Musings of a Virgin

Warning: If you don't know what Blizzard is, this rant won't make sense to you.

I'm a fairly level headed person, I don't post dumb comments and shit on forums and I avoid cuss words just because I think they are infantile. But GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING BLIZZARD!!!!

I'm of course refering to their moronic, unprofessional, unprepared, amateurish method of selling Blizzcon tickets. There are about 2 million WOW players in USA, even if only 5% want to attend the convention, that's 100,000 persons. Not to mention the huge numbers of Starcraft and Diablo fans and international fans who would also be interested in attending. They can easily sell 100,000 or even 200,000 tickets charge $200 a ticket and I am very sure they would all be snapped up. So how many tickets went up for sale? 12000. That's it.

Here's how the entire 2 day fiasco went starting 11th August. They mentioned that tickets would be on sale on Monday 11 August, but no mention of time. Come the morning of 11th Aug, nothing. I'm on eastern time so about 3 hours ahead of pacific so I cut them some slack. Unfortunately, the site is now down. And remains that way for the rest of the next 2 days. To my knowledge it was up for a short time on Monday evening when a small number of tickets were sold. And for "a few minutes" on Tuesday afternoon (this is the actually wording from Blizzard) when the rest of the tickets were sold. A small reserve number was also made available at 8pm on Tuesday, that lasted all of 1-2 mins.

Bottomline unless you camped out in from of your monitor for that entire period, and kept hitting F5, and then was extremely lucky, you did not get a ticket. There are too many people who when they finally got in to buy a ticket could not complete the purchase because of a malfunction or lag.

This is a company that in 2007 earned 1/2 a billon in profit, that makes some of the most enjoyable games on the planet. They can't setup a site or devise a method of selling tickets that does not involve 10's of hours of waiting in front of a monitor.

I know that creating a convention is a lot of work for 12000 let alone 100000. But GenCon which occurs every single year does it and they get 30-50k persons and only charge $40-60 a ticket.

The sad thing is that this is probably the fault of a few individuals at Blizzard who FUCKED up majorly. Because from all reports the exact same fucking shit happened last year. And because of this unfortunate incident, the efforts of the developers who make their amazing games and the Blizzard reputation is severely tarnished.

Labels: Gaming, Personal

Posted by emyln at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments

World of Warcraft

Still playing World of Warcraft, still in the same guild, but I've cut down my raiding night to twice a week instead of 4 times a week. My main Astir has gotten a bunch of upgrades and the guild is just starting Black Temple, soon we'll be wearing Tier 6 gear. Good chance that it will be before Wraith of the Lich King.

I played WOW a lot more when patch 2.4 was released but over all my wow time has dwindled down, I'm not even playing my alts much.

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Age of Conan


I won't give a detailed review of Age of Conan, in fact there are plenty of places to see other people's reviews. I upgraded my PC to play AoC and it also runs on my laptop (although not at max settings). The game is pretty, very very pretty. The avatar you make actually looks sexy, its one of the most gorgeous avatars on the market. But that aside its not grabbing me and making me play hours on end. I am however playing it in short bursts.

With my current travel and work schedule, I'm only level 14 and playing a Tempest of Set. The beginning area is very well designed but the quests are ... so god damn boring. Run to point A, kill X, run to point B turn it in and run back to point A again. The amount of running back and forth is mind numbing. Don't get me wrong, since WOW was released, I've tried so many other MMO's (SWG, EverQuest 2, Vanguard, Hellgate, DDO, Tabula Rasa, Lord of the Rings, ...) and this is by far the best MMO since World of Warcraft (given what I've seen till level 14). But it still falls far from the bar set by WOW.

It might keep me occupied for a couple of months but nothing I've seen is making me jump for joy.

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Jade Empire

I played Jade Empire when it was first released on the XBOX. Heck its the reason I bought the xbox. But its still an excellent RPG. Next to Blizzard, Bioware is the next best computer game studio and I would buy their products review unseen.

The PC version has much better graphics and controls. That aside, I'm still loving the game.

PS. Don't ask me about my avatar's name.

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Mythos

finally, my last game is Mythos. Here's the thing, the game is still in closed beta and I did agree to an NDA, but I'll say this about it...

This game pretty good especially since its free to play. But a few weeks ago we found out that the game is making a huge change. Its going from an instanced game into a real MMO. Previously, the main towns are the only areas where you would see other people. Now, its will be like logging into WOW, their joined all the instanced areas into a single connected world.

This is a huge change, and a BIG gamble. Up till now Mythos has been getting neutral to glowing reviews even in closed beta. But NOW!!! I'm going out on a limb and say that they turned an OK game into an AWESOME one.

I am loving the game now. Its an excellent diablo2 like clone with its own look and feel, its a full MMO game and best of all its still free to play. Mark my words, this one (unlike its brother Hellgate) is gonna be a hit.

Labels: Gaming

Posted by emyln at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

One of the hottest games to appear in the past month is Audiosurf. It's really a very fun game, essentially, it plays any music you have stored on your computer and turns the track into a visual roadmap like the one seen below.

