Gunpla Heaven!

This is so insane, this video is of a variety talk show where they introduce many topics just to chatter and perhaps get a laugh out of. Gunpla is insanely popular over in Asia so it's only natural that the layman wants to see exactly how Gunpla is made. Well, here's a sneak peak into the mythic world of plastic kits. Talk about overkill, I always joked that the technology inside a Master Grade Gundam can be replicated to make a real 1/1 scale weapon of war but in a couple of years this factory might just be able to pull it off. It's quite impressive to see actually, it's so high tech all for the sake of making a do it yourself plastic kit.

The talk show host in the red cosplaying as Char should have done it all the way with the mask and helmet, but the guy who believes he's really Amuro is hilarious as he sounds exactly like Amuro. What a loser lol. They actually have a 3D scanner for these things as well as a laser scribe that cuts a metallic mold for these kits, talk about insane precision. It's no wonder every MG kit comes roughly the same, unlike a lot of garage kits out there where imperfections and variations litter the crop. Keroro Gunsou would probably crap his pants (wait he doesn't wear any...) if he got to visit this place. The end part there is crazy. Apparently they can make those little 3 millimeter Gundam figurines with that laser scribing machine.

Can That Sword Get Any Bigger?

http://www.e2046.com/product_info.php?products_id=7252

The hunt will live on forever as soon as you get yourself one of these! And a bunch of Monster Hunter weapons!!

Something to Keep an "Eye On"

Unicorns Make Great Mecha Too

And finally do you hear that in the background? While watching the video, as soon as the Unicorn launches did you notice? Mikuru begins singing and it sort of goes with the video, how crazy is that!? This year is a decent year for Gunpla it seems after quite a few lately that have been less than stellar. Maybe Bandai will finally release the long rumored/wanted Hygog?

The Wrath of 'Los

http://www.hlj.com/product/HAP80430

Too bad I found out about this a little late, but this is getting exciting. More and more Monster Hunter goods are appearing on the market and this one is a pretty darn awesome rendition of the Rathalos. Too bad the picture is cropped so close because I can't see if it has folded wingspans or if he's in full flight form there. Either way, this gets a big thumbs up from the Bard.

Fun in the Sun 2007

I swear, first we have Korean Revolutionary Colonies, then Castlevania in Korea, NOW we've got fun in the sun. So...how exactly is this related to Spanish colonial conquest?

I bet Maggi didn't design those : http://maggi.new21.net/

Hope This Isn't Just a Fairy Tale

http://kotaku.com/gaming/psp/folklore-psp-in-development-291556.php

After changing into a fresh pair of pants, I can safely type now. Kotaku is reporting from yet another source that they've confirmed a PSP version of FolkLore (FolkSoul in Japan). I loved the demo, it might not be the best game in the world but as the Shining Wizard mentioned...the Bard loves fairy tale creatures. If this game pans out the way it should, then Gaming Republic may just redeem itself for the real historical giant crabs. Only time will tell.

The (Simple) Art of War

Some of the friends of the Blacksmiths have asked questions about Granado Espada as it's a game that isn't widely known to them as they aren't avid players of MMO games. So to answer these questions I've made 2 more small clips that demonstrate exactly how a multi-character system can function in the simplest setup. I started this game playing with the Elementalist (Warlock), Scout and Warrior. This combo is a simple tank and AoE (Area of Effect) setup which most MMO players are quite familiar with. The unique thing about GE is the ability to switch between 3 characters and control all or none of them at all. By simply pressing quick keys (Alt+E or spacebar) one can set the characters up to Patrol Mode which basically tells the AI to react to enemies nearby in attack mode, similar to placing Gambits on partners in FF12 but a little more advanced as you'll see.



In this clip I set up my Warrior and Scout in Patrol Mode. After they position themselves I hit F1 to select my Elementalist (Galatea) and then hit F9 to switch to Individual mode. Individual mode makes it so that any commands I input only effect the person I am currently in control of so obviously Select All mode gives the commands to all of them. In this mode however, I am free to move Galatea all over the map and do anything I want, in this case it's to draw (or pull) enemies towards my Warrior and Scout. As they approach you'll notice that once they reach the field of vision the Warrior automatically runs forward and starts swinging away. The Scout also times heals based on damage percentage and automatically knows to heal since he is in the right Stance (stances dictate what abilities that character has to utilize). In this clip however he's idle because no one has taken enough damage.



