Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

This fight is for everything.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Fight them, without becoming them!

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Gamer Dork Open Thread

Gamer Dork Open Thread

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Sitting here having lunch and thinking about all the lingo I know from the games over the years, from PLUGH to XYZZY to All Your Base to Head Shot, and realized there were two words that would bring a smile to my face no matter what, and 99% of the country has no idea what the hell I am talking about:

“Rolling ignites.”

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  2. 2.

    That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)

    To everyone who offered sympathy in the other thread, thanks. I’m not taking it as hard as I thought I would. Hard, yes, but not as hard. It spares me what was my nightmare scenario: that I would have to put him down while he was still active and full of energy. My finances were getting kind of stretched, and I’m not sure how many more times I could have paid for something like amputating his toes, but you can’t just let him go on with an infection eating away at his paw, no matter how lively he is. Unless something else comes up in the time left, that’s not going to happen. Check out time will be when he decides it is.

  3. 3.

    AhabTRuler

    “Your are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”

    Although I will say that I consider the first real cracktacular video game that I played on the PC was the original port of TETRIS. I was mega-sick of that game well before it ever hit a console.

  5. 5.

    Aet

    It also works for turning common sayings into gamer terms.

    “Jesus saves. The rest of you take full damage.”

  6. 6.

    David Brooks (not that one)

    @AhabTRuler: Ahhh… I finally scored 351 in that game, but only after cracking the map file and drawing the map. The bonus point was very well hidden.

    There was some impossible mapping at one point, IIRC: in the seond maze some passages looped round to themselves.

    Cheering elves. So happy.

  7. 7.

    Roger Moore

    “Who was that Maud person, anyway?”

    Anyone who doesn’t recognize this phrase can’t count himself as a true text gamer.

  11. 11.

    nwithers

    Since this IS a gamer dork open thread, anybody been playing minecraft recently? I picked it up and it’s amazing how you can do so much with so little.

  12. 12.

    srv

    I have to take issue with all those people being upset about the TN house burning. From a utilitarian perspective, every redneck in that county has already run to the post office this week with their $75 check. They will have flying firetrucks by next year.

    Maybe there’s a job opportunity there – resident or traveling firestarter. Surely if everyone lived in a more gamer-like world.

  15. 15.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    Gaming=bleh

    Other than the occasional Microsoft Flight Simulator growing up, (all the way from ver 2.0!!) I never caught the gaming bug in any way. Nowadays, I run Linux at home and that greatly reduces a lot of my opportunities, but the world of gaming revolves around spending gargantuan amounts of money on computer hardware, and constantly, constantly tinkering and updating it.

  16. 16.

    Bryant

    Rolling Ignites made me happy, until the inevitable sequel, pulling aggro. But it was worth it.

  17. 17.

    AB

    Anyone take a crack at FFXIV? I played XI for a bit and liked it, it was grindy at the beginning but got pretty sophisticated and fun later on, but I’m hearing horror stories for XIV.

  21. 21.

    Alwhite

    the place I work at has a TV in the Lunch Room tuned to one of the lesser business channels, never cared which one. Today they had some econ prof on discussing why the dollar needs to be devalued (I think I try very hard not to pay attention to these morons). they got to talking about historical good economies & bad & it became obvious that they had to say something about Clinton’s term. Turns out he did very well at reducing the deficit, trimming government spending & stimulating the economy. But the prof said “But I don’t like the way he did it, raising taxes and cutting defense spending!”

    If that moran is TEACHING econ to college students no wonder we are circling the drain.

  22. 22.

    Ryan

    Rolling Ignites

    I played a lock back then, and it was no fun to hear the mages do the bitch and moan when immo and corruption knocked off their damn precious ignites.

    When they bitched too much I just switched to coa.

  23. 23.

    Sentient Puddle

    @nwithers: Oh god, yes. I made the mistake of checking it out the day before Civ V arrived. Yeah, bad idea.

    The good news for my productivity is that multiplayer has some bug in it that whenever the game crashes, it takes my router with it. I’m really hoping that one’s fixed in the Halloween patch.

  24. 24.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    For years, we’ve taken D&D and Traveller references and used them in real life.

