A Firefall Holiday Poem

By Cuculainn

'Twas the night before Christmas, when throughout Copacabana,
Not a creature was stirring, not even an Aranha,
The thumpers were hung like the stockings of yore,
In hopes the Accord would fill them with ore.

A Journey in the World of Yesterfar

WTB this Swift Steed of 'Merica

Back in 2007, I bought my first computer that was somewhat worthy of the modern gaming scene. I was about to enter college and majoring in Graphic Design so this naturally caused me to buy a Macbook Pro. Being excited with my new purchase I wanted a game to play while I was at my friends houses and that had a lot of replay value. Two months ago, I would of wanted to go back in time to my young self and sack him, tell him it was a really bad idea because you are gonna hate it come the third expansion. Two months later, I would sack the one responsible for the soon-to-be sacking, and tell 2007 EF that all will be okay after the third expansion. There will be Pandas and they will save it!

It has been 2 whole years since I have even a remote thought on returning to the world of Azeroth. Then, on some random Thursday afternoon, my best friend texts me and asks, "Are you getting Mists of Pandaria?". My immediate response was a rational thought at the time. It was a long the lines of, "LOL F THAT". Little did I know that this text actually sparked my interest and caused me to look into Mists of Pandaria. Reading articles would lead to my discovery of live streams. This would lead me to wanting to live stream... andreturningbacktoWorldofWarcraft. There I said it... Wow I feel good! Like really good! Now that the burden is gone, let's write this article! Just remember, these are all my own opinions on this game. Also I am returning after a 2 year hiatus, so I'm learning some new-ish systems.

O Come, All Ye Chosen - a Friday Night Firefall holiday event

This is going to be... interesting.

'Tis the season to warm Aranhas with plasma bullets! We know this will bring just as much joy to the boys and girls in New Eden as it will to us. I still gotta put those snow tires on the LGV though... Also, is the North Pole covered in melding? These are the things that plague our minds here at 8-Bit Tavern.

Friday Night Firefall - 4th Edition

Here we are! Week 4 of Friday Night Firefall (#FNFF), and as always, we will be rockin' out in New Eden! This weeks FNFF will be based on farming XP for anyone who needs it for the Brontodon Brawl. Then we will all have time to adjust our frames, then do some scrims!

And Now For Something Completely Different

 

Beer and Video Games. A match made in heaven.

As you have probably gathered by now, we here at 8-Bit Tavern enjoy beer. On any given day, whether we're thumping in Firefall or blasting our way across the Borderlands, we often have something at hand to quench the thirst. Over time, we've developed tastes and understanding of the character of a variety of brews and have determined, through reflection and rigorous application of science, that some beers and brewers are very similar to some of our favorite games out there. If you disagree, we expect a well-reasoned argument in the comments. Or you can just troll us like the merry band of keyboard-mashing monkeys we were meant to be. I mean, this IS the internet, right?

New Eden Chronicles: Post-Firefall Fest

Firefall Fest. Say that puppy five times fast. It's actually pretty easy, so screw it. Red 5 Studios wrapped up Firefall Fest this past weekend and there was quite the line-up of guests who got to play the game with the community. And we all get to observe their shenanigans! On top of that, we became fans of Tony Rey and #TeamSweatRag. To cap the experience, Red 5 also released a brand new patch to give us beta testers more PvE content to chew on and/or abuse! Soon (TM) indeed. Between the new PvE content, new Halloween store items, and our push to create Friday Nigh Firefall, there's plenty to recap!

Read on, noble netizen.

Introducing Friday Night Firefall!

In order to contribute toward building the Firefall community, we want to officially introduce Friday Night Firefall!

Tonight, after the Firefall Fest live stream has concluded (6PM PST / 9PM EST), join 8-Bit Tavern on our Twitch channel to watch Antilles stream with Cuculainn.

Our goal is to bring together everyone who enjoys something about playing Firefall and raise awareness about a time and place to organize, learn, compete, and just have fun.