In this second clip, you see what happens when things get more hectic. I ended up pulling much more than I needed to and at the same time some more enemies spawned behind my group. Things look a bit worrisome but anyone who's played MMOs a lot knows that a good plan always comes through. Here I use the aforementioned strategy of Tanking/AoE. The Warrior in this game is the same as WoW's in that they can provoke nearby enemies to focus attacks on them. By using this I can gather away all the nasties from my squishier characters (like Galatea). My Scout finally begins auto healing here and when they all get near, it's time to drop the bomb and call it a day. After clearing out most of the enemies with a well timed AoE spell, I clean up the stragglers and try unsuccessfully to show off Freezing Spear. Btw you can also hear in the distance someone else who was in the area. Apparently they tried to same thing with less success as you can hear their Elementalist bite the dust.

The Latest from Colonial French Korea!

Have you ever seen the map of Granado Espada? Well it's in the same shape as Korea itself. So does that mean Granado Espada is some sort of Spanish/French Korean alternate universe? Weird. Anyway, I thought I'd post up about the only thing that keeps players playing this game. Unlike most other MMO games, customizing characters is not entirely what Granado Espada is about. In fact you can argue that collecting more family members is ultimately more fun in this game than getting a silly hat or shoes. So here's the latest 2 that I added to mine :
That's Emilia Guilianno and Lisa Lynway. There's a more super version of Emilia named Emilia the Sage but I don't really feel like paying real money to get an Emilia that can fly. Lisa is just fine the way she is though. I also got a guy named Soho but I don't really feel like wasting Barracks space to create him.
So what about the rest of the family? They're fine, except for poor Raki there. He runs the expenses and he just realized how expensive his sisters are. At least he can take solace in the fact that now they level fast AND stylish!

Cloverlocalypse

I think I found secret behind JJ Abrams Monster in his new up and coming untitled flick. Deep within the lake waters of Espoo, Finland lies the most fowl, hellish, and vile monster ever to walk the enchanted lands, who has been in slumber for 1000 years but by some miracle managed to drift into the upper New York bay. Prepare, for on January 18, 2008, he will awaken!!....MUSTAKRAKISH!!! THE LAKE TROLL!!

Fun with Fraps

Here's a short clip I recorded from earlier while running around Al Queza Moreza (whatever I'm sure I didn't even spell that right much less got it close)? It's a test of fraps on this PC while running a game. For the test however I had to significantly lower the resolution (1024x768) from my usual resolution (1440x900) in order to get a size ratio and a smoother running recording. On my default size it slows down, though not too much. I also wanted it to fit the youtube.com size ratio rather than force feeding it a 16:10 video.



Oh and this one is thrown in for fun. A glitch that happens when you die every now and then is that your animation gets stuck. This one features the knockdown animation, which looks pretty funny.

More Fun with Oblivion

Using a new mod I found called Actor's-in-Charge (I think it's what it's called) I've been fooling around in Oblivion with a lot of different things. The mod basically gives your character the ability to use many different poses and also gives you a spell to cause others to do those poses as well. I've also input a free roaming camera to allow for better angles then the default ones. Finally using the magic of fraps I'm able to take screenshots of the game with anti-aliasing enabled, which finally shows what the game is capable of on this cheap eVGA 7600GS (it's not the best in terms of frame rate but that'll do donkey...that'll do).
I also decided to change my character's face. One of my friends doesn't look too kindly at the Alba, so I decided instead of decimating a real person's mug I'd try my hand at creating a custom one using Ren's Cosmetic Beauty pack which gave me this elf look. After downloading more mods including Remy's Fantasy Figures, I've been able to create a very attractive elf character. It's after all the goal of every fantasy dork out there to have a hot elf, Oblivion PC makes that ever more possible with modding. Also I noticed from some of the Japanese Oblivion sites that they tend to make mod pages where they take screencaps and write a mini-storyline for their characters. I'm not that obsessed but I thought that it'd be hilarious to try taking screens in a sequence without telling any story. See what you come up with?
My question though is why would an elf chick be thrown in jail? We all know the first 2 minutes of the game is a jailbreak which leads to this point in the game, but why would anyone throw someone like this in jail? With how absolutely FUGLY the ingame NPCs all are, this game needs more beautiful people which is for the first time a really good justification for having made such an attractive character. Maybe with all the fugliness around, it's like that episode of the Twilight Zone where the beautiful woman was horribly disfigured and the "regular" people were pig faces?
I screwed this one up a little, her arm is going right through the floor there. Oh and an explanation about the "armor" she wears, it came with one of the mods that added clothes for Remy's UFF. I decided to add to the sheer dork factor here I'd make her wear something that would recall that lol sound clip of the D&D with the Mountain Dew.
And we're done. So what kind of story did you create here? What do you think is happening? Oh and you can see it slightly but I have the improved Natural Environments mod added so the trees are bigger, though the skies in this shot are entirely clear of the weather effects. I also didn't catch any of the added insects or birds in the screen but futures posts with more fun are abound.
*Update : I just noticed it, but I did catch 1 fly buzzing around near her ear there.

