Droniac's Blog

Yarr - Blogging FTW!

2007-01-31T00:22:00.000+01:00

Arr, I have a cold :( So I haven't been feeling too well the past few days, mostly snottering through the day on to the next. Hopefully I'll get better soon, or we'll run out of tissues.

Sooo, I've finally managed to get The Game Drone back in action. It's been up again for a week already, which has resulted in 6 enjoyable posts for you to read through! There's still a fair few things that I have planned for The Game Drone, including the return of a few old fan-favourite entries. That's not my main concern right now though, because The Game Drone is running quite well right now.
Yes, now that The Game Drone and even this blog are back in action, there's only one blog still left to renovate! It's still getting dozens of pageviews a day, but I really aught to start posting again - and as such I'll start work on The Anime Drone again tomorrow! It might be down for a while - and all the old blog entries will disappear - but I'll make sure to have it back up and proper again as soon as possible. I'll even throw in a few rewritten old entries :)

Once I've got The Anime Drone back on properly again, I'll post up a nice entry here announcing it's return to the land of active blogs! Until then, just wait and keep your eyes pealed for the good news!

More Blogging! Yarr

2007-01-27T20:33:00.000+01:00

If you're visiting this blog then you've probably seen a sight similar to the picture on the left before. Aye, The Game Drone blog - my blog which is geared towards providing whoever visits with plenty of good reading and watching material regarding PC gaming. As you probably know, I've been working on renovating that blog for quite some time now - and have been using this blog as an outlet for my gaming-related blog entries in the meanwhile...
Well, there'll be no more of that now! The Game Drone, while looking entirely different from before, is back in action! I've been posting up new entries for the past few days now, so go check it out here. If you want to read some blog entries related to gaming, then you'll want to stick to The Game Drone from now on. There are already some pretty interesting entries on there, so take a look and leave me some comments while you're at it ;)

This will of course not mean the end for this blog as I'll be using it as more of a personal blog, rather than a dedicated blog towards gaming or anime or whatever entries. You'll probably still see the occasional game-related rant here, but not quite so much anymore. I know it's been a while since I last posted an entry on this blog too, but I'll have a few more entries up soon enough! :)

I have returned!

2007-01-08T21:04:00.000+01:00

I returned from my trip to the United States a few days ago. I didn't sleep much while I was there and couldn't sleep on the plane back to The Netherlands either so I slept like 13 hours on the day I came back, which must be a new record!

Overall my vacation was nice. I got to see a fair bit of Wisconsin and what it's like there compared to back home in The Netherlands - it's certainly a lot different. Some highlights of the trip include: seeing Kayla, driving a 4-wheeler in the snow, the view at the hill we went to and the truly massive Mall of America in Minnesota.
It didn't quite work out as expected and it could've been better, but it was still enjoyable. I'm glad I went over there and experienced all of this. I've grown more fond of some of the nicer aspects of living in The Netherlands, but also more aware of some of the negative aspects (such as no online Wall mart service to upload your pictures to so you can go pick them up an hour later! The outrage! :o).

Anyway, I'm back.
Oh - and before I forget: Happy New Year!

Aion, Neverwinter and Spellborn!

2006-12-20T10:09:00.000+01:00

I've decided to leave The Game Drone and The Anime Drone under construction for now. I'll return both of them to activity after I return from the United States. I've already managed to write up a fair few articles for The Game Drone, but I don't see the point in posting them up already when I'll be leaving again in 6 days time. As for The Anime Drone: it hasn't even been transferred to the new Blogger service yet, so that blog might take a while longer to reappear.

