Archive for May, 2007
Posted by Stropp on
May 31, 2007
It’s been a while since I posted on the update to the Stropp’s World theme. I thought it was about time that I did.
Unfortunately I stalled a bit with this. I was having some problems getting the CSS to work with all browsers and spent way to much time trying to get it fixed. Then a few weeks ago I was caught up in a ‘restructuring’ at work. Quite a few people were made redundant, including my position. Fortunately for me, I was redeployed to another division instead of being shown the door. Ironically, since the restructure was done for financial reasons and not lack of work, I have been extremely busy finishing up before the transfer. That happened this week. So I’m now training and ramping up for the new job.
So nothing has happened then? Not quite.
Sometimes the best way to get things done is to get others to do them for you. Especially when you don’t really know what you are doing. In this spirit I hired a small company to make the theme for me. There was an email waiting for me when I got home tonight telling me that they are getting close to finishing. Hopefully it will be finished before the weekend so I can install it on a test site and tweak it before going live here.
In any case, while it has been pretty quiet here lately, good things have been happening.
I’m really hoping you’ll like the new look.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
May 31, 2007
The May 2007 edition of the Warhammer Online arrived in my inbox today. This issue covers the usual looks at various zones, dungeons, bosses and classes. It also has a link to apply for the upcoming closed beta. As usual, I applied for the beta, but it’s unlikely I’ll get into this one as it’s exclusive to North American testers. There is a link for European players, but none for us Antipodeans. Sigh. I applied anyway. Who knows I might get lucky. But even if not, I’ll be ready for a more general beta, if one happens.
The class that this months newsletter looks at is the Witch Hunter. The Witch Hunter’s sole motivation is to seek out and destroy the corrupt forces of chaos. As you can see in the picture to the left, the Witch Hunter has an appearance somewhat reminiscent of Hugh Jackman’s depiction of Van Helsing with that 19th century inquisitor flavor. The wide brimmed hats, buckles and long coats and cloaks appear to be the trademark appearance for this class.
As I mentioned, there’s quite a bit more info in this edition of the newsletter. There is a preview of the Warhammer Forge of War comic book. You can order this from Boom Studios. There’s also a preview of the High Pass zone and a boss profile of Slaurith amongst other articles.
The newsletter is a pretty good read. You can sign up for it here.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
May 31, 2007
The last few days I’ve been revisiting a few of my MMOs. It’s been a bit of a housekeeping session. I thought it might be a good idea to get everything up to date with all the patches. So, I’ve downloaded the patches to Everquest 2, and World of Warcraft. I even had a bit of a play with EQ2 in the new zones with the Fae and their evil cousins. Very well done with lots of great content.
Anyway, it occurred to me that I should check Vanguard again. When I first tried it at release (Vanguard vs the 800 pound gorilla) it was in pretty poor condition, and I was going to give it a month or two and see what had changed or improved. It’s actually been four months since I first tried Vanguard (time flies) so I decided to do an update and have a go.
The first catch was the patching process. It was way less than smooth, certainly less trouble free than the EQ2 patching, and much longer than it should have been. After this was done, I loaded up the game.
My biggest beef at the Vanguards initial release were the graphical bugs. At that time, I had problems getting the resolution set to my native monitor resolution which made the game look like crap. The other issue was that whenever I opened a GUI window, the graphics would be corrupted for a brief time before the window appeared (in the wrong resolution) and then resized correctly. At the time I made sure to install the latest drivers.
Sorry to say. This graphics issues haven’t been fixed. The windows still have the graphics corruption. The screen resolution was still incorrect when I got into the game, and even with 2GB ram, I had to tune the game for performance rather than visual quality. Even worse, it was like pulling teeth just to open the settings window. I’d click on the settings button, the window would then open and immediately close. It took several tries to get it to stick.
Sorry Vanguard Devs. After four months, basic graphics bugs haven’t been fixed. This is unacceptable.
It’s no wonder there was no one playing while I was on. I didn’t see any sign of life on the chat window for the hour that I was on before I gave up in disgust.
It’s a pity. Vanguard had some good ideas. The diplomacy system in particular was a really good idea. I’m a proponent of mini-games in MMOs as a diversion from the main game. (I’d love to see WoWs fishing turned into a fishing mini-game, but that’s another topic.) But the implementation of Vanguard has fallen short, and if it’s left much longer before the issues are fixed, Vanguard will just fade away.
I doubt I’ll bother with it again.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Posted by Stropp on
May 22, 2007
Excellent.
Blizzard made the announcement the other day in Korea, the land of Starcraft, that Starcraft 2 is on the way. It’s been a long between drinks for this game. The original Starcraft was first released in 1998 to much acclaim, and amazingly it still sells very well, especially in Korea. My friends and I have had many a LAN party with Starcraft as the guest of honor, and we are hugely pleased about this announcement.
There was a lot of speculation that Blizzard would announce Starcraft 2 as a MMO rather than as a RTS, and I’m rather glad that they didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, the Starcraft universe would likely make a great setting for a MMO, but not every game can be a MMO and Starcraft works really well as a real time strategy game. I’m hoping that Blizzard doesn’t change the formula too much though, like was done with Dark Reign. The first Dark Reign was a great and innovative RTS, and even though Dark Reign 2 was one of the first fully 3D RTS’, it lacked much of the fun of the first game. However, I think I’ll give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt for this one.
No date was given for the release. It was, as usual, given as "when it’s done." I expect that it will probably be before the end of the year, in time for the Christmas season. From what I’ve seen so far, it looks like Blizzard have been working hard at it for quite some time. Here’s hoping anyway. My friends have already indicated that a LAN party during the Christmas break is in order.
This just leaves one more thing up in the air. I’ve heard some rumours recently that Blizzard has been developing a new MMO. Maybe these are just rumours and have no real substance. Given the Starcraft 2 announcement, that may very likely be the case. On the other hand, it’s a pretty good bet that Blizzard developers are feverishly working on Diablo 3, sweating away in the darkest dungeons of Blizzard. Maybe Diablo 3 is that new MMO that Blizzard is developing.
Popularity: 10% [?]