    When somebody’s having a breakdown and doesn’t want to do something, it’s “oops, musta rolled a 1 on that throw”.

    Or when doing some 4 wheeling in a buds 73 Blazer in the CO mountains, going thru some serious hard to navigate trails “Ah, good thing he has ATV 4 skills”.

  26. 26.

    Karmakin

    I have to say this for my darling wife.

    Arcane mages rule, fire mages drool :p She’s actually played Arcane before Arcane became the spec of choice, or even really viable.

  27. 27.

    WereBear

    @srv: This is the core of the Libertarian outlook, I think: See, something terrible happened and people reacted to it. It’s all good!

    However, I really really really prefer using my frontal lobes, looking ahead, and avoiding the terrible thing all together.

    Why does this not work for them?

  28. 28.

    cleek

    @Amanda in the South Bay:

    but the world of gaming revolves around spending gargantuan amounts of money on computer hardware, and constantly, constantly tinkering and updating it.

    nah. it’s just like any other thing geeks can get into: you can go that route if you really like the gear and like to brag about your gear and obsess over benchmarks. but most games run fine on fairly reasonable hardware. i buy a new PC about every 2 years and the only thing special i do to it is to bump the video card up from the standard on-board stuff to a mid-level card (never more than $200). that does fine.

  29. 29.

    Walker

    Sitting in a talk at GDC Online, listening to design principles in Star Wars: Old Republic. Is this game ever going to be released?

  32. 32.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    @cleek:

    I think there’s nothing more depressing than a college student/someone with a limited income posting a message on a gaming forum asking for computer recommendations, then going into an expensive shopping list for uber gaming machine du jour.

    Like any hobby, it can be taken to extremes (expensive extremes) but I just guess my brain just isn’t configured to be that into games.

  34. 34.

    Tim

    Here’s another: TRAIN TO ZONE!!!

    Minecraft sucked away some of my life this week. Was having fun playing with Lava and Water until a creeper snuck up on me and blew me into the lava which destroyed most of my diamond picks and shovels. Not happy.

  36. 36.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    and 99% of the country has no idea what the hell I am talking about:

    Could you be a bigger frag?

  41. 41.

    Captain Haddock

    I could quote endless lines from what I believe is the best game ever – Arcanum. But I am alwasy saddened that nobody knows what i am talking about (except my wife, bless her geek-ette heart).

  42. 42.

    LarsThorwald

    It’s like I tell my six-year old: “Son, always remember, and never forget: Pottery first, then Writing.”

  45. 45.

    LarsThorwald

    This is a triumph.

    I’m making a note here, “Huge success.”

    It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

  46. 46.

    scav

    oh you fiends — now I’ve regressed all the way back to Hammurabi and am pining for amber, amber not even green screens, oh help!

  50. 50.

    cleek

    @Amanda in the South Bay:
    yeah. i hear ya.

    when i was in college, i obsessed over my bicycle. i spent all kinds of money on that thing: buying new seats, handlebars, handlebar tape, pedals, gears, reading mags to know what the best new stuff was, etc.. and i wasted many hours cleaning, oiling, waxing, polishing, tweaking, adjusting, and … riding!

    now i know better than to read hobbyist magazines or websites about anything i enjoy doing. it’s easy to get on the “my gear isn’t good enough” treadmill.

  51. 51.

    Kryptik

    I just recently got a PS3, so I’ve been drowning myself as much as I can in Gamefly rentals and TF2. I don’t know about Rolling Ignites and all that, but that’s ‘cuz I spent most of my life as a Nintendo geek. Still am, mostly, just not as exclusive of one.

    That said…who’s looking forward to the 3DS?

  55. 55.

    evinfuilt

    “Rolling ignites.”

    Those were the days, I remember back in AQ40 timing combustion with pyroblast to get a real high stack going. To actually have a fight with no chance of pulling agro meant I was finally free to go all out. I didn’t match the DPS I did on Huhuran again till late Burning Crusade, the loss of Rolling Ignites was just too much for me to handle playing my mage again for quite some time.

    Arcane mages rule, fire mages drool :p She’s actually played Arcane before Arcane became the spec of choice, or even really viable.

