All Out Assault recruiting and other things.

Busy Busy Busy! So I've been pretty busy since my Twilight excursion. BTW I read the funniest article about Twlight right here. And let me know if you can figure out the universal symbol for "fat irish fingers".

Aions been in closed beta as you know. The Elyos legion I had joined, well there wasnt anything wrong with them, it just wasn't the same as playing with AoA. Sorry Pat i still <3 you. Anyway, one thing lead to another as I sent in my division leader application to the big boys of AoA. I stressed out I'm sure as they laughed at me behind my back along with Horace. (See recruitment commercial in recruitment post to learn about Horace).

Short story short, I became Division Leader for the AoA divison of Aion. And let the recruiting begin! As of now we have 24 confirmed players and still have 44 days until release! We also are already in talks of allying some Warhammer guilds that played on the same server of AoA in Warhammeer. If you know anyone looking for a legion please direct them to this thread or http://alloutassault.net

So other than doing leaderish things for Aion, Cleve and I have picked out our cabin when we finally go on vacation. Amazing Views of the Smokies, long name but awesome cabins. Thats the one we'll be staying in. Now we just need to get away from games and twitter for that short time we'll be gone! Is it possible? :p

Tolkien Elf vs Twilight Vampire

This is soooo dorky, but who cares :) I was laying in bed last night and it popped into my head how similar the vampires in Twilight are to Elves. (besides the whole drinking blood thing ya know ><)

So I started going through this list in my head of similarities. And then the freak that I am I thought, well who would win in a 1 v 1?

So we start off with similarities. Keep in mind all of this is based of vampires from the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and the elves are based from Middle Earth in J.R.R. Tolkien stories.

Elves and Vampires are both very Agile creatures. Actually I wrote down Graceful/Agile. Vampires have developed this trait by being hunters and predators. Elves were born with the natural ability. Along with being Agile they both are fast. Running. Although we don't know exactly how fast each can run, it is for sure too fast for the normal human eye to decipher.

They are both said to be beautiful and breathtaking when looked at. 1 v 1 though I don't think this would make a difference :)

Elves and Vampires both have the experience of age. Both being immortal, gives each a lot of time to perfect their way of life and fighting skills.

One of the iffy similarities I can think of also would be healing. Elves have the skill of herbology that helps with healing and most elves the magic art of healing. Vampires on the other hand don't exactly call it magic but they can regenerate and heal their own wounds. As far as I know these vampires are not learned in herbology unless you consider modern medical technology they could use. Vampires though have no blood running through their body so in the end Medical drugs/assistance wouldn't be a wise choice. Which brings us to the differences between the creatures.

Elves are living. They have hearts and blood running through their bodies. They can become poisoned or bleed to death if not treated soon enough by either by magic or herbs. Vampires are already dead with no heart beating and no blood flowing through their veins. The only way to kill a vampire is to dismantle the body and burn it. The ways an elf can die include a mortal wound, weariness, or grief.

Getting to the actual fight between a Vampire and an Elf we must first consider that the Vampire is a natural predator. To some that could mean an upper hand. Vampires are made to kill and it is instinct. Elves... not so much. But elves are trained almost from birth how to fight, because they are involved in many wars.

Vampires have a natural melee weapon. The teeth. It can shred and pierce any skin while poisoning them at the same time. Elf has no natural melee weapon. They must make their own weapons and keep some sort of defense on them at all times.

And the most important skill in this fight would be magic. Now this word is hard to compare between the elf and vampire. 1. There is no such thing as magic in a vampire world. 2. Not all elves know battle/defense magic and if the do the expertise would vary between each elf. In Stephenie Meyers vampire world her vampires do have specialized skills though. Instead of fire, water, ice, heal ect. magic, each vampire has a different ability ranging from reading anothers mind, seeing in the future, blocking others out of your mind, changing a persons feelings, or torture by meeting ones eyes. So it will depend on what skill the vampire has and how much magic ability the elf has in this category.

So in relation to watching the "Deadliest Warrior" too much on Spike TV, I would be giving the edge to the Twilight vampire, considering the elf has no natural weapon and is much easier to kill. I would say the exception would be an elf with extremely advanced skills in magic, who would just make the vampire explode and burn. :p

What do you think?