As the song progresses you collect more tiles of the same color, create combos, get more points. This part of the game is more like Tetris, except the speed of the game is the tempo of the song.

Its fun and addictive because you're choosing songs that you enjoy (else why would it be on your PC) and dynamically creating a unique track. I highly recommend it to everyone especially since its only $10. Download the demo from Steam and give it a try.

Sadly, with most of my songs coming from Musicals, they tend to be on the slow side. But thankfully ABBA plays very nicely.

Labels: Gaming

Posted by emyln at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments

Well I got 2 new games this last couple of weeks.
Assassin's Creed

I got this from GameTap, a great online game rental service, it allows you to try out games before actually buying them. A good thing because so many games are failures these days. I got Assassin's Creed because of the awesome reviews it got, and I must say I'm very early in the game but I'm loving it so far. The story telling aspect is amazing and fresh, I don't think any other game has done this before.

The Witcher

The Witcher got lots of super reviews and was billed as PC's best role playing game. I must agree. I've only completed the tutorial so far but this game ROCKS! It literally is a great story and I'm totally hooked.

World of Warcraft
Yes I'm still playing World of Warcraft. Here's an up date on my adventures in Aseroth.
Isale finally hit Level 70! My 2nd level 70 character and all ready for Wraith of the Lich-King.


The guild killed Magtheridon and Astir even got a little souvenir from it. Here's also a group photo of the guild by Mag's head.

Here's little Emyln, my warlock who just hit level 58 this weekend and is posing before he takes his frist step into the portal to the Burning Crusade.

And finally the biggest news of all, (for me at least) most of my guild decided to switch servers so here are all my guys on the Ghostlands server. I don't feel too much regret, Doomhammer had almost nightly queues and I was getting sick of it.

Labels: Computer Games, Gaming

Posted by emyln at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments

Well its been 8 days since my last post. Not much to mention, things have been slowing down since the holidays. I did celebrate my Birthday on the 29th with Eins and her beau.

I also cooked while they were here. I made my grandmother's Satay Chicken again and also sambal eggs. The Satay Chicken is comfort food for me so I like making it around the holidays.

Since then, I've mostly been reading up a storm and playing computer games. My choice of books is kinda junkie, so I'm actually a little reluctant to list them but oh well. I may read a lot but I they sure as heck don't improve my mental skills.

That aside I've been playing Mass Effect. Here's a cool list of all the races you'll encounter in Mass Effect, and also the picture of my second character in Mass Effect.

I've also been playing some World of Warcraft. Yes I'm still playing it, mostly because there's a severe drought of good MMORPG's. I finally got my 2nd level 70 character (Isale) and now I'm playing with my Draenei Shaman.

Labels: Gaming, Personal

Posted by emyln at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments

I finally finished Mass Effect. Took me 36 Hours and 48 minutes and I got to Level 48 as an Adept. Oh and I unlocked 565 gamer points as well.

I have to tip my hat off to Bioware. This was one of the best RPG's I've ever played and I'm done quite a few. The story and ending while not original for a sci-fi book is amazing for a video game.

Anyway, here are some youtube scenes of the game. Specifically the romance with Ashley (the human) and the ending that I experienced.

Labels: Gaming

Posted by emyln at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments

Those reading this blog will know that computer gaming has long been in my blood and is a life long hobby. And more recently MMORPG's are my new passion. That said I will be skipping Tabula Rasa when it comes out on 19th Oct.

I am currently in the Tabula Rasa beta and I have to say that I'm not all that impressed. I won't bother with doing an actual review of the game. For that you can read these reviews:

Tobold's preview
Keen and Graev Review

For myself, the graphics on High are gorgeous The gameply of aiming and shooting mobs like in an FPS is unique and different. Its also fun... for the forst few hours. Then it gets very very old real quick. They have quests for you to kill 400 of a mob. I'm sorry but that's worse than anything World of Warcraft ever came up with.

But the biggest transgression for me was the classes. In any MMORPG or RPG game, a player should be excieted to level up. Tabula Rasa fails on this point. The names and descriptions of their classes are mandane and ordinary. Enduring over 30 levels in this game, you can look forward to becoming a Spy, Sniper, Engineers, Medic and several more classes I won't bother to mention. Uhhhhh... Medic? What genius thought that Medic as a high level class description was a good idea?

To top all this off, I have some beef with Richard Garriott. If you read the blogsphere, many people seem to think of him as some visionary and such junk. What many many many of them forget or don't know is that he was the idolt that was responsible for Ultima IX: Ascension. A game so broken that on launch day, less than 50% of people could play it on their systems and those that did were faced with game breaking bugs.

I was one of those dumbasses who paid over $70 for the Dragon Edition of the game and it was at that point that I vowed that Richard Garriott went from the hero who invented the Ultima series to an untrust worthy ass and who's future games would need significant success before I ever paid another dollar for.

That said I see Tabula Rasa as a game that might rival LoTRO in fame initially, but will need to improve their end game significantly before it will be worth my dollars.

Labels: Computer Games, Gaming

Posted by emyln at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments