It seems Mythic is going to beat a dying horse to death. This Mythic Press Release details how they are at work on a third retail expansion for their game Dark Age of Camelot. Here is the mandatory quoted text:

Catacombs deepens the world of Dark Age of Camelot by adding new content beneath Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard, said Matt Firor, Vice President of Development and Executive Producer at Mythic Entertainment. Instanced dungeons support a more casual gaming style by giving players exclusive play sessions for groups of all levels and abilities.

Catacombs system of player versus monster instanced dungeons will allow more casual players of Dark Age of Camelot to quickly find and adventure in exciting and challenging areas geared to their level. By eliminating the need to search (and sometimes wait) for monster encounters, in Catacombs, players generate private adventuring areas for their groups on their schedule.

New technical features for Catacombs include:

• Major art upgrade to Dark Age of Camelot player character models utilizing the EMotion FX 2 graphics engine that provides more detailed facial features, hairstyles, and skin tones as well as enhanced armor, clothing options and character animations.
• Instanced content will allow player groups to adventure in private dungeons.

New content for Catacombs includes:

• Players can explore a new underground city for each Realm based on the backstory of one of the Realm?s underground player races. Each city leads to new dungeons, catacombs, enemies, loot and adventures.
• One new playable class for each Realm.
• Content will be provided for all character levels.

As if the tedium that Trials of Atlantis was not enough. Now we get to have instanced dungeons. It just seems like that is the hot thing to have in a mmorpg these days and those boys at Mythic didn’t want to be left out.

My question is will this be enough? A november release is pushing it’s luck with entering the retail market around the time World of Warcraft will come out (I hope). Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Mythic should put it’s collective heads between their asses and kiss it good by. I’m just wondering if this expansion and the free RvR expansion will be enough to keep the mass migration to WoW when it comes out. And I know it’s going to happen.

If Mythic should take anything from WoW it should be the way quests are done. Make them more fun. Make them more accessible to the newbs. I’m not saying for them to steal the yellow exclamation point or anything. I’m just saying do something to add on to the “story” of the game. Make it interesting to do quests that are sorely lacking in the current game as it stands today.

Personal information, a topic I don’t cover often here at the website. At least not for a long while. When I do it’s heavily disguised. But tonight I’m going to open up just a little, covering a few topics that deal with my so called life.

Starting on sunday I’m going to change the way I do things. Changes that have a lot to do with the fact that I am not getting any younger. I don’t want to label this as a diet. Because I’m to damn fussy to follow any diet (well maybe the John Cash Diet would be ok). But I am going to give up pop. So no more Mountain Dew. No pop at all. I plan to switch to some kind of girly french bottled water. Something like Evian, but probably a cheaper brand.

I also will be dusting off my weight bench and will be lifting weights again. I used to do it in high school for football, so it shouldn’t be to hard to get back into it. In the day I could bench over 300 pounds. I don’t plan to turn into the hulk or anything. I just need some kind of exercise. I want to loose some weight. I don’t expect to end up looking like some male fashion model. I just want to get my shit together and this seems like a good start.

Which brings me to the next item. I have noticed as of late my lack of companionship of the female species has been something that’s been on my mind. Now I don’t want to sound like more of a loser than I am, but as a man you just crave these things. Not that I have anything to offer a woman. I have a shit job with which there is no possible advancement. So what future could I provide for any woman? And last time I checked my good looks and charm haven’t been pulling their end. So losing some weight couldn’t possibly make my luck with women any worse.

Now that I’ve managed to type this much drivel I wonder if my best friend is right. He joked today that I was having my midlife crisis when I told him about these plans. Maybe that’s what this all is. Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m sticking to my guns this time. I just need to focus on whatever motivation I can find.

After careful consideration and the loss of a twenty dollar bet, I have rethought my no pop stance. I’ve decided that is to drastic of a change and opted instead to go with a diet pop instead. I still get the caffeine I need and zero calories. I just got to get used to the taste.

It’s kind of funny that the last post deals with my lack of female companionship. Looking back at last year this time I had a talk with this girl that I had became emotionally involved with. It’s funny reading that post now. How shaken up I had got just because this chick had called. And really this chick is a perfect example of what I talked about last post.

What have I to offer to a woman?. Nada, zilch, zip. While me and this chick made good friends, as soon as I got other ideas the friendship was gone. She didn’t want anything to do with a loser of my caliber. Either because of the fact that I made little money or because I’m just not visually pleasing. Take your pick or it could be both.

So I wonder does wanting to loose weight and getting in some kind of shape make me a shallow person? Am I doing this all just because I’m fucked in the head? Do I need a woman that bad? Which really is a problem. I’m rather picky when it comes to chicks. Or I guess I just know what I like. And I know what I don’t like.

