Untitled.

Welp, tried out Planetside and I have to say it's pretty damn fun. It's exactly what I expected, just a bit harder(or I just suck more than I thought) I get a great framerate, it looks and plays fun, I just can't hit things very well and die quite often(my best ratio so far has been 6 kills and 18 deaths...) I guess I need to experiement with all the varous gameplay styles, you can be many different things and do a large variety of things in the game, maybe I'd be better with vehicles or armored attack suits, or maybe even a stealther. I bought the game about 6 months ago, got sidetracked and never installed it. I saw yesterday that I never would have succeeded, apparently the third(of 3) discs is unreadable, has a deep gash in it. So 1.8 gigs later(thanks fileplanet, you might not be the devil after all!) I had it downloaded it and installed.

Ok, keeping in mind that I am enjoying planetside, I will most likely still buy guild wars...but hey, it's no monthly fee and I can try it out, might have a good time and play when I'm bored. Plus, tomorrow is new-releases day, so my new additions to my dvd collection will be License to Drive(fun Corey Haim(or Feldman...or maybe both, been a while) movie)...Wow, ok...I have to take a minute to say Holy Crap, I just used Parenthesis within Parenthesis, that's a first...ok, back to what else I'll buy. And Spaceballs Special Edition, which I almost was going to skip until I realized I never bought the cheapo barebones edition previously, I had considered it often with the various 2 or 3 dvd's for $xx that they have at stores, but held off for a fancy version, now it shall be mine! Hmm, and the new Nine Inch Nails album, almost forgot about that one. His last album was odd, it should have been just one disc, instead of 2, and he could have cut out the silly filler that no one seemed to like.

So, playing too many online games, most of which have monthly fees, and buying too many dvd's. Plus I'm coming down with a cold or flu I think, hoping it's just a temp thing.

Damn I suck at updating.

Well, looks like the week slowed me down in terms of updating, not that anyone is reading for it to matter... Right now I'm debating what to do about my current mmo's. I have an account active for city of heroes and an account active for world of warcraft, but both have problems and reasons why I don't play heavily, which I will discuss a bit in detail since I'm bored.

City of Heroes has amazing graphics and very fast-paced gameplay, it almost plays like a single player or console game at times. It is great fun to solo for a time, but does slowly lose the appeal because of the one serious problem of the game, it's only pve. There is no loot, no crafting, no pvp(though there will be in a couple weeks, by way of an arena) and no skill use. This is refreshing and nice, it makes it a great casual game that you can pick up and play when you want, plus it has a sidekicking(and reverse sidekicking) feature that lets anyone play with anyone else, regardless of level, and still be effective. The slow tedium that arises from single player can be put off a bit by grouping with some experienced players, either people in your "supergroup" or just other people who know how to play. The problem is, random groups of people grouping tend to suck, either because of idiots or just because people aren't used to grouping effectively, so it's a waste of time typically. And even experienced grouping can get old after a while, but I guess that's true of any mmo. Fun game, great casual play and grouping, once they add some skills in their next patch this summer(plus city of villains expansion later this year) they will have a pretty great game with depth instead of a great game with little depth.

World of Warcraft...where do I begin. Joined the beta, it was somewhat fun and had some great features and ideas, it seemed like they took the best ideas from most other mmo's and put them together in the warcraft universe. A bunch of coh player I was playing with decided to go along and try it out, since we enjoyed the beta somewhat. First problem we ran into was the ungodly lag and server instability, they are working on that at the moment and it is getting a little better. Secondly, class imbalance. Some classes, at launch, just sucked compared to other "better" classes, and with only 5-person group limits, you pick the best since you are limited in numbers. This put off a lot of people who had mains as the "lacking" classes, but the company is working on helping them a little...but oddly they are buffing the better classes also, which makes no sense. Thirdly, to me at least, the grind began to set in again around 50 or 51 I guess(60 is the level cap) and I just found playing to be a chore. At that level(and until about 56 or so) you can't go to the "cool" dungeons and are mostly stuck soloing and questing around until you can get high enough to go to those levels. And then the final problem is, once you do get to those higher levels, all you really want to do anymore is go to those dungeons to try to get your "class set" which is basically the best armor possible for you, everyone seems to get them eventually so everyone eventually looks the same... And once you hit 60, all you can do is make a new guy or just keep trying to get "better toys" in those high-level dungeons, it's just a rat-race to get more stuff, since at that point you've likely seen all the locations and nothing is new to you. I am one of the "lesser" classes on my main and also I don't care much about getting the equipment later on unless it has some purpose. In daoc, you had rvr(3 opposing realms pvping) as an endgame, a reason to get good items, so you could compete with your enemies. Here, they haven't added a real reason for pvp yet, they say they will soon, but their idea sounds a bit "out there" and I don't know if it will work. Wow is fun until the 50's, to me, and then it just goes downhill quickly. Quite a few people I've talked to have felt the game start to lose their interest then, especially at 60, yet most still play for now, hoping they will add things to keep them busy.

I enjoy the gameplay of coh greatly, I love the combat and the look and feel of the game, it just grinds and becomes tedious quickly. I like some aspects of wow and I also enjoy that it has crafting and loot, for the times I do get in the mood for those things. I would have canceled my wow account months ago though, if not for the people who came over from city of heroes and decided to stay in wow, it just doesn't hold enough interest for me to keep playing, yet I will as long as they are there...I guess $15 a month is worth not losing friends I've had online for quite a while(we've moved from a few games so far) but it does suck I'm put in that spot, to sit and play a game I don't much enjoy, just to be around. I'd keep my coh account active because I do enjoy the game in small doses, I just love so much about the game. But I don't play either game on a daily basis, so I'm trying to decide what to do.

There are two games that I do want to try out, both online games and one has a monthly fee(yet I already own the game, just haven't installed it) and the other does not, but I'd have to buy the game itself. The one I own but haven't installed is Planetside, an mmo that isn't an rpg really, it's a first person shooter. The game looks and sounds great to me, the reviews and screenshots and all make me want to play it. But do I want to start paying another 13 bucks a month, 3 mmo's at once is just crazy. The other game is the newly released Guild Wars. It is online, but not quite an mmo(close though) and has no monthly fee, but the main endgame is pvp apparently, and I'm not sure if I would prefer that kind of pvp or the first person shooter pvp that planetside will offer. So do I install my copy of planetside and try that out(free month still on it, I bought it right before wow beta and got distracted...) or do I buy Guild Wars and get in on "ground floor" since it just came out Thursday. Very tough call, though knowing me I'll probably do both stupidly.