Away Message

Just a quick post. I have been very busy IRL lately and it has caused me to not post, and what is worse…I have not logged into an MMO in at least two weeks. There are some interesting things going on at work so it may take a couple of weeks for me to get back up and running. Until then, I am trying to keep up on my blog reading anyway, so keep the good posts coming folks.
-Pid

Star Wars Domination

Can you imagine a world where Star Wars Dominates the MMOverse? After reading a post from Dragon at Kill Ten Rats, I signed into the open beta for Clone Wars Adventures from SOE. What if in his infinite wisdom, Lucas designed this whole diabolical plan to create a cartoon based on his franchise, then have a group design a youth targeted MMO to go along with it. This will suck in a huge player base who when they outgrow the kiddy MMO, but still bleed Star Wars, sign up to the more mature Star Wars MMO being The Old Republic. (Let’s face it, Galaxies has an end finite lifespan.) Pure brilliance! No matter who makes these games, Lucas gets paid. No matter what age the player base is, Lucas gets paid. No matter what critics say, Lucas gets paid. Say what you want about the man’s vision after the prequels, but the man knows how to make a dime. After generations have lived, breathed, eaten, and drank Star Wars for most of their lives you may see what the true power of the force is…the force of billions of dollars that is!

-Pid

Quote to Note

I was reading through the EQ2 patch notes and found this entry regarding a revamp to the layout of the city of Gorowyn:

Academy of Logistics engineers have completed their changes to the layout of the city of Gorowyn. They sincerely hope that the improved city layout will be easier to negotiate for Gorowyn residents, will promote more tourism to Gorowyn, and will reduce the number of completely lost rangers that the guards keep finding in obscure corners of the city.

Having known a few rangers in my time, I can see how they would get lost in that city. Too funny.

-Pid

Scratch the Paint on Slave 1 and I’ll Vaporize You

I sat down to read my latest edition of PCGamer Magazine and they had a feature article on the space combat that is going to be included in SW:TOR. Avoiding posting the actual article I can paraphrase part of it that has me concerned. Essentially the devs have said that they went with an approach to the space combat that is very cinematic that will make you sat wow (not WoW). That’s great, but what happens when you play it a second time, or third? MMO’s tend to be very repetitive and I can see grinding space missions to get that holiday paint job for the ship. How many people played KoTOR more than a couple times or Dragon Age or Call of Duty (single player that is)? The story kept you in it and the cinematic scenes were cool, but once know the story, it’s the game play that keeps you coming back for more. I suppose you can circumvent this a bit by using carrots like gear, achievements, or titles, but in the end it turns into drudgery that way and not an enjoyable experience.

I realize that TOR is not going to revive X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter or that it is not going to have space combat as the focus of it’s game, but I am worried about the title as a whole that they are trying to make the game too iconic. I’m worried that it won’t be that great after the new MMO smell wears off. I mean if we all look like Han Solo or Boba Fett who is going to play the bartender at the Mos Eisley cantina or Bib Fortuna, Jabba’s majordomo? Suddenly being that icon is not so iconic if there are a thousand of them running around in front of you. That is a major drawback in my view of games like WoW and EQ1. Everybody looks like everyone else. Every level capped warrior looks like every other one. Don’t let this be you SW:TOR. Help me BioWare, you’re my only hope.

-Pid

Commence Easy Mode

I was playing WoW the other day as a Shaman and boy things seemed like they were taking forever. I couldn’t seem to kill things very quickly and I died a lot. Maybe it’s because I’m a new player, who knows. Anyway, the game states that hunters are supposed to be good for soloing, so I decided to try it out. I still died a lot…that is until I hit level 10 and picked up Zsazz here. Zsazz if you haven’t figured out is the name I gave to the cat pictured behind my hunter. Since I found a pet, the experience has been nothing short of easy. At least from levels 10 to 15.

All that considered, now that I have dinged 15+ I was able to queue up for the dungeon finder. This single contraption personifies why people both love and hate World of Warcraft. I got into the dungeon finder queue as a DPS and after a while, I was prompted that a dungeon was waiting for me. I dutifully typed in “This is a warning, this is my first dungeon run ever.” and we proceeded to run through the dungeon. We got into a bad piece, and wiped. I had no idea what I was doing and before I knew it I was standing in Durator. The folks were pretty nice and guided me on how I should get back into the dungeon and we finished it off. Sweet, my first blue loot! I thought to myself, this is pretty cool. Why doesn’t every game have this.

A person from the newly created guild I joined (they asked and I said sure) asked if I wanted to run some dungeons with him, so my second dungeon was with him. Now this experience was totally different. This one was riddled with name calling and blame casting and regular childish behavior. Now here is the WoW that I have heard about. I must say, I don’t care for it one bit. I can see why people complain about it to no end.

Well, I opted in for one more dungeon queue and this one went rather well. In the immortal words of Meat Loaf, “Two out of three ain’t bad!” I see how fun this dungeoneering can be, but I really don’t know how long I can handle the kindergarten garbage that I saw in the second run. You figure there is a server for everything else, perhaps Blizzard could make a server for us “old” folks that you need to have your age verified before joining. Then again, who knows, these folks might have been older than me!

