Well, not really. This is one of the better things I've seen related to him in a while, though. It's even mean to Mark, which gives me an excuse to post this here.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=waiting+for+grimoire&hl=en&safe=off&rnum=1&selm=6aaaot4l1vpfgk27frshk171odrrfncdt4%404ax.com

Heh -- I saw that message but didn't read far enough into it to realize I made an appearance in it. I wonder why I got picked on? Oh well, being made to talk like Jeff K. is kind of funny.

It does have that underlying theme that I've always relied on: Mark Asher always has the answer. I'd take it as a compliment, Mark! ;-)

Anyway...pretty funny stuff.

I'd love to be satirized in Beckett.
Neat!

-Andrew

>I wonder why I got picked on?

Heh, I'm not sure if the reference to me was meant as an insult or not. It was certainly an accurate statement, heh.

Stefan

My favorite Usenet thread title of all time was (and I'm not making this up): "Cleve Blakemore butt-fucks sheep."

Truer words were never spoken. Or typed. Or whatever.

It's good to see that Cleve is still plugging away at Grimoire, though. At this rate, he may finish it before the sun goes nova. Or before people stop caring... oh, wait. Never mind.

Asher is leet. He is so leet i should just type ' ' and insert leet. YOU RULE ASHER!!! and TOM CHICK IS BALDING!!! And so am i.

btw i did a google search on your usenet postings... 38,000+ and Tom Chick? only a paltry 7,000. And me? a tiny 2,100. Yes you are ELITE!

etc

And did you know Asher is a trolly St Louis Rams fan? read this!

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22mark+asher%22&hl=en&group=alt.sports.football.pro.stl-rams&safe=off&rnum=1&selm=xRX36.14402%24cW3.550650%40newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net

Wow, these football fans sound like rabid gamer fans. Wow!

etc

38,000 Usenet posts? Is that right? By god, good to see I haven't wasted my life!

Actually, that number can't be right. It must include reply posts that have my name in them. I refuse to believe that I'm averaging over 6000 Usenet posts a year.

Just doing an unscientific search on "[email protected]", you've posted 8,520 messages to USENET. If you search in the advanced search by author with an e-mail address, you should get a more accurate count. I've used at least 6 different e-mail addresses to post to USENET so I'd have to search all six and add them up. Any variations have to be accounted for too. I used to be [email protected] until I got piles of spam, then changed it to [email protected]. Searching on both gave a more accurate picture of my old postings. Since I now use [email protected], that shows my most current activity.

--Dave

Hmmm... I guess I have that last address different, or I haven't posted from home yet. I use Newsranger when the mood or need strikes at work.

--Dave

The web has not been kind to usenet. It's really gone downhill in the last two years.

The only reason people actually enter usenet these days is piracy. It's one of the last bastions of piracy for the non-l337 common folk, believe it or not. I know a couple coworkers who are reasonably computer savvy but not addicts like me, and they regularly troll usenet for warez and movies.

I think you're overstating the death of Usenet quite a bit.

Perhaps piracy is one of the main reasons, and one of the few legit reasons, but you'll find that perhaps the most active, and most purpose-filled newsgroups are the alt.music.* or the alt.rock-n-roll.* newsgroups, or perhaps any of the music groups.

The quality of these groups is generally unsurpassed, considering they actually have a point most the time. Where-as the gaming newsgroups are all homes for trolls, the comp newsgroups are all homes for, er, whatever the hell is in those. Etc. You get the idea.

Of course, then there's alt.test, which kicks all ass.

There's still some good chat in the game groups, but they have gone downhill. I'm sure the web has siphoned off a lot of traffic.

Yeah. This, for example, is a much better erudite-games-chat location than USENET currently is. Since games no longer have the odd half-documented and deep design style that generates a trillion USENET posts (Master of Magic), most USENET game discussions are now advocacy and....well, not much else.

Yeah, I've all but completely abandoned usenet in favor of Web forums like these. I used to waste SO much time on the gaming newsgroups on Usenet and all it ever did was give me a headache. However, I will still go to the comics groups now and then if I wanna get general reactions on how a certain comic is. But, yeeesh, those guys are full of more trolls and flames than the gaming groups....

>comics groups...But, yeeesh, those guys are full of more trolls and flames than the gaming groups....

Yeah, and there's only about 30 people who post there. I post a bit to the xbook group, but wonder why I bother. The number of people that post to the gaming groups also seems way down from a couple of years ago though -- I suspect most people who have gotten online during the past few years don't even know the usenet exists, or even if they do, just think of it as another "message board". Message boards have really superseded the usenet, which is kinda disappointing.

Stefan

"Yeah, I've all but completely abandoned usenet in favor of Web forums like these."

Me, too. At least when a new game comes out, I can find information about it at the appropriate web forum without someone blasting all of the discussions for being inappropriate to the group charter. But on the other hand, I really miss my killfile.

It's a shame because USENET is really a great medium. I still love to read what's written in the game groups and post from time to time. The biggest problem is it seems that one or two trolls have really taken over at different times in the last few years driving off anyone that was trying to talk games.

I think I still like the format better than a web board. Threading is simply easier to follow most of the time.

--Dave

Usenet is still around? It's so...20th century!

"It's a shame because USENET is really a great medium."

It's a great medium if you like noise. My favorite Usenet comment ever: "finding useful information on the Usenet is like panning for gold in a cesspool."

And that's pretty much true. I still use it from time to time if I'm stuck in a game, but I rarely browse it any more. Moderated forums (like this one!) tend to produce more interesting discourse.

I agree. I rarely use Usenet now and when I do occasionally use it I mainly focus on comments from people I have been reading for the last 7 years, eg. Mark Asher, etc.

