New, Nifty and Old

Hey there people, and... non-people. As you may or may not have noticed, depending on your level of awareness, we have a section of "Sites We Like" added to our menu. Yay for us! Let me give you all a brief rundown of each one. Aikida is pretty self explanatory. If you're reading this site and you don't know what Aikida is, you need to have an axe buried in your face. Aikida is Fenris' comic, which is hosted by Warcry. It's hilarious, go read it.

Next up we have GameDesigner.Net, which is run by Savant. You know him. He works at Themis Group now. He's big, mean looking, and he was responsible for that game called Fallen Age. You know, the one with the slugs... He's going to beat me for that. Anyway, his site is kind of a journal, but not really. It's also kinda like this site but not really. You'll have to go read it to see what I mean.

Massive Multiplayer is a great site. It's basically a huge database of every MMOG in existence. Each game page has relevant information and links. Mystery (The webmaster) also has a variety of articles and interviews posted for your reading enjoyment. I find his news is fast and accurate, and I have his site on my bookmark hotlist. Well, I would, if such a thing existed. Just type the URL into the address bar you lazy sack of shit. Whoops, pardon my non-french.

Finally, we come to Waterthread. How do I explain this site... Well, remember the Lum The Mad site? When it exploded the pieces became Slow News Day. When that was devoured by the Internet, the resulting gastro-expulsion morphed into Player2Player. All the people who read that site, but hated it, now go to Waterthread. Make sense? Didn't think so. Anyhow, the writing is fairly solid, and the forums can be entertaining (if you're into that sort of thing). That about sums things up. If you have a site you think would fit in this category, feel free to let me know.

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Now, let's talk games. What is Neocron? Well, it's a MMOFPS. Yes, a Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. Is it any good? Yes, I love it. Why? Because it has all the things in it I liked from UO. Add to that some 3D, The Future (tm) and shooting from the first person and you have a naughty mixture. And I like naughty mixtures. Er. Also, there's housing. I played the beta of Neocron, and the housing system in it is already significantly better than AO's was in beta.

What does it have from UO that I like? Usage based skill. Well, more of a hybrid. It takes the stupid parts out of "leveling" and the annoying parts out of usage based skill gain. How is leveling stupid? The fact that I can attack the same type of monster for 5 hours in DAoC with a sword, attain a new level, and suddenly become better at using my crossbow pisses me off. It's stupid. And usage based skill gain is horrible when you have to spend hours upon hours doing the same activity. Like, say, fishing. So Neocron uses a unique mesh of the two. The more you use an item or skill related to a prime attribute (Strength, Dex, Int), the more experience you gain in it. So if you swing a bat, you gain strength. If you shoot a gun you gain dexterity, and you gain intelligence if you use psychic powers. Once you "level" in these prime attributes, you can distribute points into their relevant sub-categories (pistols, weaponsmithing, running, etc.) I find this system works great.

The graphics seem a bit dated to me. The environments look great, but the models/textures seem to suffer a bit. There's also a complete lack of clothing. Once you choose your start-up look, it's impossible to change anything about it except the color. The customization options are very limited and you tend to wander around the city bumping into people who look the same. Luckily the city and it's well-implemented "cyber-punk" atmosphere distract you from the mundane character models.

The FPS part of Neocron might cause you some trepidation. We've all tried playing Counterstrike with 600 ping at some point, and it Just. Doesn't. Work. I suppose playing with a 300ish ping against monsters wouldn't be terrible in Neocron, as your chance to hit them is partly based on your skill level and partly based on your ability to aim in their general direction. This is not so difficult, as the monsters I've fought tend not to move around a whole lot. However, when fighting other players, it's essential to be able to aim without lag. The lag times I experienced were pretty good and I 'felt' very little latency in the game (ignoring the occasional spike). Then again I have DSL. I pity the poor fool playing Neocron on a dial-up connection. Unless they set up some US servers, their western customer base is probably going to be broadband only.

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Irate dumbass: "Landslide, why the $#@% are you playing Ultima Online again?"
Me: "Because after waiting for AC2 for so long, I was emotionally shattered to discover the beta was ass."

That sums it up. Also, I'm having fun discovering all the retarded things OSI has tossed into UO after UO2 exploded. I'm finding bits and pieces of UO2 scattered throughout UO. It's amusing. Also, a few IRC people I know started playing at the same time, so it seemed like the logical thing to do. Now that I have my brother playing as well, I'll probably stick with it until Raph comes out with SWG. I have faith in Raph. You should too.
Okay, almost 5am, that's enough tonight.

-Landslide