(no subject)
No recent post because of no recent changes in my life. I would go on and whine about my health and being depressed and wah, but nobody cares enough to hear it, and honestly, I don't care enough to type it.
But today was one of my better days. Maybe I don't feel well because I don't do anything? Is the cycle self-defeating? Well whatever, I was out cutting grass, and actually felt better today than I do most days.
Fuck, I said I was going to stop that. Right, sorry.
So as 75% of the reader base for this journal would know, I've been playing a lot of Sword of the New World lately. Absolutely love the game. Multiple characters at once and something that's not a vanilla fantasy setting? Hell YES. I would link the website in the off chance someone might stumble in and be curious, but I can't, due to maintenance. And that's where I am going with this. The game was slated to come down for major hardware upgrades. A full 24 hours without the servers being online. But that was Wednesday, and as it is now Saturday night and the game is still unavailable, obviously something went wonky. But the forums are down, the website is down, the parent company has no information (that they're willing to share), no news from any of the game's official Twitter accounts, and people who are e-mailing them are getting nothing. It's aggravating to be left in the dark like this, but it IS just a game, I'll suffer until it comes back.
Because of this total radio silence, I've been lurking some related forums, such as the ones at the parent company (who are only allowing one thread about the game to be open? the hell?) and the ones at a popular fansite. And the majority of all the posts I've seen can be summed up thusly: "BAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW". Half the posts are bitching about how K2 (the publishers of the game in North America) are not being fair, and how they are jerks and wah wah wah. The best are the threats of quitting. Not only are they hilarious, but I actually WANT these people to leave, so that I may game in a slightly more mature realm.
Moving on.
Thanks to the SotNW downtime, I've been trying out a few other games, of which I shall share a few quick impressions.
Age of Conan. Pretty fun game. So far I like some of the mechanics, like semi-manual attacking and the way enemies can 'stack' how they defend, forcing you to think before you button-mash. There is a main storyline for your character running in the background, and I would assume it branches due to race/class selections. I don't think a barbarian would be apprenticing with an evil witch. I do like how there is a totally instanced 'night' version of the game where you do all these storyline quests. But I guess that's part of the problem. No matter how much it feels like I'm living out my destiny, I always know that there are thousands of other people living the exact same destiny. When are MMO developers going to realize we want freedom to do as we please? If I want a story, I will watch a movie, read a book, or play a single player game. An MMO is supposed to be about freedom, isn't it? This is why I loved UO and SWG so much. No quests, no classes, just skills and freedom. But I digress, this was a Conan mini-review, not a rant on the state of the MMO industry.
Next up is Unreal 3, which Valve and Steam so lovingly released for everyone to play this weekend. Now, I didn't play too much of this, but so far, I am totally shocked. It turns out that Unreal 3 is actually Unreal Tournament 2004 with a graphic engine enhancement add-on! Seriously, maybe there is more, but so far this is the EXACT same game. Just prettier and with new maps. Also, I don't much care for the way they're trying to shoehorn a war storyline around tournament-style gameplay. I have to keep killing the enemy army until their respawners run out of charges? What? And why does the enemy army only send in four guys to fight MY four guys? You have an ARMY! Send more!
And finally, we have Granado Espada. This is, the slightly-renamed, Singaporean release of Sword of the New World. While I don't plan on playing this too much, since my 'real' family isn't here, it IS nice to get a glimpse into the future. The US release is currently at version 2.9, while the Singapore version is already at 3.2. Now, for low levels, there isn't much to see just yet, but there seem to be a bunch of new zones and the user interface is redone. It's nice, but not too drastically changed. But really, the big deal is the lag. I haven't done any actual tests, but I would guess my pings are north of 600ms. Not a big deal at lower levels, but I can see this getting me killed a bit later on. Either way, it's nice to be able to play at least a little!
Urg, what else?
Oh, right QQ. I love the language practice, but it seems like I'm not really making any close friends here. And I am getting a little annoyed at the constant video chat requests from people. I tried to be nice, and just unplugged my camera so it wouldn't show up on my profile, but people still randomly send me requests, usually without any pretext. I'm pretty sure my most commonly typed phrase has become "I don't have a webcam". There are some interesting people on my list, and I have had a few interesting conversations, like the one girl who, bless her heart, would NOT. STOP. TYPING. Honest to god, she would crank out three paragraphs of text before I could even read the first line. And she wasn't even being a little helpful towards the fact that Chinese was not my first language, either. She was being scholarly. Imagine someone giving a technical lecture to a friend who didn't speak the same language. I felt dumb. (Shut up.)
