Archives

The System Protection Saga, it’s still really annoying.

Mar1

So awhile back I posted about the annoyance of the current state of copy and account protection for games and my small Blizzard problem.

I guess it’s time for a bit of an update.

It seems I never get to calling whenever they’re open, because I have no idea what time of day or night that is for me here in eastern australia.
7am to 8pm may seem like a big time window. But really it’s not when dealing with people on the other side of the globe.

Just then I did some conversion work, and I have a wonderful time slot of 2am to 3pm according to their message.
I just called, it’s not even 2pm here, they’re closed.

So that’s off the board for another 12 hours I guess.

I managed to locate my warcraft 3 and frozen throne cases complete with cd keys on them.
So I figure why not put those in to the system, you know to verify who I am.

Just like my Starcraft 2 key, these ones also don’t appear to be in the system.

Wow, this is a brilliant idea.
Sure I can play warcraft 3 no problems, and even diablo 2 (I don’t install, I just migrate the directory between machines).
However Starcraft 2, the Heart of the Swarm Beta, and Diablo 3 are all off the books, all because I moved house and their automated system refuses to recognise product keys that have been registered with my account.

I have the games, I have the boxes, I have the jewel cases and the discs, manuals, the works, but I might as well not.

Now I compare this with the wonderful experience I’ve had with dealing with arenanet support trying to get my password for my guildwars account reset.
All the information asks you to submit a ticket on their system which uses a different login system, easily done.
They then ask you for a bunch of information like game keys and other stuff they can compare to your account.
And well it turns out I didn’t need that after all, since I just did it more or less instantly through the ncsoft account site, which had questions I could actually remember (seriously, how the hell am I supposed to know what name I would choose if I could change my name? what year did I decide that answer?)

So now I’m still unable to touch my battle.net account, yet in a fraction of the time and annoyance I’ve reclaimed my ncsoft account.
So now I’m working with the ncsoft tech guys to figure out how to get guild wars working with windows 7 using directx 9.
They’re actually a pleasure to communicate with.

So to break it down, ncsoft good, blizzard bad.

And to prove how I feel, the following picture 😀

Gotta catch them all.

So I herd you like guildwarz

New years, new friends, new place, new everything.

Dec31

So I’m sitting here at a party thrown by some good friends and thought I might muse over the last year.

Some long awaited games came out and I bought many of them.

I bought a new PC from pccasegear.

Soundwave where I got to see half the bands I wanted because I got fried in the sun.

Spent a lot of time with my new first legion guildies who followed me over to guild wars 2.
Crash, Palamax, Nhorn, Warjay, Blazorax, Tara and many more that slip my mind, you’re all awesome people.

I met the most awesome person ever, Nikki I shall miss you.

And I will not get a haircut.

I shall post more later after some drinking.

Pure White, purely offended by technical issues.

Nov10

So I was hanging out in Lion’s Arch yesterday afternoon and I received a whisper from a character named Mz Pure.

I was asked if I’d be interested in joining a casual/hardcore World Vs World guild that did regular runs based in Australia.
So I agreed to do so.

I mean their definition of hardcore was 3 nights a week at 4 hours each. Pretty easy for a guy who’s generally home in the 6-10pm timeslot on most days of the week.
I mean I have no issues with doing that, especially since the monthly award requires a bunch of WvW kills as well as granting loot and money.

So I ended up as a trial soldier.
I managed an entire run with them yesterday (this being a friday evening) that appeared to have no issues.
No technical issues though I think my drivers flaked momentarily at one point.
No negative comments or feedback.
In fact my only feedback was to go to various locations to capture points and collect supplies as a group.
I did it all.

So today I log in around an hour later than intended, but still well within the required timeslot.
I changed my colours to white (or close enough, it was pretty damn white) even though there were others in the guild in WvW who were not in white or even any near approximation.
I fire up Vent apologise for lateness and ask if they were on Sanctum of Rall, to which I received a yes.
This was all I sent during that half an hour to my knowledge.

Then out of nowhere I got disconnected from Vent, but my game was still functioning, I was still running and fighting and everything.
I mentioned it in Guild Chat and someone else mentioned they were having trouble.
I switched over to vent to discover that I’d been banned from the server.

Switched back to GW2 to query what was up, and found I was no longer registering as being in Pure White.
As there have been issues in the past with the guild back-end I checked with one of the others, named Muka.
At the time he (I say He, as I’ve heard his voice and that would be a pretty manly girl) was advertising and asked what was up.

It seems that as soon as I joined the vent channel I “fukken blasted everyone’s headsets” while they were defending an area.
Nobody said anything on vent at the time, nothing about my audio stream being too loud or anything.
If they had of said something I could have just flicked a switch on my headset muting me.

But no, instead they wait half an hour and boot me and ban me without so much as a word about anything relating to it or why.

So to Muka and Mz Pure, I would like to give you a collective Fuck You.

And to anyone else on Sea of Sorrows looking for a guild, if you’re after one that does pure world vs world with no tolerance for technical issues with no social aspects whatsoever, then give Pure White a shot.
If you’re looking for people to have fun with, who can take a joke and will actually talk to you about problems that they might have with you and your play-style, then I suggest looking elsewhere.
You can even join me in The First Legion, it’s been pretty quiet since Crashes left us to get back to his real life.

AmK.

MMOs, and the state of them these days.

