Jokes from beyond the Bridge

on Tuesday 18 April 2006
This article from a Singapore news website is really really quite funny. Too bad the joke's on us. Can we blame them for making fun of us? I don't think so, since I believe that if the roles were reversed, we'd be doing the same thing, and probably in a cruder manner.

I'm playing Guild Wars!

on Friday 14 April 2006
Yup, I'm playing Guild Wars. And it's been a heck of a fun time so far. Love it. I started playing at end of March, right after their preview event on the up coming Chapter 2, Guild Wars: Factions. Been meaning to post about it and add in some screenshots. But I've been stumped on how best to go about it. I've reduced the shots to slightly more than 1 MB each. Maybe I should just upload them all into Flickr. Hmm... I am loathed to reducing the size even further (the details! the details!) so... maybe I should.

Guild Wars does not charge any subscription fees, unlike most other MMORPGs, which is simply wonderful. You don't get that feeling of wasting money when you're not playing, compared to other subscription-based online games where you pay a fixed amount each month. So how do they make money? By alternating the release of new content and a new "expansion" every 6 months. Guild Wars: Factions is the so-called "expansion", although it really is a standalone game. You can play with both, or just one of them, and having access to the appropriate content. This makes it possible for players that own different chapters to still be able to play together. There are already naysayers on how long Arena.net can keep up their cycle of releases. I think it's possible and still too early to say it won't work. Work has already begun on the next two releases even before the upcoming Factions.

Anyone considered playing but didn't? You won't regret it, trust me (except maybe the usual sleep deprivation problem and the social costs, hehe). There's quite a few Malaysian players in there. Check my GW bookmarks for useful links.