With The Game Drone currently 'unavailable' as a gaming blog I'll just post some of my thoughts on gaming stuff here for now. I mentioned that I had played through the Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign in my last blog entry... now I've managed to play through the original Neverwinter Nights campaign again, which lasted a lot longer than I remembered (well over 50 hours), but not for the same reason as NWN2.
    Neverwinter Nights lasts long due to it's difficulty and annoying encounters, as well as rather repetitive sequences (10 level dungeons, 9 level towers, etc) - whereas NWN2 lasts 80 hours due to it's vast amount of content. Personally I prefer the NWN2 approach, although I have to admit it was quite a bit too easy in comparison to the original game... it wouldn't have hurt to have made the game a bit more challenging.
    I'm currently playing another Neverwinter Nights campaign, namely it's first official expansion pack Shadows of Undrentide. It very obviously improves on a lot of things compared to the original game, but it's much shorter and so far I don't like the companions much. I can't take along the pretty loud-mouthed Paladin girl, but rather have to choose between a Dwarf Rogue or a Half-Orc Sorceror, both not exactly optimal combinations for my Lawful Good Half-Elf Paladin. The rogue is good for a lot of comic relief, but I'd still rather have taken the Paladin with me or have had some sort of alternative such as a cool bard, druid, ranger or wizard. I imagine there will be a fair few new companions along the way, so I'll just hope those are fun.

The Chronicles of Spellborn is a game that's being developed in The Netherlands. A lot of elements about this game really appeal to me. It's setting is very unusual, with ships flying through a giant storm encompassing shards where people live and the like, not quite the standard orc or elf bashing fare such as World of Warcraft. It's art style is also very unique, featuring a European drawing-style for it's graphics, which actually works really well and looks quite beautiful, unlike World of Warcraft's cartoony visuals. Combat in Spellborn is also unusual, because it relies a lot on player strategy and skill for a role playing game.
    Similarly unique is it's musical influence, because the developers have opted to work together with none other than Within Temptation! They're actually developing an entire album based off the game - and you can see the first song's music video right here - featuring loads of Spellborn footage of course!
    Spellborn's final closed beta phase will be in very early 2007, so this game isn't very far away from going retail. Don't worry if you want to try the game before you buy: the developers are planning to give you the chance to try the game in an open beta phase shortly before it's released. In any case: if you're even remotely interested in role playing games, then you'll want to check this game out.

Aion is a game that's currently being worked on by the well known development studio NCSoft. As a long-time Online RPG player (dating as far back as the beta test for NCSoft's original, 2+ million player, game Lineage in 1999/2000) I am very, very, excited about this game. It looks set to become the best Online RPG ever made - and I say that after having experienced well over 3 dozen Online RPGs over the years, including some that didn't even make it to retail and some that became amongst the most popular games ever. No other big-budget online RPG in development right now can match this game in terms of originality and sheer quality.
    An awesome new trailer was released on GameTrailers a while ago, detailing some of the progress they've made since E3 2006, when the game was announced. Aion has certainly come a long way since then. At E3 you could only fly your Angel or Demon along specific paths in the world, much like gryphon rides in World of Warcraft. Now that has completely changed. Now you can take flight anywhere in the world and have full control. And on top of that you can even fight in flight with some of the most fast and action-packed combat I've ever seen in a role playing game! NCSoft proves once again that they listen to their fans: the single comment heard at E3 was "make flight controllable" and now they went above and beyond just that by offering even in-flight combat!
    Still, a lot of people are worried that this will become just another Asian grinding game like the Lineage games. To those people I say: your worries are for naught. For Aion will feature the best of both worlds! Western character customization, questing & interface. Asian animation, character models, combat and massive Player vs Player implementation.
    All of this already sounds great of course, but this is far from all there is to say about this game! It's Unreal-engine powered graphics are amazing. There's a screenshot in this article where you can see angels flying: that's Aion in-game! Yes, it looks that beautiful and yet it's one seamless world where you can fly at will and do combat with players and non-players alike, on the ground or in the air!
    But wait, there's more! Aion will offer an ever-changing world. Each server will look entirely different. The world will actually change depending on which faction maintains control and on how the quests in the game are accomplished. One server could literally look like hell, whereas the other were to be an Angel's paradise: true Heaven, but with a touch of Demonic and Draconic combat along the way. The over-arching storyline of a server actually changes depending on the cumulative actions of the players!
    As a player you will be in control of either an Angel or a Demon. Naturally the factions are at war with each other, so you'll be fighting Demons if you're an Angel or the other way around if you're a Demon. So what happens when one faction totally decimates the other you ask? The NPC Dragon faction steps in and starts attacking the strongest faction. That's right, you'll be in a constant three way battle for total world domination in this game.
    Of course even that is not all there is to be said for the unique features of this game. Spells are affected by weather conditions (fire spells are weakened by rain for example), you can climb cliffs, you can soar through the clouds and of course do all the basic RPG stuff you're used to from other games like WoW. So yes, you can form a Guild and raid dungeons, in fact, your very own actions will influence which dungeons will open up to you on your server!
    Does this sound too good to be true? Yes, I'd think so. Still, if NCSoft manages to do only half of what they've promised, this will become the best online RPG for years to come. And knowing NCSoft from their previous games (Lineage, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Auto Assault) - I certainly wouldn't put it beyond them to actually pull this off. In fact, the only company out there that has the talent to make this work... would be NCSoft.

