Nothing’s cooler…

…than Jesus riding a dinosaur.

And I mean that literally. Nothing is cooler, even Darkfall apparently. The game has launched and first reports and impressions are in, as are outsiders commentary (like myself). Who could  have predicted something like this? Oh, every–one. The sooth-seeing of a terri-bad launch were so prevalent, it’s hard not to stumble over one at every google of “Darkfall”. I don’t have the energy to copy/paste that many links, or try to struggle around the fire wall at work to get to some of them.

Is this Darkfall Schadenfreude? Most likely yes, but come on, nearly everyone saw this for the disaster for what it was. The situation has been like that with people who think an indie movie equals good cinema, which is complete bullshit. Sure, it works out that way sometimes, but most of the time you get complete fucking shit.

Guards, I don’t need no stinking guards

Asuryan’s Flames is one of the blogs, I read on a more regular basis, and one of his recent posts was his musing on why people let themselves be spawn-camped. He makes a lot of really interesting points and questions about why people who should know better, let this happen. Is it the mindless zerg, hoping that continually throwing themselves at the wall of the enemy will result in success? Why do this when you can sneak around back, snag an objective and get some momentum for your side, as well as create a distraction? All excellent questions, and I figured I’d weigh in on some of these myself.

Dominating your Freetime

That’s right boys and girls, 1.2 will be here shortly. Oh yes, sweet, sweet zone domination, how I long for you. Oh, and a little live event,  side-thingy for those berserkers. Bleh, not nearly as excited about that as I am for domination. It’s going to change the face of the game as we know it. It will hurt, it will leave us bruised, and we’re going to love every minute of it.

You and I, how do we do it?

So, we were talking in my guild lately about how you lay-out your screen, what kind of layouts you use, what do you find to be necessary to your display. So, I thought I’d show you how I roll, and maybe some of you guys can throw up your own and give suggestions/tweaks/criticisms/accusations of stupidity. You know, whatever.

MMO Trials

I mentioned some time back that I was going through trial accounts of a few various games, and that I wanted to see how some of them have come since I last played, or just what a game I had never looked at was like. What I was hoping for, was to come at these games like it was my first time, and think about how they portrayed themselves to a would-be newcomer with zero expectations. The three that I checked out were City of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online, and EvE (EVE? what’s the correct capitalization with this damn game?). I choose each of these because I had differing levels of exposure to them all. CoH I had played on and off for a number of years, never getting over level 30, but had a ton of alts, as this game basically demands you to do so. LotRO I had given the trial a spin once a year or so back, and just couldn’t handle playing it, so I stopped before even getting to level 5. EvE I had never even set foot in, and was completely unaware of how the game worked other than it was a sandbox space MMO. So, with high hopes and an open mind, I set out on my trials.

It’s Spreading

Awesome billboard in Asia. They know how to promote. Thanks to PB for pointing it out via Twitter.

Of Transfers, Queues, and Sieges

Because I could, I transferred over my Disciple and my BG over to Iron Fist. I don’t have any intention of ever really playing them again, but I thought back to my Boy Scout roots, and decided to prepare for the possibility of me becoming disillusioned with my Shadow Warrior. So, I logged into Mythic’s site, and in the blink of an eye, had them queued up to move over. Maybe 30 minutes later, they were move. Say what you will about Mythic, but when they get something right, they get it RIGHT.

WCPI

Try to pronounce that string of consonants followed by a vowel. I dare you. You’ll look like a giant idiot, but it will be fun. When you tire of trying to decipher seemingly random letters, you can head here, and find out what it’s all about, or you can keep reading this post. Obviously, I’m hoping you stick it out.

Fog of WAR

I had the best night of game-play of my entire WAR career last night. Far and beyond what it normally was, but close to a few nights back in Kadrin Valley, and yesterday was a Monday of all days.

Like They’re Trying to be Mocked

People love to make snappy witisisms about games, and online games in general. Eversmack, World of Borecraft, World of Warhammer, Failhammer, Fail-Com are all common terms you heard from segements of communities who wish to deride another games success or who just try to call out what they see as poor games/design. Sometimes, games dissapoint on such a gigantic measure, that the very name of the studio comes be to a term of failure. Currently, one new expectant game just dropped it’s NDA, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it.