Looks like I’ve got a long weekend – no work on Monday in celebration of the 4th.  I’m thrilled.  I need some time off after the last week or two…  And next weekend (11th/12th) is going to be spent at work.  Best of all is the fact that we’ve got nothing crazy planned for this weekend…  Not having any parties, not inviting folks over, no major projects, no working for free…  Just a nice, relaxing, long weekend.

Speaking of plans, however, we are planning a vacation for August.  We’re planning on heading out to the Thousand Islands area of New York.  We’re planning on going during their “pirate days” event…  Looks like a lot of fun.  We’ll take a couple boat tours, tour a couple castles, do piratical stuff, and just basically not worry about work for a while.  Sounds great!

EVE is kind of on autopilot for now…  With my folks up for a few days, and then the travel for work, I haven’t been logging in a whole lot.  I set shield management V training, which is going to take about two weeks to train.  I’ve poked my head in a couple times, run some missions here and there, but that’s about it.

It looks like my alliance is declaring war on someone.  I’m not entirely sure who or why…  That information isn’t very readily available on the boards and I haven’t been in-game enough to figure it out.  Looks like it is basically just to give our PvPers something to shoot at…  But I might be misunderstanding.  Maybe there’s some contested territory or something.

It seems weird to be on the giving end of a wardec, rather than the receiving end.  Seems to be weird talking about actually intentionally declaring war on someone.  Back in EVE University, wars were always done to us, and they were a thing to be avoided.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with myself during the wardec…  There’s no talk of a lockdown or anything like that, so I suppose I could continue mining/missioning/ratting…  But that seems unsafe.  Maybe I’ll grab a frigate and go looking for trouble instead.

I just purchased Overlord II on Steam last night.  I was waiting for a .torrent to show up on ThePirateBay, but it just wasn’t happening.  And, honestly, I figured I’d wind up purchasing it eventually anyway…  I thoroughly enjoyed the original game and wanted to support the developers.  I just wanted a better taste of the gameplay than that short little demo, and I didn’t have the cash handy.

Well, I came up with the cash, and I got tired of waiting for a download, so I bought it.

Terrific game.  Basically the same gameplay as the original, just tweaked and improved a bit.  Better graphics, more detail everywhere…  More things for your minions to interact with in the environment…  A bigger stronghold…  More of a storyline going on…  Better in every way so far.

So, stupid as it may sound, I’ve just recently realized that you can play Overlord in a more evil manner.

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I’ve pretty much finished off both Mellow Hills and the Evernight Forest areas. I say ‘pretty much’ because the game has become somewhat nonlinear and puzzly, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that I had to go back to those areas for something later.

I’ve recruited all four tribes of minions – brown, red, green, and blue. I’ve popped an obese halfling and cut down a deranged elf/tree hybrid. I’ve learned several new spells along the way. I recovered a number of items for my tower, learned how to forge equipment, and purchased all kinds of upgrades. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, but I’m still left with the feeling that the designers of this game could have put in a little more evil.

Sure, I guess I have a choice in the matter… I could certainly go on a killing spree and just slaughter dozens of innocents. That is certainly true. But, while it is fun to cut down innocents, it doesn’t really do much for the game. Progress is generally achieved by completing quests…and the quests are, by and large, a little too nice for my tastes.

The box advertises the fact that you get to kill heroes and unicorns… But they’re are all twisted and corrupted – more evil than you are – and the peasants are all quite happy to see them killed. The peasants don’t cower in fear when you come to town… Instead they ask you to do things for them – kill monsters, recover food, rescue their family.

Don’t get me wrong… It’s all a lot of fun… And you can be evil anyway… But it just seems like the game is trying to steer you in a less-than-evil direction.

So, obviously, I spent a good chunk of last night playing Overlord.

So far I am very impressed with the game. The installer warned me that my system does not meet the requirements, but allowed me to continue anyway. I’ve seen too many programs either refuse to install entirely if you don’t meet the requirements, or provide no warning at all – neither of which is terribly helpful. But, despite the fact that my machine really shouldn’t be running Overlord at all, it actually runs pretty well.

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