I promise I'm going to do some study!

I just wanted to link this as many people have mentioned the game Evony in particular for its specific advertising style, and its good for a chuckle and a /facepalm

Play WoW for free!

It appears that there is a general movement towards making free MMOs which at the very least look extremely similar to World of Warcraft, and it makes perfect sense. I make videos on Youtube about various free MMOs, and one thing I have come across is a general hatred of WoW for no apparent reason. Runes of Magic is, in many ways, similar to WoW; it looks quite similar visually, the combat is fairly similar, the end game focus is on raiding, it doesn't have great PvP, and every thing is pretty much dependent on your gear, and what do you know? RoM is pretty popular. It makes sense really, people dislike WoW because they have to pay for it, why do that when you can play RoM which is pretty much the same except its FREE!? (Hurrah for massive generalizations :P)

I mentioned a game called Allods Online a while back and the more videos I watch on it the more I think 'this is going to be another WoW and get a pretty big following.' Free MMOs are considered to be the lowest of the low; always generic, always with a massive grind, and always with people who spend a fortune in micro-transactions and PWN everybody else. But with Allods Online and RoM it is clear that the savvy developers are figuring out that all they need to make is a game similar to WoW and they'll rake in the profits/players. The free MMO market appears to be moving away from its traditional asian roots and following western designs. (Also could be why so many people love/hate Aoin as they associate 'Asian MMO' with 'free MMO' and therefore cruddy.) Perhaps the question that needs to be asked is 'is this a good thing?'

I'm in two minds, because I believe that if AAA MMOs are going to charge us 15 bucks a month they had better be offering an experience of the very best quality. There should be a big difference between the P2P MMOs and the F2P MMOs if developers expect us to pay and play. Therefore, the better free MMOs get, even if they are cloning WoW, the more pressure P2P MMOs will be under to improve their game and give the best value possible.
On the other hand, 'free' MMOs (At least in Guild Wars fashion) are possibly the way of the future and it doesn't do anyone any favors if they uphold their reputation of simply cloning other popular MMOs, and having very little originality.

I'm turning off my computer now for a couple of weeks to study, but boy its going to be fantastic when its all over. See you in a bit!

Some simple card magic

Sorry that this is not MMO/photoshop related but it was so good I thought I would share it. I used to be a magic fanatic and got fairly good and some basic card stuff, but this guy is really, really impressive.

Tis gone

Well, after getting the blue screen of death over and over again, my dad took my computer down to be repaired. A week later they sent me my computer back, saying that I can get all my information back, ie all my files, games etc, and all I needed to do was enter my windows xp product key. I spent a good deal of time looking for it but stupidly I had misplaced it, and now I have the disk but not the product key. So it looks like not only have I lost all my games and files, but also I don't even have a proper OP as I'm on a 30 day trial or something right now. Its a huge pain, especially considering all the files I had (WoW, RoM and all my Photoshop stuff) but that's life. Time to go through the trekload of posts from the past week in Google Reader. :P

Do not use Cybelink PowerDirector...

...unless you like watching a program crash over and over again for no apparent reason while you are trying to finish rendering your nicely edited vid. /rage