December has come!

2006-12-09T19:16:00.000+01:00

It's actually already been over a month since I started this blog! So far I haven't exactly been posting much, but I'll certainly try to write more frequently during the coming months. At least the layout is decent enough now :)

I started working at the new Albert Hein store last week - it's simple work, but the days are a bit long and they've scheduled me in for a few too many hours (22+ every week), considering I'm still in college and all that. They've promised to get me a more reasonable schedule the coming weeks though, which should help.
    I didn't see Roger at work until Thursday, when he had to start working after my shift had ended. I also saw him around on Friday when he had an afternoon shift. More surprisingly, I met up with a former neighbour: a girl who used to live merely two houses away from mine now also works there apparently!
    The other guys and girls I've worked with so far were mostly nice as well. Talking with the my co-workers and the fact that I'm always busy help make the time pass quickly so I'm making money for what seems to be not all too much work. And it's also good for my condition I suppose, no need to be all sportive when you're working 20 hours a week anyway ;)

This week I managed to complete the Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign at last. The original game only lasted twenty hours - which by current standards is still above average, but really isn't all that much for a roleplaying game in my opinion - so I expected Neverwinter Nights 2 to last about as long. Little did I know that completing the Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign would take me a little under 80 hours... now that's what I'm talking about!
    Overall Neverwinter Nights 2 was a truly enjoyable experience. I'm definitely going to play it all the way through one more time - and probably a few more times. For the most part it proves to be completely superior to it's predecessor, but there are a tiny few areas that seem to be a little bit lacking after having played the original game. The amazing story more than makes up for any lacking parts of the game though. I honestly can't wait for the first expansion pack!

I've also played a few other games lately. I tried the Carpe Diem beta, which is some sort of Asian online roleplaying game. It's screenshots looked alright, but the game itself proved to be very disappointing. In the end I decided to remove it from my hard disk in favor of superior games which I'll undoubtedly be receiving from Santa Clause ;)
    The last two days have also seen some nice Unreal Tournament 2004 action. I had entirely stopped playing the game after I had started on Neverwinter Nights 2, but now that I had finished the campaign I figured I might as well join in on a few UT2004 clanwars.
     Thursday evening was a battle for a ClanBase cup featuring four different game modes. We got wasted horribly in the Bombing Run and Double Domination game modes. During the Capture the Flag battle I at least managed to score a point for our team (after carrying their flag from their base to ours and returning our flag from the dead bodies of our enemies, twice) but they scored 20 points so we still lost that one in the end. Even TAM proved to be a horrible failure on our part as we lost 10 to 3 rounds.
     Friday evening started about as bad as Thursday really, although this was merely a single TAM game. After their team (a premier division team btw.) scored 7 rounds, apparently it was our turn as I went on several killing sprees and the rest of the team fell in line too. In the end we racked the score back up to a 10-8 finish (in their favour, unfortunately).
    Playing through the entire Neverwinter Nights 2 campaign obviously didn't help my fragging skills, so I think I'll be playing a bit more UT2004 during the coming weeks to try and redeem myself in our upcoming cup matches. (although I have to admit: my teammates didn't do any better than me :p)

Well... now there are merely 22 days left until the next year, 2007! Time is flying by, but at least we're flying to some good times with Unreal Tournament 2007 and other great games, not to mention the new Gundam SEED movie! ;)
    Before I end this entry: within roughly two weeks I will not be posting entries on this blog for a while, because... I'll be off to the States! I bet it'll be loads of fun, albeit a wee bit cold. Anyway, it should be fun and I'll tell you all about it when I come back of course! :p

