We have all seen it, those of us that are old enough at least, the whole revival of things from our pasts.  Sometimes for the better often times for the worse.  As we are in the 21st century, well the dawn of it still, we have seen both the 70’s and the 80’s come back in force.  Especially in the world of so called fashion.  However, that is not the only place.  Look at our movies.  Hairspray (the original broke Rikki Lake into the, albeit short, primetime), I am Legend is a remake of the Omega Man from the 70’s which is a remake of a 60’s movie Last Man on Earth.  Halloween was recently redone, arguably poorly, by Rob Zombie etc etc etc.  Music, well that’s nothing new

EGM and OXM this month have articles about many games making their rounds through the retro revival thing.  Either as sequels or as remakes of the original games.  This is all cool there are many games, imo, from the 80’s that still outshine their descendants.  Ultima IV is still the pinnacle, for me, of what RPG gaming is about.  So, since OXM wrote about some of the franchises they would like to see return I would like to indulge with my own list.  Would love to hear your comments and thoughts.

Interview with the folks behind the WH40K MMO is up at PCGamer.

One of the best things, and something I look forward to hearing more about is this quote: “As just about everyone knows, class balance and fun group dynamics are some of the trickiest, and most important aspects of the MMO genre. While characters will be able to take part in non-violent actions in the game (social activities are vital to the success of an MMO), there won’t be any characters that advance completely outside of combat.”

Hit the above link for the full interview.  This is one to keep an eye on!

Around the intertubes there is a great deal of information flowing, especially from the gaming press, about a certain soon-to-be-released game: Age of Conan.  As I am just a blogger and am bound by the NDA please allow me to attempt to write this post.  There are times when I am forced by the aforementioned NDA where I will have to intentionally be cryptic.  For this I am sorry but, I have been beta testing (single player and mmo games) for close to 15 years now.  Arguably longer than many of you have been gaming.  As a programmer and Q&A expert plus the invitations to betas galore, I believe that my feedback is something that the game companies do look for.  I enjoy working with most every single company out there and the people that make up those teams (well apart from Brad McQuaid but that’s an EQ beta story) and do not wish to jeopardize my inclusion in future beta tests nor the beta’s that I am currently in.

Everyone, I am sure, by now has heard of ICanHasCheezburger.. their pictures and captions are everywhere anymore :)  And I must say that they are great.  What’s best is that most of the captions, as I understand it, come from the community itself.  Well, anywho, they have sister sites one is ihasahotdog.com which, you guessed it, features pictures of doggies!

Well, this one gave me a warm fuzzy feeling lol.  And with all the negativity anymore concerning Iraq, the 2008 Presidential Race, the $4.00 a gallon gas (well not for regular unleaded yet but its damn close $3.95 this evening at a shell down the street) I thought this was a perfect silver lining.  Enjoy

 

Quick edit, reading through the comments at Ihashotdog for this pic I found out there is actually an organization out there trying to help homeless people’s pets.  Info can be found here: http://www.petsofhomeless.com/default.htm

Have a safe weekend all!

Cryptic Studios, we all know by now, is working on Champions Online.  This is a pen and paper rpg that I first played back in the mid 80’s and an IP that I have long thought would be a perfect fit for an mmo.  While perusing the main Cryptic Web site I was looking at their indevelopment section.  While there is no information apart from some concept art I thought it might be fun to guess what IP’s (if any) they could be linked to.

Kinda bummed that none of them could be a Star Trek MMO

Well, it has been a couple weeks since last I posted so I thought I better get on it.  Still under NDA for a couple of betas.  Will be posting my thoughts on one of them in the next couple weeks as the NDA will be lifted.

Turned 37 a little while ago, went down south to be with my girl and her girls :)  Had a great time and they even made me a cake!  Homemade birthday cake = the bombdigitybomb :)  While down there we made a quick trip to Legoland which is always fun.

Her girls are all in softball right now.  Was a blast going out and playing catch with em and trying to pass on the little knowledge I have concerning the sport.  Going to their games was incredibly fun and frustrating at the same time.  Her girls are on teams that are all about the sport and the fun yet they played against one of those teams that are about nothing but the win.  One of her girls was really down that they had lost.

I know how it feels to lose.  I played football through junior college (was too small for the big time, or too slow for positions more my size :P) and had my fair share of wins and losses.  I also wrestled though I won most of the time I had my share of losses there as well.  It’s never easy to lose but losing actually builds character.  You learn a great deal about yourself when you lose and you also learn more in general when you lose than when you win.

