Blogged in MMORPGs, Reviews, Games by Matt on Friday May 27, 2005
As of late, I’ve been looking for a video game to play that is not only fun, but original. I’ve grown tired of playing the same old game over and over in the form of Counter-Strike Source and Half-Life 2, I’ve played Counter-Strike since Beta 3, time to move on from that dated formula. So I’ve been debating either playing World of Warcraft or Guild Wars. Well guess what, I played the Closed Beta, Stress Test, Second Stress Test, and Open Beta for World of Warcraft and came to a realization, after all of that grinding, I had no desire to ever play it again. So lo and behold, I picked up Guild Wars and am loving every minute of it.
I first played Guild Wars in it’s First Beta Weekend and was anything but impressed. The game mechanics sucked and the lage was horrific, but what can you expect, it’s a beta. I gave up on Guild Wars and just kind of brushed it off as a crappy want to be MMORPG. Five months have passed since then and the release of Guild Wars and boy was I wrong.
The thing that I love the most about Guild Wars is that a semi-casual player can play it, and still keep up with the hardcore power gamers. I’ve played the game thirty hours or so and am almost to cap my level and complete all the story line missions, albeit there are still hundreds of quests left for me to do. The fact of the matter is, I haven’t had to expend 200 hours or more to compete in the game, I simply do not have the time to invest hundreds of hours into a game.
Guild Wars is an entirely new game, there has been no other like it. It mixes elements of Diablo with elements of MMORPGs as well as action games. To top all of that off, Guild Wars has no monthly fee what so ever, making it the first of its kind. While some may argue that Guild Wars is not a MMORPG in the traditional since, the fact of the matter is, Guild Wars is not only a MMORPG, but an exceptional one.
The graphics in Guild Wars are phenomenol, theyre not “ultra realistic” however they are beautiful and have their own little artistic flair to them. The environments are large and lush and full of eye candy. The characters and spell effects are great, each spell having its own casting graphic and attack graphic, while the characters have countless animations to show their current condition or action. Monster models are plentiful, and very few use the same model with a different name, giving you plenty of variety.
Sounds in Guild Wars are good, monsters sound unique and when hurt they sound like they’re actually hurt. The sounds aren’t over done either, so you won’t grow annoyed of hearing the same monster gasping in pain over and over. The musical score is good; however it is generic and won’t be remember as a great game soundtrack. As much as I dig the sounds in Guild Wars there is one thing I can not stand, and that would be the voice acting in the cut scenes. Absolutely horrid, it’s like watching a B movie with their voice acting, cheesey and pathetic, no other way to put it.
Perhaps my favorite part of Guild Wars is the character classes and character creation. As you may or may not know in Guild Wars you start out as a base character profession, in this case, Elementalist, Ranger, Warrior, Monk, Mesmer, or Necromancer, and as you progress through the early game, you take on a second profession to make a dual classed character. By using all the possible classes, there are 30 possible class combinations one can have. Every class in Guild Wars is useful and versatile, for me I have chosen to play a Mesmer/Monk. By choosing those classes I can lock down enemy casters and players, and also heal with the monk profession. A different class selection equate to different playing styles, and is ultimately up to the player to choose how he or she wants to play.
The real gold of Guild Wars not only lies in it’s terrific set up and character classes, but also with it’s Player Vs. Player combat. PvP in Guild Wars is terrific to say the least, players compete against one another to sway the favor of the gods to their side. However, players do not just compete against other groups, they compete against players in other regions. For example in game you may be competing against Korea or Europe to gain the favor of the gods. Players can fight in either random PvP fights, or they can enter Tournaments to claim their guild as the top position. All in all, Guild Wars is the best PvP model to be introduced into a MMORPG and will keep players occupied for hours.
Guild Wars is a terrific MMORPG, in fact it’s my favorite that I have played before, that includes UO, EQ, DAOC, SWG, AO, WoW and More. Buy it NOW!!!!
Popularity: 28% [?]