Final Results

2006-11-27T15:52:00.000+01:00

I've finally received the last of my results for the exam week I had about a month ago. As I had hoped I passed all subjects so I don't have to repeat any exams just yet! I had some surprisingly decent results so I hope to be able to keep it up.
    The new period has already started a few weeks ago and they recently added another class to my roster. Now I have 15 hour mondays (also counting the 3 hours of travelling time) with only 3 classes on that day, essentially I go to school at 7 in the morning and return home around 9:30. That sucks, but it's only for a few weeks so I'll survive ;)

I finally finished watching Innocent Venus last week and it was quite the awesome anime. The story is intruiging and very surprising and the animation is superb, although the mecha unfortunately look a little weird. Jo is my favourite character, he's awesome. I'll be certain to cover this anime on the new and revised 'The Anime Drone' that I'm working on!
    I've also finally gotten around to playing some Neverwinter Nights 2 again. Now that I am around the 'Old Owl Well' area the story is really starting to become interesting. With the settings almost to their highest the game looks really great, although I hear the next patch is going to offer better performance so I hope to be able to push the visual detail even higher. Anyone who claims NWN2 doesn't look good is simply blind - it looks great, especially the spell effects are amazing!
    I can't wait to get back to playing, once you get going this game's story totally sucks you in and doesn't let go. If you're looking for something to keep you entertained: go buy NWN2.
    I've also played some Supreme Commander as I've managed to slip into the beta through FilePlanet. The game is about as good as I expected: great fun! It's awesome to see the masses of armies in a 6-player game go at it. The graphics are truly amazing as well, but the beta test suffers from a few bugs. As for the performance: it's a lot better than I expected! Don't worry, your 2 year old rig will still run this game in gorgeous detail as hundreds of units go at it in full real-time 3D glory!

Lastly: I'll finally be off to Wisconsin in less than a month from now! 26 December I'll be off to meet Kayla in person. I wonder what that will be like. I got to know her last christmas on MySpace and have been talking with her for hours almost every day since. Wisconsin is a lot colder than The Netherlands during winter so I imagine this will be quite the experience o.O

Fainting in hospitals and other fun stuff...

2006-11-23T01:01:00.000+01:00

Monday I had to go to the AMC hospital in Amsterdam for my regular check up: I have two holes in my heart and the doctors want to make certain that those holes don't grow. So I went to Amsterdam by bus in the morning and they were surprisingly fast in getting my ECG done and everything. It went a lot faster than any of the previous years and luckily my heart was still just fine!
    After that, I was asked to participate in national research into heart conditions and whether there are any hereditary factors to them. So I donated some blood, nothing special, done it plenty of times before - never any problems. I walked back to the reception to make me an appointment for 2 years later, which ended up being impossible because they can only handle 1 year in advance, then all of a sudden everything turned black.
    Next thing I know I'm lying on the floor and there are three doctors crouching over me.I bumped my head a little when I fainted apparently, but otherwise I was just fine so after waiting in the reception hall for a while I went back home. A weird experience, felt just like falling asleep although I was very dizzy right before it happened.

Tuesday evening I was to meet with some people from the Albert Hein, a successful supermarket chain in The Netherlands. Last week I had solicited for a job offer at their new 'superstore' in the city and I was accepted! So on Tuesday evening I was to receive some stuff (rules and regulations, that sort of thing) and sign a contract. I also ran into my friend Roger who apparently will be my co-worker soon, yay!
    It won't pay much and it's not exactly my dream job, but at least I'll earn some money that I can use on... eh... whatever. I wonder what it will be like, but I'm starting next week so I guess I'll just have to find out then.

As of today I finally know almost every single grade I've gotten for the tests I took a few weeks ago. So far I've only gotten good grades and the only grades that I've yet to receive are of subjects I know I've passed anyway. So for now I'm doing fairly good in school. Hopefully it'll stay that way ;)

More time spent on schoolwork

2006-11-14T23:07:00.000+01:00

In my previous blog entry I talked about the time I spent on creating a magazine last week. Thursday was supposed to be a day off though, because there was a reunion at school so the school was 'closed'. And so the rest of the group was enjoying some free time or finishing their articles...
    However, I had to go to Utrecht anyway to meet up with Meral so we could work on an assignment for 'Journalism and the Society'. We had to find old newspaper articles about some massive 50.000 person demonstration in Amsterdam in March 1978. The teacher had told us they'd definitely have Het Parool en Algemeen Dagblad, but they didn't have the latter newspaper at all so we used de Volkskrant instead.

