I have played a decent amount of Heroes of Newerth. I have played even more League of Legends. While I have experienced some of the most exciting moments in my gaming career playing these two time-sinks, I find that more often than not I am actually quite miserable. It’s not because the game itself is bad, It’s because the MOBA community itself contains some of the most jaded, angry, rude, and egotistical bastards that have ever walked the Earth. Games of HoN/LoL/DoTA can get downright hostile, and its the only game i can think of where you are more likely to be verbally abused by your own teammates than  your opponents.

In addition to a really high learning curve, the belittlement that new players are subjected to is more often than not what causes a novice to not want to hop in queue for a second match. Statistics have shown that the ones who are lucky enough to escape the incessant harrassment that occurs during the first fifty matches of their MOBA of choice, are 90% more likely to become giant jerks.

In order to help curb this, I have decided to create some commandments that we all should follow.  The aim is to both  correct bad play habits of newer players, and to end this false sense of superiority that all of us MOBA vets have experienced from time to time.

Enjoy!

Thou shalt have no other things before game

Seriously, If you are about to eat dinner, leaving the country in 15 minutes, or dying on your hospice bed, don’t start up a match. Nothing is worse than the traditional “HEY GUYS SORRY I GOTTA GO MY HERPES ARE FLARING UP” that you will undoubtedly experience any time you sit down to play one of these games. It is annoying, and we all hate it.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven errors

We’ve all seen it before, the bonehead move that is permanently engraved on the face of a match; The one dumb thing that we did that made the battle fall just out of reach.  Next time you think its OK to Baron/Roshan/Kong when the whole enemy team is MIA, remember that its a terribly stupid idea, and don’t do it.

Thou shalt not insult others in vain

Don’t be a poor sport when you are losing. Don’t be an ass when winning. There’s a distinct difference between simple trash talk and utter douchbaggery, and in case you can’t tell the difference, I present to you an example of both:

“Hah! you missed me by a mile!” – a simple poke at someones inability to hit you with a skill shot, it gets it’s point across well, and doesn’t sound overly condescending

“DUDE YOU F@*&ING SUCK AT SKILL SHOTS GO DIE IN A FIRE YOU [insert racial slur here]!!!!!!!!!!” – pointless garbage, its obviously rude and loses any effective insult weight because 1) You just proved you are one of “those guys”, and the likelihood of you getting muted just shot up ten-fold, and 2) You used the wrong racial slur and just sound completely uneducated. 

It’s fairly simple. Do the former. Avoid the latter. Everyone wins.

Just to recap, you have already learned to not start a game when you don’t have enough time to finish, don’t make imbecilic game changing decisions, and don’t needlessly insult others. If everyone would just follow those three at a minimum, I GUARANTEE that the MOBA genre would be a much better place

Tune in next time for a continuation of the list.

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G4 has again been named the official broadcaster of E3 2009, and with only a month to go until keynotes, I’m definitely excited. Let’s just hope I don’t relive the fiasco that was E3 2007 on the same network. See my rant for more information on that.

G4 promises to provide over 22 hours of content, including five keynotes, hands on demos, interviews, and Steve Wiebe with another one of his live Donkey Kong high score attempts. If you’re unfamiliar with Steve, then be sure to check out the documentary: The King of Kong. It’s a great film. Other than that, additional details on the broadcast can be found at the following link.

G4 Named Official Broadcaster Of E3 2009 – G4tv.com.

You might be wondering why I took the time to write this, after all, my Vista machine tells me when there are updates available, right? Wrong. For whatever reason, these updates have yet to be included in an auto update. Well then you just might assume that these are not overly important updates. Wrong again. Why are you always so wrong so often? The notes for each update are as follows:

• Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938979) – This is a performance update. Install this update to improve the performance of Windows Vista in certain scenarios. Additional information about this update can be found in KB Article 938979. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

• Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938194) – This is a reliability update. Install this update to improve the reliability of Windows Vista in certain scenarios. Additional information about this update can be found in KB Article 938194. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

Sources have been notes as saying that part of this update fixed glitches with video drivers. This will hopefully lead to fewer lockups during my ever so important gaming sessions. I realize that the updates I listed were specifically for the 64 bit edition of Vista, however the same updates are available in the 32 bit variety. Take a look, and game on.

I personally work with code all the time. Whether it be html, php, or any of their related file types, anyone who finds themselves working with things of this nature has a best friend named notepad. The problem with notepad is that it really hasn’t had anything added, well, ever. I would recommend anyone wanting to check out a great replacement for notepad check out notepad++ found at http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net. This introduces easy to use tabs, which for someone working with more than one document is truly the best addition a notepad like program ever saw. Couple this with a feature which automatically detects the file type, and then provides sections of interest you can click from the function list to immediately jump to different sections of your document, and you have the best notepad program I have ever used, ever.

Excerpt from http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net:

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

This project, based on the Scintilla edit component (a very powerful editor component), written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL (that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program), is under the GPL Licence.

This project is mature. However, as you can see it’s a one-man-project, there are still some bugs and missing features. If you have any question or suggestion about this project, please post them on the forums. As well, if you have any feature requests, you can always make the demand, but there’s no guarantee that I’ll implement it.

You’re encouraged to translate Notepad++ (if it is not present in the Download Section) and/or to translate the Notepad++ official site into your native language.

I hope you enjoy Notepad++ as much as I enjoy coding it.