Right now, the things we plan on doing, as well as the activities we want to see grow include all of the following:

• Educating new or potential players on game content and mechanics. We do lots of Q&A and will demonstrate game content and mechanics to you live!

• Involving viewers in PvE content. Jump in and group with Antilles and Cuculainn or any other community members!

• Raising awareness and promoting the PvP eSports scrimmaging community. As Red 5 Studios fleshes out the PvP content, we want to help connect interested players with teams looking to sharpen their eSports skills for competitve play. These activities will be the foundation of the future eSport community.

• Practice shoutcast events. Want to shoutcast but need a chance to try it out? Want to warm-up before casting your next tournament? We want to help.

• Experiment with new PvP game ideas (looking at you NERC) and incorporate weekly events into Friday Night Firefall that put a spin upon standard PvP and PvE gameplay.

In the short-term, our FNFF's will be looser, more casual, and centered around educating potential players and involving viewers in both PvP and PvE. Once we get to see everything that Red 5 has in store for us, the more we will start introducing specific events aimed at PvP or PvE gameplay.

So come join us on our Twitch channel on Friday night or look for Antilles and Cuculainn in-game and group up!

See you in New Eden,

WF (Cuculainn) & EF (Antilles)

Tavern Tech: Samsung Galaxy SIII



Samsung Galaxy SIII or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rectangles with Rounded Corners


Well it's high time that I expanded my repertoire of posts to include one of the other subjects our blog covers. Technology, especially smartphones, has become as intertwined in our lives as drinking water. You can go a while without using one, but you'll be darned if you don't get really thirsty for some of that sweet sweet gadgetry after a while. And once you make the move from what the carriers are calling "basic phones" to smartphones (or as I like to think of them, exobrains), you'll have a hard time going back. My first true smartphone was the Motorola Droid X, which I acquired two years ago. Back when a phone that size was gargantuan. But I didn't mind. In fact, I prefer larger phones that are concussions waiting to happen should they ever become airborne. With my two year contract being up, I shopped around and was amused that most new smartphones are either as large, or larger than the Droid X. After researching specs, reviews, discussing the newest generations of phones possessed by friends and colleagues, toying with Verizon's in-store models, and consulting no less than three Ouija boards, I settled on the Samsung Galaxy SIII.

New Eden Chronicles: Prologue

This is it. The best anteater simulation game ev... Crap wrong review. Who loves free-to-play?

This will be the first of a series of co-written posts aimed at chronicling our adventures on the up-coming Free-To-Play massively multi-player first-person shooter being developed by Red 5 Studios. The name of the game is Firefall. It is currently in a closed beta, but after testing out the game at PAX East 2012, we have been opted in ever since! We did, however, put Firefall on the back-burner for a few months as we chewed our way through Diablo 3, Civilization 5 Gods & Kings, and a few other games that have held our collective attention. But now in the past month we have sunk our teeth into Firefall, and dang is it crispy. Like bacon. An upcoming patch will overhaul the game's approach to character development, combat, and content offered, but there's no reason we can't dive in and share what we've seen so far. We want to see where Firefall goes and we plan to ride shotgun as Red 5 Studios drives this game's development and innovation into new areas of gaming.

Avacynian Decisions

Just throwing cards together and seeing what sticks

So M13 is breathing down our necks and it's high time for me to comment on the previous release. Better late than never! I've settled into my new house, with my new fiance, and my mind has room to intelligently communicate via keyboard once again. Before we continue I promise that Magic is not going to be all I write about. I feel I have a Firefall beta post brewing in the depths. So, hold your pinky up to the computer monitor, smart-phone, tablet, or any other gadgetry used to divine this page from the aether. Promised. Now, on with the ideation!

Podcast: We are okay at this!