The universitie's library was massive and it was cool to be able to see news from so long ago. Although we had to call in someone to explain to us how the equipment worked (because it was stored on microfiche).
    Unfortunately everything that has to do with students and payment works with the chipknip and neither of us had one. So we had to call in the help of some fellow students whenever we wanted to print a page from a newspaper. Fortunately it wasn't very hard to find some students willing to help out with their chipknip.

We also had to find some background information about the news itself as well as the newspapers. That proved somewhat more difficult and after looking all over another library in Utrecht for good books to help us out, we decided to call it quits at 3 PM and headed over to some cafe across the street for a few drinks.

On Saturday we were supposed to meet up again, but i the morning I felt really bad. As in physically bad: I could barely get out of bed. Fortunately I had finished most of the work on our assignment the evening before so I sent that to Meral.
    Yesterday we spend some of the time between classes on finishing the assignment. Together with Fatiha who joined our group at the last minute. Each of us also had to write our own individual assignments still - and apparently most of our class had the same idea so pretty much all of us were in a computer room working on our assignments.

So that's basically what I've been doing during what little spare time I had last week. I had hoped to update my blogs during those bits of spare time, but it was not to be. It's good that we have a very quiet week now, because last week was a bit too hectic for my liking. I have to admit though: it's a nice feeling when you've finished all those loads of works and you know that there's absolutely nothing that has to be done anymore, that you can spend your time on whatever you want.

Magazine: finished

2006-11-11T23:53:00.000+01:00

Last week has been a very busy week for me. Initially I thought I'd spend some time getting all my blogs in order and posting new entries on them, but this week of school proved to be a fair bit more demanding than I had anticipated.
This week I've essentially been making a magazine together with 6 random other people from school. It was an assignment we were given at the start of the week when our 'orientation week' started and initially I thought it was impossible to get an entire magazine done in less than 5 days time. Fortunately I was wrong :)
So I've been in school or working on the magazine at home all day pretty much the entire week. The group I was in was nice though, that made it nice to work on the magazine which we dubbed 'Vision' (for a lack of a better name). I wrote a little piece on game addiction amongst students and visited the local game cafe (Quality Gaming) for the first time.

The game cafe was unexpectedly nice. It doesn't seem like much from the outside, but it's actually fairly big and stylish on the inside. No one was there when I visited, but they seem to be getting a good deal of customers because they're making a fair profit. I definitely intend to visit it again with some of my friends to have some fun playing games.

    It's unfortunate that they don't have cool games like Dawn of War and Quake 3 in their collection, but they have plenty other cool ones to make up for it. With a little luck we might be able to organize a little PanzerParty-like gathering there in the future. If not, well.. at least they sell WoW game cards cheap so that might be nice for my friends who play WoW.

Anyway time to get back on topic. We used Monday to determine what kind of magazine we were going to make. It ended up being Vision - an opinionated magazine targeted for students around my age. Everyone in my 'team' was also assigned their own article to write during the course of the week.
    Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday were used to write the articles mostly. Although we also had to create a 'moodboard' that was basically a visual representation of what our magazine's look & feel should be. During a few classes we were taught the basics behind making a magazine and we were introduced to some cool editors at popular Dutch magazines.
    By Friday I had finished my article and the rest of the team was mostly finishing up work. After putting everything together and doing some final editing it was ready to be presented and the teachers liked it. So yay, that's it for my first orientation week! (getting another one early next year)

Oh and for a short off-topic rant: the new Naruto filler arc sucks as usual. Honestly, can't they get on with the normal episodes for a change!? At least the intro shows everyone grown up and all so maybe we'll get to see the real, manga-inspired, episodes before the end of the year... I do hope so.

