So it has been a few weeks since my last post.  There are a few reasons for this:

1. I canceled my EQ2 account and was waiting for the WAR open beta to begin for me. (Thanks again to Landuran who bought all the EQjunkies the game).

2. School started again.  For the fellow graduate students out there - you know what a complete time sink this is.

3. UPS & USPS can be annoying (details below)…

I did get a chance to play WAR beta for a few nights, maybe a total of 10 hours or so.  I had mixed feeling about it.  When you first start the game you have to wait through a couple of developer splash screens to come up and also click through two agreements every time you log in.  The annoyance of clicking these agreements has been well documented.

For me, the license thing is annoying, but it isn’t a game breaker.

Once you get into the game the graphics are refreshing.  They are kind of a cross between EQ2 (who goes for realism) and WoW (which is admittedly cartoonie).  The result is scenery that flows in the background and characters that look like a split between Conan (the movie, not the game) and Dragonball Z.  I really enjoy how my Blight Wizard looks like a bad ass. (I went for the spiked hair and a couple tattoos).

The game play in the noob zones (I only played for a few hours) is similar to other MMOs.  You are given some basic quests and are asked to perform some basic functions to get used to the game.  The main difference is the existence of open groups and open raids.  Basically, if you are in the same area as an open group/raid you can join without being invited and everyone works together.  What is really impressive is how seamlessly this works.

Now to why UPS/USPS is annoying - I still haven’t received my game in the mail.  Landuran, Greldor, and Myclawz all already got it.  Mine was shipped UPS, but they handed it off to USPS.  They are holding it hostage somewhere in PA and hasn’t moved in a couple days.  Consquently, I haven’t been able to log on and play (I am busy enough with school that it hasn’t bothered me all to much yet).

One last thing - my weekday posts won’t be back to normal for a couple more weeks.  I have a lot of homework to do & it is more or less consuming my life.

If you have some free time, I would recommend buying WAR and giving it a shot.

CNN is reporting that Nintendo is being sued over their Wii remote.  Apparently they have violated 4 patents of another company by its design.

What really boggles my mind is that with all of these types of accusations, the prosecutors always wait until the product is really popular. I don’t know if anyone remembers when facebook got sued, or how about this one?

I mean, some lawsuits are valid, but the majority of them just seem to be gold diggers.

Hopefully Nintendo is able to settle this quickly and move on. It just seems like a waste of everyone’s time. Better yet, just buy the company like Microsoft does…

CNN is running an article about how there is no video game associated with the new batman movie, “The Dark Knight”.

This brings up an interesting question: what video game have you always wanted to see that was just never created?

Personally, I could have gone for a “Honey a shrunk the kids” game when I was younger.  How about you?

Last night Myclawz and myself hopped online to get into some long awaited playtime.  Since he was only level 8, I traveled over to DLW to help him quest a little.  As I zoned in I turned on mentoring so he could continue to earn exp as we did things.  I met him just a little outside of the city gates and we immediately moved over to a hut to get a bunch of quests.

This was about the time that I remembered one important fact: I am not an evil race.  A level 25 heroic guard came over and killed me.  Great - I think I deserved that for being stupid.  The really sad thing is that it gave me a few options of where to spawn, one of which was 0.0 meters away.

Without putting much thought into it I clicked revive; I spawned in the center of the huts.  The guard ran over and immediately killed me again.  Being stubborn I kept spawning in this spot until I was able to run away from the guard…it took me about 3 trys.

This reminded me of back in the EQ1 days where you could literally bind yourself anywhere (including over lava).  I had a few friends who decided to keep killing themselves until they were low level again (but with awesome weapons).  I also had a few friends who found themselves on PoFear corpse runs which never ended well.

What is your best corpse recovery/death loop story?

Archangel has started a debate on the EQ2 forums - we wants to join a guild purely to buy a mount and then immediately disband.  He is being honest about it.

The conversation on the forums seems to be directed towards ‘would you let him do it?’  To me it is more of a question of ‘why would you want to do it?’

When myself and the other EQJunkies came back to EQ2 we had a major decision to make.  Do we join an existing guild of casual players or do we create our own - we chose the later for a few different reasons.

So, how do you feel?  Would you want to take the easy way out and join a guild for a quick mount?

Would you have any interest in letting someone leech of you?  Would you charge them?

There is a story running over at destructoid about a new FFXI boss that takes 18 hours to attempt.  That was not a mistype - the encounter takes 18 hours to attempt - simply insane.

Back in my EQ days when guild would spend up to 8 hours a night raiding - FFXI puts that to shame.  If you think about it, 8 hours does not even get you half way through this encounter.  What is not mentioned in the article is wether this encounter is actually difficult or if it merly a time sink.  If everyone is hitting the same buttons over and over for 18 hours…I imagine everyone would go insane.  Likewise, scripting 18 hours worth of an encounter seems unlikely from a developers standpoint.

Regardless of how the boss is setup, it was interesting to hear about this guild’s story.  People were vomiting and becoming physically ill after sitting there for so long.  The guild that attempted this, Beyond The Limitation, actually had to call the raid off after 18 hours; people simply were unable to physically endure it.  Can you imagine watching an 18 hour movie without ever getting up - this would be even more difficult.

This makes everything else just seem easy or maybe just sane…