Thanks for reading my extremely dorky Monday morning random essay haha.

I <3 Aion

It was soooo fun. I don't even know why I liked it more than any game I've tested, but I did. And i wasnt cheating on Lineage 2 cuz it was still NcSoft! I tried the SpiritMaster and Chanter. Chanter all the way for me on release. Most hybrid of the classes. Reminds me alot of the captain in LoTRO, cept using a melee staff instead of a halberd. One of the best things I think ncsoft has done with the chanter is make the buffs toggle skills that effect everyone in your party. This leaves out the possibility of people leveling buffers just to out of party buff. Brilliant, let's hope it stays like this! Of course I was so involved like always I forget to take alot of screenshots, but I did get a few.

And it starts...

Aion!

Finally on NA servers this weekend. The first Aion preview/beta event. Damn NcSoft for not sending me one of their keys. They sold the rest of them to mmo sites and gamestop. So, Cleve and I pre-ordered 2 of them so we could get the pre order items and participate in the preview/beta events. They sent us 1 key, for 2 orders! Doh! So now while Cleve has his key and is ready for the beta this weekend I'm waiting on a reply from gamestop about why they didn't send the other.

But omg either way I will get to play Aion this weekend. Granted, you can only play 1 faction and only to level 20, but I will probly just spend hours on the character customization screen. I decided I'm going Chanter class. Cleve wants to go Cleric. So healer and buffer here we come!

Ooooo I just got a tweet that The Hobbit will start casting for Bilbo Baggins in 2 weeks.

If I can't log into Aion tonight I still got 4mil sp to get on lineage 2 lol.

E3 random news

I was going to post about the weekend in Lineage 2. But I just got so absorbed into E3. Yesterday the EA pres was awesome just because of the new Star Wars: TOR cinematic. Must watch!! Bioware knows what they are doing! When Cryptic announces Star Trek Online they better have something up to those standards!

But I think what stuck with me the most was the xbox presentation and announcment of Project Natal. No more controllers, all played by motion camera. Amazing. If you didn't see it go see it now at !xbox!

Just got done watching the Nintendo conference. Still glad I didn't purchase a wii! As they said they are all about expanding though and have titles coming out for Final Fantasy, Mario, Resident Evil, Dead Space, and Metroid.

Getting ready to watch the Sony press conference in 30 mins. Will actually mean more to me since I do have a ps3 :)


Btw, anyone interested in Star Trek Online should join us in IRC on gamesurge.net
#STO. Cryptic Devs do chat with us in there often.


aaaaand 3% till 79 in L2 :)

What I've done since March

Lord of the Rings updated to Book 7. I got to wonder around Lorien for a bit, but then it sent me right back into the depths of Moria. Blah! Turbine started having issues with lag, rollbacks, disconnects on my lotro server, Brandywine. Cleve and I decided not to renew our accounts.

Took a little break from mmo's for a couple weeks - played some ps3 and watched movies.

Gave World of Warcraft another try for a month. Started some characters on Naz'grel server because Cleve's dad and brother were on there. Yeah I played WoW cuz well basically there was nothing else to play, lol. Eventually, Cleve got tired of it because his dad only logs in weird hours like 11pm-5am and never got to play with him. So we let those accounts expire. Got my shaman up to 45. Yeah funny I love the hybrids.

A friend, Ruffian, from AoA was playing Age of Conan and we decided to try. Played for about 3 weeks, tried every class, couldn't decide on one - until I realized it was way too bloody for my taste, lol. I know I'm a wimp. Cleve was loving it, but I guess grew tired of it without me.

Hm what else did I play? I know there was something else dumb during these past months I've been so bored with current mmo's.

So Cleve activated his old Star Wars Galaxies account and started rp'ing there. About that time Lineage 2 had just released Gracia final update and had a free 2 weeks for everyone with accounts. I thought why not!

