Altitis and Free Games

Posted by Stropp on January 8, 2008

My Christmas holidays finished up over the weekend, and I started back at work on Monday.

I can hear the collective sigh from here. Wait… is that a tiny violin playing?

Consequently much of the weekend was spent doing chores that were pretty much ignored for the previous two weeks in favour of much holiday laziness.

In between loads of washing, I spent some time in World of Warcraft and I spent an hour or so looking at a free MMO game called Shaiya.

Altitis

In a fit of altitis, I created a new character in WoW. A Blood Elf Paladin of all things, named Selaeya (pronounced Slayer) and levelled her up to seven. I know, I know, you’re thinking what about the rogue? What about the hunter?

I’ll keep playing those characters, I definitely want to get Stropp to 70 before the new expansion. But as I said some posts ago, I’m just playing to have fun this time around. No pressure to do one thing or another.

I previously played a Dwarf Paladin up to level 56, before I was lured away to an Oceanic server and the life of the Horde. I can’t honestly see myself going back to the Alliance. Aside from the Dwarves, I reckon the Horde has character over the Alliance in spades.

And of the Horde, it’s definitely the Orcs I love. They’re the ones I’ve spent the most time with.

What about you?

Are you hopelessly afflicted with Altitis?

What is your favourite race/class?

Shaiya

I also spent a couple of hours in a game called Shaiya. I originally saw it mentioned on another blog, which blog I can’t remember, sorry. It wasn’t a huge download, so I was up and running pretty quickly.

I’m going to do a review of Shaiya in the near future, after I’ve spent a bit more time with it, so I won’t go into great detail now. Except to say that I was pleasantly surprised.

It reminded me a lot of the original Everquest. At least that’s the impression I got when I loaded up. There are differences of course. The graphics are a bit better than EQ, and there were modern MMO conveniences like icons above quest givers. It wasn’t anywhere near as polished though. Little annoyances like not having mouse clicks register, and the NPC dialog test was a bit rough, perhaps not being written by someone with English as their first language. All up though, not a bad effort.

And it’s free.

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