Emotions were mixed in this hot and steamy recording environment

It was a warm and muggy night. I was about 5 years old. I was listening to my Grandfather tell me stories about his war stories, mostly from Vietnam. The brutal conditions of war and how he sometimes wished he could be in the comfortable, safe, and secure confines of a podcast recording set-up. He wipes his tears away as the past starts to quickly show in his face. He slowly raises his head to look at me in my adolescent eyes and says, "Nothing defines a man like a content rich, just over an hour and at least 2 people talking about gaming, podcast." He begins to tear even more. I do as well. I cannot hold this back. After this conversation, that definitely happened, I have set out my whole entire life to do so. I think I will make him a proud Grandfather.

The minions in the world grow slightly mediocre

If you don't understand how violent Diablo 3 is, and where this is going.
Please. Just think about it.

So unlike every other redditer (redditites?) and every other person who posts on the Diablo 3 Forums, Will and I have not reached level 60 yet. You know, that life thing.

As casually "hardcore" gamers we try to be, we at least have made it to level 50 and Act 4 of nightmare difficulty. At a young age, we found out that we could soak up our parents electricity bill by playing Diablo and Diablo 2 on two separate computers while listening to Limp Bizkit, we have pretty much stuck together through any Blizzard game. Yes, this even includes World of Warcraft. *Sigh* Damn, this is already depressing... Quick! To the first key point!

A memory that will forever be indescribable Pt. 3

Stephen Reid and I slightly inebriated. Slightly. Also, game face.

Saturday

Have you ever had a day where you wake up and you have no idea something great is going to happen to you? If you answered that question with anything other than "Whhaaaa...?" This place called the internet is not for you. So just... go.

Wood for Sheep

Whoops! Did I say that out loud?

I'm back from my literary hiatus. Nothing like the home stretch of a grad school semester to pick the sweet sweet time from your bones like a goddam vulture.

Anywho, like a lot of people, when I attended PAX East I had the opportunity to expand my horizons. One of the ways this manifested itself was in the board game arena. There was a plethora to choose from. A wholesale cornucopia, if you will, of cool games but I picked only one to actually sit down and learn. Twas one that I've heard good things many a time before: Settlers of Catan.

A memory that will forever be indescribable Pt. 2

Cosplay at it's absolute finest.

Friday

We first hit the Expo floor and immediately get overwhelmed. We walk to the Star Wars: The Old Republic almost immediately. Unfortunately people are already playing so we grab our Tauntaun pet code immediately and run for the Rockstar/Max Payne 3 booth. On the way we get distracted like a kid with A.D.D. in a room full of shiny, moving things.

A memory that will forever be indescribable Pt. 1

To some this is a group of nerds. To others it's a field
full of daisies just waiting to be frolicked in.

PAX East will forever be my favorite memory. Ever. I honestly have been starting at those two sentences for about 20 minutes now and have no real good way to segway this into a better description or even a decent metaphor. I can't. I simply cannot summarize PAX any better than that. So let's pretend that this fake transition is about as real as wrestling.

Shut Up Dad: Retro Games - Super Mario’s D&D Phase

This is our first guest article here. This is my buddy Mike (MV), who has dragged me ever so helplessly into the Walking Dead universe. Enjoy some retro gaming reading and then proceed to yell at him for having awesome interests/hobbies.
-EF

When I was a half grown, my parents were immensely sheltering. They were afraid of the grass in front of them and could barely make eye contact with the mailman. With this unholy fear of the unknown, came the general fear of media, and tried to keep my intake of film, literature, and video games to a grade A, Mickey Mouse approved level. When it came to my beloved Super Nintendo, my parents really only allowed me to own KA (that’s right, that was a rating one time) rated video games. Unfortunately for my youth, I suffered from ignorance, and didn’t even fathom the idea that there were video games out there in the world where you could kill Mechahitler or rip out someone’s heart in a fatality. I resorted to avoiding barrels in the country and throwing giant eggs at giant baby Bowser on top of a crumbling castle.

The Walken Dead needs more cowbell

OH SNAP... I am, The Walking Dead. How... inconvenient. 

