Time Flies

Wow, has it been a month since I posted last?

Whoops.

While I have been finding some time to play, I haven’t had time to organize my thoughts enough to write anything.  Work has been especially crazy the last few weeks.  So, after working and spending time with my wife and son, I have just enough time to play some EVE or some LoTRO or some DOW2 before heading off to dreamland.

Dawn of War 2 is good.  I’m nearly finished with the single player campaign, and I’ve played a few multi-player matches against the CPU.  My concern about boss battles was totally misplaced, which I’m glad about.  I’m going to put together a more detailed review after I finish the single player campaign and try a few more multi-player matches, so stay tuned.

LoTRO is still fun.  I’m working my way through the rest of the current Volume 2 Books.  I’m currently on Book 4 and stuck on a fellowship quest.  Between trying to find a uninterrupted hour or two I can devote to playing and getting a pickup fellowship together, I might be stuck for a while.  Fortunately I’m not in any kind of rush, one of the best things about having a lifetime subscription is I don’t fret about not playing.

I’ve actually been spending most of my time playing EVE Online.  Mining and mission running are both excellent activities when I can only guarantee myself 20-30 minute blocks of play time.  If I’m not on baby duty, I know I can pickup a mission, finish it, and salvage it in a 10-15 minute play session.  I use a Vexor fitted with railguns and drones to steamroll through frigates.  If I can’t guarantee an uninterrupted play session, I’ll get out my Procurer mining barge and head out to the belts of Mirilene or some of the other nearby systems.  I can jetcan mine and relax without worrying about having to leave my keyboard for short stretches of time.

I do occasionally do level 2 missions, but I like minimizing my risks by taking a higher level ship than intended.  Towards that end, I’m training up my Battlecruiser skills and planning to get into a Brutix.  Including all of the support skills I’ve planned, I have about 30 days of training remaining.  I’m not in a hurry, though because I only have about 7 mil in my wallet and the cheapest Brutix I could find near my home was 21 mil.  The important thing with EVE is to have goals.

Mount and Blade

After recommendations from Bill at Dubious Quality and Darren at Common Sense Gamer, I finally made some time to download and trout the Mount and Blade demo through Steam.  Did I like it?  Yes.  How much?  I started with the tutorial around 9:30 pm, after my wife and son went to bed.  After the tutorial I started a game.  I played for a bit: got some quests, failed one and completed others, gained a few levels, got captured once.  I was having fun and then some part of my brain wondered, “What time is it?”  It was 2 am, and I needed to get up in 5 hours for work.  While this isn’t too out of the ordinary, I actually continued to play for another 30 minutes.  Just had to finish one more thing.

So yeah, I’m really enjoying the game.  I’ve since hit the level 7 limit of the demo and purchased the complete version.

I’m actually surprised I liked it so much. I’m a pretty shallow gamer.  Graphics are a big part of games for me, enough so that I don’t usually play older games or indie games.  Even when the gameplay is great, if the graphics aren’t good then I’m not interested.

My only complaint isn’t actually game realted.  When I purchased the full version, Steam didn’t convert my existing installation but re-downloaded the full game again.

So if you like RPG’s go get it.  It’s a little bit Oblivion and a little bit Total War.

Gears DRM Debacle

Event like the Gears of War DRM debacle perfectly illustrate why Digital Rights Management is such a bad idea for the PC platform.

As a software developer myself, I can guarantee that there is no such thing as bug-free code.  Any piece of software that has more than 50 lines of code in it is going to have bugs, and any bug fix can introduce additional problems.  So anytime a developer adds functionality (like say DRM) to a product they are adding new possible problems.

When new functionality improves the game experience, this increased risk of problems is worthwhile to a gamer, but the addition of DRM usually provides no experience  improvements.  This is why Valve’s Steam has so much customer buy in.  Games are digitally distributed so there’s no CD/DVD required in the drive and I can buy and play a game without having to leave my house, and Steam allows me to download my purchases again if I need to.

With the exception of MMO’s, I’ve stopped buying PC games except through Valve’s Steam or Stardock’s Impulse.

Game publishers (and movie studios) need to look at what happened with the music industry.  Record studios pushed DRM in different forms for years without success, and now both iTunes and Amazon are doing great business without any DRM at all.  Customer’s pay for convenience and quality, not hassles.  Pirates won’t pay no matter what kind of protection is included.

Warhammer Expanding

Lot’s of news and commentary on Mythic’s announcements today.  Keen is excited, while Darren is concerned.  I’m neither.

They’re rolling out a new class, a cut class from the beta, new areas, and new events.  It’s a free expansion spread out over the next few months.  I’m glad to see Mythic aggressively marketing and developing their game, and I hope they succeed, but for me it’s a game of wait and see.  My subscription is up on February 17th and I doubt I’ll re-sub before then regardless of what Mythic does with the game.  Warhammer just can’t compete for my free time compared  to the Moria expansion for LoTRO, finishing Fallout 3, and a expectation for Dawn of War 2 coming shortly.

I’ll continue to follow the developments with more than a little interest, but I can’t see getting my Engineer out of mothballs until June or July at the earliest.