Fun with Oblivion

Ah the best part about Oblivion for the PC is definitely the mods. So what mod did I use now that I've got the game running against it's will? Well, Jessica Alba of course! This has got to be one of the strangest things to do with a game, I gave my character here Jessica Alba's face thanks to those Face Gen guys and on top of that I gave her "BAB's" hot body mod to replace the mannish one they all come with. I just got started with the modding fun so far, but fear not as I get deeper into the game there will be more mischief. For now...it seems Alba needs to hunt some deer...

The other guys like Sean Connery are harder to make look decent as they require facial hair mods and that sort of thing. This works best with the clean faced individuals it seems.

*For some unknown reason Bethseda deemed it necessary to allow you only to take screencaps by modding the ini file...and on top of that it only works without full scene anti-aliasing on so Alba looks a bit rough on the edges.

The Hunt Will Last FOREVER!

http://kotaku.com/photogallery/monterhunterwonderfest/

Thus far this has got to be the most wonderous of Wonderfests as it looks like there's a TON of Monster Hunter collectibles about to hit the market soon. Here we were on the Blacksmith just talking about how cool it'd be to have poseable MH figures with removable armor and out of the blue it seems there's going to be Microman/Kamen Rider style cast off armor figures. What the heck is up with the girl with the gun and the Destroyah model? lol

*Update! Where do Hunters go when they grow tired...why Pinky St. of course!
http://blog.yam.com/akros/article/11224453

Alerted to the presence of colored scans of Pinky St. : Monster Hunter I dug up a chinese blogger who happens to have said scans. Man even though the LAST thing in the world I thought of buying is Pinky St., these are highly tempting. I'm sure the resident Queen of Blacksmiths already has her sites set on the entire set...

Playstation 3 Unkillable According to Kotaku

http://kotaku.com/gaming/console-of-steel/the-ps3-is-unkillable-288962.php

Unkillable? I hope the folks at Kotaku realize what they stumbled upon. I hate to say this but if this state of matters proves true, then the Zombie Apocalypse Rating Index may just go straight to high. Unkillable? Zombies are unkillable. Are you saying that the Sony Playstation 3 is in actually one of the living dead!? Troubling times indeed...

Maybe We Need a Cheaper Sword and a Newer World?

Granado Espada was released in North America under the name Sword of the New World : Granado Espada. Though the software is $20 only, it cost $8 per month to maintain your account of which I chose not to. Instead I went to Singapore's release of their english version of Granado Espada which was still in free beta until recently when they announced that they will charge you as well for an account though the details are much better (about $5.20 a month) and they offer you differing packages to suite your gameplay style. I guess .50 a day is kind of cool, think of it as sort of an overextended arcade game?

So is Granado Espada worth your money? I had previously mentioned this as an alternative to World of Warcraft because of it being free, but now that the charges are out what would draw one to play this game? Honestly, it is no WoW. The point and click controls are infuriating at times however it was necessary to allow all 3 of your characters to have quick keys for their macro bars. The graphics are certainly better than most MMORPGs, but I guess it's expected from Asia where style always beats substance. There are some problems with this game that I would like to avoid in games altogether.

For one thing it's a grind fest. Sure there's quests to do, but most of them are "kill 100 of these!" or "stop 200 of these from going to x". The combat is fast and furious as most creatures take about 1 to 2 hits to knock down, but they respawn faster than you can pick up your drops at times. Leveling was easy until level 15 where it just slows to a crawl and we're back to archaic times when killing random beasties equals a good play experience.

