The Recycle Bin

Today is National Lemming Day. Madden 2007 was released to various outlets. The lemmings rejoiced and purchased it. Now they are moaning and groaning in various forums. This year is highlighted by NLD coverage at ESPN.com, just in case you missed the ridiculous lemming pay-per-view event.

I’ll wait a few weeks and purchase the PC version. My brother must once again feel the pain of my Madden skills via the internet! That’s the only reason I buy Madden these days anyhow.

I think Geoff beat me once last year, so maybe he’ll want some Johnson Madden pain as well…

We’re at the point where our league file can be converted to OOTPB 2006. I’ve decided that we’ll wait until the next patch is released next week to start our regular sim schedule. Patch 1.0.3 fixes some online league and other important issues, so no sense in rushing things at this point. Our biggest problems continue to be the contraction in OOTP 6.5 beause if we did decide to stay with the older version, our schedule is all messed up.

I will use as much restraint as possible to state that the views expressed by Jonathan Calvert concerning any beer product are his and his alone, and not the official opinion(s) of the Recycle Bin game blog! I figure I’d get that legal disclaimer out there so that my friends who read this won’t think I’ve become a fan of anything produced by Miller, Budweiser, etc. Shiner Bock is about as low as I’ll go!

Every once in a while we have to talk about beer – it is sort of the American way. It has been an extremely long week. In fact, last night I found myself ordering Domino’s Pizza for the crew at work, which was sort of a strange feeling because the last time I ordered pizza for a late night was the week my dad passed away. Anyway, strange how things like that stick with you.

So I found myself wanting a beer after work last night; a quick stop at Mr. B’s and I found myself with the “champagne of beers” – Miller High Life Light. I am not sure if I have ever had a regular High Life; if I had, it has been years past, and I have never had the “light” version. The price was right – under $10 for a case of 18 delicious cans – and the taste is refreshing for cheap beer. Not sure if I can tell the taste between Miller Light and HLL, but as I said, for cheap beer you cannot go wrong with The High Life Light.

I do not really care much for the Little League World Series, or at least what goes on as far as TV coverage these days, but I do have to pull for the Georgia team, the Northern Little League team, from Columbus, GA. This is not only my home team, but my home league. Way back in the day, I made the All-Star team as an alternate, but we did not advance past the state tournament. Glory days and all that.

This article focuses more on New York, but Georgia won the game 3-2 in 7 innings.

Go Northern All-Stars!

I missed this last week, but Sports Interactive announced the new features for NHL Eastside Hockey Manager 2007. The real-time 2D engine caught my eye. It looks like one of those table top hockey games of yester-year. I like it.

I just love how the rest of the world believes PC gaming is dead. Wolverine Studios released the first ever PGA Tour-like career text-game last week. There are three serious contenders in the text-baseball world for career baseball fans. Sports Interactive has their classic soccer game and now NHL EHM is moving on up to the Eastside (my “Jeffersons” reference for the day) as a polished product.

Throw in a little World of Warcraft time and who needs a console?!

If only SI would make all of their products online gaming friendly. I’d love to play NHL EHM in an OOTPB-like online league.

I decided I am going to include World of Warcraft discussion here on the good old blog. Like all addictions, WoW is something you don’t bring up in casual conversation. I wouldn’t meet someone and say, “Hey, did you know I am an alcoholic?” That’s how I kind of feel about my WoW experience to date. I play the game way too much. But I just can’t stop.

My message to the kids? Stay away. Check that, run away from anything WoW-related.

I started playing WoW around the second week it was released. I began my career as a member of the Horde. My Tauren hunter made it to level 56 before I was convinced to join the Alliance. For those unfamiliar, there are a number of different WoW servers that are their own virtual worlds. The total number of players is capped on each server. They have colorful names (I play on Bronzebeard) and server choice determines who you will be enjoying your WoW-experience with.

I am in the Shadows of Shockforce guild on Bronzebeard. We’re a relatively small group of 60 characters. Since each of us has a main character and a couple of “alts”, that translates into about 20-25 live human beings in the guild. My first 60-level character is Fwarn, a dwarf hunter. I have an alt 60-level priest (Swarn), a 34-level human mage (Thillor), and a 23-level dwarf warrior (Bwarn).

My theory is that the old ladies you see in Las Vegas sitting in front of slot machines for hours are the perfect WoW player candidates. That’s essentially what the loot system is in the game. Pull the handle (kill a monster or “boss”) and see what drops in the tray.

A sad way to spend a large portion of one’s life.

Got a newsletter from Diamond Mind that discusses the merger of the franchise with a company called “Simnasium.” No, I’ve never heard of them either.