Max Level Again

Back in October I hit max level in Lord of the Rings Online for the first time ever in an MMO.  Well two days ago on my birthday, I took a vacation day and brought my hunter from just a little way into level 59 up to 60.

brynulf_level60

brynulf_level60_played

The nice thing is I’m only half way through the Volume 2 quests, so I’ve still got a lot more to do in the expansion.

No More War for Me

So I’ve cancelled my Warhammer subscription.  It doesn’t go inactive until mid February, but if the past two months are any indication I won’t be playing any more.  I played a Dwarf Engineer into Tier 2 before I ran out of steam, so I can’t comment on the PvP or endgame much.  For someone who is primarily PvE player the game is good, but not great, and good doesn’t cut it when Moria’s caverns are calling me so strongly.

The Greatness of Moria

Everyone in the MMO blogging community seems to be on a big Lord of the Rings kick lately Michael, Darren, and John (among others).  As a long-time player, I’ve been very pleased with the response the Moria expansion has gotten.  LoTRO really hadn’t garnered much attention prior to November, so it’s great to see the pendulum swing the other way, even more so since it’s so well deserved.

How good is the Moria expansion?  Let me answer by mentioning that I am a huge Warhammer 40K Dawn of War fan.  I own the original game and all of the expansions.  It is the oldest game I have installed on my computer that I still play on a semi-regular basis.  So of course, I’ve been looking forward to DoW2 and I was excited to learn recently that Steam players who bought Soulstorm were going to get an early preview.  Last night when I launched Steam I found that the preview/beta was available for download which I immediately started.  My plan then was to spend an hour or so in LoTRO to wrap up some crafting and turn in some quests, then log out  and try DoW2.  So three hours later at 1:30 am, I logged out of LoTRO and went to bed.  I didn’t even think about the demo until I was browsing through my Google Reader feeds this morning.  That is how good the Moria expansion is.

New Year Update

Nearly midway through January and I’ve barely posted.  Hmmmm. I have some articles I’m working on, but they aren’t ready yet, so let me just leave you with a quick rundown of what I’ve been playing:

  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • Fallout 3
  • World of Goo
  • Fable 2
  • EVE Online

My EVE time has been solely limited to training since the end of December.  I had been doing a bit of mining both as a way to replenish my wallet and since its pretty easy to do when I’m busy with the baby.

Fable 2 has sat on the shelve since my initial run through.  I had started two more play-throughs intending to try out the other two endings, but no more progress on that (similar to my KoTOR and Mass Effect plans in the past).  I did pop in recently on my original character and buy up some more real estate with the funds he’d been saving up.

World of Goo is an awesome game. I highly recommend it if you haven’t already tried it, and for pity’s sake please buy it.  It’s not that expensive and its produced by a tiny developer.  If you don’t like DRM, this is a way to both vote with your wallet and have some fun.

My main two games since Christmas have been Fallout 3 and Lord of the Rings Online.  I had been playing Moria quite a bit up until the holidays, but took a week off from MMO’s to dig into Fallout 3 while I was on vacation.  It’s a good game although very empty, which I suppose is part of the point.  My only problem with this game is it reminds me of why I so rarely play shooters.

So since coming back to work on the 2nd, I’ve moved back to my primary game of the last six months.  I’ve advanced to level 56 with my hunter and am really enjoying my time with Moria.  My only disappointment so far with the game is how small of an area of Lothlórien is accessible.  I did a fun run from the Twenty-first Hall through Durin’s Way t o the First Hall and then out the eastern gate.  Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much to do east of the Misty Mountains yet.

So that’s been my gaming time for the year to date (really including time since mid-December).  Please stay tuned, there’s more comign shortly.

Boss Battles in a RTS?

I’ve been looking forward to and following news about Dawn of War 2 for quite some time now.  I have the original game as well as all of the expansions, including that last one (Soul Storm) which was rather weak.  Every tidbit of news and video clip that I’ve seen as served only to increase my interest in playing the game, until today.

Edge is running a story about boss battles being included in DoW2.  I’ve never been a fan of boss battles, especially as they tend to be a bottle neck to game play where the difficulty spikes temporarily.  In an RTS, this seems especially artificial.

It appears that Steam is running a beta so I’ll be rewarded for buying Soulstorm, so I’ll get a chance to check out the game early.

Quick Update

Haven’t posted in a bit, between the holidays and the new baby, my gaming time has been severely limited.

I’m popping into Eve every couple of days to queue up another skill.  I don’t have a real goal in mind just now, so I’ve been using the new certificates to fill out some of my level 1 and 2 skills and get them up to 3-5.

The rest of my playing time has been devoted to LoTRO.  I’ve completed the entrance quests to get into Moria, but before I got too involved there, I decided to go back and clean out some of my old quests.  So I went back to Forochel and finished off the zone.  Next is Angmar where I’m still on Book 7.  I want to finish the rest of the Books before I really focus on getting into Moria full-time.

I hope to get a few more posts in before the end of the year, but if not Happy Holidays.