Patient Zero

Connor and Baldur were involved in their first real combat last night, not counting the one against the flying demons. I'm not including that one since, if the demons had actually been interesting in fighting us, we would all be dead. No questions asked. So now we have these potential allies in the devils, which I think is a pretty swell idea, so long as we treat them with circumspection. You never really trust a powerful ally, you trust that they will follow their own motivations, so just make sure that you both want the same thing for as long as possible. Plus dealing with Lawful creatures is much more reliable than dealing with Chaotics. Not safer, just more reliable.

I really love the way MMOs generate complex behaviour from a simple system. Have a look at this article about a virtual plague in WoW. It seems that a bug in a spell effect from a high level area causes it to be transmitted by proximity. Unfortunately for the rest of the populace, the spell effect is fairly long-lasting, and deals damage over a period of time, kind of like a poison effect in a game like Diablo. Unlike Diablo's poison, it can kill you. So, some level 75 character bumps into you, coughs an apology and moves on. You stare in horror at your status bar, and drop down dead. Not a pleasant experience, I would imagine. According to the article, pretty much anyone below level 50 is going to be instagibbed like this. Harsh! Extremely cool though. This reminds me of one of the other MMOs who implemented some boosting drug of sorts, complete with addiction and side effects and withdrawals. MMOs are such a cool place to model real-world scenarios, and it adds a badass element of realism to the games.

Microsoft are working on an all-new interface design for the next version of Office. It sounds quite cool, although the article is lacking a bit on details. I am busy downloading the video of the interface, but it's 600Mb large, so it's taking a while. It's probably not even going to be worth it.

I've been reading some more of The 10k Commotion, and it really is a great web comic. Great art style, cool characters, and it's set at a DDR competition. What other web comic can boast that!

Simon introduced me to a puzzler called Professor Fizzwizzle on Wednesday night when we were playing board games at his place. It's very polished and loads of fun, although the demo levels are excessively easy, except for the advanced levels which are excessively impossible. Give it a bash =)