I must say that the DIamond Mind newsletters are hands down the best sent out by any gaming company I know of. They are entertaining to read. Tom Tipett won’t just try and sell you the latest and greatest all-time players set. He always includes some interesting discussion about baseball in general.

All of you historical text gamers ripping out your hair in the Out of the Park Baseball forums really need to check out Diamond Mind or PureSim Baseball.

We solved the draft and conversion problem – no thanks to Sports Interactive since nobody there could answer this queston. Our own study revealed that the prospects generated in OOTP 6.5 convert to OOTPB 2006.

A couple of people continue to post their concerns over and over again on the OOTPB 2006 boards. I really wish they would move on to PureSim or some other game. Or if they could at least vary their message it would make things much more enjoyable. Idiots like “The Wolf” (a serial basher) can only be trolling for posts by this time since he/she has nothing good to say about OOTPB 2006 (or repeats the same thing over and over again).

At least lynchjm24 moans and groans once or twice and varies his complaints a bit.

A bit off-topic, but I think Richard Jewel and the Ramsey family can feel each others pain about right now. Both were found guilty by the press, only to have it revealed that they were, in fact, not responsible for any crime. It’s pretty sad that the mother passed away before she saw this headline.

I ran across a reference to the “man in the arena” in a recent issue of SI, and I just had to look it up. What a great quote by Teddy Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

After dealing with the crap that I do on a daily basis, I figured it was appropriate to throw up those words of wisdom in the ‘bin. So many people think they have it all figured out; how much easier is it to criticize a problem instead of offering up a solution. (stepping off of my soap box, and putting it away for the night)

The main concern I have about the transition from OOTP 6.5 to OOTPB 2006 surrounds the draft. The new game reveals the draft class during the season. A news item is created that announces the prospect pool, and you can then draft the players whenever you’ve pre-set the date in June for your ami draft. Some leagues draft before the season starts, but we’ve always held a June draft.

So what’s the problem?

OOTP 6.5 creates a draft class when you hit the proceed to next season button. We were about to start our 2018 draft when it suddenly dawned on me that OOTPB 2006 may actually create new prospects in place of the imported players. If my league spends hours upon hours going through a draft based on OOTP 6.5 generated prospects, will we find out to our dismay that these players do not exist in OOTPB 2006?

Nobody seems to know the answer to that question.

My crack team of owners are going to do some tests to see if the prospects do carry over during the conversion. Other than that, there continue to be FTP-related bugs reported that may hamper things a bit. Markus Heinsohn has promised a new patch at the end of August that will hopefully fix these issues.

Why double dip, when you can triple dip? I already have The Lord of the Rings regular edition movie editions, and of course I had to purchase the super secret, and oh so special, platinum special editions, but do I really need a new “limited” edition with new commentaries? Sure, the fan in me wants this, but do I really *need* yet another edition of this great move? Talking about capitalism at its finest.

I came across this one at Curmudgeon Gamer.

Basically some quack claims that 40% of WoW gamers are addicted. I will never know if this is true because I do not currently spend any free time with crack, or WoW, but you would never know it by searches that after produces hits on this site, often with references to “crack.” Hmmm.

Back on topic … the quack basically states that Wow is gaming crack:

“She points out that MMORPGs typically use what is known in psychological circles as variable ratio reinforcement. Variable ratio reinforcement is the idea that the best way to optimize the desired behavior in the subject is to hand out rewards for correct behavior, and then adjust the number of times the subject is required to exhibit that behavior before a reward is handed out. For instance, if a rat must press a bar to receive food, then it will press faster and more often if it doesn’t know how many times it needs to press the bar. An equivalent in World of Warcraft would be purple (epic) loot drops: you never know when they are going to happen, but that just increases the anticipation of getting them.”

I never thought that Chris was a rat, but there is a reason I stay away from this crack. Of course I have not seen Chris post recently on WoW, so maybe it is rather pass�, or maybe the rat is tired of the cheese.

This could be a rather expensive fall. Joystiq has an article describing the alleged confirmed Wii launch lineup. 27 games is damn impressive. At this point it is hard to say what I will get, but I would have to bet on Madden 07 if the control is innovative, Wii Sports, Zelda Twilight Princess, and maybe something else that makes innovative use of the controller.

It is still early days, but I fully expect to get a Wii. With my love for games, for Nintendo, and two kids, I think a Wii purchase will be money well spent. I want access to the old classics, but I want some innovation as well, so anything that is family (or sports) oriented that makes use of the new controller in interesting ways will find its way into my gaming library.

In the interests of Public Service, please check out Family Watchdog if you or your family have young children, have friends that have young children, or just wonder what sort of rift-raft lives near you. You have been warned.