Happy Halloween. By the way, most of my WoW gametime has been more or less pushed to the backburner until Cataclysm comes out. This is usually about the time that I take an extended pre-release WoW break anyways, but to be honest, there's just not a whole lot to do at the moment. I guess I can PvP or run dungeons, but the two big things that I really wanted to complete before the expansion (Loremaster and Kingslayer) have been finished. Besides, it's gaming season and all of the new shit is starting to come out. Come early December it's not like I'm going to do anything else on my computer for X months other than play WoW.

I posted a series of Minecraft videos on YouTube. The original idea was to narrate them, something that I still might do. I was going to do a Keiya's adventures sort of continuous story bit but, eh. The problem with that is Minecraft is one of those games that I am usually playing while either half-watching or half-doing something else. It's relaxing (when not in dark areas at least lol) and I like it that way. These videos are ultra crap-ass but I had fun recording them and hope that at least at least one person enjoys them.

I haven't had much of a chance to play the Minecraft update in depth, just in small spurts; Partially because I was busy this past weekend and partially because a new Sims 3 expansion (Late Night) pack came out. I caved in and bought it after work on Friday; Obsessively playing it for a good portion of the weekend, which means that it probably warrants a review post. It's a fairly standard expansion pack for better or for worse. I'd say that it's probably my favorite out of the three that have been released, but much of it seems half-assed compared to the corresponding Sims 2 expansion features. The implementation of apartments in particular are pretty lame.

Wow is it really November already? Hey, CoD and AC:B are coming out soon...

Job related content or rather, the distinct lack thereof has traditionally been a huge gaping hole in every single Sims game. Normally your sims choose a career path: Medical, business, food, whatever. In terms of gameplay, that career consists of little more than vanishing into a building for about 8 gameplay hours 5 days a week. Assuming that all of your sims have a regular job/school, that is almost a fourth of the game per sim spent doing almost nothing.

Ambitions is good because it allows to you to actively control your sim at work. I won't bother explaining the details for all of the new professions because that has already been done and uuuh I haven't played them all to be honest. The new profession objectives are fun, though fairly typical in what you would expect from the Sims style click based gameplay (run around, click, do something, repeat). I like the stylist and the architect professions because they affect the outward appearance of the town and its people (it is fun giving people pink mullets :P).

Where the hell is my package going? Why did ship from Oklahoma to Kentucky when I live in California? Furthermore, why did I bother with one day shipping on Amazon instead of just running over to Best Buy to purchase it after work QQ. I ordered the newest Sims 3 expansion pack, Ambitions on Sunday. I feel obligated to write a semi-review or glitch (go go EA QA) guide at some point. Actually, I am looking forward to playing this expansion quite a bit because it changes core gameplay. World Adventures was interesting, but allowing sims to travel to other load zones broke time continuity (among other things).

Other than the three new load zones and a couple of other things, not a whole lot was added into the game. The ability to control sims while on the job, as opposed to them just vanishing into a rabbit hole for 8+ hours has been on the top of most player's wish lists since uuuh the first game?

Oh And: Come on EA; would it have hurt you that much to roll out some of the Sims 2 expansion pack functionality into the Sims 3 base game? (like apartments). Or at the very least, some fairly significant additional content in the form of a free downloadable patch instead of pushing everything into DLC on your stupid store. I know that I will still end up purchasing every single expansion pack like an addict but still. T_T

I MUST GET BLIZZCON tickets tomorrow. Watch me get held up at work or stuck in traffic on the way home though :/. Oh and, I went a whole week without playing WoW, playing any games (iPhone games on the plane don't count), or sitting in front of (my) computer because I *gasp* went outside! Might post about my vacation if I ever get around to sorting through photos.

Sorry, totally not related to anything but, some dude is totally recreating a Sims 3 version of Vice City (as in the city from GTA) using the Create a World tool and that is just pure awesome in my books. Said world needs to include the strip joints somehow.

Speaking of the Create a World tool, I keep meaning to play with it a little more for the sake of creating a custom neighborhood so that my little people have somewhere fun and original to run around. Actually, I kind of want a custom neighborhood to start yet another legacy challenge. If you look hard enough, a couple of really bad half-assed legacy blogs are still buried in the bowels of this site.

The tool itself really isn't all that difficult to use. I am fairly surprised at that given my experience with world editing tools. They are usually just so...obtuse when it comes to the interface and what not. But then again, I've never been willing to soak in enough time to properly learn how to use any of them. I can't think of anything cool to model a neighborhood after. Maybe I will just create an island with a giant mountain in the center or something? Wait no: I will create "Pen Island" except that, it won't be shaped like a pen at all and only a small portion, the tip of the peninsula, will be visible on the in game town map (so that it doesn't get banned off of the exchange :P). The base of the island will contain a massive forrest.

Random WoW bits:

• The paladin class changes were bumped up by two days. As in, they are tomorrow. I smell all around nerfs and a few shiny new spells. 
• Did this happen to anyone else? I updated Pitbull 4 recently, logged in and all of my settings had been reset to the default. I tried restoring the lua file from a UI backup, but that didn't work? Do you know how long it takes to redo all of the UI bar settings? Pain in the ass.
• I wonder if I should go *gasp* holy in Cataclysm? Actually, most of my main spec changes have revolved around guild need. I enjoy playing any of the three specs really, though facerolling has been pretty damned fun. I think I may have found my true calling as a paladin :P
• FINALLY WON Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter. It's not that it doesn't drop; Oh it's dropped around 5 times. I've just consistently rolled shittely.
• Also picked up the tier-10 pants and a few other things. Ugly skirt is ugly.

FYI: I have a Twitter feed, if anyone cares about that sort of thing. It pretty much mirrors anything posted on my Facebook wall +/- a few things. Okay well, it's little more than a well of boredom as well as a dump for random iPhone pictures.

If you are running a system with more than sufficient memory, are absolutely positive that it isn't a hardware issue, yet your game is still crashing/save crashing out every 30 to 45 minutes, read this blog post and then download/run this tool. Just because it worked for me doesn't mean that it will work for you, so make sure to backup the executables before patching them just in case. I Sims 3 binged for a good portion of Sunday and did not crash out once.

Neither The Sims 3 forums nor the crash logs within The Sims 3 directory were all that useful. By the way, the "DasmX86Dll.dll not found" error message isn't all that relevant to the actual cause of the crashes (confirmed by SimGuru; It is a red herring). It's a file that was used as a part of the debugging process and was removed when the game went live. So it is more of a catch all than anything else.

I was actually pretty fortunate and never had a game crash problem until I installed the High-End Stuff Pack (I know that was totally a waste of cash but I needed my Sims crack fix). Apparently, one of the suspect causes of the crashing is the 2GB virtual memory limitation. The patcher will let you modify The Sims 3 executables to use more than 2GB of memory. Or something like that.

So yay, I can play this game once again without it shitting on me.