Jan14

So anyway I’ve been a long time player of MMOs and such over the past decade and then some, back in the beginning with such things as The 4th Coming, and Dark-Ages (no, not of Camelot) so some people could say I’ve had some experience and have played a decent number over the years.

So I figured time to talk about how they’re going, or at least the ones that catch my interest.

Guildwars, was there from the beginning and it’s been going strong over the years, but I lost touch with all the friends who were playing it, and there’s not been much new since Eye of the North that I’m aware of.
So I haven’t been playing it much over the past year or so.
Guildwars 2, on the other hand is looking spectacular. Even checked out some of the gameplay footage and it looks amazing and I cannot wait to get my hands on it. I’m expecting Arena.net to pull off a masterpiece with it.

World Of Darkness Online. Well other than knowing it’s set in the old world of darkness setting like masquerade and such, I really can’t make much in the way of statements as White-Wolf/CCP haven’t really shown off anything other than some animated artwork. Curious to see what they do with it, and if it’ll all be night based and vampires, or if there will be other stuff.

Star-Trek Online, kinda got side-lined with that, and I imagine when I finally get back to it the content will have built up enough with all these new episodes. I’m just hoping the player base is still there when I do.
I do want more detailed ship interaction though, such as arranging the location of hardpoints and such, and being able to spend time tweaking values and settings to get the most out of it.
I still intend to go back and get my carrier for my klingon borg 😀

Global Agenda. Was there also at the beginning. Problem is that it stopped being able to run on my machine, and the updates are huge, in the manner of gigs. So I haven’t been able to play.
Nice concept and execution and all, but it’s not a good sign that they shifted to a free to continue playing model.

City of Heroes/Villains.
Well I started in this franchise years back with the release of Villains with the collectors box set and spent some time playing it and enjoying it, problem was too many games to focus on like guildwars and so on.
It was so much fun. Then a friend of mine convinced me to get Heroes to upgrade my account so we could play together. So I did and all was fine. Fine that is until a couple of months later when they made Villains available to owners of Heroes, and vice-versa. They basically cost me money there which I didn’t have to spend, so I guess they cheesed me off resulting in me walking away.
Come now to the very end of last year and the Steam sale, Going Rogue was on sale for $10, figured I’d pick it up and see how things had improved. Suffice to say over the past week I’ve been having lots of fun.
I probably will subscribe again. My challenge now being to find people to play it with as well as an active supergroup.
Any Arachnos Epics out there on Victory?

Dungeons and Dragons Online.
I guess I decided back in September or so that since I’d heard it had gone free to play that I might as well check it out. So I went to ddo.com, created an account and downloaded the client.
And the fact I keep pumping fundage in to keep buying quest packs and things, shows it’s a winning model for me.
Come on, it’s worth a shot, is essentially free to play, and you can buy what you want. Or if you so choose you can pay each month and get access to all the account unlocks up front.
I play on the Argonessen, Khyber and Sarlona servers.

DC Universe Online.
So yesterday I decided what the hell and purchased the game through Steam and set it downloading all 13gig last night.
Tonight I went to try it out, and the account creation progress Sony have got, while it may be good if you play things like Everquest and so on, is not really up front and clear.
I could tell you what it’s like, but the furthest I get is the Launchpad application showing SOE, and that’s all. Apparently according to the Steam forums the servers are down.
Not good for them this lack of communication. Even Hellgate: London (RIP) had more of that. We could at least see in the launcher that the servers were down.

So this is more or less it all for now.
And before you ask, no I do not play WOW, it’s not worth my time or money. I just don’t enjoy it, I’ll not play it, Sam I Am.

Get game trials where possible, and if you want to get in contact with me in these games, let me know and we can set something up.

 

AmK.

I can be so lazy sometimes I forget to waste time.

Jan23

Well it’s been quite an interesting past months indeed, so much that I was too lazy for this, even on those days I was being extra lazy.

Anyway, GuildWars: Eye of the North was released, and it is indeed grand. I even purchased the GotY upgrade thingy for the core game, granting me a heap of pointless weapons, just ’cause I could.

I have a pre-paid visa now, it lets me buy things without letting people leach all my money (well not all of it).

I moved from my place up in Coburg down to share a flat with my dad in Oakleigh. This place is cool in the summer due to awesome brick walls, you shall worship them now.

My car is fully functional and people have been taking a lot of advantage of that. But no more, you want me to drive you somewhere you hand over petrol money up front. That’s fair.

Hellgate: London was released here on the 30th of October. I have been playing a lot of it and enjoying it, so much so that I shelled out the clams required to become a Founder, which allows me to be an elitist prick and lord it over everyone.
Fear my lifetime subscription!

Just recently we hosted the January Premium Weekend for the Camarilla, it went well, no PCs died as a result of my actions and everyone seemed satisfied with it.

I suppose I should post more, but well I want to play some more Hellgate. I mean Stonehenge just got released for it 😀

Just two weekends past, Respawn v6 was held up at Bundoora. Now if I was ignorant of how much gamers like porn, I wasn’t afterwards. I must have uploaded something like 50 or so gigs of straight porn.
I wasn’t advertising or anything, people just like porn.

I also got to play some Naval Combat with my new clan/cult, FUMM, AKA Fucked Up Monkey Meat.
So far this only involves my previous housemate Vortex Vandle, but we managed to scrounge up a couple of randoms so we could stick it to the admins. Due to rules changing and not being clear and whatnot, things didn’t really go anywhere. But we so pwned them good.

Vortex also liked bread.

So until later, when I might even be wearing pants, adios!