Pender’s Fabulous Journal of Random Stuff and Things!!!!

This is pretty funny, even if you don’t play the game it’d be ok.
http://www.nextlevelarcade.com/play/games/World-of-Warcraft-raid-leader-goes-totally-apeshit

I just finished The Bard’s Tale for PS2 a couple of days ago. It was about 20 hours of witty exchanges that had me laughing until I cried on multiple occasions. The game itself played pretty well too. The voice acting was TOP NOTCH, as in, every other game in the world seems like crap in comparison. The game was too short though, and the ending was very brief. I give it an 8/10 on the llamameter.

Next up is Final Fantasy X. So far it’s going well, I’ve dumped 20 hours into it and I’m maybe 1/4 of the way through the game.

Apparently there is a large and thriving community of private WoW servers out there that are free. A VERY large community. Here’s just one list of hundreds, and there are other lists out there as well.

I was offered an opportunity to connect to one of these private servers, which I think I will. Moreso out of curiosity to see how buggy it is and if it’s actually playable.

I have to wonder where the server code came from. One of the developers may have shipped it off to a friend on the interweb then that friend sent it to a million other friends. I hope the guy that initially gave it to 1 friend got a billion dollars for his trouble, cause that’s probably how much money, or more, blizzard will lose if these private servers catch on.

One of the things that surprises me is the openness with which people are announcing to the world “hey look at me, I’m stealing propriety software from blizzard!” I’m really shocked that blizzard isn’t just buzzing around the internet putting cheap nerds in jail all over the place. I would think that it’s one thing to connect to a private server and get to play the game without paying the monthly fee (even though you DID purchase the game initially). I would think it’s 1000x worse to actually put up a server to enable others to connect to it and play.

If these private servers do catch on, I wonder if blizzard will start actually offering the server software for lease so that people can legally put up their own private servers. Make the lease cost an amount based on a certain number of simultaneous user’s connected and make that number cost the amount of money about half of what people normally pay for the real blizzard servers right now. So a 10 person server would cost like $50. Then that server could charge its userbase that amount of money to play to pay for the lease, or ask for donations, or whatever. Then blizzard could offer support and a proper download of the server software. That way they don’t have to pay as much for the servers they do have, closing some down, but making just as much money from it (cause server costs and support of each server costs a lot), as it would just be joe shmoe individual running the server. Is blizzard brave enough to attempt this model? It’s a coporation, so probably not. It would be cool though.

My biggest beef with massive multiplayer online rpg’s is the word “massive”, which equates to the word “full of morons”. Turning a “massive” multiplayer online game into one where the userbase can be controled (ie: only friends), is a dream come true.

I would write more, but you’re already bored.

I have a real passion for life. And by “life” I mean “death”. And by “death” I mean yours, in a virtual game world, of course. I seem to hop from game to game trying to get something new and interesting out of it. I seem to stick with a game for a week or three then move on to a new one. So I figure I would write about the game that I am currently playing, you know, in case you want to join me, cause it’s more fun for me to kill someone I know than it is to kill someone I don’t.

The latest game is EVE, a massive multiplayer online role playing game (AKA digital crack). It’s one of those games that you slowly build up your character and over time get all the best stuff using little to no skill and show off to your friends all the stuff you have. This version of that definition is set in a sci-fi outer space type theme. You basically fly a spaceship around, buy better parts, buy better space ships, get better guns, kill bigger badguys, then ultimately start killing other players.

The learning curve on the game is on the extreme side. The tutorial took me roughly 5 hours to complete (with breaks) but only due to its thoroughness. It leaves you actually able to play the game. There’s a lot to know in this one, it’s more cerebral than your run of the mill “make you guy swing his sword at the bad guy, keep doing that until you’re super duper high level”. There’s a lot of numbers and stats on your items, weapons, ships, etc. There is also a gigantic tech tree of different skills you can learn (more than any other game I’ve seen).

There’s a free 14 day trial of the game (completely uncrippled, except for some high level ships that you wouldn’t be able to get in only 14 days anyhow). If you want a trial for the game, email me at pender@gmail.com. After the 14 day trial it costs something like $20 a month.

My character name is Llamaberryfin, add me to your buddy list in game.