Tabula Rasa

For those who love FPS and MMO's this could be the game for you. So far it's been interesting. Fun would mean that I found it enjoyable and while it is a wonderful concept the actually "playing" of the game is a bit of an odd animal.

Mouse view is permanently on. While this is normal for a FPS, it's exceedingly annoying for an MMO. Not being able to use your mouse to click on items or NPCs is difficult to over come for the die hard MMO player. Being forced to use key commands and hot keys is not very friendly to the new gamer.

The graphics are beautiful. The world of Tabula Rasa is amazing. There should be a way to zoom in the camera view with the mouse wheel. The lighting could be tweaked and the contrast between mobs and the camouflage of the out doors could be varied a bit more. It is a bit memory intensive during game play and the loading time is sluggish. Other than that it's an awful lot like the graphics of Guild Wars. It's very pretty.

There has been no PvP with the beta so I'm hesitant to assume how it will play out though I'm thinking it's going to interact the same as any PvP server of an MMO. No safe grounds. Leveling and minding your own buisness? Watch out for those griefers. I could be wrong about this assumption and I wish they'd give us the chance to try it out before the game goes live.

The questing system is great if lacking in the amount of quests offered. What is offered is very detailed and often quite amusing. Some of the quests are based on moral decisions which I find refreshing in today's gaming world. It really gives the player another level of immersion with the game.

The crafting system is not fully in place but what I can see, it's very promising. Being able to upgrade weapons and armor early on with useful crafting recipe drops. Being able to craft ammo and job items is going to be very neat.

All in all, Tabula Rasa is showing much promise to being the game that brings together the world of gamers. No longer will there be the Counter Strike punks and the Geeky Dragon Slaying MMO players. In this new world they will be able to join as one and usher in a new era of gaming.

Professional Gamers

One thing that has always interested me is professional gamers. They get paid to play their passion, their hobby. They have my dream job. They compete for hundreds of thousands of dollars and prizes. In some places like Japan where 37% of the population are gamers, professional gaming is big business.

The CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) is the world leader in professional gaming. Add it to a growing list of other such leagues, WCG (World Cyber Games), GGL (Global Gaming League) and you get a surprisingly assorted list of gamers. No longer is gaming left to the sweaty greasy haired losers in their mother's basement. Men, women and children of all ages are in on the trend now. I've met children as young as 5 playing and some people old enough to be my grand parents. All walks of life from the stay at home mom, to the podiatrist to the kid tasked to farm items and money in game for an allowance. I've even played with a lady who swore she was a nun!

Of course I have to add in how proud I am to be finding more women gaming now. It's not just husband and wife teams. It's women who game who are introducing their boyfriends and family to gaming. We are kicking butt and taking names! One such team is the Frag Dolls. Seriously guys and gals, check them out! WWW.Fragdolls.com. Not only are they hot but they are HAWT! If it's a game they can play it, watch your backs boys!

To the haters out there talking about how this is just a new breed of couch potato, I challenge you to get out there and see how well you can do. Get good enough to win these competitions and then we'll talk. Until then, you are just jealous!

WarHammer, where have you gone?

Mythic's newest most anticipated game is WarHammer. I've been watching this game grow since 2006. It won Best Fantasy at the 2007 GCLeipzig and WarCry's 2007's Most Anticipated. As a gamer who did her "teething" on Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot, I cannot wait for this game to hit the market. I will be first in line at midnight (thats if my hick town GameStop stays open that late) the day this baby comes out.

I'm seeing a disturbing resemblance to Dark Age of Camelot. There seems to be very little advertising on Mythic's part. I'm an avid gamer. You might find me on America's Army, World of WarCraft, Age of Titans or any other number of freebie low quality PC games. I loved DAoC and would probably still play it if the population were higher. Very few of the up and coming gaming generation have heard of Dark Age or WarHammer. You see spam for WarCraft all the time at places like IGN, GameSpy, Allakhazam. The more popular game websites have very little information at all about WarHammer.

