Monthly Archives: April 2010
Warcraft Word Jumble – Tobold
Here’s the latest word jumble. This one goes out to one of my favourite bloggers, Tobold, who has a history in online gaming to rival my own. With any luck my scrambling of the words should confuse you a little and make this one tougher!
How many achievements can you see?
I was sitting in Dalaran on Aman’thul the other night and damn was it packed. I zoomed out and it occured to me that it might be cool to post the pic and see how many achievements we can see, based only on the picture.
Including multiples and feats of strength, let’s see how many we can come up with! I’ll go first – I can see that the guy fishing in the Dalaran fountain is using the [Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole] which means there’s the [Tuskarrmageddon] and [Somebody Likes Me] achievements in the picture.
Edit: Here’s a [High Res version of the pic] for you super sleuths out there.
![[High Res version of the pic]](http://www.saate.net/images/Dalaran.jpg){kind=link}
Who’s next? :D
Warcraft Word Jumble – Cal
How exciting this is! Thanks to the amazing Cal Henderson the word jumbles are now interactive! You should be able to type your solutions directly into the boxes – if the word is correct it will turn green.
Feedback on this is important! Any suggestions or comments on ways this can be built upon even further would be fantastic!
What’s in a name?
So if you’ve read my ‘About Saate’ page you’ll know that I’ve been using the name ‘Saate’ for over 20 years. Not that I’m particularly old (still in my twenties!) but rather that I came up with the name at a young age and have just stuck with it ever since.
I’ve been using the name for so long, in fact, that my signature is even a flourished version of the word ‘Saate’. It’s very difficult for me, then, to identify with folks who don’t seem to have a fixed alias and flow freely and regularly from one random name to another.
It’s even more shocking for me that some people are content to wear around names like “rougedeth” with blatant spelling mistakes that only serve to portray a negative initial perception toward strangers.
The answer is not that those others and I see things any differently, it’s actually that we see them the same. That which name continuity provides me – Identity, Reputation and Legacy – is what others would seek to avoid. To be able to slough off one identity for another is a valuable freedom to them.
I’m curious to hear what your perspectives are. How long have you been using your alias and how did you come up with it? Any good stories to share?
Interviewed by Warcraft Econ
So after reaching gold cap a few weeks back I did an interview with warcraftecon.net that was all about my journey to reaching the gold cap.
It was fun and worth the read I think, go check it out!
Warcraft Word Jumble – Anea
Here’s this week’s Word Jumble for you all (<3 Anea!). I’m currently in the process of finding a flash programmer to turn these into an actual interactive flash application. That way you can actually play with the puzzle directly and solve it on the screen.
Proposals received so far are telling me it’s going to cost in the neighbourhood of $300-$400 to get this done. I’d really love advice from you guys on what you think I should do here – should I put up a donations button to help absorb some of the cost? Does one of you happen to be a flash programmer that can volunteer some time? Should I just leave them as they are?
Age and maturity: the blurred line
With my recent gold cap escapades I’ve probably had a few more random whispers each day than usual. I make it a point to always give my time readily in answering any questions or comments random people have.
It’s not really a hassle and I actually enjoy helping people. One thing it has done lately though is given me a lot to think about when it comes to the types of people we share our gaming experience with.
When someone young whispers me for gold making advice I’ve noticed a disturbingly similar trend in how the conversations tend to go. Usually something like this:
[Person] What’s the best way to make gold? got any tips for me?
[Saate] Actually you’re in luck! I’ve written an entire guide on it that you can read. It covers a lot of the principles and guidelines I use to make my gold. You should go have a read.
**2-3 Minutes Later**
[Person] That’s too much to read. Can’t you just tell me what to buy?
I’ve seen it so many times that I should be used to it yet it still surprises me every time. It’s got me thinking a lot lately about our education system. About how it seems kids are taught to remember and regurgitate (it’s how you pass a test!) without actually learning critical thinking. Is this something independant of education that you either have or don’t have the ability to do?
It’s also interesting to note that within World of Warcraft we have no way of gauging the age or maturity level of a person until after we’ve interacted with them. This I think is the source of a lot of the conflict in the game. I wonder how many arguments have been had between people in pugs and trade chat where age wasn’t even considered?
A 13 year old child is generally going to react differently to conflict than a 23 year or 33 year old will. In real life we mitigate this by maintaining a peer group of people at our own age and maturity level. Anyone falling outside of this is simply filtered out and their opinions are certainly considered to be of less consequence.
In WoW we don’t have that luxury. We treat everyone as being part of our peer group until experience proves it to be otherwise. Is that guy begging you for gold just a real-life-loser, or is he just a 10 year old behaving as expected?
I’d be interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on this topic!
Warcraft Word Jumble – Blockade
Some of you may remember my good friend [Blockade] from the first interview I did for this site way way back. I thought this one might be a fitting tribute!
Special shout out to Red Sun on Barthilas and the folks at the SA Forums who know him well and will agree with me on the final puzzle answer hehe. Have fun!
Zevia: Oh no, he didn’t!
So a couple of weeks back Zevia put together the beginnings of a…wait for it…saate.net rap. I think at the time he referred to the event as a DZD, or Dead Zevia Day.
Zev’s usual amazing production values are evident and it’s actually pretty fun to listen to. If you guys are also suitably amused then make sure to leave a comment and lets see if we can rope him into doing some more.
Got ideas? themes? wanna be included? Comment, comment, comment!
My misspent youth – FPS Saate!
Dug this up over the weekend and thought some of you might get a kick out of reading it. Way back in 1996, around the time most arena pvp kiddies were busy being born, I was pretty heavily into Quake. 3 Friends and I entered a competition in Sydney.
It was an elimination style competition held over consecutive weeks. We ended up making it to the final and won the competition, we all got these new Spaceorb 360 game controllers which was pretty cool – and we got our picture in Hyper magazine (article below).
I’m the one sitting in front of the only monitor visible in the picture.
Quake Mania – Summer 1996
While every man and his dog have played and finished Quake, the fanatics are still playing… Deathmatching away madly. Quake deathmatch players sometimes form into teams, and these teams are known as Clans. Twelve clans made it down to Glebe, Sydney, to play in the first big organised Quake clan competition in Australia at Well Connected Cafe.
After much fragging…three clans made it through to the final: Onslaught, Fragbait and Wolf & Co. Each team played each other once, and then frag counts were tallied, leaving Fragbait as winners with runners up Onslaught, in what was a rather close competition. Hyper was there lurking in the background, offering a few prizes and so forth, and the whole event was a big success. Avid Quake players should keep checking HYPER for news of other big organised Quake Comps in the new year.