She is still really young to be able to understand all of this.  I really hope her coach is able to impart to her that the most important part (and yes this is cliche) it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.  It’s whether or not you tried your best for yourself and for your team.  It’s being able to look at the past game and say yes I can improve and here is how.  Most importantly, it’s whether or not you are having fun.

Fantastically written blog post over at Mystic Worlds.

I tend to be a solo player a lot in mmo’s.  Or I run in a duo.  Everything she writes in this article hits directly on the mark and I urge anyone interested to give it a read.

Why do I solo in mmo’s?  Pretty much for the same reasons she listed.  There are times when I am playing just for a brief moment, other times I will play a marathon session that most often times gets derailed in a group. 

The main reason why I play mmos vs single player rpgs is that devs no longer make the single player RPG that I enjoy.  No longer do we get the Fallout’s or Ultima’s or Baldur’s Gates of yore.  Today we get a lot of trivial diablo clones that strip the most important aspects of rpgs from the games.  Hell to get a good rpg anymore you have to be a console gamer.  Thank god for my xbox 360

Why do you solo in MMO’s?

One of the things I loved most about World of Warcraft has been the switcher videos.  Here is a new one, while not as awesome as *FROST SHOCK* sorry, as I was saying: While maybe not as awesome as the pali ->shaman switcher vid (nor is it done by the same people as far as I know) I think it is pretty cool! 

Just wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy Easter.  Thank you all for reading my posts over the past few months and looking forward to the future.  Take care everyone!

Well, Comcast is up and running, and has been for a couple days now.  According to speedtest.net I am running 2.39MB/s download 0.27MB/s upload.

While not breaking any speed records its about 20x faster than AT&T DSL.  It’s also nice having the digital phone line.  Haven’t had long distance, apart from my cel phone, now for 8 years lol.  Cable TV on the other hand… meh.  Picture isn’t nearly as clean as Dish or DirecTV but, I LOVE the on demand stuff lol.  Now I get to watch most of my favorite proggies when I damn well want to lol.

I did lose a couple HD channels, but I gained a couple others and I am saving a few bucks.  So all in all, relatively pleased.

On the MMO front not a lot more to talk about.  SOE is no longer part of Sony Pictures but now part of Sony Computer Entertainment.  Meh, Smedley is still there so fuck you Sony, rot in hell

I was looking through an EGM from a couple months ago about how the PS3 is poised for domination *cough* bullshit *cough* and was reading an interview with some asshat.  “We aren’t arrogant, we are just confident” he says during the interview and I just can’t get out of my head how their Euro boss called us Americans a bunch of fat cheap bastards, and yes I am paraphrasing.  I don’t know about you but calling an entire country of people cheap… well that’s arrogant, nationalistic, xenophobic, small, petty and downright fucking retarded to say the least. 

More evidence of the arrogance of Sony:

Sixxaxis, no you do not want dual shock, we know what you want and you will want it.  Oh you are gonna bitch and whine? FINE, then screw you consumer… here have your god forsaken rumble but we will take back our backward compatibility.  However, as we do this we will try and make you believe that it isn’t that sixxaxxis and Lair downright sucked, but that it’s too much of a learning curve for you, our uncoordinated ham-fisted gaming friends.

The PS3 was never TOO expensive (when you take the 360, add in the wireless adapter, HD-DVD drive etc it’s the same price) but Sony doesn’t have shit for games and anyone that thinks that Metal Gear is better than Splinter Cell needs to have their head screwed on straight.  The ONLY game that Sony has coming out that interests me in the least is Final Fantasy XIII.  Then again, with Lost Odyssey my interest in FF is waning significantly plus, Mass Effect is far more entertaining than any jrpg I have ever played and we will probably see ME2 before FFXIII makes it’s way stateside lol.

Of course I was wrong with the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD war…. Not with the fact that HD-DVD has better features, or that it is an overall better experience, but that we still haven’t learned from the vhs/betamax wars of 20 years or so ago.  So what has Sony done?  Gone out and PROVED that competition is what the industry needs and gone and jacked up the prices of all their Blu-Ray DVD players.  Why? Very fucking simple (this is to all the retards in the tech journalism business that are dumber than a wart on a toad’s ass) 1. and most importantly, they drop the prices on their PS3 so they can artificially inflate their install base to try and get some of the third party publishers back in bed.

WHEW! I feel better! ROFLMAO.  I am off to participate in a couple beta tests boys and girls.  Enjoy your weekend and stay safe!