Gaming for your life
MMO's at their best.

I'm going to stray away from MMORPG's for a bit, because there are so many other games out there.  If you constrain yourself to just MMO's, you simpily WILL go nuts. 

Anyways.  So I picked up Soul Calibur 4 the other week.  The game is a blast; great story mode, a never-ending tower full of treasures, classic arcade, custom characters, unlockable art, and dare I say....Online fighting! 

Ok, I have been playing fighters since I can remember, my first one?  Hell I don't know.  Something like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter rings a bell.  I'm sure some of you might be able to upstage me, good for you.  I never was a huge fighting fan, until I played the Dead or Alive demo on my PSX magazine disc summer of 1996.  Holy crap!  Talk about a great fighter.  I remember staying up super late in the morning trying to learn combos and moves for all my characters.  For some reason Kasumi stuck and I begun to master her.

Well time sped through, twelve years into the future and we get a game that is called Soul Calibur 4.  Do take note that I've played pretty much every 'Soul' game out there, from Soul Blade to Soul Calibur 2.  Skipped Soul Calibur 3, mainly because I lack a PS2. 

I am a pretty decent fighter in this game.  Not the best out there, but decent.  If I had to rate myself, I'd probably give myself a B++. 

Now, Online fighting can always be a problem because of lag.  Always has been in Dead or Alive 4, but you both lag together.  So no, it's not the core problem.  The core problem going way beyond just lag.  The main issue with any fighter out on the market is skill.  Skill of the player.  No, let me refraise that.  Sportmanship of the player.  Yeah.  I have this reacurring problem in Soul Calibur 4 that players online will just do one combo over and over and over until your face is melted by anger and steam.  To me, there is no way out of this.  You either block or be pelted by the fastest character in the game.  If you usually do manage to get away or counter their attack, you get a couple nice hits in before they go back into doing the same damn combo over and over. 

You see, Dead or Alive 4 was a well balanced fighter, in my book.  Sure you would come across your players that would do this, but you had the ability to counter and attack.  And if someone was doing the same one over and over, human nature would kick in and time those counter moves.  Most of these counter moves did pretty good damage and put the other player at a disadvantage. 

My problem with Soul Calibur 4 is that there is countering, but it's only a matter of pushing the character back and dealing slight damage to them.  Their down-time is not long .5 of a second?  You have to get your fastest attack up and ready or else their back at it.  Even if you do so, they usually block a few attack and once your open they are beating your ass with the same moves again. 

I have a major problem with Soul Calibur 4.  To me, this game is broken.  The combos consist of a couple of buttons and there are not many of these combos.  Sometime the combo buttons and the moves that are delt don't even make sense.  You push a few buttons and they character flys around the screen like their superman destroying everything under them.  Anyways back to what I was saying.  In Dead or Alive 4 there were combos, plenty of combos.  The best combos were not easy to pull off and took timing and skill to make sure you can trick the other player so they won't counter every attack you throw at them.

Basically I think I've had enough with fighting other people online in Soul Calibur 4.  Just tonight I fought 4 people in a row that went back and forth between 2 different attacks.  I'm sitting there for 5 minutes just blocking trying to time everything so I can pull an attack off. 

Soul Calibur 4 is a single player game, or a game you play with friends.  Don't think you can just randomly fight anyone, because 6/10 times they will pull some kind of crap like this. 

Anyways, that's my rant for tonight.  Feel free to comment, complain, or praise me.  If you have Soul Calibur 4, I hope your enjoying it more than I am.

-macr0

Let me just say that The Dark Knight will go down as one of the best Batman films of all time.  Probably one of the best superhero films of all time.  And probably one of the best action films of all time.  The performance of the characters were just jaw dropping.  Heath really did redefine what the Joker is really like, no performance could have done better. 

I don't want to go deep into the movie, because most of you probably have not seen it yet.  But let this be the reason you go see it, if you weren't.  The Dark Knight is amazing.  It was one of the best movies I've seen in quite some time.  Creepy, Twisted, Funny, and Jaw dropping.