Logged in and saw nobody was online or left in Imperivm clan and I clicked the leave clan button. Amazing what 1 button in the game could do for the fun meter! I went solo for a few days, which was awesome. Then one night I was waiting for someone to come kill Shadith raid boss for my Varka quest and that's when I met TheVersus clan. They right away asked why I wasn't in a clan and offered me an invite. I thought again, why not! and I joined. They are great people. Mostly a pve/raid clan that came from Gustin. We will pvp if need be(fortress, seiges, ect) which is perfect for me! 80% of them are Greek. So I'm picking up some cool greek words in the process! I downloaded Lineage 2 on the labtop at work and try to play in the mornings with them too. But omg, the gfx suck on this thing hehe. Not to mention we have 3mb line for 15 computers at this place so that can turn into disaster quickly.

So that brings us to the present. xp'ing in L2. I'm at 78% till 79! btw, wts drac bow clean.

Hanging out with the AoA peeps on the forums and in IRC. Feel free to join us at irc.gamesurge.net in our Star Trek Online chan #STO or the SW-Tor chan #SW:TOR

Planning on doing another All out Insider podcast soon too.

eeek

Eeek. Amazing how you forget to update your blog when it's a slow gaming news season :)


Lineage 2. Again. I almost thought I was done with it. But like they say, if you quit l2, you will be back. *rolls eyes*

Still waiting on Star Wars:TOR info, Star Trek Online beta (need a guild? join AoA!)and crying over whats left, if anything, of Stargate Worlds. (Their head dev left, and they are broke!)

More later after breakfast.

LoTRO Book 7!

Book 7: Leaves of Lórien arrives in North America on Tuesday, March 17!
Mar 13, 2009 - 1:13 PM - by Sapience
Our first content update since the release of Mines of Moria™, Book 7: Leaves of Lórien will go live in North America on Tuesday March 17! See what awaits you in The Golden Wood with our special Book 7 Spotlight. You can also view all the changes in the patch notes! Downloadable updater for non-TDM users will be available shortly.

Got a message about it from them on twitter also :) So Tuesday is the big Book 7 day. Some nice updates but nothing to get all worked up about I guess. The new 12 man is sposed to be easier than the watcher I hear? Too bad they couldn't get smart enough to put in first age barters for the watcher this update.

Hm not much else new with Lotro, cept I joined Group 3 led by Icestars for the watcher and killed him 2 times on my captain so far(far more fun than LM in watcher). Get this though - First drop was 1 shoulder 1 helm. I got helm, Cleve got shoulders. Second time same drops and I got shoulders and he got helm. mawhahaha. I told them thanks for the ingame wedding present!

Otherwise, we got a new ps3 and guitar hero world tour - but that's not an mmo so we wont discuss it here :p

Champions in June and Star Trek next January? Sweet!

source: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/63915

Champions in June and Star Trek next January? Sweet!
The sneaky folks over at Gamestop have listed their pre-order launch dates for Champions Online and Star Trek Online. Thanks to the keen eyes of our very own William Heartsill, the Ten Ton Hammer staff can tell you that Champions Online (at least according to Gamestop) is set to release on June 2, 2009, and Star Trek Online is slated for January 26, 2010.

Here are the appropriate links:

Champions Online
Pre-order Ships 6/2/2009
http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=73922

Star Trek Online
Pre-order Ships 1/26/2010
http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=73923

Money and stuff

NcSoft released their 2008 report.

NCsoft® Corporation (KSE: 036570.KS) today reported earning results for 2008. On a consolidated basis, sales came to KRW 346.6 billion (US$ 248.6 million), operating profit KRW 42.2 billion (US$ 30.3 million), and net profit KRW 27.2 billion (US$ 19.5 million). Sales increased 5% year over year, and operating profit, pre-tax profit, and net profit decreased 15%, 31% and 40% respectively.

For the fourth quarter 2008, consolidated net sales recorded KRW 99 billion (US$ 71.0 million), operating profit KRW 9.9 billion (US$ 7.1 million), pre-tax profit KRW 13 billion (US$ 9.3 million), and net profit KRW 8 billion (US$ 5.7 million). The previous quarter sales were KRW 78.3 billion (US$ 56.2 million), operating profit KRW 4.6 billion (US$ 3.3 million), pre-tax profit KRW 8.9 billion (US$ 6.4 million), and net profit KRW 5 billion (US$ 3.6 million). The sales and operating profit increased 26% and 117% respectively quarter over quarter and pre-tax profit and net profit increased 46% and 60% respectively.

