The War Within pre-patch part 1.

The pre-patch for the next World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within (TWW) has started and it has been an interesting experience.

To start, the character screen has been changed significantly, with all characters showing up in one long list. Added to this is a section for four characters that when placed, show up around a campfire. You can arrange all your alts as you wish, but there is no sorting mechanism, so however you choose to arrange them, you need to do it manually.

There is a search function which is nice, as you can search for a class, but I hope Blizzard adds a sort by function as well. You can access the server list, but as far as I can tell, it only determines where new characters are placed.

A huge change is the new flying option. It can be found at the top of the screen where you see your mounts. Toggling it (5 second cast) switches your flying between the old system introduced in The Burning Crusade and the new dragon riding that was added in Dragonflight. All but one or two flying mounts are affected by this, allowing you to zoom along at incredible speeds on your favorite mounts. This flying style is unfortunately not chosen per individual mounts, but rather on the character itself. Oh, and it also affects the druid flying form, which is amazing.

The new warband bank, which will allow you to add items and some currencies into it so that any characters can withdraw them is implemented but it is currently disabled. Apparently there is a problem with it, and Blizzard is working to fix it.

What does work, however is the new transmog system. Through the years, many raid bosses have dropped tokens instead of gear. These tokens are grouped by classes and when a character of that class uses it, the token becomes a piece of armor. These tokens can now be mailed to any character you have on any server. Super useful! Armor that is specific to a single class is exempt from this and can only be learned if picked up by the correct class.

But it isn't all roses. As of now, currencies that are sent by mail can disappear, so wait before you do this. Likewise, many achievements have been reset, but Blizzard is aware and are investigating. I myself found that my progress for the Professor title which require 20 rare items found through archaeology has been reset to 1 from 18. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

The next step of the pre-patch, which is the fight against giant bosses that will let you amazing gear should launch this week. Overall this is really exciting, and I am looking forward to more fun in World of Warcraft.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

The Day of the Jackal (novel)

Four years ago, I watched and wrote about The Day of the Jackal (1973), this week I finished the novel the movie is based on. I even re-watched the movie for good measure.

Written by Frederick Forsyth and published in 1971, this political thriller starts with factual events, namely the assassination attempts by the OAS against French President Charles de Gaulle. The OAS was a real group of ex colonial military personnel, who wanted to kill de Gaulle for giving Algeria its independence. They saw it as high treason after bleeding and dying for the colonies. So far so good.

Enter the rest of the book which is fictional. Realizing that their organization is riddled by informants and spies, and that any plans were leaked to French Intelligence as soon as they were formed, the leaders of the OAS hires a professional assassin, The Jackal. Being completely outside the entire OAS organization, the informers, and therefore the security mob were helpless to stop the assassin.

Enter police commissaire Lebel. This small but brilliant man is given almost limitless power to find and stop the Jackal, a job made harder by the fact that de Gaulle refuses to be careful. Being an old warhorse, he sees it as cowardice and weakness to increase security and cancel events just because someone might want to kill you.

The book is split into essentially two parts, the Jackal and his methods, and the police in France and the UK. We follow both investigations and the Jackal's preparations in excruciating detail. This is where the genius of Forsyth comes to play. A lesser author would have written a boring book that lumbers from scene to scene until you throw it away in disgust. Not Forsyth! The Day of the Jackal is never boring. We follow the Jackal as he steals passports, buys hair dye, flies to Copenhagen to buy Danish clothes for a disguise and it is all fascinating. I don't know how he did it, but he pulled it off.

I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I want to compare book and movie a bit.

Since I re-watched the movie in the middle of reading the book, I was in a good position to really compare the two, and they are super close. The things the movie leaves out are mostly superfluous details. In the book, the Jackal steals several passports for his disguises, but in the movie we see him steal only one. In the book the French security people have a meeting every evening, in the movie we see only a few. In essence, the movie leaves out nothing of value, and it is still almost two and a half hours long. It however leaves most scenes completely unchanged. Another good example is when the Jackal buys some false papers from a forger. In the book they meet in a bar and take a taxi to the forgers workshop, while in the movie they just meet up in the workshop, small things like that.

