By Holliday , 4th August 3:32 pm
No nude night elf pics here. It is an understatement to say that I enjoyed World of WarCraft. Hell, I was a few sentences away from roleplaying an Undead Warlock on a public blog last year. Yes, I say enjoyed because I am on a current hiatus from the game. The game itself is not at fault for this. I just felt I needed a change. However, in exiting World of WarCraft I stepped into a broken world of remaining MMORPGs. It is with some reservations that I proclaim World of WarCraft has both redeemed and destroyed the MMORPG genre.
Yes, I know, this is blasphemy. Many of you may have already skipped down to that comment box to write me a scathing remark questioning my intelligence, taste and sexuality. Hear me out though. World of WarCraft’s success has changed MMORPGs forever.
» Read all of “The Wake of WarCraft“…
By Holliday , 23rd July 11:20 am
Well it was bound to happen. I guess. Now there is a combination of the best of the internet with one of the worst (in my opinion). Hot or Not meets Google in a zip code sprawling picture-fest. Using the brilliant Google Maps’ code someone has rigged markers to appear on each zip code with Hot or Not members in it. You can then cycle through their pictures and click them to get to their Hot or Not website profile.
To me, Hot or Not is one of those internet wastelands like 50% of Deviant Art and 100% of sites like “Rate my Rack.com”. On top of my general distaste for Hot or Not there is a bit of a creepy side to the whole project. The site is not part of Google or Hot or Not. It is something made by Frozen Bear Industries. If one makes a profile on Hot or Not are they informed that their face will pop up on another site, hovering right over where they live? Not exactly. But for those who actually read the Terms and Conditions (read: nobody) there is this:
Accordingly, by submitting your photograph and/or any personal information, you thereby waive any privacy expectations you have with respect to our use of your likeness or personal information provided to us.
Goody goody. I may just read terms more often.
By Holliday , 1st July 3:14 pm
An old technology seems to be becoming the new thing. A while ago (almost a year, my first Aelon post ever) I wrote up an article on a variety of things peaking my interest at the moment. One of those was DVD Audio. DVD Audio (if you didn’t know) is music stored on a DVD rather than a CD. With all the extra space a DVD has the audio can be much higher quality as well as supersede Stereo sound and be full 5.1 surround sound. DVD Audio seemed like a great idea that would never catch on back then. The discs were not anymore expensive than CDs however the DVD Audio players were not as common. Usually found only in Personal Computers or high tech entertainment systems. The reason not being the DVD player itself but the set-up required to actually enjoy the media. In order to make it worth while you need to have a 5.1 surround sound system.
» Read all of “Dual Disc Determination“…
By Holliday , 25th June 4:15 pm
So it is here. Battlefield 2 was released on June 22nd (and 21st in some places). I picked up my copy almost mechanically. I got up that day, ate breakfast and just wandered to the nearest place to purchase my copy. Having played the demo for only a few days there wasn’t exactly any “excitement” to the purchase. It was more like getting an upgrade to something I was already enjoying.
However, the excitement would come. I actually did not play it too much at first. It is quite a behemoth of a game to tell you the truth. There is no “easing” into it. The single-player tab might as well not even exist. All the tutorials are given “on the fly” while you get near new things in the game you may not have used yet. This is quite helpful. I kept feeling like I was waiting for something. Some go ahead signal to really sit down and play.
Well I finally got everything how I wanted it. Joystick set up, keys mapped out, VOIP headset set up, visual and audio options tuned to perfect (something the SP is good for, testing). So over the past 3 days I’ve dived in to all sorts of servers. Ranked, unranked, huge and small and even some which already had some bizarre player-run rule sets (size 64 map but only 4v4 snipers only). So, in list form, I bring you my positive and negative impressions (bad stuff first so you forget about it during the good stuff).
» Read all of “War is a Hell of a Game“…
By Holliday , 10th June 9:11 am
Back when I was a young lad I had no computer. I had my Sega Genesis for video games and that was that. I had no real idea that computers played games in a serious sense of the word. The “internet” was unknown to me.
My neighbors across the street were in their 50s or so and were those very “community” kind of neighbors. They had gatherings and such things all the time. These gatherings bored the hell out of me. Largely filled with adults and children I didn’t want to play with (I must have been 10 or so). During one of these gatherings my neighbor must have noticed my overall lack of satisfaction with the whole ordeal. He came over to me and asked me if I wanted to play this new video game he just got. I said “fuck yeah!” in my most respectful tone (yes sir). He showed me how to launch the games he had on his computer (must have been Windows 95 or maybe even 3.1) and let me be.
That was the start. What I was playing was a little title called Doom. After that night I would constantly pester my parents to let me go over and play more Doom. One day I went over and my neighbor’s son was home from college with his computer and there was a chaotic array of sloppy chords all over the den between the two computers. They told me to try it out and I wandered around a level I was familiar with but there was this new monster. “Who’s the guy in green with the funny helmet?”
» Read all of “Multiplayer (R)evolution“…
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