October 2006 Entries
I really don’t get Halloween. To me, in the UK, it’s always seemed a rather lacklustre and unremarkable affair, primarily manifested by the necessity to hide, in one’s own home, so that the roving gangs of 13-17 year old juvenile delinquent thugs think that you’re out, and move on to demand money with menaces…err…'Trick or Treat' elsewhere. At least at Christmas they have to sing a bit first. Humbug indeed!
In MMO-land however, it’s a much grander affair, and curiously, usually seems more meticulously and lavishly observed than anything Dec 25th has to offer. I can only imagine that this is...
I won!
The end, when it came, was a rather subtle and anticlimactic affair, which in itself was not altogether unexpected. A few days recent minor illness saw me at home, with time on my hands, time which I spent at least partly in World of Warcraft, making that last big push on Level 60. I was just handing in a quest to the night elf commander chap at Cenarion Hold in Silithus, when I dinged for the final time. Huzzah!
Of course many players would maintain that in World of Warcraft, life begins at 60, and now the game opens up...
Here are some folks who aren’t happy:
Slashdot: Battlefield 2142 to Bundle Spyware?
And a more detailed and empassioned call to arms here:
Heartless Gamer: Voting With Your Wallet
Now technically, all this kerfuffle is somewhat outside my jurisdiction. The upcoming Battlefield: 2142 isn’t really an MMO as such – more a LAN-Game, but this current drive by EA to cram the thing with so many adverts that it’s very flesh starts to warp and twist, and then still have the guts to charge the punters full retail box-price for it, does seem very familiar somehow.
I’ve been here before:
Van Hemlock: The Day of Reckoning
Van...
I’m not quite sure what’s gotten into Planetside lately – you get nothing for over a year, and then all of a sudden, two events come along a week:
Planetside Players: Event Calendar (Via OGRank)
Two more events, and the implication that Tuesdays and Thursdays are ‘Event Nights’ now, all of which seemed to be meeting a somewhat mixed reaction. The Home Defence event will see one randomly selected empire artificially placed on the back foot, having to hold their two home maps, while the other two empires try to capture one each within the set time span - a GM-accellerated Zero-basing,...
A thoroughly enjoyable session in World of Warcraft last night, largely consisting of two halves.
First was a fling in Alterac Valley. I quite enjoy it actually, being something of an RPG Planetside map of sorts. Having been in there a few more times, I begin to see what Blizzard were trying to do there, which is basically create a game of Warcraft III, but with players as individual units. A fun idea, but of course, without a Big Hand In The Sky telling each of us what to do, where to go and what abilites to use, the thing can’t...
Man, my luck never changes. It had been a quite agreeable World of Warcraft session so far, working out of Cenarion Hold in Silithus. Killed a few bugs, gathered a few knick-nacks, visited a few sights, even grabbed a bit of Silithyst and delivered it to the Horde base.
It was a short run and no Alliance even saw me, but I like to feel I’m helping. Something of a doomed task really, given Horde/Alliance populations – the counters were 22/200, 95/200 respectively, and it’s been that far apart every time I’ve been there. I got 6k xp for doing it...
It's carnival time again:
Man Bytes Blog: Carnival of Gamers: Revival!
You know what you have to do...god, no no no! Take that tutu off! I mean the other thing you know you have to do! Go read!
Population in Planetside is in something of a precarious state these days. Each map allows a maximum of 133 players from each team on it, then locks the rest out, making 400 in total, give or take a few.
Once upon a time, when it was new and interesting, and the majority of players hadn’t been so comprehensively owned that their spirits, and patience, had given up completely, it was a more thriving place. The empire-lock was higher, around 166 per team, making map fights of 500 players a common thing, and sometimes on as many as four maps at once.
Time...
Those funny little orcs in the wolf-skull hats and white and blue outfits were loitering outside the bank in Orgrimmar again. You sort of take these NPCs for granted after a while, but I suddenly realised the other night that one of them had a yellow exclamation mark over her head. I’ve been L50 or above for quite some time, but never really thought about the Alterac Valley Battleground as something for me, being a 40v40 raid PvP battlezone. I’d always thought of it as a kind of Molten Core for the Bloodthirsty, and dismissed it out of hand.
Anyway, figuring...