Mythic, I love you, please don't fail on this game. I know people see the videos and think "WarCraft Rip Off", but I know it's not true. Only you could bring us Realm vs. Realm. Only you could bring meaning and true blood lust to Player vs. Player. The excitement, the adrenaline rush. The heated glorifying moment of battle when you know you just won the battle. The keep or castle is yours. Siege weapons and team effort, something those knuckle heads over at Blizzard and WarCraft haven't a clue about. It was so very gratifying to hear the crumble of keep and tower walls when we were playing offensive. It was amazing to look out and see sometimes hundreds of player characters working together. These other guys, they haven't a clue.

No, this isn't some lame charade to try to get a WarHammer beta invite. This is a real plea to the advertisers at Mythic. Please don't drop the ball on this one. This game has the makings to be the greatest MMORPG that PC gamers have ever seen. Plus, I want there to be a large enough population to support my killing sprees. I can't wait to explore the new world that is Warhammer. Now hurry up and send me that beta invite, darn it!

Dark Age of Camelot, a game review.

Dark Age of Camelot is by far the best MMORPG out on the market. It's also one of the oldest. With a dying population and a lack of enthusiasm on the programmers parts this is probably a dinosaur begging to be put down or totally revived. Unfortunately it's creator Mythic Entertainment is more focused on their newest venture WarHammer than they are on Dark Age.

Consisting of 3 realms; Albion, Midgard and Hibernia, it is a game focused on the never ending battle for the New Frontiers. Each realm has it's own frontier to defend. Each frontier consist of 7 keeps, 4 towers per keep and a outer wall surrounding each keep. In these frontiers they also have 2 relic gates, each protecting a relic of great strength or power. The name of the game is dominance. You want to be able to over throw the opposing realms hold on their frontiers, take at least 2 keeps that have a doc to be able to open the relic gates. Which ever realm holds the most relics is the strongest. Which ever realm controls the most keeps and towers combined gains access to a special dungeon with special loot.

In the wars for dominance players can use trebuchets, battle rams, palitones. These wars can range from an exceptional group of 8 attacking when most of the population is asleep to a full blown siege with hundreds of players participating in the offense or defense for their realm. These are extraordinary fights that can last for hours. In the actual grand scheme, these wars never end. Every minute of every day is a war in this game. There is no time out and no reset.

As you can imagine this can also cause issues with lag. The intense graphics and the over whelming numbers of participants in these wars can cause fatal errors for the gaming servers themselves. Often crashes mid siege drive many players bat shit crazy and tends to flood Mythics complaint line.

The PvE side of the game is barely even a shadow of it's former self. Most of the game zones are empty with little hope for a new player to find friends to play with. Despite Mythic's best efforts, the PvE side of the game has little draw for the battle hardened player. Even epic battles with dragons and ogres can no longer pull the players to these zones.

The crafting system could use a full over haul as well. The time it takes to craft and the amount of money needed to buy supplies makes crafting a very painful ordeal. The one good thing I say is the enchanting craft is the best I've ever seen. It blows everything else out of the water. To be able to custom enchant your armor to be exactly what you need is awesome. It blows World of WarCraft enchants away.

Also, the fighting styles were beautiful. It wasn't a click it and forget it kind of game. You had reactionary styles and chains that you had to be paying attention to for them to work. You had to time it just right, if you dodged or blocked a whole other line of fighting styles would open up. You had to be on the ball to really excel at the fighting skills in this game.

All in all Dark Age of Camelot will be one of the most missed games when it finally disappears. For those of you who didn't try it, you don't know what you missed.

Religion

I'm not a fan of religion. Raised in the bible belt with the fire and brim stone baptist and not religious? Some how 'the calling' missed me. Despite my grandmother's attempts at dragging me to church, dirty bitch.