Decrease in profit despite the increase in sales is primarily due to limited market exposure for Aion™, which launched later than expected in Korea, as well as increased marketing spend for the Aion launch and updates to the Lineage® series. Launched in November, Aion exceeded expectations in a short period on the market. This, plus the growth in Lineage series sales in Japan and the foreign exchange rate were the primary reasons for the quarter over quarter sales growth.

I want a kitty!

I'm extremely bored and I have a headache! /whine

So, this was my first week of working 8-5 instead of 5-2 and it's amazing how much extra time I feel that I have at night lol. I can actually go ingame now and finish the party I'm in without having to go to bed at 8pm :)

Got this weekend off, was planning on trying to get Jesenia to 59 or 60 in Lotro, BUT we know how that goes when I try to plan something in game :) Book night was almost a disaster last night. Got just enough people to help Haremin(who got an attitude about nobody in kin helping him) with book 2.4.7, then I gave up after that cuz everyone seemed to be igmoring me or doing DD instance runs. BTW there are some cool videos of our friday night fun events on the main page of AoA. Tonight is gonna be something like Simon Says with Titles. I'll take screens.

Diablo 2 !?

I resorted to playing Diablo 2 last night. But it was really fun.

I had forgotten I even owned it (I even found Diablo 1) when I stopped by my moms this weekend. Cleve pointed out since the internet is still dead I should go through my old pc games and see if we could find anything entertaining. Even though all these cd-roms were labled windows 95/98 we decided to test it and see how they worked on windows xp and vista lol. I ended up bringing home 2 copies of diablo 2, diablo 1, legacy of kain, the sims, quake 3 arena, need for speed 1, and whatever old school game I'm forgetting.

I figured we probly wouldnt have a problem getting it to work on xp, so I tried to install it on the vista first, well cuz, ya know... it's vista. It was pretty funny when it checked to see if i have DirectX 6 installed. And it told me my nVidia 9800 GT was good enough to play it, lol! Of course when I opened it Vista gave me the "this may not be compatable, continue anyway" speech. But the Intro movie and the game played awesome. The cd-rom lagged once. (weird actually playing a game nowadays through a cd). I was actually so surprised that the cgi movie looked so well for being made in 2000!

Anyway, Cleve installed his copy on xp and we tried to play with each other through TCP/IP (since we didn't have internet, but have the network)and we had to open a couple ports and it worked! It was good times and if the net isnt back up tonight I'm kinda looking forward to playing it again to pass the time hehe.

Wonder if Diablo 1 will work on Vista.

Aion Update: Armour

Source: http://eu.aiononline.com/en/news/article/visual_improvements_armour_diversity
Pictures at Source

News
Visual Improvements: Armour DiversityAyase | Monday, 26 January 2009

Improving and developing your character is an absolutely vital part of almost any MMORPG. In Aion however, it’s very important to us that improvements are not just slightly altered numbers on a stats page, but can actually be seen in the physical appearance of your character. Clothes make the man, and - as you will come to see in some of our pictures later on - the woman too!

Those of you who were able to play Aion at the Games Convention in August 2008 wouldn’t have been aware of it, but as you were playing away, Atreia’s diligent fashion designers were hard at work, slaving away to ensure their upcoming winter collections were as stylish as possible! Back then it was not considered out of the ordinary to encounter differently named armour sets with identical looks; those were of course mere placeholders for sets still being designed. It is now time to lift the curtain and give you a quick peek at some of the stunning armour sets you can expect to see in Aion when it launches later this year!

Read on to take a look at our stunning pictures!


Before we start, it may be worth pointing out that there are far more armour sets available throughout the game than the few we will be showing you here in this article. The sets on show here are a simple snapshot of the differing designs you’ll find throughout Atreia once Aion goes live.

So, Say “hello” to our model for the day! She is a female Ranger, the proud owner of four different named armour sets in her simple Elyos wardrobe. However, something was not quite right: last Summer, as she explored the beautiful lands of Elysea, her armour sets all looked the same! Where was the style, the panache, the flair for which the Elyos are so known?

