Uncategorized

Happy Birthday ! I hope you have a splendiferously splendid day.

I got my Katamari Damacy soundtrack today. This is a great soundtrack! It is really quirky and fun, with lots of unique tunes. It reminds me of the Sakura Taisen Vocal Collections that came out several years back, which are lots of fun. You really should pick it up if you haven’t already…

So now that I have some hours of playing on my back, I suppose I’ll ramble a bit about World of Warcraft.

What I’ve found so far is mostly good news. I can’t help comparing it to the MMORPG that took so much of my time for so long: Dark Age of Camelot. So many things are similar between the two that I picked up on them right off. However there are some differences that force me to fight instincts pretty well ingrained from my zillions of hours of DAoC. First the bad. For one thing, it seems remarkably difficult to select a party member by clicking the party member on screen. By far the easiest way it to use the hotkeys, but I’ve always clicked into the action, or the handy mini group window which doesn’t exist in WOW. That’s the first thing I miss quite a bit. Healing party members quickly is difficult when I can’t select quickly. (it seems I’m not the only one who’s missed this, here’s an add-on that solves this: ) Of course I also have that feeling of being totally overwhelmed that I’m not used to. I knew DAoC to a scary level of detail and I was the one helping others most of the time. It feels weird to be in the position of not knowing what I’m doing and having to ask for help. Also, inventory management and buying/selling is a real chore. First off, buying/selling is very slow. Selling things is a lag fest and it can be very frustrating. Second, you don’t have nearly enough backpack space at the start, and unless I’m missing something, more space is very expensive for a new character. My mage stumbled on a 6 slot pouch from a drop, so he’s a bit better off, but they both run out of space way too soon. Now some good. The world is remarkable. It is huge and beautiful and each area is very different looking from the last and features different music. The music is excellent, although not as good as Lineage 2, which has the best music of any MMORPG, in my opinion. The game is also much much easier than Camelot, particularly the early parts. In the last two days I’ve leveled two characters above level 10, and both of them, a mage and paladin, can easily solo things a couple levels above them. In Camelot, most classes were hard pressed to take monsters one level above them. (there are a few exceptions to this, of course) It might just be that I’ve picked good solo classes so far though. Once I got out of the newbie areas, there is a great deal of role playing to watch and participate in. As I play exclusively on RP servers (I can’t stand the names on “regular” servers, they just rip me out of the world) and love role playing, this is a nice change. Camelot’s RP servers had good role playing if you looked for it, but it wasn’t that often random and abundant. The quests are also interesting and can be found everywhere. This makes for a nice change of pace. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be all that much overall that makes WOW “different” from what I tired of in Camelot. It is still early so I might be missing it, but I find myself in the same treadmill that drove me crazy. Fight->level->fight->level. Okay, that’s enough for now.

If you’d like to look me up, I’m currently playing a Pally, Yvrey, on Silver Hand. I might roll a Hunter there next and give it a “shot.” I’m pretty happy with the community on Silver Hand, so I think I’ll be making it my home.

So we’ve a release date now. But July seems so far away…