Old enemies; New friends

A long time ago on the Azgalor server of World of Warcraft there were two enemies. Tanglefoot, Troll Shaman of the Horde, was constantly at battle with Taozu, Human Rogue of the Alliance. Many forum f-bombs were dropped and I even made a teaser video about Taozu (which is now lost to cyberspace).

Well Taozu had a change of heart and is now fighting for the Horde as a rogue. According to him; the Alliance is just a bunch of whining bitches. Well maybe not those exact words, but you get the idea.

Of course now being a proud member of the Horde, he decided to contact me: Supreme Commander of the Horde (don't hate because I can elect myself too cool offices). During our discussion we came to the conclusion that we really aren't too horrible to be around and I believe a new friendship was born. I see a lot of PvP in our future.

Along with this he also gave me an invite to his guild Extinct. I have been on the lookout for a guild for some time. Since I usually call the lamers as I see them, I have not won many friends on Azgalor.

Anyways, Extinct accepted me and I believe I will enjoy my new home. I miss having people to play WoW with and hopefully I will find plenty of people in Extinct that share my same enthusiasm for PvP.

So I Met an MMORPG Player in Class Today

I haven't really announced it on the blog that I have gone back to school for the fall semester. If you ever met me in real life you would think that I am not a day over 18. Fact is I am approaching 25 and am just starting technical college. I am often confused as just another "kid out of high school", but that does not bother me. Anyways this is all besides the point. I am in school and go to class everyday.

Today we had a lab to do. A simple lab: install Windows 98 SE on our hard drives. While doing the lab I started talking with the older female that was sitting next to me. We ended up talking about routers while we waited for Win 98 to install. She didn't know how to secure her wireless so I told her about a story involving my roommate and how our old neighbor found out he was piggybacking for free on their wireless access. Long story short she said "As long as it doesn't effect my games."

Being the self asserted genius that I am I put some clues together. What game or type of game could be so important that you wouldn't want it to be affected? MMORPGs... duh! What is the most popular MMORPG out right now? World of Warcraft... duh!

This doesn't mean everyone I meet that talks about video games or gaming is automatically thrown in the WoW category, but for this particular instance it was my best logical guess. So I said bluntly... "You play World of Warcraft." Not a question... a statement. Of course I was correct.

Turns out she is also playing in a couple of beta tests. Specifically Lord of the Rings Online and Vanguard:SoH. And here is the meat of this post:

Me: So how's Vanguard?
Her: Sucks. Can't even kill level 1's and the graphics run like crap (she has a moderate gaming rig, but still relatively new). Death penalty is stupid.
Me: I agree.
*senseless jabber occurs about Brad McQuaid*

Me: So how is LotRO?
Her: Great. It's beautiful and runs really well.
Me: I saw a video and I think the game looks boring... combat is slow and unimaginative.
Her: You have to try it because the combat is very fun.

Now these aren't exact quotes, but it gives the jest of what she was saying. On one hand it gave me some insight into LotRO which I was surprised to hear was going so well. I just lack faith in Turbine after Asheron's Call 2. Of course the other side is Vanguard and I must say she confirmed what I've been bitching about all along.

So overall it was a productive lab even if it took me a bit longer to install Win 98 than I had planned.

Mind Control in World of Warcraft PvP

Me: Oh look that priest is casting a spell.
(Priest is casting Mind Control)
Me: Oh I better interrupt that.
(You interrupt with Earth Shock)
*fighting occurs*
Me: Oh look the priest is casting again.
(Priest is casting Mind Control)
(You can't cast Earth Shock yet.)
(You can't cast Earth Shock yet.)
(You can't cast Earth Shock yet.)
(You can't cast Earth Shock yet.)
(You can't cast Earth Shock yet.)
(You can't cast Earth Shock yet.)
Me: Oh shit... there is a cliff next to this Lumber Mill in the Arathi Basin battleground.
{You take a lot of falling damage.)
(You are dead.)
Alliance has taken the Lumber Mill.
Alliance has won Arathi Basin.

Mind Control is still allowed in PvP... that's another one for the "What the fuck were they smoking when they came up with this?" file.

Update: 10 Nov, 2006 - Applied labels.

Vanguard : Watch how boring our game really is!

Ten Ton Hammer has a set of four Vanguard:SoH beta videos up for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately for Brad and friends they are just four more reasons not to play Vanguard.

Comments

• The animations are stiff and repetitive. They do not look dynamic or fluid at all.
• Whack. Whack. Whack. Nothing stellar at all found in the combat portions. Actually the combat looked quite boring and repetitive.
  
• Did that big bad wolf just run through solid stone? Yep it did. Next generation graphics... same old problems.
• Can the camera be any more jerky? It is commendable that they shot in game footage instead of a developer hacked ride by of the game world, but god damn is the camera really that laggy in the game? Were the graphical settings turned up a little bit high?
• Hello I am "insert NPC name here" and my legs don't work. Once again this is supposedly a next generation MMORPG, but the NPC's still don't move and still need little indicators over their head to get the players attention. After playing with Everquest II's voice acting I was quite surprised by its effectiveness. Even if I just want to skip through the bullshit and get to the quest/merchant/etc. it was still nice that an NPC would beckon for me to come over and talk.
• Did I mention how BORING combat looked? Just checking.
• The one thing that I did like was the UI that was in a couple of the videos where they were fighting in the desert. It looked clean and manageable. It was hard to tell what everything did, but it seemed like there was a good and solid base to play the game.

Vanguard:SoH is going to fall flat on it's face. An MMORPG just can't afford to launch with next generation graphics when the majority of gamer's computers are still last generation. World of Warcraft hit on the fact that a lot of potential gamers just don't have souped up gaming rigs. Next generation graphics require bigger budgets and the choice to go with better graphics means you are sacrificing a good 3/4 of your potential customers. No I don't have numbers to back that 3/4 up, but the WoW vs. EQ2 has been more than enough evidence to convince me.

I truly feel sorry for Brad and friends... I truly do.

Welcome to the new Heartless Gamer

I finally got around to cleaning up my blog template and switching over to the new Blogger Beta. It offers easy to use template tools that have allowed me to customize my template without having to rewrite the whole thing myself; which is great!

One of the biggest new features is: labels. I am in the process of retro-updating all old posts to include a label. Hopefully, this will help visitors find older posts on my blog about certain topics with the simple click of a label.

The template is not exactly what I want yet, but its a good start. I will slowly be adding to it with little tweaks here and there. If you see anything acting funny just let me know in the comments.

Update: 8 Jul, 2007 - Edited post and applied labels.