Toontown, AC2, EQ, SB, DAoC(SI) oh my!

I can't believe it's almost November! In the last 3 weeks my IRL job has moved me from Texas back home to Virginia and then turned around and sent me down to middle Georgia. Although being single and having no kids or houses makes me significantly more mobile than most people, it's still an ordeal.

The main thing I miss about being home is having DSL. It has been a complete disrupt to my ways of doing things to be relegated down to a dial-up modem. Nails on chalkboards doesn't even come close to the screaming that's going on in my head as I click links and...breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out...page might load..it's thinking about it, ok..here it comes...oh thank goodness, no large pictures!

It's also effectively made beta testing AC2 impossible. It seems by the time I get their huge files downloaded and installed, they make changes and I have to install all over again. *sigh*. Then when I finally do get everything updated, I try to login and get server full messages =(. Well, from what I hear that isn't a problem anymore, but my latest attempt to login on my brand new computer (2.53 Ghz P4, 1G ram, GeForce 4 TI 4600) was met with a "couldn't find authentication server". Checking the AC2 official forums, apparently a lot of other people are encountering the same problem. Using the Windows Updater fixed the problem for several people, but when I went to the EVIL Microsoft update page, it informed me I had over 40 downloads waiting to defile my pristine box. I've managed to overnight 3 of them, but they are of the "download, install, reboot" variety, so it'll probably be two week before I get through them doing it primarily overnight. As you can tell, I've been rather soured on the whole ordeal. MS/Turbine's handling of the AC2 beta has been marginal at best, and honestly hasn't made me feel overjoyed at the prospect of the game itself coming out soon. Don't worry, I'll buy it, and I'll probably enjoy it, but I have a lot of love in my heart for AC1, and I really had high hopes of AC2 being my next primary abode. I can't even imagine how Shadowbane enthusiasts have made it through their years of frustrations.

Speaking of Shadowbane, I actually got to check its beta out for a couple of hours. Since I have no idea what their NDA looks like (and I don't want to piss of the friend who was nice enough to let me use their account), I won't comment on the game any. I will say that I did see quite a few things that I liked about it even in the short time that I played. As long as they don't mind $%^^&$##%$ mouse games (it boggles my mind that anyone would make a game where you can't make your character move via the keyboard), I think the SB fans will be happy when it goes live.

I debated with myself quite a bit as to whether or not to talk about the next game I played. I finally decided someone out there would probably think it was funny, so here goes: Against everyone's recommendations, I went and bought EQ (not the latest expansion, but all the previous versions bundled). Ok, you can stop snickering now. Seriously. STOP LAUGHING AT ME!

I can see why everyone always praises the character creation process. There seemed to be a ton of options for customizing your character, and hey, no one can say they don't like their character to be unique! Unfortunately, I probably spent more time messing around the character creation screen than I spent in the game. After spending a few minutes trying to figure out the interface, and deciding that if it was possible to make all the extra stuff disappear (the world/character view portion is less than 1/2 of the screen), I couldn't figure out how, I started running around some primitive looking frozen wasteland village. I wasn't in the game 10 minutes before I fell into a lake and promptly drowned. This was frustrating enough, but then I re-spawned in the middle of a bunch of critters that thought my newbie butt was quite delicious. Die, re-spawn, run little troll, run. Repeat that last sentence about 3 times, and thus ended my EQ experience. I realize I should get the manual out and figure out what I did wrong and give it another whirl, but I just don't have the time right now, and my calendar is looking kinda full for some time into the future.

Toontown is such a nice, no stress, no worries world. You can log in for 10 minutes, an hour, 4 hours, and accomplish something. How many MMOG's can you say that about? It's a simple game, don't get me wrong. I don't think it's going to be one that you'd want to play every day for years on end. Also the inability to really communicate with other people in the game is sometimes a bummer. But it has one of the best group combat setups I've ever seen. Although there are no levels, per se, a toon who has played for 30 hours can group with one who just started and each receive appropriate rewards, without demeaning the time that the higher level toon has put into the game. The level of the monsters this team could take on would be limited on both ends (cannot be so easy that the higher level guy doesn't receive a reward, nor so difficult that the lower level guy can get one-shotted by an unlucky hit), but they CAN both benefit from the grouping. Having "gags" (weapons) and laugh-meter (health) being the yardsticks to which a toon can evaluate his progress and strength is an excellent method of determining level gain. A successful gag-use ups your counter for receiving a new gag by the level of the gag. Let me explain. You start out with a squirt gun. After you have successfully used a squirt gun 50 times, you can use a squirt bottle. Successfully using a squirt bottle increases your "squirt" meter by 2, whereas a squirt gun only advances it by 1. At the end of a 2-round battle, the new user gained 2 pts, the older user gained 4 pts. In addition, the new user who needed a "Cash-Cog (type)" and the old user who needed a "Level 6+ Money-Bags Cog (named)" both advance their toon-tasks ("quests"). Anyway it's a lot of fun, and will leave you humming the various background tunes at the oddest times.

Last but definitely not least, I've been spending a considerable amount of time in Dark Age of Camelot's expansion Shrouded Isles beta. Three new races, six new classes, three huge areas of land full of new creatures to either slay or ally with. Mythic gets big kudos for this effort. I can't wait till all us newsy types can talk freely about it. It's also been nice to interact with the devs and see bug reports, class suggestions, and other feedback becoming a reality.

Sims Online beta should arrive in the mail any day now. Ok, you can shoot me now.

Till next time, have fun, and pray all those MS Updates don't toast my new computer :P