If you've seen the movie or intend to, but you are unsure if you should read the book first, there is no need. Unlike to many other film adaptations, The Day of the Jackal is extremely faithful to the source. The book is absolutely worth reading though, don't get me wrong. I absolutely recommend both, but you won't miss anything of value from just watching the movie.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

Time to learn

I have been unable to find a good time to sit down and enjoy a movie, so I'm giving you a couple of documentaries.

The first one is on the Black Queen of France, Catherine De Medici, the Italian noblewoman who mothered three French kings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USVPTJ1SkCU

The other is about the East German secret police, Stasi, and the Berlin Wall. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haxkWC6MgcQ

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

 

 

 

 

Being a British spy

I have previously posted about CIA disguise techniques, but today I have a retired MI6 agent talking about the craft, gadgets (or actually a lack of them), and the evolution of how espionage is handled. 

How real is James Bond?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf5wjiAw1WI

Which Amazon gadgets would spies use?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJgLnNK78YI

I'm run off my feet this week so that is that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

How to be a cultist.

Today we're doing a first impression of a game I have wanted for a while:

Cultist Simulator.

Like many other games on the market, like Darkest Dungeon and Slay the Spire, Cultist Simulator is easy to start but hard to master.

As the name suggests, Cultist Simulator is mostly about starting a cult in a vague 1920's London setting. The game has strong Lovecraft elements, but at 4.5 hours, I haven't seen anything overtly Lovecraftian. Cthulhu has not been mentioned for example.

The game takes place on a table and the story unfolds through verb boxes and cards. Verbs include Dream, Talk, Explore and Study. You can place cards into these verbs, for example you can place a person into Talk and something will happen. You can also put objects or idea cards into talk, which will have their own consequences. The boxes only accept certain cards and learning how it all works is quite satisfying.

Some Verb boxes appear suddenly and can demand specific cards in order to give you a benefit but they can also kill you. Many of my characters have died very suddenly.

Speaking of characters, the game always starts a new save with the Aspirant, but when that person dies, you get to choose a new person. I chose the Detective, and to my surprise and delight, the Detective actually investigated what my Aspirant had done. Likewise, my Doctor studied the case file of my recently deceased Medium. You can name the characters in the lower left corner and I suggest you do in order to recognize them when they appear in the story.

When you first start Cultist Simulator, the game will urge you to explore and experiment. This can be a bit frustrating as you have no idea what you're doing and are supposed to do. But this actually plays well into the central theme. Do you know how to start a cult? I don't, so it makes sense to have to feel your way forward.

Besides the Verbs and Cards there are four resources; Health, Passion, Reason and Money. Health is your life, and this can go down very fast depending on your choices and luck. Reason and Passion are used to fuel different events. Passion can help you create art, but is also used to recruit new people to your cause. If your only Passion card is tied up in painting and you need it for something else, then you are out of luck. Success and failure are all important story elements.

Money is central to it all. You may be a newly minted occultist with big dreams, but you still have to eat. You can earn money through going to work, but that takes time and has its own perils. There is a Verb box called Time, that is constantly ticking, and every time it completes a cycle, it automatically consumes one money. If you run out of money you starve, which consumes Health. If you are out of Health, you die.

This ticking clock brings me to your best friend, the Pause button. As soon as the games starts, PAUSE THE GAME! There is a lovely intro screen for you to read, but beneath it, time is ticking. Some jobs demote you if you don't go to work, even if you're just reading a text box. Pause, pause and pause again, until you know what happens without reading anything. Trust me and take your time or you will never get anywhere.

The reason I didn't pick up this game sooner was because I was intimidated. I love the theme but most screenshots show a full board of cards which look crazy complicated, but it isn't really. You start small and grow slowly with plenty of time to learn. The other reason was the timers. Usually I hate timers but with your lovely, shiny Pause button that is not an issue. Sure, I'm only at the 4.5 hour mark, but I'm learning more all the time and getting better. I look forward to playing more, and I really think this is a fantastic game. If anything I've said seems interesting, check it out! It's even on mobile, if that's your thing.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!