I’m still playing the shit out of the World of Warcraft beta. I just can’t say enough good things about this game. Below are 4 videos I made for my guildmates in the Acolytes of Destruction that I posted in the forums.

You will need at least the DivX 5.1.1 codec to be able to view these videos. You can grab the free version of DivX right here.

WoW Vid 01 (7.8 MiB, 69 hits)

WoW Vid 02 (20.8 MiB, 63 hits)

WoW Vid 03 (18.7 MiB, 56 hits)

WoW Vid 04 (12.3 MiB, 58 hits)

So who is sick of the touchy feely shit? I know I am. Time for me to go on again about World of Warcraft. I think everyone knows by now I’m in the beta and that I love the game. Well now I got my own WoW TV thing, which can be found over here. I only really play during the morning hours. You can tell if I’m playing if the the little box on the left has in game image. If it has a WoW login screen I’m not playing. Below are some screen caps taken from my little WoW TV thing:

Blizzard released a patch yesterday and you can read about here in the patch notes. The biggest thing this patch for players is the return of Talents. Talents (shown in that second screen) allow you to customize your character a little bit. So that each player class can be a little different. With this patch only warriors and mages have talents to buy. It works a little like Camelots specs or even closer to Diablo 2’s skill system. The warrior has Protection, Fury, and Arms to choose from in the talents menu. Protection has different choices that affect armor class. Fury is about giving you a chance to go crazy thus improving your chance to crit. And finally Arms gives you bonuses in the different weapon categories.

Also with this patch the game now has an auction system (third screen) that allows players to buy and sell items. There are auction npc’s in the big cities that allow you to use this system. It costs you a minor fee (it’s refundable) to place an item up for auction and once you sell it there is another fee (non refundable) based on the selling price.

My human warrior is now level 12 and I’m enjoying him way to much. I can solo mobs at least two level ahead of me. And it’s not really a problem taking on two at once as screens shots 5-7 show. At some point I have to get back to the other classes so I can report on how they are. I’ll have more to say later and be sure to ask questions in the forum thread for this post.

So I rolled an undead rogue to see what World of Warcraft offered in the world of stealthers and liked what I saw. Like the warrior class you have combat moves (like Camelot’s styles). The neat thing about the rogue is that he has what they call finishing moves. These are special styles that you can only use after you build up a certain number of combo points. Certain styles give combo points when you use them. Now the more combo points you have the more damage the finishing move will do. If you look at the screenshot number seven you can see the five little circles indicating how many combo points you have earned.

Stealth works the way I imagine it works in all of these kinds of mmorpg’s. I’ll play around a bit more with this class so I can see what higher levels bring to it. So far I really enjoy it. And I’m not usually the kind of guy that plays a thief/stealther type of character. Check out the official rogue class page for a good rundown on what this class can do.

Woot! I’m in the World of Warcraft beta! I’ve been playing since around 9 am and just quit only because the servers went down for maintenance. I’ve already made level 5 and I got to say it is as fun as I hoped. Below are four screenshots showing off the game:

I got to take a nap now or I’ll be dead at work tonight. Questing is a huge part of the game just like the previews said. It’s cool how once you get high enough level you get a quest to go visit a region you have not been to yet. Also cool is that you get experience for exploring new regions. Lot of cool things in the game. Already it seems polished enough to be retail right now. And it runs like a dream even at a resolution of 1280×1024. Man I’ll probably never log onto Dark Age of Camelot again. Just kidding. Time for my nap.

Poor Gawain this just isn’t his year for games. First Mythica gets the axe and now Warhammer is dead. Below is the note found at the games webpage:

It is with a great deal of sadness that I have to inform the community that we have decided to discontinue the development of Warhammer Online and will be closing down this website with immediate effect.

This has been a difficult and painful decision but it was taken following a following a full review of the progress of the game, costs to date and future costs of the project. As a result both Games Workshop and Climax Development Limited, the computer games developer, have agreed to terminate the development project.

I would like to say a personal thanks to all of the people who have followed our development over the last few years, your constant support and enthusiasm has meant a great deal to us.

Robin Dews

And here are four screens showing a game that could have been:

It really is to bad the game got the axe. Read through their faq and see what you could have been playing.

Well I got a little time in with the game Guild Wars and I got to admit it’s kind of fun. But this is a pre alpha/beta kind of deal and there are bugs. Lots of bugs. Problems like joining a group and sending messages to people online that the game thinks is offline.

Gameplay is that of a mmorpg mixed with a Diablo hack and slash feel. Which isn’t a bad thing. All kinds of neat stuff I’m sure. But the documentation is non existent. One interesting thing is the way loot is handled. Any time your in a group and something drops the game assigns a player to pick it up. If you don’t pick it up in the designated time anyone can.

The graphics are pretty nice as the screen shots above show. It’s interface almost reminds me of World of Warcraft’s. Which probably is because some ex Blizzard guys are a part of the team developing this game.

If your going to try this one make sure to do so before the end of E3. This demo only is running for E3 and then after that who knows. It should be mentioned that guild support is not in the game yet, which is funny seeing how that is a selling point and part of the games name. It’s worth grabbing this demo just for the fact it’s such a small download. The content is downloaded as you go from area to area. Worth a shot for a free game if you like this kind of thing.

Well I got to say City of Heroes is pretty fun to play. Of course I only played maybe 2 hours max today before I took my nap for work. I made level 3 already, but the chat in game says leveling is slow. But so far I’ve been having to much fun just playing the game.

Character creation is quite involved, if you spend the time on it. You can just about make any kind of super hero you can imagine. You can only tweak the costume. There no stats to adjust. But you do get to pick your primary and secondary powers. At level 6 you also get to choose from a power pool of additional powers. You gain powers every other level.

Now there are no items in this game like in your standard mmorpg. But three things do drop from mobs. Every mob you kill gives you xp (of course) and what they call influence points. You use these points to buy from the two item types from npc’s. The two item types are power enhancers and inspirationals. Power enhancers of course enhance your powers in a many different possible ways. Inspirationals are one shot items. They can do all kinds of things, buff, heal, damage add, etc.

You start in training zone which looked to me gave no exp for mobs you killed while not on a mission. But that’s only in this training zone. Missions are the games bread and butter in the same way I imagine WoW’s quests are (got to pimp WoW). You get missions from npc’s called contacts. Missions can vary from fedex type quests to patrolling an area to going into a instanced “dungeon” to kill all the mobs inside. You will find clues inside these missions that can add to the flavor of the whole super hero thing going on in the game. My three levels I’ve made are form doing missions only. You can run into mobs on the street either committing a crime or just standing around talking shit.

And the powers are kinda like Camelot’s styles/magic really. Each time you use one it costs endurance and has a short re-timer on it. You can que up two powers in advance and even set one power to auto attack.

That’s pretty much all I can think of for now. Any questions you guys got I’ll try to answer them. Uh and I may have been overly harsh in my news post. I don’t miss not having a secret identity or an arch villian at all. The game is fun as it is.