The Day the Music Died

It hasn’t been as traumatic as the death of three musicians, but LotD has overall, been detrimental to the life on the server I call home, Ironfist. As I said in an earlier post, the unintended results of LotD had been amazing PvP, incredible fights, and a riot of a good time. Sadly, this didn’t last. The destruction on my server rarely take control of LotD, and when they do, all PvP stops. It becomes the proverbial immovable object. For the next two hours, at least, Order on Ironfist is stuck doing PvE content to try and take back control. As such, my guild has been doing everything we possibly can to prevent Destruction from EVER getting into LotD. It’s not out of some bitter, petty desire to stop them from seeing new content. No, our actions stem from a deep-rooted self centered need to have fun in this game, and that means having people to play against.

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Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Despite the misleading title, I actually find statistics to be really interesting. The problem is usually that so many people have problems interpreting them correctly. That said, one of the most amazing sites dedicated to WAR has to be WARheap. This place is full of all the different types of breakdowns you could  hope for when trying to see what classes are most popular, or which realm. Want to break it down to active level 40s only? How about level 40s with renown rank 51-60? Sure. Oh, want to see comparisons of each sides RDPS archetype, knock yourself out. There really is a heap (pun completely intended) of info there for you to sort through, and to geek out to your hearts content on. I had a scare for a bit when I thought they were closing up shop, but luckily, a gaggle of protesters flooded the site with emails to demand he keep the doors open, and the numbers crunching. So he has. Give him some thanks (and some money if you can spare it). So here it is, my official thank you for running an awesome website!

Why burn books?

Holy crap.

Picked up this trail from one of my regular read blogs, Stylish Corpse.

How does any government not see that the intent for the laws they have is not actually being accurately, and appropriately met by the legislation they are enacting. Additionally, how can they not have a mature, 18+ rating for video games. Today’s world is full of video games. The adults of now grew up playing them. The video games have matured with us. This is commonly accepted by anyone even remotely tied into genre. Throw a stick at the community and you’ll likely hit a 30-something. Let us protect our children from things inappropriate for them, or that they don’t have the maturity to handle, but don’t stymie my enjoyment of selection because of it. Talk about an incredible failure on the point of some stupid committee’s bureaucracy.

Early Impressions

I’ve had a busy couple of days. Between the release of Land of the Dead, a recent character development for my Shadow Warrior, my happy return to a five-day/fourty-hour work week,  my wife’s triumphant entrance into her second trimester (she still just seems to want to sleep for 12 hours a day), the regular grindstone for my summer classes, and the oh-so-joyish Florida-summer yard-work, I feel as if I haven’t had a whole lot of time to sit down and document the things that are noteworthy, or might be interesting to anyone who walks through here. So, I’m going to give an update of where I stand in regards to the game with a recent change I’ve made, a brief look at how I’ve been playing the game lately, and a brief glimpse what I’ve seen of Land of the Dead (particularly Tomb of the Vulture Lord) so far.

He’s been quiet because…

He’s no longer with the company.

Theories anyone?

Fired for falling short of performance expectations with WAR?

Asked to resign because of his many verbal (some would say Bidden-ish) blunders?

Quit over being forced to push his product early?

Uncovering of a maligned secret identity?

In all sincerity, his presence has been noticeably gone, especially when the Hickman started giving the state of the game letters instead of Mr. Jacobs. To MJ, we wish you the best of luck, you were a person who was dedicated to this game, and I truly believe you wanted this to be the best it possibly could, and you did everything you thought best to make it so. May all your endeavors be fruitful, and your career be rewarding wherever it is you land.

Edit: Just wanted to give a quick update with some links to comments and links from other sites for anyone still interested. Rev. Dr.  J. Drescher gives his inside scoop. And a little bit of journalistic info-dishing can be found here at Massively. Lastly, and most important, the man himself is writing again.

Responsibilities of the Player

With all the frustration that I’ve been feeling over WAR of late, I’ve been browsing the forums a lot more than usual. I’ve always been a crazy forum addict, and every game I’ve ever played, I’ve at least had a mild interaction with the community via the forums. WAR is the first game that ever got me off my ass and into writing, and plunged me even more-so into the community that was there. To me, it’s always amazed me when people report that less than 10% of the games population uses the forums regularly. They have always been a wealthof information, a place to vent, a community to share with, and a great ground for initiating gameplay. All of the benefits of the forums help ensure my own willingness to stick around for the long haul.

While burning through all the posts on WHA and the officials, I got to thinking about what the role of the player is when seen in regards to the development of the game. There are tools in the game to do bug reports, and to report cheaters/hackers/botters/etc… Official forums are a good place to set up communication between players and those who have a line to the ears that need to hear what the players are saying. So we have a few different tools at our disposal to TRY and get information to the people that play the games we love. However, has anyone stopped to ask why? Why should we do all this? When did it become our responsibility to do work to enjoy a game?

It’s here

Land of the Dead has finally arrived. Officially. Order won the advance day access on 9 of the 14 servers for North America. Anyone surprised? Me either.

Meh, I’ll check it out when I get home, but I’m not expecting much.

Whaduya Know?

So, I tried it out.

I was impressed.

Damn impressed.

This is a game, that I swore up and down would be a Korean grind-fest, click to move, childish community, full of awful mechanics, out-dated principles, and just flat out poor implementation for the American market. I played Lineage 2 briefly, and while I thought the game was beautiful, particularly the gear, the game itself was just terrible to play. I was prepared to walk into a storm of mediocrity, and cumbersome game-play when I got the beta key this weekend. I fully expected that I would be canceling my pre-order, and saying good-bye to the short-lived affair I was about to have with Aion.

From “Meh” to fucking pissed

Incoming rant. If you don’t want to read a long wall of text full of expletives and crazy frothing at the mouth, I suggest you skip this post and move on to gentler pastures. I was awaiting confirmation on some things before I went here, and now I have it, and the cage to the angry beast just swung open.

“Meh”, about sums it up

So, the live event for the Lands of the Dead release, and the patch for 1.3 came out yesterday. As the title of this post shows you, I’m not particularly impressed so far. I played for an hour or so on both my DoK and on my Shadow Warrior, and got a handful of the targets finished to earn my some check marks in the special tab for this. I have yet to do the PQ on either of them, as it apparently only starts once every hour (maybe I’ll be lucky enough to partake tonight). What can I say about this event and patch? Not much really.