Admit it, when you read that caption you read it in EXACTLY Christopher Walken's voice. Any who. About 6 months ago I watched 4 episodes of The Walking Dead and I really enjoyed it. Then I kinda fell out of watching the rest of the season. About a week ago, my buddy from college said he has 7 of the hardcover graphic novels and he is willing to let me borrow all of them. Then we started talking about the new game that was created by Tell Tale Games, The Walking Dead. So I had to go home and get it on XBOX. Then he came over and brought the novels with him. Let’s just say my Sunday and Monday afternoons were buried into those books. And I loved it.

One card to rule them all

I ended up getting a little to greedy with my EVGA GTX 470. This was my first build where I tried to overclock everything but my memory. I tried the CPU, that caused system crashes. I did the GPU, and then my graphics card took an arrow to the knee. In kind of a literal sense though. As in, my graphics card is literally limping along as I drag it through the dirt, yelling at it, feeling sorry for it, then yelling at it all over again.

"Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the 4th."

"But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the 4th are they." -Yoda

Happy Star Wars day!

~May the 4th Be with you

-EF

The Mass Effect of Entitlement

Fishy Shepard questions your decisions.

That's right! The Internets dead horse of all subjects, Mass Effect 3! As everyone has an opinion, I would love to throw mine into this vortex of hate, crying and complaining. The "mass" opinion seems to be that the ending didn't tickle the Internets fancy and a ton of players want EA to whip up a new ending for them. Then there is also the infamous day one DLC will forever be disputed like politics. So lets go right ahead and swan dive into this in hopes of there is a return from this black hole. (Don't worry, there won't be any spoilers.)

It's a Miracle!

At least that's what I'm looking to say, with some snark, as I play a deck with some of the new Magic cards with the "Miracle" mechanic in the new Avacyn Restored set. Top decking like a pro has never been so profitable.

So this post is all about MTG since there was a timely set release this past weekend. I was able to partake in the pre-release festivities, both regular and Helvaultian, and will share what morsels of knowledge I managed to scrape from the blur that was Saturday.

The Fear and Loathing on Tatooine

"We can't stop here! This is Probot country."

Star Wars: The Old Republic. This game has been on my list of "Most Anticipated Games", right underneath Half-Life 3, or Half-Life 2: Episode 3, or Half-Life 2 for the Wii!

Sorry I had to put a fire out on my keyboard for typing that last one. Where was I? Ah, yes, The Old Republic. As a huge Star Wars fan, I love 100% of this game when it comes to the story, and the story for all the characters. I have not played any character yet on that game which the story sucked. I honestly get so into it I start ... role-playing. Not to the point where I will start yelling at people in General Chat on the Fleet to not say certain things cause they lead to the Dark Side. As I will role-play in all my choices. I will choose what kind of character this class will be and I go with it. Sometimes a Dark Side choice will come up that I personally do not agree with but that is who my character is. So, I sit there and murder a whole base of force sensitives, I shed tears and continually mutter, under my weeping, "I'm so sorry..."

Ahhh Google, I love your antics

Go to Google and type in "zerg rush". Be prepared to defend your browser!

TGIF

-EF

P.S. Star Wars: The Old Republic Review post incoming today. Pre-1.2 patch. It is going to be nice and juicy. Good for the body, mind and soul.

There and back again

My brother thought it was high time to enter this jungle of a blogosphere that has established itself and taken root firmly in the intertubes. He was about to go it alone when I thought back to my grade school days, where we were taught about going somewhere unknown. Buddy system baby. And we brought machetes.

So here we go.

The Beginning of something I may never get to see the end of.

Well here I am. About 3 weeks after PAX East. Overwhelmed with all the beta’s I would love to dive into, but as a good citizen I work full time and try to maintain a social life. But today I bid you ado Social life... okay that’s a lie. I need my friends cause I am terrible at meeting people online to play games with. Mostly because when I do meet someone online to play with, I usually stop playing that game because of no time or a hotter and younger Video Game catches my attention.