Which makes me kick myself I didn’t go after some of the chicks in high school that didn’t fit the description of what I like. Because I know for a fact that at least one of them is looking pretty damn good. But no I had to waste my time on my three year crush.

Now that I’ve reached the end of this post I can’t think of a good way to end this one. So I’ll just leave it with this being the end of the post.

Well I’m two nights into my switch from Mountain Dew to Diet Pepsi. I need the caffeine to keep me going at work. If it wasn’t for that I would be drinking water all the time. Maybe I’ll try kicking pop all together later on.

My entry back into the world of weight lifting went off without to much trouble. The only thing I can say is my poor weak muscles are aching. The pain is good though, that means the shit is working. I’m only going to do weights every other day. I don’t want to go crazy and hurt myself.

I also need to get myself a pair of sneakers. I plan on riding my bike now and then if it’s nice out. My combat boots just don’t really cut it for that kind of thing. My only other pair of footwear happens to be sandals and that’s not really very good for that sort of thing either. Especially if I do get the motivation to do some walking. Which I may.

Writing about all this feels weird. But so far I’m three days past any other time I’ve tried to do something like this. And considering the fact my previous attempts never left the planning stages three days ain’t that bad. But I got a lot of work ahead of myself. But I only plan to take it a day at a time.

Also thanks are due to both Jordan and Ben for their words of encouragement. It really does help to hear that kind of thing. So thank you to the both of you.

Man I’ve been neglecting talking about my computer game addiction as of late. I’ve been playing two games that have been keeping me away from anything else. I do plan on getting some screen shots later on, but here is the run on these two games.

First off is Painkiller. This game is a very old school first person shooter that takes you back to the days of Doom and the original Quake, or more specifically like Serious Sam from a few years ago. It is very fast paced and it likes to throw tons of bad guy’s at you. One odd thing about it. You only have five weapons. Now each of these weapons have a primary fire and an alt fire, so in a sense you have ten weapons. It is a lot of fun. If you have a pc that can run it. The system requirements are kind of high on this one. So be warned if you get it and it plays like shit.

The second game I’m playing right now is Sacred. It is a game that has a heavy Diablo/Diablo 2 feel to it. And that’s not a bad thing in this case. It is a fun hack and slash rpg. Just don’t expect anything out of the ordinary from it and you will enjoy it. The major downside to this game as of right now is the status of the games patches. The latest patch is version 1.6 and it apparently either breaks or doesn’t fix a number of issues regarding a location you visit later in the game. Again be careful when playing this one. It may be best to leave the version first installed off of the cd on your pc until they get their shit straight with the patches.

I’ll get some decent screen shots of these two in the next couple of days and put them up when I’m not being totally lazy.

Here are some shots of Sacred. It does look and feel like the Diablo series of games. But it is 3d accelerated. The characters are all 3d and the background is 2d. Overall I think it looks ok.

It should be noted that my screen shots show blood and gore. The US version of the game has no blood and gore. To enable gore on a US version of the game you have to first find a UK exe and then use regedit to change some stuff. For complete directions on how to enable gore in Sacred head over here.

So I’m contemplating picking up City of Heroes. Let first say that I have tried 3 different games in this massively multiplayer online roleplaying game genre since I dinged 50 in Dark Age of Camelot. First I tried Horizons, then the Lineage 2 beta, and finally Final Fantasy XI. None of these games did it for me. I’ve tried to like them. It just seems either it’s more of the same as all the rest or it’s the funky control scheme that gets in my way.

I’m hoping that CoH can fill my desire to continue to play these kinds of game until World of Warcraft comes out. It should be the perfect mmorpg for me. I’m a huge comic book geek. When I was younger I had aspiration of becoming a comic book artist. But it’s some of the things that are missing from this game that keeps me from thinking this one will last, even if for a few months until WoW ships. I’ve discussed these issues with Gawain, since he is the only person I knew that had the beta. So any faulty info I blame on G.

Number one issue I have is the fact you are a super hero all the time. This is not the way it should be. Super heroes have secret identifies. That’s what makes these powerful beings human. Look at Superman. What would Superman be if he didn’t have his Clark Kent alter ego? Just another guy in tights. The act of maintaining a secret identity is one of those things that makes super heroes super heroic. The chance that you arch nemesis will find out your real identity and then put the people you care about in harms way is one of the best comic book plots.

Which brings me to issue two, the arch nemesis. Going back to my Superman example. What would Superman be without Lex Luthor? A man is judged by the quality of his enemies, a super hero doubly so. Not having your own personal bad guy with which you fight with now and then goes against every super hero comic book there is. You have no purpose otherwise other than killing mobs in a mmorpg that masquerades as a super hero themed game.

Now despite these two glaring flaws I most likely will be picking this game up at my local EB later today. It sounds like for the most part the game is big on fun. Which would be nice for a change.