Back to gaming

I'm sure people are getting sick of hearing about people complain about Age of Conan; but honestly we were ripped.  So yesterday my girlfriend and I finally decided to cancel our subscription to AoC before the next pay period.

We decided (I know I know) to go back to World of Warcraft.  I mean, I just missed the art style that WoW had and the balance nature of the game.  We have only played it a year before moving on and I think it was too early.  Do understand though that WoW was not my first MMO, since I started in 1999.

So we are back in WoW now, getting ready to start anew and level some characters together.  It's alot more fun when you have someone else to play WoW with really, especially a girl.

Anyways, AoC basically was full of unpromised 'features.'  I'm sure one day i will return to AoC, when I know for a fact that everything has been implamented.  Hell I might give it a try on my 360 when it comes out.

So here we are, going back to the future again.  Too bad I can't get her into UO ;)

It had already been about 1 year since I moved on from the official OSI shards from Ultima Online.  Mainly due to the fact that the game has changed so much.

I decieded to take my character and move him to another world.  I found a RP shard that was free, but dedicated itself to only a pre UO:R system.

I was in my guild, Dwellers of Darkness (DoD}, we were strictly an rp only guild and man did I have a blast.  We had many enemies against us.  I remember many battles that would lay outside of our castle walls.  People would horde outside and yell at us, intimidating us to come out and fight. 

One day I decided to take some action.  I told my guild master that I had a plan to go against one of our enemies.  I recently found out that they held 10 of the rarest steeds in our shard.  Each worth millions of gold.  So with a quick nod, I released myself from DoD, my guild.  I grabbed my steed and slowly worked my way to the enemy guilds castle, knocked on the door and told them I've quit DoD and have many secrets to tell them.

They accepted me in their ranks, which surprised me.  Their castle was amazing, loot and rares stacked everywhere.  But I had to keep my self focused.  They took me upstairs to the highest point and gave me some outfits that they wore, Across the floor were the steeds.  So I suited up and began to tell them some insides to our guild, all of which were lies.  They all had a battle coming up with another guild, but I do not recall who.  So then they left, as I told them I would meet them shortly. 

So I made my way to the steeds, all unlocked and just sitting in the castle.  I quickly swipped each one and placed them in my backpack.  I then quickly ran out of the building and released myself from the enemy guild.  Ran through the forest, nervous.  Anyone, any killer, any murderer could easily kill me and take the loot.  All the hard work.  All the planning.

I finally made it to the Trinsic bank and placed all the steeds in my bank.  Went to my old guild (DoD) and told them my mission was a success, they added me back to the ranks.

The next day when I logged on, I was in jail.  Someone from the other guild reported that someone hacked somehow and stole all their rare steeds.  No one mentioned my name though.  The only way the GM's found them was because the steeds were in my bank.  They said if they were in my backpack that they would have not been able to track them.

I was pissed.  I failed to see how I hacked anything.  Everything I did was through RPing and legit gameplay.  After a month of being in jail, the administrator then said that I was banned from the server, even after pleading my rights and saying that I did not hack anything.

So I quit.  I quit Freeshards, because favoritism is real.  I found out that the guild I stole from was a GM's favorite and would do anything to help them out.  Who knows, all the rare steeds could have been a gift from the GM to them.

But in the end, I felt good.  I succefully went into an enemy guild and stole their rarest prizes by just sticking to my character.  This is the freedom that UO had long ago.  It will be missed.  No other game will have this feature like UO did.

Thanks to this http://mmorpg.com/blogs/Lustmord/052008/1702_Six-Months-of-Lies-Deception-and-Betrayal-The-best-time-I-ever-had-in-a-game

It inspired me to write this blog.  I'm sure many great stories like this exist.  If your a UO player, do share you most valuable memories.

Man, it just seems like yesterday since I first started my journey in Britannia as a little nooblet.  I had no idea what I was getting into and everything was so new.  MMORPG's were totally new to me and I got hooked right away at the idea of being able to do anything you want. 

Now it's a little over 9 years since I started my journey as a MMO player.  Many games later and I'm still stuck on Ultima Online and how amazing it was.  (Was it really amazing or was it just because it was my first MMO?)

