Author: Ethic

I run this little MMO gaming blog but I hardly ever write on it anymore. I'm more of a bloglord or something. Thankfully I have several minions to keep things rolling along.
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Warhammer Guild Beta

The Warhammer Online Guild Beta starts in July. This means release is getting closer and closer.

Guild Leaders – prepare your recruits for WAR!

It has been one year since the first call for guilds to join the battle was answered and now the moment will soon be upon us. Mighty guilds, long lying in wait, have raised up their banners to make ready and the drums of war resound within their great halls. Legions of fierce warriors form their ranks, and will soon mount their attacks on WAR’s vast battlefields. They stand on the precipice in anticipation, ready to vie for honor and glory in the name of their Realm.

Now is the time for the best of the best to band together as one and clash against their enemies. Starting in July, these guilds and thousands of players will compete for domination in the great arena of the Age of Reckoning.

Like a fine wine, our Closed Beta and all that it encompasses has only improved with time. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our talented development team and the invaluable feedback of thousands of testers, the game is looking great and stands poised, ready to play host to a legion of guilds and their members.

The guilds we’ve selected have touched most every MMO released, and several hail from the frontlines of popular First Person Shooters. These testers cover every play style under the sun, and truly embody the social diversity we will welcome and encourage at launch. These guilds, and many more like them, will be the foundation of a great community that we look forward to serving for years to come.

– Ethic

Happy 5th, Star Wars: Galaxies

Star Wars: Galaxies turns 5 years old today. Happy Birthday!

June 17, 2003 – LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment Inc. today announced Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, the highly anticipated initial installment of the first Star Wars massively multiplayer online (MMO) game series, will release June 26, 2003. The Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided online fan community now exceeds more than 500,000 registered members.

“After three years of intense development, we’re thrilled by the imminent release of Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided,” says John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. “We’re honored that LucasArts felt only Sony Online had the right combination of technical know-how and game design skills to produce a game of this scope. The Star Wars Galaxies team has been working non-stop to deliver a product that lives up both to the stature of the Star Wars license and the expectations that LucasArts had set for us.”

– Ethic

Shout Out To Massively

When Massively.com first started up I thought to myself, oh great another site to gather and repeat all the news I’ve already read. Well, I was happily quite wrong. They have consistently put out new, original content as well as having a lot of exclusive first looks at upcoming MMOs. Sure they fill up my feed reader faster than I can keep up with it, but I have to admit they are serving up a *lot* of really great content. Congratulations on a job well done folks!

– Ethic

Blindsided By Conan

Age of Conan has left me without much to write. Well, what I really mean is that I’d rather play AoC than write about it. Funny that, I was not even planning to give this game a try and I normally try all the MMOs after release at some point. For some reason, AoC just did not grab me at all when reading the previews. Honestly I expected it to be a disaster. But now that I have been playing it for a while, I’m having a hard time wanting to play anything else.

Lord of the Rings Online had been my main game for the past year and I was not expecting to stop playing it until Warhammer Online came out. After a few weeks of AoC, I can’t even bear to play LotRO at all. I love the lore of Middle-earth and I know next to nothing of the Conan world and yet, I find myself eagerly reading all the Hyborian quest text presented before me.

Continue reading Blindsided By Conan

Age of Conan – After a Week

I’ve been playing AoC for about a week now and I’d like to share some additional early impressions.

Character Slots

The game gives you eight character slots regardless of server. Therefore, if your slots are full and you want to play on a different server, you must delete a character on the old server to make an open slot. This really doesn’t bother me as I feel eight slots is plenty. Really, if I had eight slots per server I would probably have to create name holder characters on each server. I can’t do it in AoC, so I don’t have to. I like that.

Continue reading Age of Conan – After a Week

Age of Conan – Early Impressions

I got my hands on a copy of Age of Conan a lot earlier than I had planned on buying my own, so I went ahead and installed it. The following are my first impressions from playing through the very first area on my way towards the town of Tortage. You’ll have to excuse the scattershot topic jumping.

It seems all the male faces are portraying the “less than a full deck” look. I had to play a female instead because of that. Really, are nipples *that* important to the game? One of the first cut scenes used a generic character to represent mine, that bothered me. Can we get some *more* splash screens to click past during log in? Where is the log out option so I can switch characters? I don’t want to exit the game and then log in again. I found a helmet and put it on, did not like it so I chose the “don’t show helmet” option and it took off my hair too (update: I’m told this bug was actually the result of changing into and out of the demon form – I did both around the same time). I crashed at log out most of the time and once when I tried to get a screenshot. I don’t really have any opinions on the user interface. It didn’t get in the way of me doing what I needed to do, so I guess that is good enough for now.

The scenery is lush and amazing (keep in mind this was just in the single player area so far). The male characters run funny. I had a few of those bloody critical kill blows but the only way I could tell is because blood splashed on my screen. My character blocked the view of the big moves. Combat is fun so far, a little different – but nothing amazing about it. It makes you pay more attention, which is good. The world (again, intro solo area impressions only) makes me feel walled in, restricted to certain areas. Does not feel like a seamless world, which is an important thing for the explorer in me. The hints might be helpful but I went out of my way to get them off the screen and did not read them.

Class choices seem very interesting. I tried a Herald of Xotli and a Ranger. The Herald of Xotli could turn into a demon, which is always a cool thing. When I was the Ranger I needed to switch from bow to sword frequently. The key to do that is “Shift + R”. G15 keyboard to the rescue. The sound your character makes when you find something is silly. “Aha!”. I found a broken bottle on the beach, picked it up, and used it as a weapon – cool. I seemed to level up really fast.

It looks like the launch was quite solid and I’m impressed. If you like Conan, this appears to be a big win. There is a lot more to the game I’d like to discover and so I will continue to play it as my second game for now. Congratulations to Funcom for fixing the multitudes of problems I was hearing about from beta testers. I will post more as I get time to play.

– Ethic