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KTR2K9

Another year has passed us by and it’s time to once again reflect on the goals of KillTenRats. What started as a way for me to vent about the frustrations of MMO gaming has turned into something different. Not my intention perhaps, but what happened to it is just the result of going with the flow.

I don’t write nearly as much as I used to and since Zubon writes so much (and so well), I have turned into a reader of my own site. I actually find I enjoy it that way. I would love to see a few more writers here but with the situation being as it is, I must leave the contributors to their own desires of when and what to write about. Therefore, we end up with a few people that write something once a month. This is all fine with me, but I thought I would turn to you folks that come here for some feedback.

What is the main reason you come here? What would make you come here more often? Do you feel the number of posts per day is enough or would you like more? What about the quality of the posts, are they meeting your standards? What subjects are you most interested in, game play or game design? Should we add more writers or should I start writing more?

What I would like to see in the next year? I would like to contribute more personally. I would also like to see one or two new regular enjoyable writers added during the year. The people we have here I very much enjoy reading but I’d love to see more posts from some of the quieter folks. I want to add even more banners for the top of the page, that is perhaps my greatest joy of this place.

Finally, we are here because of you – the readers. If there existed no readers here, there would be no writers (besides me that is). Tell me what you want from us!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by and also for coming back to visit so many times over the last (almost) five years. It has been a real pleasure and I hope we can continue to entertain you folks now and then over the next five years.

– Ethic

FigurePrints

FigurePrintsOver the Thanksgiving holiday I found out my brother had his rogue made into a FigurePrint so I decided to post some photos of it for those that might be interested in seeing what one looks like when you get it.

The first one is to show scale against the gaming standard, Code Red.

Next we have a front shot, up close.

From the back.

Then of course we have left side and right side.

I had put my name on the waiting list and they contacted me so now I need to decide before the end of the year if I want to have one made of my wife’s hunter or not.

– Ethic

Ethic Gets Older

It’s birthday time again I see;
Another year’s gone by.
We’re older than we used to be;
The thought could make me cry.
For getting older is not such fun,
When there’s hurting in your back,
And it’s agony if you have to run,
And a pleasure to lie in the sack.
Yes getting older is quite a bore,
But to not get old is worse.
So “Happy Birthday!” let’s shout once more,
And to heck with our ride in the hearse!
– Karl Fuchs

Yes, a pathetic attempt to garner birthday wishes for myself. Sad isn’t it?

– Ethic

Happy 4th, World of Warcraft

IRVINE, Calif. – November 4, 2004 – Blizzard Entertainment today announced that its eagerly awaited massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft will be in stores in North America on November 23, 2004. World of Warcraft will launch simultaneously in Australia and New Zealand, and is planned for release in Korea, Europe, and other countries throughout Asia shortly following. With a monthly subscription, players in these regions will soon be able to experience the epic adventure of the Warcraft series in an immersive and continually evolving online environment.

Make sure you log in today, there are birthday gifts!

– Ethic

The End of Tabula Rasa

I just caught this over at MMOG Nation. Was not expecting Tabula Rasa to close. I figured they would fight it out for a good while before they ended up deciding to pull the plug.

To the Tabula Rasa Community,

Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we’ve achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn’t performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.

So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

Before we end the service, we’ll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009.

– Ethic

Losing Sight of the Carrot

One of the problems I have with quest-driven leveling in modern games, is that I end up depending on the carrot to lead me around way too much. Eventually, I lose sight of the carrot altogether and then I stop playing. I know it’s kind of a silly metaphor, but it happened to me in both World of Warcraft at level 40 and in Lord of the Rings Online at level 32.

What seems to occur is that I will end up with a group of quests that are too hard to do solo, or else a bunch of quests designed specifically for groups. Since I seem to have some sort of mental block around finding groups, I usually log on a few times and log back off. Finally I cancel the game.

However, since I have a lifetime account for LotRO, I didn’t cancel and continued to pop in once and a while to see what’s new. One day a few weeks ago (with my hunter that was stuck at level 32) I decided to get on my horse and ride to Rivendell. I had not been there yet and I realized I did have one quest asking me to talk to someone there so off I went.

Continue reading Losing Sight of the Carrot

Death Knight, Fun.

I installed WotLK for my wife and then watched the queue for her. 1600 people and 45 minutes later, I was staring at the character screen. What the heck, I thought I’d whip up a Death Knight to see what they put together before she came back downstairs.

Fun. Damn you Blizzard you know how to make this fun. I had a total and complete blast and finally logged out after a level and a half of pure joy. Even the quest to kill 100 guards was fun. And what is this fantastic new technology that you use to change the state of the landscape with the blink of an eye? I was dumbstruck. I just don’t know what to say other than way to go Blizzard! You really surprised me.

I had no intention of ever playing World of Warcraft again. Thanks a lot.

– Ethic

HCB: The Run To 80 – Is Over

My Hard Core Brother (HCB) is going to update me as he progresses on his way to level 80 in World of Warcraft. I will update this post as I get the information from him. He estimates he will be 80 sometime on Saturday. Yes, he took the rest of the week off for this.

Beginning at level 70 with a Retribution Paladin on the Horde side at 11:30 PM on Wednesday night. He claims he started 30 minutes later than he wanted to so he had to play a little catch up with his guildmates at first.

  • Level 71 at 3:30 AM Thursday morning (4 hours to level).
  • Level 72 at 8:00 AM Thursday morning (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 73 at 12:00 noon Thursday (4 hours to level).
  • 4:00 PM Thursday, taking 2 hour nap.
  • 6:00 PM queue of 600, est. wait time 25 minutes. 30 minute nap.
  • In game 6:30 PM – Level 74 at 7:45 PM Thursday night (5.25 hours to level).
  • Level 75 at 1:30 AM Friday morning (5.75 hours to level).
  • Level 76 at 6:00 AM Friday morning (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 77 at 10:30 AM Friday morning (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 78 at 3:00 PM Friday, highest on server now (4.5 hours to level).
  • Level 79 at 6:45 PM Friday (3.75 hours to level).
  • Level 80 at 11:00 PM Friday night (4.25 hours to level).
  • Realm first on Mal’Ganis! He got spammed by so many tells that he couldn’t even do anything so he is off to bed for some much needed rest.

    – Ethic