I never was into roleplaying back in the day; hell I didn't even know what a RPG game was when I first started UO back in 1999.  I've dabbled a few time into roleplaying when looking for new games, but nothing felt as good as RPing in Ultima Online. 

I'll admit that I miss UO greatly.  But I feel it's time to move on and move on I will.  But I'm thinking I'm going to take my UO character somewhere I never would have taken him before.

You see, Age of Conan is realistic (in a sense of fantasy)...similar to UO.  You didn't have Elves or Dwarves.  You didn't have wierd mushroom planets like in most other MMO's.  I feel like Age of Conan's Hyboria is in a way very similar to Ultima Online's Britannia.  So I started thinking the other day.  I want to take my character from britannia and send him over to hyboria.  Of course there are some issues with story and all, but I feel I can connect my character somehow and actually feel like I'm playing a new "UO" so to speak. 

I know, sounds weird.  But it makes me feel better inside to think I can connect Britannia and Hyboria together in some way.  How will my character get there?  I don't know, haven't thought about it that much.

I guess basically what I'm saying is that Age of Conan is almost a true sequal to any die hard UO fans out there.  Sure we don't have some of the annoying things that UO had like FFA pvp and item loot, but this is a new generation and I think AoC tips his hate to UO.

Psh, enough with this rambling.  I hope to see many old UO faces in AoC in a couple of days.

As it looks, many people around here are getting pissed off at Funcom about their move with the Beta.  People are going on how now they hate Funcom and Fileplanet and they think it was a bad move.  Now people are starting to say Doom about Age of Conan just because they feel 'cheated' out of an open beta.  Please, you got to be kidding me.  Don't diss Funcom, because they made a wise move.  Just think of all the great impressions they are getting right now; no one is having a problem downloading this client.  It's a huge client too.  Would you rather have a free open beta where the download server is horrid and no one can download the 14gb file?  You've got to be kidding yourself if you say yes.

This is MMO buisness, people.  If money can be made then money will be made.  If you don't like that the beta has gone through fileplanets subscription, then go cry somewhere else.  It's $5 (quit paying for that other MMO that you play) a month to do this, plus you get other great things from fileplanet like access to other betas, free games, and fast download rates.

If your going to diss Funcom on the way they handled beta, then you just need to either wait for release and not worry about it, or quit spending so much money that your worried about $5 a month.  I'm getting sick of hear all the whinning coming from everyone that they should have a fair shot into beta.  Well this is your chance.  This way it shows that it is a fair chance.  Instead of getting picked for you amazing/weak computer system...you actually get a chance of skill in getting in beta.

So my advice to everyone that wants to cry about Funcoms handle on the open beta, just wait until release.  Would you rather have a clusterfuck with server loads and have people get irritated because they can't download the client?  This is a wise move by Funcom to have Fileplanet do this because everything right now is going so smooth.  This just shows that Funcom cares about their product and it shows the quality of the work they have put into this project.

And if you don't like what I'm saying in this and don't agree.  Feel free to express your opinion, I'll listen.  But it won't change anything.

For those of you that don't have a problem with Fileplanet, enjoy yourself.  and have FUN!

Let the blood spill.

And thank you Funcom for making this painless, I appreciate what you've done.

So the WoW servers are down, like always on Tuesday.  Which is fine by me, I swear I'm not addicted >.> <.<  But honestly, I almost hate tuesdays.  I only work during the afternoon, and since school is out for a month, I have no classes until next week.  So I decided to play some other game and catch up on them.  I would get on some CoD4, but it's too early for that.  So right now I decided to play some Mario Galaxy and load up. . . .*drum roll*  Diablo 2!  Man I miss that game, I'm looking very forward to playing it again. 