I have noted 1 interesting dilemma about this game. I've been grinding out random mobs in an area called Al Mor-something. Anyway, I noticed that every now and then I'll pass a room where a player has his group parked in a convenient corner and set on "patrol mode". What this does is causes the player's characters to stand in place and attack incoming enemies much like in the old Blizzard RTS'. The problem here is it's just about the same as botting, so I'm running around busting my butt when all it takes is to leave the game in the background while the computer kills these creatures? Granted I'll die once or twice thanks to a roaming boss spawn but then I just pay 100 vis to the waypoint, run back and bam I'm in business again.

Still I do like the game's fast pace action, it's ability to allow for multiple character controls, the costumes and the RNPC hunts (these are the NPCs you can recruit into your team). It's fun enough every now and then but don't go grinding out this game as it'll give you bad memories of Lineage II.

* Update : The pay to play system in Granado Espada International Edition is actually pretty awesome now that I understand it. Apparently your monthly subscription is refunded to you in game in the form of Gold-points which you can then spend in the cash shop for fancier items and possibly RNPC cards. Pretty darn good deal there.

Danny Choo gets to see EVERYTHING!

http://www.dannychoo.com/blog_entry/eng/1034/Claymore/

Man this is the luckiest Otaku-guy in the world. He gets to go to all these shows, see all these things and even probably has some kind of deal with Good Smile Company. And now he gets to see this in person. Oh my god I want this SO bad right now. I'm serious. Like Max Factory Haruhi bad. Damn...that's pretty bad. I bet if I preorder this thing and then it comes out watch them release Galatea. I'd be pretty cheesed off at that point...then again not really. Like we always say here on the blacksmith's, why Cray more when you Cray less? That didn't make a lick of sense...

Level 5 to the rescue!

Just recently I discover that my PS3 can do something more than merge into dark matter. I learned that I could actually make a Japanese PSN account without having to go through to much trouble, Thus...giving my PS3 a reason to do something other than upscale dvd's and play PS2 games.The first thing that went through my head was Japanese PS1 games, demos, videos!!!sweet Jesus scissors!! this is gonna be fun! Well for the most part I was right about the PS1 games, they had shit loads, 50 to be exact, Many of them were fighters and rpgeez. Next was the PS3 demo's, for the most part this section was sad, the Folksoul and BladeStorm demo's were the only exceptions(btw David Beckham's avatar is in BladeStorm I shit you not).Last was the Video's and the downloadable content. The content was obviously japanese and basically unusable to me (sorry no japanese oblivion high school Hime packs) and the video section I did not look at until today.


As I browsed through the first page of this section I noticed that most of the video's there were on the English PSN already, there I new that the rest of the video's probably weren't going to be anything special (aw shucks).As soon as I turned to second page I noticed right away a new video which stood out from the rest due to its busy steel looking picture box. It was a game made by Level 5 called Shirokishi Monogatari, this game I was familiar with cause most popular gaming sites have covered this under the name White knight Story, seriously this game didn't seem all that interesting at first, but believe me after watching this video on the PSN I was sold. This game has all the makings of an epic tale on a huge scale, its like a mesh of mechs, pirates, politics and huge ultraman bad guys!!(there's even one that looks like Cthulhu). The Graphics of course are phenomenal and the musical Jrock-pop that is played in the background is awesome and add's the element of hardcore chaos to the crazy battling thats taking place \m/>_<\m/. To all of you who own a PS3 get yourself a PSN japanese account(also sat speakers help) and check this game out cause its awesome, and don't go looking it up online because remember you wanna give your friends a good reason why there's a 600$ trashcan in you living room, and all though this promo video is sure as hell not a good enough reason, at least your moving toward the right direction in convincing them that you have a machine capable of playing good games......oh and at least you not folding =P

A Look Under the Hood

It's been years, quite literally since my desktop has been that empty. A quick peak at a portion of my screen however shows some interesting and perhaps perverse dealings. Anyway, like I said, it's been years and I've finally cracked. I used to use exclusively Windows 2000. I'm sort of one of those guys who's extremely slow to upgrade OS, case in point I was pulled away from Windows 95 kicking and screaming. I NEVER wanted to touch ME and when XP came out I was very wary. So now a couple of months into the sinking ship called Vista I've finally caught up with the new millennium of PC useage.

