http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204781804577271652014459814.html

And the video follow up to the article

Time to go old school in a galaxy far far away

Growing up nerd, and having been a gamer my whole life I think it may surprise people who know me that I have never played an MMO in my life before this. Well, I’ve never played World of Warcraft at least, THE MMO. I had always been turned off by Everquest, Ultima Online, and every other pre-WoW MMO. It always seemed blocky and slow, and when I game I really didn’t want to be beholden to 10 other people waiting around. I like to game when just two or three others, and elite delta six team of adventurers if you will. Though I have dabbled a bit in similar genres playing Maple Story, Dungeon Fighter Online, and Audition, the dancing MMO. Yes there is one, so go bust a move now. But I have never played the big one, and this is kind of shameful as my mark as professional game designer so I decided that with my love of Star Wars and Old Republic promising to be WoW plus more, and one very pushy friend who wanted me to play with him all the time named Matt, I forked over the 70 dollars and entered a galaxy far far away. After taking to attempts and about an hour an a half to install, 21 gigs? WTF? I was finally able to enter the game.
After creating a character, which I actually thought had an underwhelming choice of options (see the WWE Smackdown games for the most robust character creator ever) I made my first character ever. Prayer, a sith warrior that I was going to be the baddest most kick ass dark lord this die of Darth Maul, minus the being chopped in half thing. Also she was pretty hot.

Time to say your prayers

If I was going to stare at some character for hundreds of hours on end, it was going to be a girl. Also I kind of wondered who would actually ever want to not play with light sabers or be a bounty hunter. Like who would want to be a grunt storm trooper? Kind of like the people who were shop keepers in Ultima Online. When given the ability to slay dragons and cruise the space ways, you decide you want to put and run a retail store? Apparently lots of people though. Right off the bat the game is pretty beautiful, even though I seem to be running around this dusty boring ass desert planet fighting a lot of worms. The cut scenes look great, the animation looks great, the sounds sound great, a lot of things were great. What was not so great was actually learning how to play. This game has virtually no tutorial! And here is my greatest source of frustration and gripe with this otherwise awesome game. I don’t know how to play and it really doesn’t tell me what to play. You right click on things to attack. Why is it right click? Why not left? Which power was it using? My drill sergeant Matt wanted to party up with me and chat, and I didn’t know how to just reply to that. Or equip new weapons I found, or much about anything. The game assumes you’ve played WoW and know all the previous commands from them. All 547 commands. It took me about 4 hours of play before I figured out how to even open up the Codex, which is the information guide / text tutorial buried under the mission menu.

It took me forever to find this

Why aren’t hot keys marked? I even bought the physical copy of the game but there is no manual to play. Every choice seems so permanent, and with an unrelenting Matt goading in my ear to hurry up and get to level 50 I don’t have time to make wrong choices, especially with a Jedi rebellion to crush. As I plunged into Old Republic my overall impressions are it’s a beautiful game, and it seems like a lot of fun, but really… a little help! We’ll see how it goes in my adventuring. Wish me luck.

Ingredients:

2 large Hass avocados

1 tomato medium size

1/2 onion medium size

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 large lemon

salt

pepper

red pepper

1. Finely mash 2 ripe avocados into paste. Easiest way to do this is use a spoon in a bowl.
2. Finely chop tomatoes and onions. Try to cut it into as tiny cubes as possible. Mix them into the mashed avocados.
3. Take the half lemon and squeeze the lemon juice into the bowl. Careful not to get seeds in there.
4. Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil into bowl. Stir and mix everything well.
5. Add pepper, salt, and red pepper for kick to your own taste. Add it slowly, mix it well, then taste to make sure you don’t over season.

This guacamole is great for chips, in burritos, or topping hamburgers. It’ll last only a few days though in the fridge so make it fast and eat it quick. The olive oil will help it from going brown quickly, but whatever part is touching air will oxidize and make it brown quick. So make then eat.