Author: Ethic

I own this little MMO gaming blog but I hardly ever write on it any more. I'm more of a bloglord or something. Thankfully I have several minions to keep things rolling along.
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Two MMORPG Themes I’d Like To Play

These are just off the top of my head, just the basic themes.

Pirates – Puzzle Pirates doesn’t count. I want to be a swashbuckler on a ship with my crewmembers. I want to sail on the sea, find a merchant ship and attack it. First with canons and later by swinging onboard for some combat. I want to be able to bury treasure and I want to be able to search for treasure. I want sailing to work like real sailing.

Robots – I think robots would be fun because they would be so flexible. You could justify replacing body parts, even the whole design. Upgrade your robot. Changing your skills would make total sense. Go into a shop and download new software. Combat should destroy parts of the robot and you’d have to go buy a new arm or whatever.

More WoW Woes

Last night I logged into City of Heroes but my friend was not playing. So, I decided to check in World of Warcraft for a bit. It gets stuck on the authentication screen. So I give it 15 minutes and try again – same problem. I go back to CoH and play solo for a while. An hour later I try WoW. This time I get past the authentication screen, however it gets stuck at the loading characters screen. Back to CoH. An hour later, I try WoW one last time. Finally, I got in. Three minutes later the screen locks up and I get disconnected from the server.

I log back in only to see that the world is down. Five minutes later I get in and the general chat was filled with people saying “another disconnect? wtf?”. Five minutes later another disconnect and I’m done for the night.

Blizzard rep comments on the forum: “Players on certain realms may get disconnected from their realm briefly in a continent dump.” Oh I see, thanks. Er, what?

I should mention that I had no crashing issues with CoH this time.

Long-time Turbine Customers Rejoice!

Turbine Kicks Off Member Loyalty, Beta Rewards Program

WESTWOOD, MA – February 23, 2005 – Turbine, Inc., a premier provider of online subscription entertainment, today announced that it has launched a member rewards program as a way to say “thank you” to its dedicated and passionate online games service members. The new member rewards program, which went live on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005, offers anyone with an active subscription to a Turbine service the opportunity to become eligible for future Turbine beta testing programs before the general public.

In other words, if you currently have an active AC or AC2 account going back over the past 6 months you have a good chance at beta testing one of their upcoming games. Considering they have two pretty hot titles in the works (MEO and DDO), I’m looking forward to having a chance to test them.

It’s A Rave!

The last time I played City of Heroes, I remembered doing a mission where I had to rescue some people taken hostage at a “Rave”. In reality, it was just a warehouse with people running around inside it.

The first mission I got the other day was this exact one. The loading screen when I entered the warehouse showed a picture of booze bottles and party lights. I laughed, remembering the former reality.

Upon entering, I knew they had changed it. I could hear music thumping away in the background and the lighting was quite different. Eventually I got to the party area. Laser light show, loud music, and even the booze bottles. The changed it so it actually looked like a rave! I was tempted to hang out and dance after arresting all the bad guys.

One other thing, what is up with all the badges? I don’t recall this so it must be new. I was awarded a badge shortly after the tutorial. Also, several people in the tutorial were looking for people to team up for “the badge”. Anyone want to fill me in on why I should care about them?

Authenticating…

I double click on the World of Warcraft icon on my desktop. A note pops up telling me a few servers are offline. None of them are mine. Log in and get “Authenticating” and that is it. No game, no fun, no community – nothing.

Sometimes a game just picks the wrong time to act like a piece of garbage. I’m not in a very forgiving mood tonight.

UPDATE: City of Heroes just got another month out of me… I’ll give it 30 days. WoW will be my backup for the next month.

The Drudge Report

It looks like there is a new race you can play in the upcoming Asheron’s Call 2: Legions expansion pack. No, it’s not the already announced Empyreans, but it appears to be a Drudge – complete with board and nail.

Seems it is only for people that pre-order the expansion pack.

UPDATE: At a later date, a quest to unlock the Drudge race will be available for those that do not pre-order, but this quest will have a pretty high level-requirement (60-ish).

Bored

All weekend when I had free time I would log into WoW. It just wasn’t working for me. Something is wrong. What is it? Nobody I know is online, that is what’s wrong.

I decided to reinstall City of Heroes. There it is, the icon is on my desktop. Mocking me.

I played a little more Guild Wars. It’s pretty. I’ve seen enough pretty this weekend.

Logged into EQ2 Try To While Away Time On The Isle Trial. Made a mage, was going well. Some guy runs up and tells me I’m making a huge mistake making a mage, they suck really bad. I should start over with a scout.

I’ve got no interest all of a sudden. Nothing new, this happens. I forget what I do to get over it. I think it is to take a break. Not sure. Well, I think I’ll log into WoW and see if anyone is on.

Or maybe I’ll activate CoH. Or maybe I should just take a shower and go to bed.

Working As Intended

[World of Warcraft] I was told that I could level my rogue’s lockpicking skill by picking a locked chest that is in a pirate ship near Ratchet. I went in and started picking the lock. Going along smoothly until I stopped at 110 skill. I was told you can get up to 175 here but I appeared to be bugged. I tried about 40 more times in a row with no skillup and decided to petition the problem.

The GM responded later on that it is working as intended. Nuts to that, I thought. Heck, the lock was still yellow to me which tells me I should still gain skill on it. I totally knew he was wrong.

I decided to read the WoW forums today to see if I could prove the GM wrong. After digging through 29 pages of discussion on lockpicking I found my answer: Lockpicking is capped at 5X per level. I am level 22 so 5×22=110. Damn, it *is* working as intended!