Thursday, March 25, 2004

The Heroism of a City full of Heroes

On a recently, rather long thread on Grimwell, the conversation recently turned towards the nature of Heroism in MMOGs. Something I hadn't really thought about all THAT much before was that there really isnt THAT much Heroism in your standard Hack and Slash MMOGs out there - the game mechanics are biased against Heroic attacks in general (You generally don't even THINK about taking on something higher con than you). From some of the things that were said on there, City of Heroes promises to offer a VERY different experience - in that your average hero can feel confident in jumping into the fray and taking on multiple, even opponents with a good change of winning - just the kind of thing a Comic Book Hero would do! Haven't really paid THAT close attention to CoH over the time its been in development - mostly because I have been a comic book fan in my time and I wasnt sure how 'pure' it would stick to the feel of a comic book - EQ with Super Heroes would quite frankly SUCK. I may just have to pay some more attention now - as its getting released in a month!

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Meanwhile, back in Crushbone...

Well now, EQ has been keeping me very occupied over the last couple of nights!

I am having a very good time - met a bunch of nice folk in my new guild, the Silver Phoenix Alliance - I definitely feel at home there already!

I had a grand old time in Crushbone last night - one of my favourite low-level haunts! After a few mishaps and deaths, I got in a really good group and we stayed in the Throne Room for a few hours - and I made 3 levels up to level 13 from it! Well worth the few deaths I think!
I'm enjoying playing a Bard more now - it was a little frustrating earlier, being a clueless newbie bard and all - but now I've gotten up in power a little, its becoming much easier. We'll see how it goes!

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Opinions on Ashen Empires

Well another game I neglected to mention in my previous post that I tried (briefly) was Ashen Empires (the game formerly known as Dransik). From the couple of days that I played it - the game is basically pretty similar to Ultima Online - same 2.5D isometric interface, similar trade-skilling systems, similar weapons skills. They have levels also in Ashen Empires though - which primarly controls how many HP you get. It was alright I guess - I've never really gotten into UO in the couple of times I've tried it - the skill-based grinding as opposed to exp grinding wasnt to my taste - and AE pretty much gave me the same sense. I didn't try the magic system but from what I could tell it had a similar reagent system - not sure on the exact mechanics of it though!

If you like UO - I would say its pretty well worth at least the free trial - the company behind Dransik were recently bought out by another - and the new company is providing a lot of resources into the game (They were getting ready to publish a pretty big update when I got off the game - just before the free beta ended!)

Monday, March 22, 2004

Something tells me I need an alarm clock to keep updating this!

Well since more of my friends (here, and here) are doing blogs - I decided to try and get back into writing this.

Not that I think many people actually READ it - but then I don't LINK to it anywhere - might be worth actually putting some content IN if I'm going to link to it!

Well - judging by my last post its been a couple of months since I updated this. Here's what I've been up to since then:


  • Quit SWG - money was getting to me and I didn't feel like I could afford the expense of 2 accounts so I quit.

  • Cancelled XBox Live - the free 2 months was nice and all but I wasnt prepared to pay for a service I (a) hardly used, and (b) didn't offer that much of a service
    for me to start with!

  • Started playing DAoC Europe with some old friends from back home in the good ol' UK - they have a spare account which they are letting me co-habit on so I'm getting to play free - enjoying it for the most part so far - I have a level 20 Reaver I've levelled up from scratch which I'm doing well with!

  • A few days ago I found out SOE were re-activating all cancelled accounts on EQ which were in good standing until April 15th - which is basically a full month free - I found the combination of EQ and free too hard to resist - so I am now on the BristleBane server after the recommendation of my buddy Darniaq - and I have a level 10 Bard there! Enjoying it so far but its tough going really :)



Thats pretty much it really - still posting to Grimwell.com's forums and mostly back in lurker mode on WaterThread - less likely to get flamed on Grimwell really :)

Well - I shall try and keep this updated more often!