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Yes it’s almost that time again. “Talk Like A Pirate Day” is coming up soon. In fact, it is September 19th.
Most days are like all of the others,
Go to work, come back home, watch TV,
But, brother, if I had me druthers,
I’d chuck it and head out to sea,
For I dream of the skull and the crossbones,
I dream of the great day to come,
When I dump the mundane for the Old Spanish Main
And trade my computer for rum! ARRR!
Drink up, me hearties!
– Ethic
[World of Warcraft] Sending a special tip out to the person that invited me to join their guild last night.
Don’t just invite random people to your guild without even talking to them. That move alone guarantees I won’t join your guild.
That is all.
– Ethic
[World of Warcraft] My undead warlock hit level 18 last night. I learned a few new tricks during this level, as well as gaining an interesting new skill.
The new skill is called “Create Soulstone”. What this does is it creates a soulstone out of a soulshard. The soulstone, when applied to someone, can be used by that person to self-resurrect. Now my understanding is that you can only make one every 30 minutes and they only last 30 minutes so it’s not like I can go around handing them out to people. But, the nice thing is that I can use it myself.
If you are not sure what a soulshard is, I’ll sum it up for you. Basically, a warlock casts a special spell on a monster just before it dies. If successful, you will capture the monster’s soul in a soulshard. Warlocks use these for various things, like summoning demons and people (or creating soulstones now).
I also learned a few new tricks (new to me anyway). I started using my voidwalker demon for pulling. I would send him in to gain aggro, and recall him. When the monster attacking him wandered into range for my attacks I would tell the voidwalker to start attacking again, and I would attack as well. Worked pretty well as the monsters kept their distance from me.
Another trick I learned was really nice for me. One of the things I hate is when a monster starts to run away when it gets low on health (not all monsters do this). Warlocks have curses they can cast on monsters. You can only have one curse on at a time. Normally, I use the “Curse of Agony” which is a damage-over-time curse. I noticed one of the other curses, “Curse of Recklessness”, has a side-feature of keeping monsters from fleeing. So, I started casting CoR at the end of the battle, just before the time when a monster might run. It was a great to not have to worry about a monster running away and pulling in more bad guys.
All and all an enjoyable evening.
– Ethic
[Guild Wars] A new free patch, Sorrow’s Furnace, was released yesterday. Free. What do you get for free?
2 new large explorable regions
17 new quests, most repeatable
4 new cinematics
A variety of new monsters (bosses too!)
5 new veteran-level quests
New random locked chests with uncommon or better loot inside
Each member can open chest for loot
Keys for chests random drops or purchase from NPCs
9 skill changes
5 PvP changes
9 monster balance changes
13 UI changes
17 bug fixes
Go ArenaNet!
– Ethic
[World of Warcraft] Since I last left you, I have been playing my warlock and having a good time. I’m up to level 17 now and swinging a mean sword while carrying around a bright glowing orange globe maraca-thingy. I summon a voidwalker (a blue bully from hell) who does a lot of the hard work for me.
Actually, most of the damage comes from my damage-over-time spells and some extreme burnination. My sword is mostly for looks and for the bonuses it gives me. I realized tonight that I have 8 talent points to spend so I put 5 into improved corruption to make that spell nice and fast casting. Not sure what to do with the other 3 points yet.
It feels downright evil to play a warlock with all the demon summoning and such. I’m not real happy about a few things, like soulshards not stacking and the fact that I lose my demon whenever I hearthstone or fly. Kind of sucks to have to waste a soulstone every time I want to take a wyvern somewhere.
Sooner or later I’ll be able to summon a succubus, which from the few times I have been around them will be annoying. I really hope they don’t still crack their whips and moan all the damn time. My wife will think I’m watching some sort of bondage porn video (not that there is anything wrong with that).
– Ethic
What are some of the MMORPG companies doing to help those affected by the latest natural disaster? Well, they are trying to make it easier for their affected customers by making sure things will be like they left them in-game. If the game has housing maintenance, they are stopping the cost for now. Some games are even dropping the fees temporarily. Still others are linking to charities.
Mythic Entertainment: We’ve all got friends and family down south, and there’s a big player community down there as well. Like many of you, we’re struggling to find some small way that we can help besides the basic and obvious “donate to the Red Cross†stuff. We went through the game systems, looking for stuff that people could lose if they are unable to log in for awhile, and paying rent on the in-game houses is fortunately the only thing. We can’t suspend in-game house rent by billing address, so we’re just suspending house rent across the board for the whole game.
