JohnnyBGamer

Monday

Good Monday afternoon everyone!

By now I am sure that most of you are settled into your places of employment and have commenced with the work day. Bosses have already yelled, deadlines have been pushed or postponed, and some random crazy person has disrupted your otherwise “normal” Monday.

Here in the JBG offices, which overlook the beautiful forests of Endor, Monday has proven to be uneventful. Valentines weekend has come and gone, and yours truly enjoyed relaxing with his wife. What did we do? I ended up BBQing and cooking for my woman. Plain and simple.

As a sidenote: Valentine’s Day always seems like the greatest setup for a man, a setup for failure. Expectations always run too high and consumerism is king. Lucky for me my wife realizes these things and decided to keep things simple.

What have I been playing?

Besides the occasional game of Cartoon Wars – Gunner, I haven’t been doing too much on the gaming front. Just haven’t had time. With the Olympics on TV, a son that is growing too quickly, and a life needing to be lived, gaming has certainly taken a backseat lately. Fret not though dear readers, much more is to come on the horizon. Such as?

Goals for JohnnyBGamer:

Come up with a working definition, based on the DSM IV, for gaming addiction.
Focus articles on gaming addiction and raise level of awareness.
Write more reviews!
Recruit other writers to write for the site (regardless of belief).
And in the far future…
Setup a gaming tournament hosted by JBG.

Hopefully Monday is treating everyone well. If it isn’t, there is always tomorrow. So, take a deep breath. The day is almost over.

Born of Hope

Came across this movie and thought I’d share. Nothing like a good fan made movie on a snowy day. Enjoy!

Born of Hope

This 70 minute original drama is set in the time before the War of the Ring and tells the story of the Dúnedain, the Rangers of the North, before the return of the King. Inspired by only a couple of paragraphs written by Tolkien in the appendices of the Lord of the Rings we follow Arathorn and Gilraen, the parents of Aragorn, from their first meeting through a turbulent time in their people’s history.

For more on this movie be sure to check out the official website.

To Catch Accountability

While the rest of the United States eagerly awaited the opening of Super Bowl XLIV, I was off watching Dateline NBC’s ‘To Catch a Predator‘ marathon. For those that are not familiar with this series of investigative work, ‘To Catch a Predator’ is an elaborate series of sting operations hosted by:

Dateline NBC
Perverted Justice, a non-profit foundation
Local police authorities

Through the course of one episode –that was about all I could stomach for a night– predators from all walks of life were busted by the sting operations. Like who you may ask?

A minister
A cancer researcher
A father
A guy that had just turned 22

The list goes on. When the thought of a child predator comes to mind, one does not think of a next door neighbor or a trusted family member. Perhaps they should.

In watching the show, I was struck by how much the Internet causes a loss of community. Online, people are able to live out their wildest fantasies without any sort of consequences. Unless they are caught by a hidden camera news show like ‘To Catch a Predator’. When being interrogated, after being caught, these predators showed much remorse over their actions being revealed to others (in this case the interrogator). In light of community, of a fellow man, the act of sleeping with an child seemed revolting to these would be predators. Let’s see:

Light + Community = Accountability

Accountability somehow failed in these cases though. Many of the men that were caught were married. Why didn’t their wives know about their activities online? Not trying to fault the spouse, but this shows that no accountability system was in place. There was a failure in the system. The fact that some of these guys drove 2-4 hours just for the opportunity to sleep with a little girl, demonstrates their lack of being plugged in with others.

In our brave new digital age, being known in real life is the struggle. Anyone can act out their impulses in the obscurity of the Internet. Anyone. However, it takes a real man or woman to let themselves be known by others; to plug themselves into a community. Accountability is the fruit of living in community. Accountability is something we need more of.

Crossroads

Arclight, faithful druid and all around good elf, recently hit a crossroads in his World of Warcraft career. After 53 levels of working in fine-feral-form, the time for change had come.

Recently resubscribing to WoW, I thought that it was time for something new. 53 levels spent as a tank was getting old. Looking around Stormwind one day, I noticed other druids that were specced out as moonkins. Why not give it a try, I thought to myself. So 20 gold later, I now have a guildless moonkin for hire. Time to hunt for some gear that will give me some mana regeneration!

If anyone out there plays a druid in WoW and has some tips for me, I’d appreciate it. Arclight (on Stormscale) is my main character in WoW. I have been playing him off and on since the game launched in 2004. While it is kind of sad that I have yet to hit 60, let alone 80, I have enjoyed the time I have spent exploring Azeroth.

Tips? Thoughts? Comment below.

World of Warcraft Auction House Going Mobile

Original Post:

Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we’ve been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they’re not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we’re designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what’s available in-game. Players have been requesting — and we’ve been hoping to implement — a feature like this for a long time, and we’re excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible.

This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don’t have an exact release date yet. It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won’t release it until it meets the quality standards that we’ve set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We’ll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release. – As originally posted by Blizzard Poster Bornakk.

Thoughts:

As exciting as this announcement is, many details still have yet to be hammered out like:

1. Cost

It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based…

Blizzard seems to be on the pathway towards requiring a monthly subscription fee + additional fees for what is deemed “premium content”. What does premium-based content look like?

Tier A – Players are given mobile access to the Auction House as well as in-game chat capability (premium-based monthly fee required).
Tier B – Players are given mobile access to the Auction House for a one time app fee.
Tier C – Players are given mobile access to the Auction House for one character (for free).

There are so many variables involved (access to multiple characters, number of auctions allowed per day, etc.) that speculation seems mute at this point.

2. Release Date

As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won’t release it until it meets the quality standards that we’ve set for our other features and services.

Translation – The Auction House feature is still in the early stages of development. As with all Blizzard products, expect to see it released when we feel it meets our high standards.

Be sure to check back with JohnnyBGamer for the latest in video game news crumbs.