Does anyone here have access to the SW:KOTOR beta? My friend got an invite, apparently as a result of sending a picture of himself naked along with his application, and says he isn't too impressed with it so far. He said it was basically, "WoW with a Star Wars skin." Personally, I would be fine with that. Was just curious if anyone had managed to get into the beta and had a different take on the product.
To any Canadians looking for a deal on Mass Effect 2 for PS3, you can do a price match at Best Buy and quote EB/Gamestop's online store. You can also combine this with any rewards certificates you may have. I ended up paying 23 dollars for it after tax.
The Humble Indie Bundle 3 is here. Five indie games that look to be pretty entertaining (I've heard great things of VVVVVV, and crayon physics and Hammerfight look pretty good). Basically, you choose what you want to pay. Anywhere from $0.01 up is accepted and the games are all DRM free. Of course this is for charity so if you only pay one cent, your an ass. Seems the average for the whole pack right now is about $5, and you can choose how much you want to go to the developers and how much you want to go to charity.
VVVVVV was fantastic, hard but never rage-quittingly so. As soon as you die you reappear at the last checkpoint (there's one every screen or so) and I do mean "as soon as" - it's super fast, and you barely think about how you just died. Once you beat "Veni, Vidi, Vici" you'll just want to do a victory lap around the house.
New LoL patch hit today. They improved the store a fuck-ton (and by that I mean made it work the way its supposed to) Updated two old champions, Kayle and Tryndamere. Made Tryndamere a rage champion. That will be interesting. Also upcoming changes to Pantheon and Twisted Fate's ultimate to have a range. Read all about it here.
I still don't see Trynd being much better. Yeah, he's a nightmare when fed, but he's easily countered with thornmail and a stun or two. As for Kayle, her ulti is nice, but there's way better supports and way better casters so big meh right there.
Both of those champs are meh in 5s, you're right Hotwheelz. But both are OP in 3s. Kayle makes it possible to turret dive at level six w/ a tanky lane partner for a kill and Tryndamere's low CD wall spin throughs make him really hard to catch. I played a team a few days ago that was Singed, Amumu, and Kayle. Between their innate tankiness, CC, and Kayle's heals and ulti, they were impossible to beat. In general, I think the 3s game is entirely imbalanced. However, its great practice w/ small group skirmishes as you don't get instagibbed when 5 ultis get popped on you. Learning the finer points of kiting, baiting with low health, and laning is very much worth the occasional game where you get roflstomped by a perfect 3s comp. It's also amazing when you're winning because you can completely deny the other team from their jungle and lane, even moreso than 5s. 3s are an opportunity to win and then rub the other teams faces in it. gg nublets.
Yeah, so people who think WoW is too easy now, watch this. Not so much. You pretty much need to dedicate yourself entirely for weeks to do something like this. Otherwise, you can do it later and completely outgear. This was pretty impressive though.
I played since the old days of Vanilla WoW, and yeah, many aspects of the game are too easy now (leveling, getting your mount, etc), but I always thought their end game content was challenging throughout the years. Unfortunately, not everyone is into raiding, which to do successfully takes a decent amount of time and commitment. If that's not your thing and neither is RP or PvP'ing, then the appeal and difficulty drop of markedly. I had a big thing written about how it's changed but most of it was just reminiscent "get off my lawn" BS so I deleted it. I haven't played any of the Cataclysm content (so this is all based on expansions and patches through part of WotLK) because Warcraft winds up being such a huge timesuck, and I don't think it'd do too well on my computer nowadays, assuming I even had enough HD space for it.
I enjoyed watching that video, even though I stopped playing WoW during Burning Crusade. I am absolutely stunned at what people can do with a flexible UI like Blizzard provided. I play older mmo's, mainly, I guess because I'm something of a masochist (DAoC, EQ Emulator (Shards of Dalaya), mess around with Eve Online), and the thing that I miss the most from WoW isn't the population or the graphics or the great class design, its the community-spawned addons and improvements that really allow you to customize your experience. I wonder if killing that boss would even be possible with Blizzard's default UI. If guilds gain a competitive advantage by using this type of software, I wonder how long it will be before guilds start recruiting members based on their ability to produce these types of mods. It may be that some of the addons we saw in the video are closely-guarded pieces of software already. If that hasn't happened, I will be so bold as to say that it will. If e-gaming's history is any indication, any competitive edge will be pursued and defended. Someone could make a bundle by selling proprietary UI packages to top raiding guilds. Sure, there are tons of nerds who do the work for free. But adding incentive would spark innovation and renewed dedication from some of the current developers. Consider how much some of those add-ons aid your performance in a fight like Ragnaros. More or less than a video card upgrade? I'd say more, and people pay top dollar for performance graphics.
