Ald Demo

The long awaited weekend was upon us and VI dove in head first into ArenaNet's follow up to the award winning Guild Wars.  This time however, what we have is an actual full fledged MMO.  Let me start right there and reiterate how fantastic that aspect really is.

The game world is outstanding in every detail possible.  I spent more time just exploring, which the game promotes with it's dynamic event system in place of quests, than i did actually fighting mobs.  That right there told me we might have something here.  It's freaking huge!  Just running around and finding stuff to do as apposed to following a lunch line to the next quest hub has me hooked so far.

As i said, i didn't really focus on leveling at all and yet still managed to hit level 20 just by exploring and doing random events.  This was deliberate on my part as i don't really want to rush myself in yet another beta and then get bored on release.  I enjoyed taking my time and just having fun.

I'm going to put this out there because i honestly believe it.  Divinity's reach is the largest and best looking city i have ever seen in an MMO.  Its obvious Anet put a lot of time and love into not only the city, but everything else i got a chance to see this weekend.  It remains to be seen how the game plays later on or if things change before release, but so far so good.

Incoming wall of pics.

Thought I'd fire up LOTRO after a few months and run around for a bit.  I absolutely adore the game world and wish more MMO's would follow suit.  It's unfortunate that the combat, character models, and animations are so mediocre or this could be a fantastic game.  Since I'm only 32, i couldn't explore everywhere, but i ran around Bree, Lone-Lands, Trollshaws, and Rivendell.

Full steam ahead in preparation for the beta event for the weekend of the 27th.

Since i haven't played Rift in 3 months now, i thought I'd gather all of our Hammerknell vids in one spot. Missing Rune Kind and Inwar somehow so I'll have to yell at someone to get me those. There's of course no Akylios vid since we stopped playing before we could kill, which is unfortunate since i hear it's nerfed to hell now and on farm. Such is life i suppose. Even though i really miss the game and i think Trion is rolling, it's full speed ahead into GW2.

Got a chance to try out TERA's beta this past weekend.  I'll start off by saying that i couldn't really get a fair assessment of the game because i had nothing but GW2 on my mind.  I also have no actual desire to purchase or pre-order due to GW2, so i was just playing to play and have fun.

The art style, graphics, and character models are fantastic and so is the game world.  I mean, it's freaking beautiful to look at.

The highly touted action combat is also really fun, with one exception.  I've made no qualms about not being a fan of animation locks.  I hate them with a passion.  I understand that it's supposed to make combat more dynamic but, for me it slows it down.

I made it to around level 10 before beta ended as i only played 1 day but i can say that if it were not for GW2, i could see myself playing this.  Oh, it's also a requisite to play a female character when playing a Korean MMO!