Now I mainly use forum based groups like QT3, SimHQ, etc.

Much better signal-to-noise ratio.

"Actually, that number can't be right. It must include reply posts that have my name in them. I refuse to believe that I'm averaging over 6000 Usenet posts a year. "

That's only about 16 messages a day. You do that here, ya?

Just wondering... is anyone here actually going to give Grimoire a try when/if it's finally released? I have to say, if he can deliver on the game he's promised, I think it should be pretty cool. Sure, the graphics were already outdated when he started working on it, but graphics aren't everything. Any thoughts? I'm bored, and looking to start up a discussion. yo.

Grimoire is basically a Wizardry clone and very "old school". Gamers are used to full 3D environments or BG type isometric environments. I can't see it being successful.

You know people criticise Derek Smart for Battlecruiser but at least he has a released game that plays reasonably well after patching.

As for Cleve Blakemore the guy is full of hot air and bluster and is a psychological basket case. I will be very surprised to see anything eventuate from this idiot.

---

Quote:

As for Cleve Blakemore the guy is full of hot air and bluster and is a psychological basket case. I will be very surprised to see anything eventuate from this idiot.

---

Yeah, he talked up a pretty big storm on the Usenet three or four years ago. Ranted endlessly about how all other developers were idiots that couldn't make a good game to save their lives.

I seem to recall that he also spent a lot of time mocking other games's extended development cycles. HIS game would come out on time, he proudly proclaimed. Given that, I'm not real surprised that he's pretty quiet, these days. He's busy eating his humble pie, with a side order of hypocrisy.

As for Grimoire, I didn't think it looked all that impressive back in... what? 1997? I seriously doubt that it's improved with age. Games rarely do.

>I didn't think it looked all that impressive back in... what? 1997?

I played a build of it in early 1998. It was a decent Bard's Tale/Might and Magic 1/Wizardry 3-5-style clone, but that was terribly dated even then. I don't know how much you've played of Wizardry 8, Ben -- although I think it's fun, it's also terribly dated. It really should have been out in 1998 -- when it would have been a viable competitor to Might and Magic VI, which was a reasonable commercial success.

Stefan

I've never been a big fan of the Wizardry games. One of my roommates in college was really into them, and tried endlessly to get me hooked on Bane of the Cosmic Forge or Curse of the Dark Savant or whatever was out at the time (I misremember), but it never grabbed me. I liked the Might & Magic games up through the Xeen titles, but I've since cooled on that style of RPG altogether (tried to play through M&M VI, and gave up about ten hours into it). My tastes have shifted to two opposite ends of the RPG spectrum--towards games like Diablo, which gives you the dungeon crawl but livens it up with simple mechanics, quick pacing, and frequent rewards; and games like Fallout (and, more recently, Arcanum), which is deep and involving but rewards you with a great story and allows you to role-play your character the way you want and make decisions that matter.

I have less patience for multi-character RPGs--usually I feel like the sheer act of managing all that character info dilutes the experience. I'd rather play one character with depth rather than six cardboard cutouts. I did like Baldur's Gate II quite a lot, although I would have prefered that the game handle all the characters aside from the main one. Fortunately they give you lots of tools to help "automate" things, at least in combat.

I agree that dated RPGs can be fun. I recently replayed Fallout, and it was just as much fun as it was the first time around. I replayed Wasteland last year, and Ultima Underworld the year before. I guess the problem with Grimoire is that it never looked very appealing to me in the first place.

I took one look at the lockpicking interface in Wizardy 7 and played something else.

I played the press demo of Wiz 8 and liked it a lot more than, say, Wizards & Warriors. It looked less dated than that, but yeah, it was dated. Still, I was intrigued enough by it that I would probably give it a whirl if I ever see a finished copy.

But games, as has been noted, do not age like fine wines. More like raw fish.

The original Wizardry is probably the main reason I am into computer gaming now. It was D&D on the computer and it was amazing. I never really played the follow ups even to this day but don't discount the original it was very cool and I know it influenced a lot of people as it did me.

-- Xaroc

Werdna to your mother Xaroc!
Mahalito! Bring on the Creeping Coins!

-Andrew

Oh, I was wowed by the first Wizardry as well (who can forget Vorpal Bunnies?), and I was even more wowed by Bard's Tale. But that style of game really hasn't evolved much, other than visually. The latest Might and Magics play a lot like Bard's Tale 2.

I've killed more Creeping Coins than you can shake a stick at. I remember my brother and I found a closet-like room that was always stuffed with XP-engorged Creeping Coins, and we would spend hours beating the hell out of them.

Memories...
Woe to you if you met Creeping Coins (on the second level if I recall) and you'd forgotten to adjust the combat speed to maximum.

It'd take FOREVER!
But they really were worth the XP.

I also recall the first time I saw the animated Bard's Tale monsters. (So pathetically animated - yet so impressive for their time.)

-Andrew

For what it's worth, Cleve has (vaguely) decided that Grimoire is ready for beta testing. Check this link, part of the Grimoire forums:

http://pluto.beseen.com/boardroom/y/54077/View?n=00181

Speaking of usenet personalities, is it still a secret who Critical Bill was? His endless attacks on PC Gamer were sometimes spot on, and sometimes completely wacko.

Critical Bill was just an ordinary game fan when he ranted. Later, he became a hardware editor for a website. I think he's back to being a fan, or probably a non-fan and non-editor at this point.

Critical Bill's name was/is Vince Freeman. I think his wacko status has been taken by Evil Avatar, or Philip Hansen, as he's called when he links to his reviews on GameSpy (which aren't as Philip "Evil Avatar" Hansen). 'Course that boy is sorta schizo; he gives Max Payne a great review on GameSpy, then says they "fucked him" out of $50 because the game is so short.