See, I never finished D2 in the past.  Which is sad to say.  Mainly because while Diablo 2 was released and popular, I was in my first MMO (Ultima Online).  I tried Diablo 2 and played it to the 2nd act, but never finished it because I was so addicted to UO.  Well, now that UO is old and dead to me. . .I figure I might as well load up some Diablo 2 and try the game out again.  I thought I would try to get my girlfriend into it this time, since just recently she has gain a love for video games, but that didn't work quite well.  "It looks too much like Ultima Online."  Pssh, fine.  But it's way better graphics than UO.  See, she hates UO.  I've always tried to get her away from WoW, but once she played and saw WoW, she was hooked.  Oh well, I guess I should be lucky enough to have a girl that plays games, lol.  Anyways, if anything I'll get my bro to play some Diablo 2 with me, he loved the game.  So, right now I'm switching out some discs to get it installed. 

OH NO!  It looks as if I have lost my D2: LOD CD key and case.  Damn it all.  Well, I guess I'm going to have to just play the normal campaign for a bit until I can either 1) find the cd key, or 2)look on the internet :).  Anyways, I'm off to make my D2 character. 

ouT.

**EDIT**

Well, I looks as if Diablo 2 was not ment to be.  I tried installing it twice and each time I try to load up the game, it just gives me a blank screen that I cannot exit.  So I had to illegally shut down my computer 4 times and reinstall 2 times.  I guess I'll just read up on Diablo 2's story instead of playing it.  Oh well, it was worth a try.  I have so many other games to play/finish as of right now anyways.  Call of Duty 4, World of Warcraft, Mario Galaxy, Resident Evil 4, Guitar Hero 2/3, Mass Effect. . .I'm more than busy with my gaming life.

Having never played Star War Galaxies, I can still relate to how the veteran player base feels towards SOE and their now 'dead' game.  As some of you know, I used to play Ultima Online way back in the day.  UO had a very similar 'death' that SWG had.  Two games that were both very different from the rest of the genre were quickly beginning to become the rest.  No more Ultima lore or Star Wars lore, it was more about the money and how many players we can get to our game.  Which in the end, failed in both cases.  You will see pretty much everywhere veteran UO and SWG players mourn over their game that they once lived in.  It is not rare to see "Why don't they just make it like it used to be."  Of course the developers always have some smart ass comment like "We just can't."  or "that is impossible." or "we are doing better now (yeah freaking right)."  But this is not my concern at this moment or why I'm writing this.  As a vet UO player I would so love for myold UO to be back.  I would give up any game in the world to have that feeling that I used to have in old day UO.  And I'm sure any vet SWG player would feel the same towards their game.  It's almost like a sickness though, to me.  I begin to relate every MMO, hell every RPG to what UO used to be and what I could do.  Shortly I end up not enjoying myself in the game because I begin to think how UO used to do this and that.  I hate it to be honest.  And I'm sure most of you can relate.  Mourning over our game is getting old.  The developers will never take action and as far as we know, we will never get our game back.  THis is where I think we need to draw the line.  I've realized that many of us are not enjoying ourself in the MMO world anymore.  "WoW is fun, but too candy cane.  CoH is great, but it's mostly instance.  EVE is awesome and has alot of depth, but where is my avatar.  I want my house, I want my vendor."  It gets tiring.  I know its easier said than done, but it's time for us VETS of the UO and SWG world to move on.  We need to accept what is there and begin to find the other game that gives us that feeling.  Sure I don't get the same feeling in WoW that I do in UO, but it's another feeling I get. . when I finally get that gear I've been pvping for.  It's a great feeling in EVE to finaly get into a good corp that can hold their own.  We are becoming so in depth with wanting that same feeling back with our old game that we become so closed minded and will not accept anything else.  Who knows, maybe we will find something better than what we had back in the day.  THe only way to know is trial and error.  Hell, maybe going back to UO or SWG is the best thing to do.  At least seeing certain areas will give your mind a rush.  This blog is mainly to help others out there like me.  People that Miss pre-R UO and people that miss the pre-CU and NGE SWG.  It's just time for us to move on.  Never to forget what we had, but to look ahead to what we could have.  I know I enjoy WoW and CoH, but I'm still looking for the game that makes me log on just because I feel like decorating my house or going treasure hunting.  ANd with that I'm out.  I hope you all find this blog a way to think ahead and help.  Atleast some of you hopefully can relate.