On top of upgrading to XP, the entire computer itself resembles little of what it used to. Thanks to me buddy over on the Island, I'm finally up to 2.8 Gigs on a P4 (though it's an older core) and I've broken the 1 Gig RAM barrier for the first time. The new monitor I mentioned earlier also prompted me to purchase a new graphics card to take advantage, though I stayed very cheap and got an eVGA GeForce 7600 GS. Amazingly enough though, this sub-$100 card is actually quite good, though I guess Half-Life 2, Granado Espada and Guild Wars aren't exactly PC killing at this point they did get a "new lease on life" sort of deal by having some very cool effects on now. I'm finally able to see what all this shader 2.0 stuff is about, though that screen shot from HL2 : Episode 1 really doesn't do it justice till you get to some of the later levels which abuse the dynamic lighting.

I had heard that this card can pump out Oblivion, though I haven't got the game yet I'll be trying to get a copy to see for myself. Though I imagine that with these specs I would only be able to play Oblivion on the old faithful 1024 x 768 resolution, it's still more than enough as I went a little insane playing Guild Wars (I bumped that one up to 1440 x 900) and yet it still ran pretty smooth. Guild Wars is made for those people who have some older specs on their machines, so naturally it looks good on older machines but if you're fortunate enough you end up with a pretty spectacular looking game.

Granado Espada looks really nice. I'm surprised by how well this game ran overall, though it chocked a bit in town that seems to be the expectation for any game that loads in so much so quickly. I really love how awesome the models in this game look though it is a bit much with them adventuring in those outfits. I'm guessing my Warlock there doesn't feel even a little bit embarrassed? Her boobs are basically hanging right out of her clothes there, that's just the half of it as you can see. It's a shame that this is a pay to play game but news out of Singapore is that it's a $5 per month charge so it's not too bad.

harry hentai!!

its been like 2 weeks since my last post, I've been quite busy reading harry potter, and working on a hentai (ecchi sort of) for yen press =P, with enough hope from this moment on I'll stay consistant with my daily posting, poor bards beens holding the frontlines. ;_; Im coming buddy!!

Need Some New Gears for this War

http://www.dailytech.com/Retailers+Estimate+Xbox+360+Failure+Rate+High+as+33+Percent/article7892.htm

In this era of name calling (my favorites are the X-plode 360, the nogamestation 3 and the Nintendo hospitalvisit) and stubborn "video game system wars", we have another shot of ammo for all those people that seem to enjoy berating other hardware they don't particularly own. In this case is the failure rate of the X-Box 360. Now I know, before I believed that it wasn't a huge problem and maybe similar to the older Playstation 2 issues that some people have had before. However as dailytech.com discovered through some retail sources the problem might be bigger than one once believed.

I hope Microsoft decides to do something about the internal architecture of their gaming system, I wouldn't say this is outrageous but it's a problem and one that currently stops even me from buying one of these. I'm not entirely sure this is a cooling problem or a faulty chipset issue but it's clear that something in the architecture of the 360 is causing this, maybe a pipe system cooling solution will fix it if it is heat? So of the people I know who do own an X-Box 360 how many have had them replaced? All. :( Microsoft's customer service department however is pretty good and they have an awesome warranty at least.

Returning in Full Force

I usually shop online for deals on computer components and the like but this was too good to pass up. A mere $129.00 + tax got me a cheap 19" Westinghouse Widescreen monitor. I've been wanting something cheap and widescreen to replace the gargantuan Goliath of a 19" CRT I'd been using for years now. I do need new speakers however, the old CRT I mentioned actually had some really kick @$$ speakers attached to it and obviously regular monitor speakers are just garbage. However upon viewing my Haruhi DVD and not seeing those black bars crunching the video down, it's become apparent why you would want a widescreen type of monitor in the future. The only issue is how my games will react to this screen as most are formatted for the old 4:3 standard.

Char Rouseman

I have no idea who this character is or what game/anime/manga it's from but I rather like it. The design is pretty cool and it's coming from Good Smile Company so it's gonna be well made. Over on Danny Choo's site he got a preview look at the figure on a visit to GSC main offices, it also looks like he might have a Mirai figure made. Kind of makes me wonder if I can't try to design a moe-type anime girl and try to cash in lol (yeah right). He also makes mention that this figure can "cast-off". If you don't know what that means, I'm not gonna explain it. ^_^;

http://www.shuraki.jp/products/shall-02.html
http://www.dannychoo.com

*edit : I found out where this figure came from now. It seems Red Entertainment and Good Smile Company got together to create a new series of drama CD/artbook/figures and this is the third one in the line. The first figure is a rather cheap 3800 yen. Pretty darn good.