-Pid

WoW Phishing

Ugh, so I encountered my first WoW garbage today oddly enough minutes after I made a post that I had subbed to the game. At least I know that WoW scammers read my site. Anyway, I received an email stating this:

Hello,

Blizzard Entertainment recently received a request to change the e-mail address used to log in to the Battle.net account with the username myemail@wowsucker.com. The e-mail address y***@hotmail.com has been specified as the new username for this Battle.net account. An email has been sent to this new address containing a verification link to complete the change.

Once the new address has been verified, the e-mail address myemail@wowsucker.com can no longer be used to log in to this Battle.net account or any World of Warcraft accounts merged with this Battle.net account.

If you did not initiate this request, please click here to check your login e-mail address immediately.

Sincerely,
The Battle.net Account Team
Online Privacy Policy

Normally I am pretty savvy and can spot a scam a mile away, but today I must have been drunk or something…so I click on the link and then input my email address and, oh it pains me to say it, my password too. Just then I realize…I am stupid…really stuPID. Luckily the email account the scammer used was not the account I use for battle.net, but i went around and changed the passwords on all my accounts that I could think of anyway. Not more than five minutes later though a similar email did show up in the pertinent account. Is this how it is with WoW? I hope not. Ugh.

-stuPID

My Foray into WoW Territory

Well I did it…

Things are so boring in Pidville that on a whim I plunked down some cash on World of Warcraft and WoW: The Burning Crusade. I played through Starcraft 2 and decided to leave it be for a little while before I play through it again. I finally got back to Torchlight and beat that game. I got to a dull point in EQ2 and just stopped playing. What was left? I decided that as an MMO/video game blogger I needed to actually try out WoW so that I can at least have an idea what the big guy looks like.

So what are my thoughts so far? I’ll put them in bullet form:

• If it weren’t for addons, this game’s UI would be unplayable
• Walking never seemed so slow.
• 1 – 2 – 3 – 2 – 4
• Everything seems so orange in Durator
• General chat is as inane as people complain about
• Random people running by and helping to kill your mob…cool!
• 5 people fighting over 3 quest mobs
• Need three quest items, but the mob drops the items once in 15 kills

Anyway, the game is keeping my attention, but then again it is very new. The game doesn’t seem to do anything all that crazy, but has all the basic things you would expect to have in an MMO…I guess that is why it is the gold standard of the genre. I’ll keep posting as I find new and interesting things to talk about, or if I find something this summer that doesn’t bore me to tears.

-Pid

Audiobooks for Free

Just chiming in with a public service announcement of a website that I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago. If you are someone who loves to read and can’t find the time to do it, could never get into the “classics,” or can’t afford books and hates to go to the library LibriVox is the place for you! This place is great! Essentially people volunteer to dictate books that are in the public domain (i.e. really old books whose authors have passed on). The great thing is, the audio recordings are FREE! Heck, they don’t even ask for donations. Now you won’t get the Harry Potter collection there, but you can listen to The Iliad by Homer, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Clemens, or even The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. I downloaded A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens for my first book and I have made it through the first five chapters so far.

The Good: The books are unabridged and the sound quality is good. The download speeds are good for a free site.

The Bad: Each book chapter is dictated by a different author. All of the ones that I have heard so far (5) have been easy to understand though one had a bit of an accent. It makes it difficult though to tell some of the characters apart though because you have to learn a new readers interpretation of them. Also, a small nuisance is that each chapter has a small commercial for the website that precedes the book.

All in all it seems like an excellent service with a huge catalog of books even if most predate 1923. All of the books on the site are legally free in the United States, but if you happen to be in another country you may want to check your nation’s copyright laws. Happy listening.

-Pid

Picture source http://www.anythingbutipod.com

MMO Duo

I don’t know if I am in the minority here, but since EQNext (EQ3 or Free Q Realms or whatever) is not yet in full development I want to put in a request. There is usually a bunch of content in MMORPG’s for single players, groups, and raids, but can they consider adding duo content? I mean you can usually duo the solo content, but the experience gain is lower and doing quests in a duo is often a pain. I have a buddy of mine that I game with and while we would gladly welcome a third or fourth party member, we love to tackle content as a duo. Now in games that have the trinity, you can see how a duo is tough to work with. It’s doable, but not ideal. Give us some content for the nearly antisocial!

-Pid

Thousand-Yard Stare

I have been playing a bunch of Single Player Games as of late in lieu of any MMO’s. In EQ2 I am currently in the doldrums of the late 50’s content and boy does it stink. I haven’t been able to bring myself to log into my account in well over two weeks. Last night I found myself just staring at my computer screen not knowing what to do. This isn’t the first time this has happened and it is typically pretty short lived. I usually go and watch movies or a TV series on DVD for a week or so and get out of my funk. The sad thing is that I have even been toying with the idea of plunking down all the money required to get a sub to WoW. Not that I have anything against the game, but I told myself that EQ2 would be the MMO I would ride out until SW:TOR drops.

I am almost worried to go home tonight after work for fear that sometime tomorrow morning my wife will find me blankly staring at my monitor. Anyway, not much else to report here, but I thought I should at least mention why there hasn’t been a post here in a while.

-Pid