There is a church about every 3 blocks here in this town, I shit you not. Sometimes there will be 2 rival churches on opposing street corners. It's ridiculous. They all want you to join them in their house of worship. They litter your car windshields and your home doors with invites to their church. They come around in groups and walk the blocks of homes surrounding their church trying to recruit. It's enough to make a person want to answer the door covered in blood with the anti-Christ symbols drawn on their forehead.

I've had them come to my door and ask me where I thought I'd go if I died today. I know where I'm going to go. I'm going to haunt these ignorant judgemental mother fuckers and laugh as they try to throw holy water at me. How dare they pass judgement on me because my beliefs are different. I've even had some of these dip shits try to "pray" for me on my door step. I don't come to their homes and tell them how stupid they are for believing what they do. I don't litter their yards with anti-religious pamphlets. What is it with these people and their need to try to convert everyone?

My philosophy on life is to live it how you feel it should be lived. Let everyone else worry about their own life. Are you gay? Lesbian? Black? White? Brown? Aethiest? Guess what? I don't care. It doesn't matter. Just don't expect everyone else to think and believe the way you do.

Thursday Morning Ramblings

Life as stay at home wife isn't so bad. It gets awfully boring in this back water hick town though. My options for entertainment are the local Wal-Mart, church (HA! Me? In church?) or one of the local bars. Fun stuff. So, here I sit cleaning house and contemplating fighting off the fucking huge ass mosquitoes to mow my yard. Yeah, I think I'll ramble for a bit instead.

I'm a married to a man in the Air Force. For the most part it isn't to different from my life before. We are still in my home town, we don't live on the base and we don't socialize with his co-workers. Though from time to time his enlistment does come trodding into our home life. Less than 3 weeks and he'll be gone for a fun filled 6 month deployment over seas. At least it's not a year long tour right? Though I'm still not happy seeing as how this time around they gave him a helmet cover. He didn't have one of those the last deployment. Hmm...

On the topic of military wives, not to offend the whole populace, but why does it seem that half of the ones I meet are thicker than molasses? Seriously! What.The.Fuck? Did you know that according to one Stepford Wife that juries should be prosecuted for convicting innocent people? Apparently she missed the chapter in her Government class that explains that Jury Duty is not voluntary.

My other favorite quip is the religiously intolerant ones that think that all Muslims are gun toting, woman beating terrorist. Yeah, way to generalize. I could go on and on but I'd end up wanting to paint the wall with my brains. I'm not saying that everyone I've met is ignorant but it does seem that we have more than our fair share.

And so it began...

With the downtime from World of WarCraft I was persuaded to create my own blog. I'm a regular lurker of many blogs often laughing and crying along with the writers, but I thought it was about time that I come out of the shadows.

Husby is set to leave for the "Sand Box" again in about a month. 6 months to myself, what ever shall I do to stay busy? My first plan of action is to invade that holy shrine that is his garage. I plan to add a "feminine touch" by cleaning and organizing that mess. I can barely make it too my washer and dryer most days without being attacked by Bob knows what kind of car parts and miscellaneous inventions.

My second idea is to take me a trip up to Denver to visit with my best friend and con her into hiring me at her pharmacy. While I abhor the idea of working in pharmacy again, I do have a license and I should probably use it to make some green while I attend to my college courses. One of these days I'll finish my course in Computer Networking.

Last but not least, the dreaded diet. Gaming and getting old do horrible things to ones figure. I want my perfect hour glass figure back so I've started the Alli diet plan. None of the dreadful side effects yet, no cravings. I've lost 3 pounds only about 40 more to go.

Yeah, so I am a gamer and I have ovaries! OMG! I'm not into FPSs or console games, I am a huge fan of MMORPGs though. I played EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Puzzle Pirates, America's Army and GuildWars, I am now into World of WarCraft. It's a waste of time as my wonderful loving husby enjoys trying to burn into my head, but I enjoy it. I'm good at it and I think that kind of makes him worried. I've actually been trying to get hired on as a game tester so that my "waste of time" can earn me some money. Drives my husband nuts, but as most gamers can agree there are a lot more wasteful hobbies I could take up.