    @Karmakin:
    Imagine being the only mage back in 40MC, when we summoned 4 waters at a time. Yet, I was also a fire mage then as well. I don’t know why I didn’t respec to frost till Ragnaros, but man, I loved Rolling Ignites.

  56. 56.

    McWaffle

    You have arrived. After a journey from the Mountainhomes into the forbidding wilderness beyond, your harsh trek has finally ended. Your party of seven is to make an outpost for the glory of all of Edtulast.

    There are almost no supplies left, but with stout labor comes sustenance. Whether by bolt, plow or hook, provide for your dwarves. You are expecting a supply caravan just before winter entombs you, but it is Spring now. Enough time to delve secure lodgings, ere the wolves get hungry. A new chapter in dwarven history begins here at this place, Urmimeral, “Swimvessel”. Strike the earth!

  59. 59.

    Sentient Puddle

    @Amanda in the South Bay: A lot of the market for gaming has moved off onto the consoles, which really does a number for these concerns. Only one configuration (except maybe hard drive size), and manufacturers often times retail them for less than manufacturing costs.

    Hell, it was college that almost completely turned me off of PC gaming. I just didn’t have the time, money, or patience to deal with all the configurations and considerations. If only they made Civ IV for consoles, I thought to myself…

  61. 61.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Me and the boy like to quote Dungeon Keeper. When the animals are all whining to be fed, he’ll announce “Your creatures are hungry!” or when they’re scratching all over the door jamb in an effort to go out, I’ll say “Your creatures are destroying your dungeon!”

    Good times.

  62. 62.

    mantis

    WoW dorks are not even gamers. They’re virtual RenFair rejects.

    Ahh…the grue. True gamers remember Zork and the ridiculous dragons from Atari’s “Adventure”

    Those were ducks, not dragons!

  63. 63.

    Walker

    That said…who’s looking forward to the 3DS?

    There was two day long session on 3D gaming here at GDC Online this week. I came away from it thinking “meh”. It appears to make a difference to first person perspective. But the added value for third person perspective is minimal.

  64. 64.

    Jon H

    @Amanda in the South Bay: “the world of gaming revolves around spending gargantuan amounts of money on computer hardware, and constantly, constantly tinkering and updating it.”

    Not if you play text adventures / interactive fiction.

    The graphics are great. You can depict scenery in a paragraph that would give a legion of 3D artists fits trying to render it.

  65. 65.

    lacp

    “Rolling Ignites?” Is that anything like “Wet Start?” This is good news indeed for John McCain.

  66. 66.

    Jay in Oregon

    I still say “Warrior needs food, badly!” from time to time.

    Usually around lunch.

  67. 67.

    evinfuilt

    @Comrade Javamanphil:
    “Frog, blast the vent core.”
    Followed by an “Ohh frick” as you realize there’s a Green Bob behind you that you didn’t check the colour of his blood.

  71. 71.

    ericvsthem

    Current gamer terminology rumbling thru my brain: 6-pool, 4-gate, MMM ball, proxy rax, maynard, fast expand…

  73. 73.

    cs

    @nwithers:

    While I was waiting on an random queue to pop for my holydin, I was going to ask the same question. Glad to see other Minecraft players here.

  75. 75.

    evinfuilt

    @ruemara:
    I get some satisfaction that the new impact ability in Cata will cause all your fire DoTs to spread like DK diseases do with Pestilence. We may never again get giant Ignite tics, but now we can have some smaller ones on lots of mobs.

  80. 80.

    uloborus

    Minecraft:

    I quite like this game, which I picked up during the week it was free. I won’t buy it until they add survival mode to multiplayer (hopefully that’s in the very coyly described Halloween Update). When there are undead to provide a little tension and some limitations to what you can do, then it will be worth my time to make a little server for me and my friends so we can show each other our lake bottom greenhouses and so on.

    Minecraft = First Person Dwarf Fortress. Wouldn’t be surprised if Notch has said it specifically at some point.

    WoW:

    Oddly, I know nothing about rolling ignites. I hate raiding and almost entirely play MMOs with small groups of close friends. None of those combos has produced a high level fire mage. I’m usually either healing (because no one else will do it) or playing a warlock (because DEMONS).

