Category: General

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.

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.

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.

What’s new with me? I think everyone is back to full health around the house so that is a plus.

I’ve been able to get a little WoW playing in – got my Rogue to level 21 and now able to use poisons. Currently he is equipped with two gigantic swords (that just look stupid in my opinion) I found in Shadowfang Keep during my late night raids with Inhibit. Really, all I did was follow him around and observe but we had a good time chatting and goofing off. I went through levels 18 and 19 in that place. Honestly, I really like that instance. It just flows nicely and looks great all the way through. I really like when you get outside and look down off the wall and realize that you are really high up above the ground.

Played just a bit of EQ2 Trial of Isle. So far it seems all right, if not a little dark (lighting that is). Perhaps it was just night time. I started a Scout there, which seems to be like a Rogue. Getting stealth right off the bat was nice. The tracking feature was interesting. I selected what I wanted to track from a dropdown list (which I assume is a list of things only in the nearby area) and a magic path shows up that I can follow to whatever I am tracking. Not overly excited to play it any more but I’ll keep popping back in there now and then.

Asheron’s Call 2 has announced a ship date for the expansion pack (Legions) of May 5th. That is a little over a month later than expected. Turbine is really struggling to manage expectations these days. I tried to play some but when I log in I get hit immediately with the choppy movement. I don’t know what is the deal with that game, but it has been choppy for me since day one. It makes me rush back to WoW just for the fact I can run and not have to stop once and a while to wait for control back.

Played some of the MMORPG beta tests I am in as well. One of them (The Matrix Online) has an interesting combat system. I spent a large chunk of time in the fight tutorial just playing with it. I also tried Puzzle Pirates recently, not my cup of tea for sure. What else? Oh, I have not reactivated City of Heroes as I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. That is all for now.

It has been about 5 days since I last played any serious amount of World of Warcraft. Sick kids, sick wife and the stench of vomit buckets has pretty much kept me offline.

I don’t miss the game all that much. That is good. I used to go nuts when I had time away from the game. I am pretty comfortable without the game these days. Sure I miss it and I look forward to playing some more, but no more shakes when I can’t get my fix.

Another relevation for me is that I am actually coming to grips with my altoholism. I have started to enjoy the variety of playing multiple characters. Sometimes I feel like a Rogue, sometimes I don’t. With the rest bonus it only makes it even better.

And tradeskills? What is with those? I pretty much avoid them lately. It just seems mostly counter productive to my game play. I don’t find them fun so I don’t do them. When I need a break away from combat, I just log out. Fishing is the only one I halfway enjoy and even that is not part of my game sessions any more. It seems that a lot of people use them to make money, but since my brother gives me piles of gold, I guess I have no need for making my own.

In other news, I have started reading the series “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R. R. Martin. The first book is called “A Game of Thrones”. Very good stuff. This is possibly another reason why I am not going through WoW shakes. A good book does wonders for your soul. And your brain.

I was picked to participate in the Ballerium beta test. This game, according to the devs, is considered an MMORTS. They say that stands for: Massively-Multiplayer-Online-Realtime-Strategy-Game. Why didn’t they call it an MMORSG then?

Anyway, I’ll check it out as soon as possible. Since there is an NDA, I won’t be sharing much here until the time that it is lifted. I’m not a big RTS fan so I can’t say I’m overly excited about the release of this one, but I’m currently only being asked to test, not to have fun.

Face of Mankind is an MMORPG set in the 24th century. You are invited to play out the ageless battle of good vs. evil, and witness all shades of gray in between. Role-playing and your real-life skills are the raw ingredients of game play.

This MMORPG uses the first ever player-generated mission system, and combines it with sophisticated economics and complex player politics for a new kind of online experience. Only your ability to shoot, bargain, politic and otherwise duck and deal will advance your character�s private or corporate agenda. The success of each and every mission will determine your rise to the top, or your fall into obscurity. Whatever path you take in this astonishing world, plan well: one day, one minute or a single second could bring you to your destiny as the true Face of Mankind.

Get the open beta client while it’s hot.

And I’m an Altoholic. Seriously, I have toon commitment issues. I don’t play all that often, so logic would dictate I choose one character and focus on it so eventually I can get to the upper levels. In reality, I get bored after a while and start a new character.

I may find one that I can keep playing for a long time, but that is pretty rare. My current character selection window in WoW has 8 characters. Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Shaman, Hunter, Priest, Druid, and a Warrior. Highest level is 24 and the rest are around level 10-15.

The first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have a problem. This probably isn’t really a problem, but it does tend to make me cancel a game after a while because I burn out on all the low level content. So it is a problem for me.

What is the solution? Play games with only one character slot like FFXI or SWG? Well I played them both. In FFXI I kept changes jobs so the same thing happened. I burned out on low levels. In SWG, well lets just say I was never really into that game in the first place. So I guess one character slot is out.

Perhaps the problem is that I am addicted to the fast levelling the lower levels offer. I think this may be the whole problem for me. Which makes me wonder what I would feel about playing a game with no levels. Would I have no incentive? Or would I focus on something else? Is levelling really what drives my MMOG gameplay?

What can I do to fix this? Delete all my characters but one? Maybe do some soul searching to determine what is the most fun for me. Or am I making too big a deal out of this? Perhaps I need to take a break.

I went into a local game store today to get a copy of Pirates! and it was sold out. Bummer. I’ll have to try again later.

Since I was there I thought I’d see if they had any copies of World of Warcraft on the shelves. Nope. The empty spots were there, but no boxes.

Everquest 2? You bet. 12 copies. On sale. $34.95, hmm.

Just caught this announcement on the Turbine website:

Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE), a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming, today announced the formation of Station Publishing, a new distribution label within the company. Station Publishing will focus on distributing interactive entertainment products licensed from external content providers for the PC and game console market. The first titles due from Station Publishing will be Turbine Entertainment Software�s Asheron�s Call: Throne of Destiny and Asheron�s Call 2: Legions.

Argus, the senior producer of AC2 Legions, had this to say about the decision:

Turbine is a developer and publisher. We make games. When it comes to putting these games into boxes and getting them on store shelves, it is better for us to partner with a well established distributor than to grow in a direction that is not in line with our focus: making games. If what we want is a distribution partner that has succeeded with the marketing and retail launch of expansion packs, SOE starts to make good sense. Sony�s sales force is one of the best in the games industry, and we�re more than happy to have them working on our behalf.