At one time there was a mod that allowed people to draw in the world and other people with the mod could see it. Like you could put a circle on the ground and tell people to stand there when something happens. Blizzard changed something so the mod would no longer work, though.
Surprisingly, the majority of the mods you see in that video are pretty common. The hunter (with the pea green looking health bar) uses ElvUI. I use the same exact thing, with some tweaks. Many of the current mods such as Deadly Boss Mods that track boss timers, and make fights easier, are widely used and available to everyone. They are better about utilizing the full potential of the mods though. Here's my UI Spoiler This is true. You could draw out ranges, and that was the biggest bonus. However, they do have raid markers you can use that are built into the game. And, if you have range trackers, you can do pretty much the same thing now.
Speaking of Blizzard... ...I'm super pumped for D3, though this little bit of news I found to be a little...peculiar. Blizzard is bringing real-money auctions to Diablo 3. On the one hand, this looks like just another classic cash grab by the developer. People pay real money for in-game loot all the time, WoW being a prime example, and this reeks of Blizzard trying to make sure they get their cut. On the OTHER hand, the idea that one could potentially pay for the game they've bought by selling loot they don't need seems pretty cool. It would all take place in an easy, non-shady environment and - through Blizzard regulation - remain legit. I'll likely avoid the whole thing all together, but it's an interesting addition nonetheless. Oh, and make sure you change your beta settings on Battle.net so you can get in on this action.
What Blizzard has done is incorporate a lot of what UI mods have historically done into the default interface. For example, the default UI now has a built-in threat meter, location markers you can use to visually mark the ground, and the brand new dungeon guide even tells you what abilities bosses have.
I haven't purchased a football game (neither Madden or NCAA) for about 6 years now. It just felt like I kept paying $60 for the same thing over and over again. Of course a large part of this belongs in the discussion about companies pumping out franchises on a yearly basis, but I'm not looking to discuss that here right now. I was thinking about purchasing a football game this year since I haven't in such a long time. What advice would people have for someone like me? How do NCAA and Madden compare with each other? Do you think it's worth it at all, or do you think I'll still be disappointed?
I don't know how many of you guys have played VVVVVV, but what this guy does is just short of, well, pure genius.
Sorry for the back to back posts, folks... Some very exiting news I just found out about. Borderlands 2 is going to be released during 2K games fiscal year next year! I played the shit out of that game, and am very excited to see where they go with the sequel. Here's the Official Site.
Since there's been some WoW discussion on here... Blizzard files for a trademark for something named "Mists of Pandaria." The trademarks were for computer software and online entertainment services, leading people to believe this will be the title of the next expansion. Seems like the Pandarens will finally make an official appearance.
I would have thought that they would finally begin to focus on an Emerald Dream expansion since that has been discussed since the game was in closed beta. I don't follow much lore on the game and haven't played it too much lately since the game becomes more and more shitty by each passing hour. Is there even enough written about Pandaria for them to do a full expansion? What would be the "great evil" throughout the expansion? Would Jack Black be involved? Also, there is the issue that China is hugely against having pandas dying in games apparently. Considering a giant chunk of Blizzards subscription base is in China (even though they are an expansion behind everyone else for years at a time), wouldn't this be a horrible move in terms of making money? I honestly wish they would just finally kill WoW, since they've been poisoning it ever since Burning Crusade came out. I'm interested to see what the new MMO they've been working on for a few years now is all about. I'm sure it will be just as horrible as WoW has become, but one can dream... At least the Diablo 3 beta starts up in the next few weeks here. They even seem to be ruining that though. Implementing auction houses that you use real life money to buy and sell items, removing any instance of pvp outside of arenas, making only gear you can use drop so you can't loot steal... Jesus, am I describing Diablo or WoW?