    Also, I have accepted Chromie as my personal lord (lady?) and savior, and (unrelatedly) I am looking forward to getting back into the game when Cataclysm rewrites all the really boring low level zones.

  81. 81.

    ruemara

    @evinfuilt:
    I rolled balance, all I get to do is heal in raids. Do not boast of your dps to me, clothie. I’m stuck looking like dead tree rapper with giant gold medallion.

  83. 83.

    Cat

    @taylormattd:
    No, He means he switched to CoA as a passive agressive way of pissing the mages off. You only ever brought one warlock to raids cause you only needed one for the CoA and SS.

    Oh, And to summon the idiots who couldn’t get to the instance on time.

  85. 85.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    And who can forget Fazuul, the Major BBS game, that featured a whole host of crazy words, one of which I still use to this day: umflungoo.

  89. 89.

    Jon H

    You are falling towards the ground, wind whipping around you.
    >east
    Down seems more likely.

  92. 92.

    evinfuilt

    @ruemara:
    I don’t actually do DPS very often anymore. After being a mage tank (suppression room and Nef) in original, I ended up turning to the armored side. I have a feral tank (which actually tanked MC, ZG and AQ20 before feral tanks were viable) and my main toon is a blood DK tank (my static was always worried about how I’d act in our final showdown with Arthas, just because I’d always /kneel to him in ToC and then cast path of frost.)

    I did resto for a short while on my druid, I have to say compared to the other healers, I much prefer being a Tree, I actually enjoyed tracking all those HoTs.

  93. 93.

    soonergrunt

    @ John Cole,
    Sir, it’s your site. You can support whomever you want, but I’d ask you and the others to take a look at this race in Massachusetts:
    MA10, Democrat Bill Keating is running against Republican Jeff Perry for Congressman Bill Delahunt’s seat.
    Perry was the supervising officer of a cop in Wareham, Scott Flanagan, who at least twice in the mid-1990s conducted illegal strip searches of female teenage suspects. He ended up resigning from the force and Flanagan went to jail.
    Keating’s Act Blue page. Since a Democrat worth voting for doesn’t exist in Oklahoma, this is one of the races on which I’m spending what little I can spend.

  94. 94.

    Jon H

    Austin, your incorrigible ginger cat, lounges around here.
    >austin, go south
    I can see you've never had a cat.

  98. 98.

    ruemara

    @evinfuilt:
    My only ish, which I admit is pure ego, is not topping meters. Now everything is meters and gearscore, which is bullshit. As much as I prefer dps, I fully own up to being almost always the last healer standing, so, raid awareness FTW.

  101. 101.

    RobertB

    I’m pretty sure Mages have nothing to complain about right now in WoW. Ours are always at the top of the meters in raid, since we don’t have any good ret pallies.

  104. 104.

    Nick Istre

    @soonergrunt: Actually, in my mind, when people learned to macro voices to keys, that was more like: TA-TAAAAANK! TA-T-TAAAA-TAAAAANK! TAAAA-TAAAAN-TAAAAANK!

    I did read the original post of “Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls”. (Actually, the original was just “Kill Skuls”, but someone else added “Go. Hunt.” in front of that which seemed to really make that meme take off…)

  105. 105.

    daveNYC

    Since we’re talking old school games, I’ve recently started getting stuff from gog.com. So right now I’m multi-tasking between Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, and Master of Magic. I’ll probably pick up Freespace if I can figure out how to run the Saitek controllers from my couch.

    Cheaper than crack, only slightly more addictive.

  108. 108.

    RareSanity

    Really??

    What the hell kind of gamer geeks are you when I get to this thread really late, yet no one has uttered the infamous…

    FINISH HIM!

    ….I am quite disappointed.

  111. 111.

    SammyV

    “My groin is the groin of fire!”

    From the original Fallout demo. I don’t think it made it into the release version.

  112. 112.

    Ron

    I miss the original Adventure game. So many great lines. My personal favorite:

    >kill dragon
    With what, your bare hands?
    >yes
    congratulations, you have just vanquished a dragon with your bare hands(Unbelievable,isn’t it?)

