I completely forgot to let people know that the Look at Book 7 piece for Lord of the Rings Online was up.
Book 7 is live in the States, but we’re still waiting for Codemasters to pull ther finger out so we can have it here in Europe. One of these days we may actually get a book release when Turbine actually releases it instead of a week or two later, but I won’t hold my breath.
Today was my last day at the piece of hell I’ve called a job for the last 2.5 years. On monday I start for real as the CS Manager for an online game that’s coming out soon. I wish I could share what the game is because it’s quite good. It’s not my normal game genre, but it’s fun and interesting.
Still now both of my jobs are in games and I’m returning to somehting I enjoy in an industry I enjoy.
I’ve jsut quit my day job today. Two weeks notice. Normally I wouldn’t give such short notice when my contract explicitly states 4 weeks but I really don’t have any other option.
So why am I posting about such a mundane thing? Well the new job is the reason. You’re now looking at the new CS Manager for Dexterity Networks. Basically, I’ll be handling the online game support. Of course I can’t say for what game(s), but if you look hard enough you may find me. (Not that I’d tell you if you did find me)
So the countdown to leaving hell begins now.
So turns out my motherboard was slowly enacting seppuku upon itself. Due this unfortunate turn of events I had to buy parts for a new computer. Since I hadn’t upgraded anything other than memory and video card in the last 3-4 years I had to replace everything. So I got new memory, hard drive, CPU, motherboard (obviously), video card and PSU. I also bought a 1TB external hard drive when I thought it was my hard drive going tits up. Luckily it wasn’t, but now I have a backup drive.
Wasn’t terribly costly to buy the new parts. All told was about £250, not including the TB drive. Took me a week or so to get everything re-installed and sorted out. But being the geek I am, I enjoyed every moment of it.
Now that I have a dual core CPU and a PCI-E vid card, the games look OMFG wonderful. LotR:O looked wonderful already, but now it looks super wow and runs so smoothly. I think I need to re-install Bioshock jsut so I can look at it in amazement.
So my computer is all fixed again and you can all breathe a sigh of relief.
Yea well I’ve been lazy about posting. Busy with work lately and real life gets in the way and some days I jsut don’t feel like going near my computer when I get home.
I went to Connect ‘08 a couple weeks ago. Birmingham is such an ugly ugly ugly city. But it is the best place to have any kind of convention since it’s in the middle of the country. Here are the 3 pieces that came out of that though.
Dungeon & Dragons Online
It was a good time and I got to meet people and play games and get paid for it. Oh what a horrible job I have. I have to play games and write about them. Or the horror.
So, thanks to a special someone I’ve been playing around in Pirates of the Burning Sea on a buddy key. I didn’t realise just how much I’ve been looking forward to playing PotBS until I got that little code. Once I finally managed to find the download page, with unexpected help from the SOE FAQ, I was well on my way to waiting 24 hours to play. I had to download it twice because the first one was corrupted. Not sure why, shit happens. Once I had it installed it took another 12 hours to patch. I wish I was joking about that amount of time but I’m not. I trully astonished me jsut how much patching was needed.
It was eventually ready though and I was ready to get in there and be a pirate. So I did and I was having a bit of fun trying out being a scourge of the sea. All is good and well until I log in one day and the harbour I’m in happens to be over shadowed by a nearby port’s siege. I think nothing of it figuring that high level people won’t bother with me since I’m obviously only level 6 and definately a newbie. Ya know I wish I could say this all has a happy ending, but I can’t. I was attacked of course. No biggie right? I am after all in a PvP zone so I should expect someone of a similiar level to me to have a go at PvP. Definately not the case. For my first PvP experience in this lovely game I get jumped by big boys and not just 1, but 2 of them teamed on me. Yes my dears, it took two level 40+ ships to take out little level 6 me with nothing in my hull but a bit of default ammo. This was not the only incident like this unfortunately. I had several scenarios like this one happen to me and it did not make me happy.
I am not what people term as a carebear. If I willingly go into a PvP zone then it is my own fault if I get attacked. What I object to is having a PvP zone thrust upon me and thus having my choice taken away.
I am more than aware of the nature of this game. I know that PvP is a part of it. The nature of the game doesn’t mean that everyone wants to do it. There are PvE shops out on the open seas that will attack you. There is anything but safety out on the open waters, but to force people in PvP when they don’t want it is a bad choice and it will drive people away.
So as much as I enjoyed playing PotBS, the PvP really makes me not want to play it because I don’t like having that choice taken out of my hands.
The Planetside:At a Glance article is up. I’m a little annoyed that it’s jsut today been posted as it was supposed to go up on the 1st, but oh well.
Anyhow it’s late so no long posts tonight. Sleepy time for me.
At this very moment I’m doing a write up about Planetside. Not a full review, mind you. Just a basic overview of the game with some first impressions. I still haven’t decided how I feel about this MMOFPS. I’ve been playing FPS games since the beginning of time and online since Quake World. So this isn’t really new territory for me, but it is different.
The article is due tomorrow. And as usual I’m writing it the night before. Although technically it’s due today since it’s after midnight. Still it’s only about half done and it’s 2am. I’ll get it in on time. I always do. Only once have I ever missed a deadline.
I should get back to work. I’ll make sure to post up a link when it’s live on the MMORPG.com website.
Recently I was asked by one of my editors to write an guide to playing a Captain in Lord of the Rings Online. My prompt response was that I don’t write guides. He wasn’t ready to let me out of writing something though so instead we agreed on a small op-ed piece about me playing a Captain.
I don’t like to tell people how to play a class in any game. As far as I’m concerned there is no right or wrong way to play something. How I play something will always be different to how the next guy does. In the gaming world this is a long running debate on classes. Wat is best for what and how to play certain ways. Obviously I don’t follow this logic and feel people should jsut play how they enjoy it.
So here is the outcome of that article. I know left things out, but it isn’t a guide, it’s jsut a small way of how I play and what I think is important in playing a Captain. Oh and that screenshot is a picture of my very own character.
