Warhammer Online

The latest patch of 1.0.6 to Warhammer Online is massive, containing balance fixes, bug fixes, general improvements, as well as the addition of two new classes: the Knight of the Blazing Sun and the Black Guard, which were previously cut from release due to time constraints.

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Originally uploaded by ab.er.rant

So far, I've been enjoying the game tremendously (yea, the subscription fee is a pain, but bearable). My man character is a Witch Hunter. While Guild Wars still holds a special spot for me, this is definitely something that will tide me over until Guild Wars 2 comes out (at least, that's the plan, who knows, I'm already getting addicted, heh).

What I love about it is that the PvE side is not boring (especially if you love really rich background stories and lore). What's even better is when you get to RvR (Realm versus Realm). Search for videos on Youtube, there's already an incredibly large number.

What I really really miss from Guild Wars (and where EA Mythic can improve) is instantaneous map travel, shared character storage, and more beautiful graphics. Cutting down travel time, better item sharing between characters of the same account, and better art will definitely improve an already impressive game.

And for players around the UTC+8 timezone, there are Malaysian guilds (with a smattering of other nationalities) on the Ironclaw server. For Order, check out Vosian (me in this guild). For Destruction, check out Celestial Order (my Guild Wars guild).

For Warhammer resources, check out WarDB, TheWarWiki, HammerWiki, and the Warhammer portal on GamePressure.

Trailer 1:


Trailer 2:


Tier 4 Keep Siege RvR:

Kongregate

I'm currently quite involved in playing Flash games on Kongregate. Let me be your referral.

It is still in development since last year but much of the site and its features are already up and running very smoothly. What is it? It's a outlet for both players and game designers. A place where you can play games and upload your own Flash games for others to play. If your games get rated 3 stars and above, you're entitled to some of the revenue earned from advertisements.

What's different about this Flash games website and numerous others out there are three things (for me anyway). One is that the interface is clean. I don't like cluttered webpages that put in too many obstrusive links too close together, and not enough clear space.

The second is they have both a system for points and a system for achievements. While nothing concrete on how to use points yet, the achievements are pretty fine. Some of the more popular games get badges that are awarded to you when you achieve a certain objective. It makes it a nice target to play towards. Oh sure, it has the usual high score tables and such but those are usually too huge, too dynamic, and too impersonal. I dunno, I just like the idea of having a objectives to a game rather just playing for the sake of playing.

And thirdly, the most compelling reason, is that they're developing a card game for their site. By completing game challenges (special objectives for certain games), players (i.e. accounts) are rewarded with access to a game for the upcoming card game (yea, it's not ready yet). so far there have been like about 30 challenges. I have 3 cards, so yea, I joined pretty late and missed alot. I hope there'll be a challenge that allows latecomers to obtain the older bonus cards. The card game system itself sounds pretty interesting and I'm definitely eager to try it out.

You can also check some blogs on the games or the site in general. COCAK is a good start. And remember, use this link to join :P Being your referral gives me a small number of points, heheh.

Audition

Seeing that I'm kinda taking a break from Guild Wars, I actually started playing other games. Why did I break from Guild Wars? No Internet access for over a week. Why? Because lightning fried my modem, my router, and the network card socket on my motherboard... poor oh wallet of mine.

Anyway, about the only good thing about that is that I actually started playing other games :p Aside from continuing the campaign in Dragonshard that I started over a year ago and abandoned, and doing a little practicing on DotA, I actually registered for and tried out Audition.

My sister was pretty addicted to it so I got curious. Boy was it addictive. It's a dancing MMORPG where you compete with others in sort of dancing stage. How you dance is basically by hitting the direction keys in the sequence shown on the screen and being able to finish on the correct beat. So it's a game where finger-eye coordination is extremely important. After playing it for several hours (!), my fingers were pretty tired. Apparently, it's not as boring as I thought as I watched my sister play. Not a whole lot of play styles and content, but still pretty addictive. The forum for it is here.

Aside from not having much content, keyboard longevity is affected, not to mention finger-aches. The number of songs available isn't really that large. I keep hearing the same songs over and over on random mode. The patching software sucks. Each patch averages around 30-40 MBs! And they expect you to download all available patches in one go. Something fails while you downloading the last one of the set? Too bad, you have to start all over.

The game is being distributed and maintained by AsiaSoft. They utilize a sort passport system that gives you a master account for all AsiaSoft games (you still need to create individual game accounts). That's another of my peeves with it. Just to create my Audition account, I've suddenly increased the things I need to remember by 4 - the password to the passport account, an authentication PIN number to that account, a password to a playing account for AsiaSoft games, and a password for my Audition account... Crazy. It's worse than my banking accounts.

The First DDO Review

The first review of Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) is out! And the review is excellent! I'm really really definitely getting it.

It's still not in Malaysia yet of course, at RM 189 (at the Software Boutique), it's much cheaper than World of Warcraft and Guild Wars when they came out. Still, as my friend pointed out, there's still the matter of a monthly bill. Oh well, I'm still trying to convince myself not to get it and buy the next expansion of Guild Wars (coming out next month or so) for the simple fact that there's no subscription fee involved. But... but... I'm a D&D fan, how can not play DDO? To buy... or not to buy. That, is the question. Heh.