  115. 115.

    meh

    @uloborus:

    the new low levels look pretty sick. I’ve been rolling a goblin in the beta and am having a blast. The quests, the subtle cultural references, the twisted developer humor (quest to find a cat that will satisfy the requirement to witness a dead cat bounce) it seems to be a decent expansion so far. Plus the fact my pally is raid healing and hit crits for 50k are a nice plus.

  116. 116.

    lawnorder

    @meh:
    Ya gobos rock. Like my worgen too, but gobos are much better :)

    Try the Welcome to the Machine quest on undead land level 20 :p

  117. 117.

    Catsy

    @Kryptik:

    And if you’re a truly dedicated geek, you hit up MU*s. Think MMO-Text Adventure.

    Been there, done that, never going back. The problem with most MU*s is that it’s very difficult to really enjoy them with a limited time commitment, and they’re not something you can pick up or put down. Once you get involved in plots and roleplay, the stories of other characters become affected by whether or not you’re there. Tabletop games I like because it’s a predictable time commitment and nothing happens in the time that passes in between games. MMOs I can deal with because I can drop off the face of the earth for a month and not affect anyone else’s gameplay. But on most MU*s that are organized enough to be worth playing, if you disappear then you’re going to fuck up someone else’s story or just be forgotten. I get the urge to RP every now and then because it’s fun and I’m very, very good at it. But it’s not fair to other players for me to get involved in something I can’t commit to constantly maintaining–it’s also the reason I’m not in a raiding guild anymore.

    None of that applies if you don’t actually get involved in any kind of ongoing plots, or develop connections with other characters. But if you’re not doing any of that, you might as well either write a book or play an MMO anyway.

  120. 120.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    “Obvious exits are North, South and Dennis”
    “Get ye flask”
    “You can’t get ye flask”

  121. 121.

    uloborus

    @Catsy:
    I have a long MU* history (although I think the original reference was to MUDs, obviously a different kettle of fish) and you make some good points. I will note to you that the only MMO I ever played (and I’ve played most of them) that was particularly friendly to roleplay was City of Heroes. I know on Virtue it’s practically assumed that even if you don’t play it your character has a background story. I believe it’s the result of a character creator with umpty-million options that let you look like whatever you want.

    The distant #2 for MMOs encouraging roleplay was Warhammer Online. Yelling ‘OI! GIT!’ is massively infectious. It sucks people in.

  122. 122.

    Jon H

    @Kryptik: “And if you’re a truly dedicated geek, you hit up MU*s. Think MMO-Text Adventure.”

    I doubt that I’d enjoy that. A large part of what I enjoy about text adventures is the voice and tone of the author, and the way it aids immersion.

    MU*s seem like they’d be an unpleasant combination of a ren fair and the CompuServe CB Simulator. (early IRC)

  127. 127.

    Fax Paladin

    “Bring me the blue pages.”

    “Spy ship sighted.” (Since this was the very early days of voice synth, it was years before I realized that was what was being said. It sounded more like “Base svort snaving.”)

    Gauntlet’s already been mentioned. I’ll just note (esp. given the nickname above) my personal variation tends to be “Paladin needs caffeine badly!”

  128. 128.

    Jay in Oregon

    “Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said ‘Goodbye’ and you were like ‘No way’ and then I was all ‘We pretended we were going to murder you’? That was great.”

  132. 132.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Comrade Mary:

    Waiting for v2.0 to be released. Have you seen the clips Valve has been releasing? The new game looks to be one crazy mofo to solve. The humor they put into it is excellent and l laughed my ass off at the GLADOS-like module with the Aussie/Brit accent. He’s pretty damned goofy and hilarious to listen to. The two robot characters look to be set up as Stan and Ollie types in the released clips.

    The possibilities with the attraction/repulsion gels, springboards and such are going to make for some fun times!

    Now if they can only fix the Linux Dedicated Server for SRCDS so I can get our L4D2 servers back online. The latest update broke it for some i686 platforms, ours being one of them. They released an update to it today but still no-go. The L4D server update went smoothly, all we had to do was patch MetaMod and SourceMod to get everything back in order.

    Not as lucky with L4D2… grrrrr.

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