LotRO goes F2P...WOOOT!

Well I have to say that I am estatic about Turbine's recent announcement to make my favorite MMO LotRO F2P. Chances are this will be the first F2P MMO which I will actually put money into. I haven't played the game for a long long time but since I quit I have heard nothing but good news about it. I'm feeling like rolling out another dwarf hunter, simply because it seemed to be the rarest (And most illogical) combination of race/class ever. I excited, hopefully we don't have to wait for the game to come out in the new model.

Portal for free

Just a quick post to say that you can now get Portal for free off steam as part of a promotion before the sequel comes out. Go get it now!

Corrections + Pictures!

Well thanks to the fantastic "Senior Social Media Marketing Coordinator" Sam, I have to correct a couple of things in my last post. I have to say its a real breath of fresh air to have a development team of a free MMO so interactive. According to Sam the drop rates of Soul Gear between the closed and open betas are exactly the same. Also the max level is 125 instead of 150. Sam also explained how the team was addressing post-60 content which is great to hear. I also received a kit of BoI screenshots, concept art, and wallpapers so I'm going to include in this post my favorites of those.

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Leveling 60+ concerns

I've been playing probably an unhealthy amount of Battle of the Immortals lately, the new "Action" MMO by Perfect World International. I'm currently sitting at level 58 with the max level at a lofty 150. In my earlier posts and my videos I predicted that the initial fast leveling and plentiful quests would surely very quickly become a thing of the past, giving way to a grind for the top gear/levels. Now apparantly that point has been defined as level 60.

In the Closed Beta there was a mechanic called Combat Aid which was essentially an in-game bot. This allowed the top players to grind all day, then chuck on the bot when they went to bed. This caused (logically enough) an outcry amoungst the players and it was quickly removed for the Open Beta. Unfortunately that has made leveling 60+ even more difficult, with no new content being added, or the amount of experience required lessened. On top of that the drop rates of Soul Gear (The best gear for its level) has been decreased by a significant margin.

Now that I'm nearing the level 60 mark I'm slowing down a fair bit. I've run Specter Island (The instance that drops 60 Soul Gear) a bunch of times but not one piece of gear for my class has yet dropped. I'm hoping for a news release in the next week or so addressing the leveling wall that hits players at 60, and hopefully they make our lives a bit easier.

The game has a lot of potential, and I don't mind a certain amount of grinding, but seeing as people have slowed down so dramatically after hitting 60, I would hate to think about leveling 100-150.

New Blog Look

I've had my old blog look since forever now, so I have picked out a new blogspot template. I think it looks pretty snazzy, but I'm kind of missing the personality of the old theme. What do you think?

Crocs + outback + aussies = a great game!

I can't quite remember whether I have made a post on this game or not. But I feel inspired to write about one of my old time favorite games, so you'll have to excuse me. DUD was a simple point and click comic adventure game. Throughout the course of the game you fall out of an airplane, find a bunch of hill-billy-esque outback Aussies, and try and find your way home. I played the game when I was probably 10 or about there, so most o fthe game was trial and error but I'll never forget it.

The game had simple but logical puzzles, a few jumping/platforming puzzles, mixed in with some good old rabbit shooting and croc jumping. I'll never forget the time, when I must have been playing through the game for the second time when I came to the part where you have to cross a certain river infested with crocs. The only way to get accross was to jump from log to log, avoiding the crocs. It was possibel to actually land on the crocs themselves, but you had to time it very well so you wouldn't land anywhere near their mouth.

As little kids me and my brothers would save every time we made a successful jump, because at that age it wasn't easy. So I was jumping accross the river when I made a jump onto a croc. Except I didn't actually wait for myself to land, because I thought I was going to make the jump. I quickly saved and resumed the game to find out that the jump landed me right in the mouth of the croc, resulting in death and a return back to my last save point.

Problem was my last save point was of me in the middle of jumping once again into the croc's mouth. There was nothing I could do except start the game all over again, but I don't think I minded too much. Down Under Dan, what a great game. :)

Battle of the Immortals can do no wrong

Yesterday the developers of BoI announced that they were givin away 5000 ZEN (Cash shop currency) to every single Closed Beta user. This effectively means that everyone playing can have a look at a large number of things on sale in the cash shop. Because I'm on dialup at the moment I can't check how much 5k ZEN would cost in actual money, but it certainly is a significant amount.

This is a very clever play by the developers. They are doing an extremely good job at selling their product, with no ill effects. I predict that a large number more people will be spending actual money on the game now that they have experienced what the cash shop has to offer. Compounded with the early bling, and comfortable leveling pace BoI is shaping up to be a really popular game.

It is also good to hear that the developers are beginning to address the major problems that the community has had, such as tab-targeting , WASD moving and better HP/Mana regen rates. There has been also a lot of complaining about the PvP aspect of the game which I expect/hope will get a revamp soon enough.

This is what I spent most of my ZEN on.

Epic mount + diving suit + wings = awesome!