Sony Online Entertainment: In EverQuest II we have added the /donate command, type in /donate to be taken to the American Red Cross’s Hurricane 2005 relief page. For those members of SOE Communities in other games, you can contribute using this link, American Red Cross. The American Red Cross will process your donation and make sure that it is put to maximum use to help those whose lives have been affected by the hurricane.
Additionally, for our 13,000+ players actually in the affected areas, we will be suspending billing until such time as they are able to play again. In addition, any items or structures in any of our games, which decay over time, will be preserved until the user’s next login.
NCSoft: To show our support for the Gulf Coast victims of Hurricane Katrina, NCsoft has placed a banner to the Network for Good website on the front pages of all North American NCsoft websites.
Blizzard: Our heartfelt condolences go out to the individuals and families affected by Hurricane Katrina. We encourage everyone to assist the federal, state, and local organizations doing vital work on the ground by making a donation to the relief efforts. The Department of Homeland Security has asked that donations be made in the form of financial contributions, rather than supplies, which are difficult to get into the affected areas at this time. If you would like to make a donation to the relief efforts, please contact the American Red Cross: www.redcross.org; 1-800-HELP NOW (1-800-4357-669).
Kudos to Mythic and SOE for going the extra mile, but still more can be done. Give an incentive to players that donate, perhaps some in-game item or something. Or better yet, how about matching pledges?
Oh, here is a nice FU from Blizzard: Any player affected by the hurricane should call our Billing department to turn off their account until they power is restored. Characters and items on the accounts affected will not be removed, deleted, or changed during the time the accounts are turned off. WTF?
Anyone see something I’m missing, let me know.
Regardless, if you have the means to do something to help, whether it is a donation or something more involved, please do so. This is a terrible tragedy.
– Ethic
[City of Heroes] I found an email from Cryptic/NCSoft in my spam folder. I wonder how it got there. Anyway, this weekend is free for past CoH customers.
Just log into the game between 2pm (CDT) on Thursday, September 1st and 11:59pm (CDT) on Tuesday, September 6th and you will find your account reactivated FREE of charge!* Your hero characters will be waiting just as you left them the last time you played, ready to lead the charge against evil.
But hurry…this offer is only valid for a limited time, and once 11:59pm (CDT) hits Tuesday night, September 6th, your account will again be deactivated unless you choose to resubscribe.
I’ll spend a little time playing there, no problem.
– Ethic
[World of Warcraft] I ended up playing my level 28 undead rogue on Hellscream for an hour or so tonight. Relocating to Thousand Needles from Tarren Mill (which killed the game for me) made a huge difference in getting things rolling again. Killed a lot of centaurs on the edge of their camp. Felt very rogue-ish. Getting close to level 29 now. That would make him the highest level I have ever gotten to in WoW. Sad.
Anyway, I had forgotten how fantastic and majestic the scenery in WoW is, at least to me. The Undercity and Orgrimmar are both just a lot of fun to look at.
It only took me about 30 minutes to remember how to play a rogue, it is not a simple class to play really, lots of options to play with. It feels good to be back, even though the lag on this server is still pretty rough at times. I’m awfully tempted to start a new character on a low population server, but I’m not sure I want to go through the low level stuff yet again. I have not played an Alliance character past level 18 (in beta) so there is at least some fresh quests on that side for me. We’ll see how aggravating the lag gets.
– Ethic
[World of Warcraft] It just keeps on going and keeps on growing.
IRVINE, California – August 29, 2005 – Blizzard Entertainment®, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has reached more than one million paying customers in North America. This brings the total population for Blizzard’s critically acclaimed game, the largest MMORPG in the world, to more than four million paying customers.
It’s a behemoth now, steamrolling over rival MMOs like they are made of Dereth.
– Ethic
[Asheron’s Call 2] Sadly, another prediction has come true:
Dear AC2 subscribers,
In spite of our hard work and the launch of Legions, AC2 has reached the point where it no longer makes sense to continue the service. We will be officially closing the Asheron’s Call 2 service on 12/30/05. Until then, we plan to run live events, but we will not be adding any content or features.
We deeply appreciate the many dedicated fans of AC2 who have stood by us over the years. You have our sincerest gratitude.
Best regards,
Jeffrey Anderson
CEO, Turbine
I got nothing to say.
– Ethic