World of Warcraft Never Ends

So Blizzard has unveiled their latest money pit craze, World of Warcraft : Wrath of the Lich King. This was entirely expected from an MMORPG, after all expanding your make believe world is the bread and butter of pay to play games. Just like the last time (despite a promise not to do this every expansion pack) Blizzard will be raising the level cap 10 more levels making level 80 the new end level. On top of that the prerequisite new dungeons, new tiered armors, new hairstyles, dances, the whole shebang returns in full force. They're even throwing in a new Heroic job class which is based on the Death Knight, about damn time. I know some people who have been clamoring for this since day one only to end up playing Warlock as a sort of consolation prize.

My question here is...is this all worth it? I mean I'm now part of the minority on the world wide web that doesn't believe in the alpha and omega of WoW. I spent tons of time on the game pre-Burning Crusade and even some time on the game after. But I came to realize that this game is not actually fun. I'm not talking about the gameplay mechanics either, those are fine. The leveling system, combat system and all that is actually quite well made as expected of Blizzard. What I'm talking about here is the actual motivation to play the game. It's sort of like you're compelled to play and level up your character, ultimately the goal is to get to the max level, get your tiered armor and then "pwnzors n00bs". That's just it, there's no goal other than the "one you make for yourself". The problem comes when you reach the dangling carrot at the end of the stick. I've been told countless times by people that it's expected of this game or that this game is constantly evolving to bring you more. Too much of a good thing though is bad for you.

Now I tried the guild thing, and believe me I think the most bitter part of the experience in playing World of Warcraft is here. For those of you that don't play, imagine that you join a society like the Stonecutters. You've got your fun handshake, initiation tests and all that. You're now a part of that group, that's where the fun ends. Those stories about epic battles in a coordinated effort? Yeah that's only if you were there from the beginning, otherwise you're the one hunting Dreamfoils for 6 hours a night while your "friends" are on that epic battle. Sure there are guilds who become close friends, some even have found true love if that's even possible on a videogame, but for the most part you have to remember that your true friends are those around you who would do more than offer you a Major Mana Potion.

On top of that some people have asked "why don't you just turn it off?" during my subscription months. Well there were about two reasons, #1 being that logging on means they (you guild) reward you with Dragon Kill Points or some other imaginary monetary system your guild cooks up. What do these points do? You trade them in with your guild to have a shot at winning armor pieces that bosses drop upon killing them. It's quite complicated and the rules change with each guild but this is generally why most people stay on in the first place. It gives players a sense of accomplishment I guess. Another reason is that the game simulates a social environment. A lot of people tend to overlook the idea that you are participating in a social atmosphere (though this is not a real life one) and having "friends" within this guild you tend to feel compelled to stay there to help them. It sounds stupid at first but when you actually play the game you tend to get caught up in it and you (like me) at least TRY doing things the way the natives do. The only other reason is that you actually enjoy this.

Granted they have since made systems in the game to offset this problem by reducing raid sizes (you used to have to have 40 people to accomplish tasks in raids, now it's 25) and they do section off the dungeons so you can complete these sections at your leisure while it saves the progress you've already done. But there isn't an alternative to this gameplay if you're a player who either has no friends on the game, has no time on their hands or just can't pass that "upside down inverted handstand initiation test". I found it quite hilarious that the most fun I actually had on the game was leveling up a Blood Elf Priest from level 1-21 after the release of the first expansion pack. In layman's terms that's like a drop in the bucket as the early levels are designed to be extremely easily accessible only to scale up as you get higher and higher. It's their addiction hook.

Now obviously one of my best friends of course is sick of me lambasting the idea that only a hand full of hours of the game were actually fun, but I can't help but feel this way considering the cost that goes into playing World of Warcraft. The monthly fee can cost a person more than $100 a year to play, this monthly fee also has the bonus added effect of making a person feel as though they need to make up the value of their monthly expenditure. Maybe it's only for those conscious of their wallets but you feel like you HAVE to play while your account runs. The exception to the rule obviously are those who are burnt out from playing TOO much and they're just too lazy to cancel their accounts, thereby paying Blizzard more money for a service they aren't actually using.