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Blogged in Internet by Matt on Thursday May 26, 2005
It looks like today, the Gestapo err FBI and ICE have started to crack down on BitTorrent sites through out America. It Looks like EliteTorrents is gone, at first many people thought this was a DNS hack that brought down the site, now however more information has been released confirming this was done by the Government.
Building on the success of Operation Gridlock, a similar takedown announced by federal law enforcement last August that has already led to the felony convictions of three P2P copyright thieves, Operation D-Elite targeted the administrators and “first providers” or suppliers of copyrighted content to the Elite Torrents network. By utilizing BitTorrent, the newest generation of P2P technology, Elite Torrents members could download even the largest files-such as those associated with movies and software-far faster than was possible using more traditional P2P technology.
The content selection available on the Elite Torrents network was virtually unlimited and often included illegal copies of copyrighted works before they were available in retail stores or movie theatres. For example, the final entry in the Star Wars series, “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith,” was available for downloading on the network more than six hours before it was first shown in theatres. In the next 24 hours, it was downloaded more than 10,000 times.
On top of EliteTorrents going down, it looks like alot of other sites are closing their doors and trashing what they can, take BitAnce for example.
Popularity: 8% [?]
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Blogged in Internet by Matt on Thursday May 26, 2005
I was browsing over some of the news posts today on Spread Firefox and saw that c|net has put up a comparison of the seven major web browsers on the market. Our good friend Firefox came in Number 1 with Safari RSS and Netscape 8 coming in tied for second. At the bottom of this list is none other then Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (with Service Pack 2), Opera 8, and Deepnet Explorer.
Rapidly forcing IE from desktop dominance is Mozilla Firefox. This open-source browser receives our highest rating, in part because it includes tabbed browsing and RSS feeds, is very easy to use, and is well supported with a variety of third-party plug-ins. Firefox’s popularity has recently helped unearth a few vulnerabilities, but we’ve been impressed with the speed and forthrightness with which Mozilla has patched its browser. In short, we just don’t feel as vulnerable surfing the Web with Firefox.
I think this shows the strength that Firefox has gathered over the past year or so, and it will just continue to grow!
Popularity: 13% [?]
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Blogged in Games by Matt on Monday May 23, 2005
So I was thinking earlier, that it seems to me that most game developers and publishers have lost all concept of what a good game is. These days it seems people care about only one thing, and the thing is Eye Candy. Don’t get me wrong, good graphics are a great thing, however it’s not what makes the game.
For example, let’s take Doom 3. Doom 3 is an amazing looking game, perhaps the best they come, but Doom 3’s gameplay is where it crashes and burns. If anyone has ever played Doom or Doom 2 then they will feel right at home with Doom 3. While this might not inheritly be a bad thing, the fact is it’s 10 years later, and games need not follow that formula.
Doom 3 consists of walking down dark, eerily lit corridors to be jumped by three or four monsters in a pre determined spot at a dramatic part in the game. This continues on for the next 12 hours, until you beat the game. Oh let’s not fail to mention the whole Find Red Key to Open Red Door part of Doom 3. Hello, John Carmack, we were doing this
back in Doom.
Sure Doom 3 is an amazing looking game, it’s just the same old crap over and over. Then we have Half-Life 2, amazing graphics, amazing story, and amazing gameplay. Some may argue if Half-Life 2 looks better then Doom 3 or not, but this isn’t the point. Half-Life 2 is a solid single player experience, and the multiplayer in the form of Half Life 2 Death Match or Counter-Strike Source is great, albeit Counter-Strike is old and boring to me now. The multiplayer in Doom 3 consists of four to eight people, duking it out in a deathmatch in a DARK level. I’ll choose Half-Life 2 anyday.
Now to continue on with this rant. Let’s look at the two leading MMORPG’s out now. We have Everquest 2 with it’s “faux realistic” graphics, while World of Warcraft goes for a more stylized, cartoonish approach. Now EQ2 may look more realistic, but WoW is a much better game by 10 fold. Not to mention that I much rather prefer the stylized, cartoonish graphics that World of Warcraft has.
Popularity: 17% [?]
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