Anyway, that's enough. Wow. Been typing for half an hour! yey for frendz list spam!
But today was one of my better days. Maybe I don't feel well because I don't do anything? Is the cycle self-defeating? Well whatever, I was out cutting grass, and actually felt better today than I do most days.
Fuck, I said I was going to stop that. Right, sorry.
So as 75% of the reader base for this journal would know, I've been playing a lot of Sword of the New World lately. Absolutely love the game. Multiple characters at once and something that's not a vanilla fantasy setting? Hell YES. I would link the website in the off chance someone might stumble in and be curious, but I can't, due to maintenance. And that's where I am going with this. The game was slated to come down for major hardware upgrades. A full 24 hours without the servers being online. But that was Wednesday, and as it is now Saturday night and the game is still unavailable, obviously something went wonky. But the forums are down, the website is down, the parent company has no information (that they're willing to share), no news from any of the game's official Twitter accounts, and people who are e-mailing them are getting nothing. It's aggravating to be left in the dark like this, but it IS just a game, I'll suffer until it comes back.
Because of this total radio silence, I've been lurking some related forums, such as the ones at the parent company (who are only allowing one thread about the game to be open? the hell?) and the ones at a popular fansite. And the majority of all the posts I've seen can be summed up thusly: "BAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW". Half the posts are bitching about how K2 (the publishers of the game in North America) are not being fair, and how they are jerks and wah wah wah. The best are the threats of quitting. Not only are they hilarious, but I actually WANT these people to leave, so that I may game in a slightly more mature realm.
Moving on.
Thanks to the SotNW downtime, I've been trying out a few other games, of which I shall share a few quick impressions.
Age of Conan. Pretty fun game. So far I like some of the mechanics, like semi-manual attacking and the way enemies can 'stack' how they defend, forcing you to think before you button-mash. There is a main storyline for your character running in the background, and I would assume it branches due to race/class selections. I don't think a barbarian would be apprenticing with an evil witch. I do like how there is a totally instanced 'night' version of the game where you do all these storyline quests. But I guess that's part of the problem. No matter how much it feels like I'm living out my destiny, I always know that there are thousands of other people living the exact same destiny. When are MMO developers going to realize we want freedom to do as we please? If I want a story, I will watch a movie, read a book, or play a single player game. An MMO is supposed to be about freedom, isn't it? This is why I loved UO and SWG so much. No quests, no classes, just skills and freedom. But I digress, this was a Conan mini-review, not a rant on the state of the MMO industry.
Next up is Unreal 3, which Valve and Steam so lovingly released for everyone to play this weekend. Now, I didn't play too much of this, but so far, I am totally shocked. It turns out that Unreal 3 is actually Unreal Tournament 2004 with a graphic engine enhancement add-on! Seriously, maybe there is more, but so far this is the EXACT same game. Just prettier and with new maps. Also, I don't much care for the way they're trying to shoehorn a war storyline around tournament-style gameplay. I have to keep killing the enemy army until their respawners run out of charges? What? And why does the enemy army only send in four guys to fight MY four guys? You have an ARMY! Send more!
And finally, we have Granado Espada. This is, the slightly-renamed, Singaporean release of Sword of the New World. While I don't plan on playing this too much, since my 'real' family isn't here, it IS nice to get a glimpse into the future. The US release is currently at version 2.9, while the Singapore version is already at 3.2. Now, for low levels, there isn't much to see just yet, but there seem to be a bunch of new zones and the user interface is redone. It's nice, but not too drastically changed. But really, the big deal is the lag. I haven't done any actual tests, but I would guess my pings are north of 600ms. Not a big deal at lower levels, but I can see this getting me killed a bit later on. Either way, it's nice to be able to play at least a little!
Urg, what else?
Oh, right QQ. I love the language practice, but it seems like I'm not really making any close friends here. And I am getting a little annoyed at the constant video chat requests from people. I tried to be nice, and just unplugged my camera so it wouldn't show up on my profile, but people still randomly send me requests, usually without any pretext. I'm pretty sure my most commonly typed phrase has become "I don't have a webcam". There are some interesting people on my list, and I have had a few interesting conversations, like the one girl who, bless her heart, would NOT. STOP. TYPING. Honest to god, she would crank out three paragraphs of text before I could even read the first line. And she wasn't even being a little helpful towards the fact that Chinese was not my first language, either. She was being scholarly. Imagine someone giving a technical lecture to a friend who didn't speak the same language. I felt dumb. (Shut up.)
Anyway, that's enough. Wow. Been typing for half an hour! yey for frendz list spam!