A Borat Saturday

2006-11-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

Earlier last week me and my friends decided to go to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan in the weekend. So on Saturday at 9 PM I met up with a few of the guys at the Burger King next to our cinema. We talked for a bit, while we waited for everyone (we were 10 people in all) to show up.
After everyone was there we headed into our huge cinema with over sized stairs and retrieved our tickets and then proceeded up to the room they were showing Borat in, because we didn't want someone else to go claiming our seats. The movie started half an hour after that.

Borat is definitely a movie you'll want to see if you have a sense of humour. It's a very humorous movie, that will make you laugh pretty much the entire one and a half hour it runs for, but it'll also leave you amazed at the stupid reactions from most of the Americans he gets in contact with. Ranging from rednecks wanting to kill every last muslim to a fanatical religious sect, this movie manages to amaze you at every turn. It's not merely a good comedy that will keep you entertained and wondering what will happen next, but it plays all the right stereotypes to make you think about how damn stupid people can be after seeing it.

After the movie we went over to Den Enghel, a local bar that was jam-packed with people. We hung out for like an hour or two, talking about all kinds of stuff, with 'awesome' music like Jan Smit and party songs in the background.
All in all it was another successful movie-night with my friends, everyone had a good time and the movie was great. If you want to go see a movie with some friends during the coming weeks, then definitely go watch Borat in the cinema. You won't be disappointed.

First wave of tests: complete!

2006-11-04T11:41:00.000+01:00

During the past week I've had to make a bunch of tests at school to finish most of the subjects of the first period of my new study (journalism). The week started horribly with a test that had to be made on the Apples in school, when the network just died under the pressure and a lot of people lost all (or most of) their work.
    This Friday marked the end of the week of tests however, with a 'Nieuwsbericht' test that had us creating titles and leads for articles in newspapers. We also had to write a full news article for a newspaper ourselves and this time the computer network managed the unusually high load properly.
    Me and Hidde were finished with the test at the same time, so we went to the train station on the same bus and talked for a bit. Amazingly there weren't even any problems with public transportation today, so my train arrived perfectly on time! :)

After getting back home I went by the Dynabyte to pick up two PC games: the Dark Crusade stand-alone expansion for Dawn of War and Neverwinter Nights 2. Apparently I was in luck as they still had a lawful good limited edition of NWN2 and it only cost a few euro more than the regular version... so I took that one home with me :)
    If you want to know more about the two games, then wait until I fix up my 'The Game Drone' blog to Blogger Beta. I'll make certain to upload an article on both games, because so far they've proven to be most entertaining and well worth the money.

At home I installed both games and decided that I'd play Neverwinter Nights 2 first, because I had already played the Dark Crusade demo. Before I could play I needed to patch the game - and that proved to be quite troublesome. Installing both games had taken up nearly 11 GB (4 for Dark Crusade, 7 for NWN2) and the patch needed roughly 10 GB free space to install properly, although it only takes up a few dozen MB.
    After I finally got the patch installed I spent a few hours playing the game. So far NWN2 is proving to be a very good game. The game seems to be superior to it's predecessor on all fronts, other than the text screens. Talking with computer controlled characters was presented in much better fashion in the original game.

After playing Neverwinter Nights 2 I spent the rest of my evening on reading blogs about blogging. It's been a while since I last updated any blog layouts so I thought it wise to read up on the latest tips before getting to work on moving my blogs to Blogger Beta. I also talked a slight bit with Kayla, but I was really not in a mood for initiating conversation (anymore) and she didn't say anything herself so I went back to blog reading and went to bed afterwards.

Welcome!

2006-11-02T22:09:00.000+01:00

Welcome to Droniac's Blog!

I am Norman, a 19 year old journalism student from The Netherlands. This blog will be about me, containing random ramblings, fun links, weird videos and whatever else comes to mind while I'm writing new blog entries.

If you're looking for anime and/or game-related blog entries, then this blog isn't for you. You should visit my Anime Drone and Game Drone blogs instead. Note that these are currently still being reworked to function under my Blogger Beta account, so the old blogs will be replaced by entirely new and fresh ones soon (although I intend for them to remain accessible on the same URL).

This blog's appearance could change a fair bit over the next few days, but bare with it. I'm still trying out all the new Blogger features, so once I've figured everything out and I'm content with the look of this blog, that's when frequent posting will commence.

Bye for now,

Droniac.