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Champions Online

Okay I know I’m not supposed to talk about this yet, but it’s near enough to open beta that I feel I can safely talk about the game without giving anything important away — or at the very least I think I’m safe from being sued..  (Please don’t sue me..)

I have been in the Champions Online closed beta pretty much since day one and I can say without much hesitation that the game is not horrible. In fact I would go as far as to say its pretty good and appears to be getting better with each patch..

I certainly can say that as the beta has progressed the game has gotten Waaaaayy better and will very likely continue to do so for a good while yet..  And I can further say that it’s good enough for me to actually purchase and play the game after release, but there are issues I hope get solved..

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Wow versus War

I love the Warhammer universe.  I have been an avid player of the various table top miniature games as well as the couple RPG games in the same universe.   So when Warhammer Online came out a year ago, I was stoked!

I figured it would be pure liquid awesome and finally give me a computer version of the game world I have enjoyed playing in for so long.

Of course I was let down quite a bit in that the game was lacking..  but I get ahead of myself.

When I learned that Warhammer online was licensed to Mythic Entertainment, I was less than thrilled. Their only other game of note is Dark Age of Camelot which was a one trick pony (realm versus realm combat) that has no long term play associated with it.. And while the game is still around, it’s just not fun. There is nothing there to keep players like me playing the game.. I just don’t enjoy it nor does it have the massive fan base that it could have if they had bothered to keep innovating.

WoW on the other hand has gobs and gobs of things to do long term as well as lots of mindless achievements and other end game elements to keep players attention.  They are adding new content and new fun things to the game all the time and this is from a guy who really doesn’t like WoW..

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Surfs Up!

I have been playing with the jQuery animate functionality a bit today and it occurred to me that jQuery would likely be the perfect library to build a browser based game on top of..

I did a little browsing about the web, and sure enough.. someone thought of it before me.

The games I would want to create would be less animated than this one.. but I could totally see a Masters of Orion remake as a browser based game using the jQuery library..   Or any number of other turn based games..  You could even make them multiplayer fairly easily..

As computers get faster, and as browser trend towards threaded javascript engines.. Why the hell not?! At this point I think it would be just as easy/difficult to create a game via a webbrowser as it would via any other medium..

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Bhahhahahahaha… So, the infamous anti-gaming crusader Jack Thompson has finally met his match in the form of the Florida Supreme Court who this week permanently disbarred him while in the background the announcer yelled “headshot” for all to see his shame..

Okay that last bit may be a lie, but the rest is true. They stated that the disbarment was to take effect 30 days after the initial hearing back in September in order to allow him to shut down his practice.  Of course, being the douche bag that he is, he immediately filed his own emergency motion with the court in order to seek a retrial, however another Bar member would have had to vouch for him because they stated “no motion for rehearing will be considered unless signed by a member in good standing with the Florida Bar” which didn’t happen.

I think most lawyers were smart enough to stay away from this one..  And now a month later, his career as an attorney is over in Florida… Anyone wanna bet he will move?

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Far Cry 2 Cover

Open world game play is all the rage. The industry has decided that linear is out and that open ended randomness is in! The issue being of course that it detracts from the over all story and game play something awful.. of course gameplay also appears to be out right now, so no big loss … but I get ahead of myself..

Over the weekend I picked up Farcry 2.  I wasn’t on the original Farcry boat.. For whatever reason that game came and went long before I ever saw it.  When I finally did get my grubby hands on it, I had just played HL2 and was jonesing for some extra action.. needless to say it didn’t do much for me..   But I could see the potential!  And certainly why it was thought of as awesome.. It was still pretty good for an older game..

Now that Farcry 2 is out I was one of the first ones on the band wagon.  I downloaded the game from direct2drive and had it installed and playing in fairly short order.

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Shooting themselves in the foot? Mmm maybe.. I’m an avid MMO player and ever since Cryptic first announced City of Heroes back in 2002(?) I was in love with the idea of a super hero MMO. It really seems that all modern MMO’s are fantasy based, and I have said for a while that I’m pretty fantasy-ed out.

Cryptic had sold CoH to the masses as this do anything engine that would mirror “Champions” the role playing game, without actually saying the word champions. And to be honest, it turned out to be much less than champions. Still a good game, but not the freeform system that everyone envisioned. Lots of work and updates went into the game and it’s still pretty fun. I still play it.

In November of 2007 Cryptic sold their ownership of the CoH and City of Villains franchise to NCSoft so that they could work on their new super secret project!
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