I still do wish that Blizzard had stayed true to their concepts of allowing a more casual play style for their players. I know the word "casual" causes quite a temper tantrum from a lot of the more hardcore players but this game was originally designed with that in mind. Somewhere along the line they decided that hours long campaigns are the only way to play this game and it's frustrating being that I've been a fan of the series since Warcraft 2 originally popped up all those years ago. Granted my knowledge of the Burning Crusade end game is quite limited, but I just don't have the motivation to jump back in to find out. I've tried to make it fun for myself by PVPing, raiding, grinding random creatures for money or doing quests for meager rewards even after hitting cap level. This game however does not seem to offer me anything more than an endless crunch through dungeons for "purples".

It's just sad that I had originally joined up with this game because a lot of my other friends were playing it. They claimed it was one of the best games around and well worth the investment, yet the entire game time was a grueling task of constantly trying to keep up with other players. I hadn't actually even spent more than a small percentage of my play time actually with my friends. They were all pretty much capped off by then and off raiding while I wasn't even allowed to approach their guilds until I had reached their certain quotas in level, armor and item donation. I had quit a month after Burning Crusade landed, it was probably all I could take of that game. A lot of people flock back for new expansion packs, but please ask yourself if you will end up any different than before? I personally don't feel like it is changing all that much to warrant another subscription.

I don't know, maybe because I used to MUD and play various online games of the same type maybe that's what affects my opinion of the game but I still do feel strongly that World of Warcraft is best left to moderation if that's even possible. I've got to apologize to my friend whom I mention earlier however as he's bore the brunt of my thoughts on this game. It's also worth mentioning that this is just my own opinion, quite frankly the game itself is well designed, it's just the circumstances surrounding my own game time that led to this disapproval. However there are alternatives to WoW for those interested like :

Guild Wars Prophecies/Factions/Nightfall
Monster Hunter Freedom
Granado Espada (the Singapore Beta is free and is the full game)
Never Winter Nights (it's buggy but at least it's a good small group adventure)

Shinobido

Just watch this...WATCH IT!

Looking Too Deeply into Things

http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=25817098&sid=6175993&action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;2

I've got to chime in (rant) on this article, this is absolutely ridiculous. Basically the meat of this article is that Resident Evil 5 encourages racism. Now me, you and everyone who watched the E3 trailer probably felt like it had shades of Black Hawk Down going but in the back of our minds we probably said to ourselves "man watch someone think this is racist". Well here we are with lots of commentary about how this game teaches children to kill Africans and other people of colored heritage. I am calling shenanigans on this, why?

Well for starters it's a videogame with an M rating. Apparently one of these commentators believes the game is marketed towards children, starting them young on the road of hate. Yet the game is M rated so if you can't read that on the package and buy it for your kids, well then it's the fault of the parents who don't listen to the Gamestop employees. I guess it's expected though, I mean I once sold a copy of Space Channel 5 to a young girl looking for a cool rhythm dance game only to have their grandparents try to have my head for selling "pornography" so I guess what the hell would I know about the ratings system?

I mean, just because you happen to kill a certain thing in a virtual reality scenario doesn't mean you would reproduce that action in real life (unless you're mentally disturbed). Does this mean I'm racist against everything that I happen to kill in a videogame? I better put down Monster Hunter then, I mean I've killed PLENTY of Yian Kut Ku and I'm sure that means I hate Wyverns a lot. I'd also suggest for all you World of Warcraft guys to stop killing Gnomes, you don't wanna be pulled into court for being insensitive to short people. For that matter, I apologize to every single mushroom I have EVER insulted because I liked to play Super Mario Bros. so much when I was 6 years old, I didn't realize the long term racial effects that game would have on my psyche.

Ridiculous? Well it seems everyone loves to find something in everything for the sake of finding things. Forget the fact that we've been mowing down zombies of all kinds including farm animals in movies, games and books for years NOW it's a problem to kill a zombie cause it's based in Africa? Oh and the best part is when one of the aforementioned commentators decides that Zombi-ism itself is a parallel to AIDs in real life and that is also linked to the African setting hence the...omg. I'm just gonna go kill some ninjas now, cause you know...I'm a self hating Asian...