Wish Guild Wars could be... more... something!

I really enjoy Guild Wars 2 and I intend to still play an explore it, I just wish it could be ... more. The combat is intense with npc's and ok against pc's though gear still has too much sway I think rather than skill but its still ok fun. I like the "world changes as you do things" aspect, but it jsut gets me wishing things stayed saved a little longer or that the chains were a bit longer. It seems like the moment I save something and after I defend it for a while it just gets back in jeopardy the moment I turn my back. This breaks the "immersion curtain" and makes me feel like I'm just in a clock instead of a world. I'm not dissing the game. I like it better for world pve than pretty much any other mmo. I just wish it could be "more" of what it is. Maybe Guild Wars 3 will be. Anyways, I also wish the dungeons were lower level as I haven't seen them yet and I don't hear good things on the forums about the first dungeon. One of the things I loved in WoW and Lotro was the dungeons and other group sequences. There are times I've played in group in GW2 but only for convenience of survival to beat some boss or defend someone and it was mostly a flash mob. I've tried to catch my firneds online playing but it seems like we have different schedules. I'll keep trying though.

Other than that I'm really enjoying playing Terraria for our game night and I've been toying with the idea and some day having them play the black pits together with me for game night. That would be interesting. In Terraria I faced the wall of Flesh for the first time last Thursday and he cleaned my clock. I recommend Not touching him. We actually had him half dead when I died though. Maybe next time.. with more friends, most had gone to bed when he showed up. ;)

My new game ready to share!

Hi, this is Anton, I haven't posted here for a long time, but have some important news!
I've been working 3 years on an indie game for 3 years, called Siphon Spirit.

Please play the demo and visit Califer Games on facebook, or in the forums to give feedback!

http://blog.califergames.com/

("Anton" is just my blogger alias, of course, so don't be surprised if you don't see it here)

Neverwinter MMO is in Open Beta and Enhanced Edition ok on Vista now

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=9&cad=rja&ved=0CGEQqQIoADAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgamesn.com%2Fneverwinter-mmo-enters-open-beta&ei=ayWEUYPEFab8igLA2oH4Bg&usg=AFQjCNHO3b24rqjrrDKS37hw3ksVINbaHw&sig2=reXA6Y_znQrrZyuLUXkXRg&bvm=bv.45960087,d.cGE

The link above goes to an article about the Neverwinter Nights MMo's new open beta that just launched. I'm going to check it out when I get some time. In other news, I want to say that Baldur's Gate Enhanced edition now works on Vista, and I am having a LAN party for my birthday tomorrow where we will do the black pits in baldur's gate and do a Terraria adventure time maybe or some Dungeon Siege. :)

No Enhanced Edition on Windows Vista

Don't attempt to play Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition on Window's Vista, it has nasty bugs wherein you will want to close your client and reopen every time you grab arrows for example. Use Windows 7 instead.

I got Guild wars 2 for Christmas! Now I can play it with Anton on Northern Shiverpeaks! So far I haven't seen anything in guild Wars 2 other than the opening areas and those are pretty normal MMO fare but I am hopeful. Its enjoyable combat and questing for me anyways.

Lotro/Turbine in trouble?

Turbine just had layoffs announced and confirmed by Warner bros. You can search on the web and see it but I just wanted to speculate a little. Turbine had 400 employees. They haven't had a new game come out in a  while. They must have been pinning some revenue hopes on the Rohan expansion which got good reviews on Gamespy and such but Only people who have already spent a LOT of time recently n the game are even at the level to buy that AND I don't have most characters near big enough, my biggest is lvl 71. My brother quit playing Lotro because of the expansion. He said that it was stupid to release a level cap raiser this early since people were still grinding up levels to get to the last cap and hadn't really run the dungeons to their fullest yet. I think Turbine might be desperate for cash. Which is sad since they could have created a new MMO by now with their resources, or greatly expanded the low and mid game of Lotro which would have helped them retain people better. They aren't getting money from many of the people like me who have been around a while also because of the lifetime account deal and the free points we get, which I guess makes the business unfeasible unless we evangelize enough others who are actually paying monthly or for content additions to play. DnD Online was a mini turnaround success that I wasn't terribly interested in playing. I wonder if they will come out with a new game before they belly up as a studio.... I knew they were in trouble once Warner bought them though. Warner and other big companies have no soul, and no compunctions about firing and hiring massive swaths of people at a drop of a margin.

Public quests are now in Lotro

They've added public questing to Lotro, and rewritten the Ettenmoors. Might be fun. Details below torn from their changes page:

Hytbold

Hytbold is a new soloable endgame experience being delivered with Riders of Rohan. It focuses on rebuilding a razed Rohirrim village by aiding the people of the Eastemnet through a large suite of rotating, randomized daily quests. It heavily employs phasing and utilizes three new technologies: Instanced Public Questing Areas, Open Tapping and Remote Looting. Its rewards are class specific, trait line specific armour sets with raid level set bonuses that are bind to account. Upon completing the town, players will be able to take part in a capstone experience that culminates the storylines of Eastern Rohan. If successful they will be named as Thane and considered an honorary noble of Rohan. Learn more about Hytbold.

Beat Super Swing golf 2, played BlazeJam games

I got an email a couple weeks ago from a nice fellow name Dave Calabrese who sent me the fun little BlazeJam game pack of games created by some developers in a 48 hour fund raiser for donating to a Waldo canyon fire or something like that. Well I'm glad not everything on the web is a scam. These were kind of cute games. I particularly liked the kitty rescue one.Anyways, I of course scanned the files for viruses and there were none detected so I'm pretty sure they are safe. On another piece of good news, I beat Super Swing Golf 2 and have gotten really good at fake golf. I wonder if that helps at all in real golf.. I may never know... :)

Lastly, I'm downloading Riders of Rohan right now. My hope is that they somehow add mounted combat to the other parts of the game but more importantly, that they enable creep vs freeps battlegrounds or skirmishes so that you can get a real pvp challenge by fighting an even number on each side. If they don't see how this would increase excitement in their games, I think they should play Warhammer or WoW, or Rift, or Starcraft, or anything other than Turbine games.

Lastly I did buy the Baldur's gate enhanced edition and I'm still waiting eagerly and I am playing Terraria with my brothers and the crafting and building aspect is really becoming quite interesting.