We returned to our daring Ranger a few months later, and upon looking one more time through her armour sets, found a very pleasant surprise: three of the previously identical looking outfits had changed, and were now uniquely stylish and elegant! Happier than ever, our excited ranger charged straight into combat only to find herself happen upon a second surprise. From out of nowhere these shining new armour sets started to change again, but this time right before her very eyes! They seemed to be charged with a radiating energy which sparked into a brilliant light as she stepped into combat, dulling only as she lowered her daggers and bow. Don’t believe us? Well, we thought you might find it hard to believe, so made sure to grab a few screenshots as evidence!

"dynamic armor" where the armor changes its look when a player goes into combat! Leave it to the Koreans :) Love love love this idea!

Forochel in Kentucky

Incase you didn't know Paducah got hammered by freezing ice and Power/cable/internet like everything is/was down. So I'm bout ready to pull my hair out without having cable or internet at home. We've watched alot of DVD's lately! I'm currently at work and the net is working here, blah. Just to keep updated this is what I posted for the AoA forums:

Hey everyone! I've got limited internet here at work. The power was wiped out Tuesday night and everything was black and then all you heard was POW! POW! from transformers blowing all over the city and then like the sound of firecrackers as all the trees fell down and then lots of sirens! was pretty scary! The power at the station came up yesterday morning but we had no way to get news for people who could listen. phone lines were down - internet down.

So we were scrambling around all day trying to see if anyone had power, who had food, which gas stations had gas, kerosine all that stuff. I brought the guinea pigs to the station to keep them warm Yesterday morning it was 40 degrees in the apartment brrrr. Anyway It came back up last night for us, but we live right in the middle of the city and are very lucky. 46 hours with no power for us. People out in the county they are saying have 2-3 weeks without power! Those cities in southern illinois right here across the bridge I feel sorry for. They have no governor to declare them an emergency and they are having a hard time finding shelters in Massac County.

Knowing comcast it will probly we at least a week till we are back with cable/internet at the apartment. We are gonna head up north for the weekend to stay with my dad, cuz he has food there! lol

Sorry I missed Epic Book night and Brenin im reallyyyyyyy gonna miss the conga line tonight!!

yeah we made it to my dads this weekend, there's snow here but no ice thank god! On our way out of kentucky it was like a hail storm. The temp got over the freezing mark and the ice was falling off trees and powerlines and busting up peoples windshields while they drove by. Now just to convince my dad to install LoTRO on his pc...

Now I'm back in paducah, we have power but nothing else. Thank god for the heat though!

Update

Warning: I'm typing with gloves on cuz it's really really cold lol.
and btw I'm at work, so no screenshots until I get home :D

Ok first off, Grats to Turbine and LoTRO for winning 3 out of 7 awards for peoples choice on mmorpg.com. Best Developer studio, Best expansion ( by a really high margin) and game of the year. LoTRO won 4% over Wow for game of the year. I read somewhere some WoW maniac give excuses saying like "WoW players are too busy ingame to come vote, there's 11 million wow players and 450k Lotro players" And I laughed when someone replied "McDonalds sells millions of hamburgers worldwide but you don't see them claiming they have the best hamburger" And well plus, nobody knows how many subscribers lotro has since turbine hasnt released any reports on that.

Damn I'm doing pretty good typing in these gloves.

I've been working on my captain lately, but Ragter gave me a "pity" invite to the watcher and I got to see him die :) So ok, I'm content now! Killed him on my loremaster I can get over it now. Anyway I kinda agree with cleve on the fact that he is pretty useless when he drops shitty weapons like a first age champions dagger - 2 times. I havnt seen any LM weapon drop from any group yet, so meh.

All the LM's and Mini's are still on the forums complaining that no dev pays attention to them. I am fully convinced there is no such thing as an LM dev. It's probly a combined effort of the rest of the devs for the LM. I should of just when with my guts and gave up my LM when MoM first came out. My captian is level 46 now and Cleves warden is level 49 now, so we wont have much longer to be end game with them. My RK is still level 27, but I think the whole huge squishyness factor wont do well with me.

I had a brief thought of renewing my Lineage 2 account, but then thought better of it, since I would rather spend more time in Lotro. Imperivm clan is pretty much in shambles. Deseo hasnt logged in awhile and people keep leaving to join the active clans in the alliance. If I did happen to reactivate I'd leave clan and go solo, cuz the politics are so fucked on the server right now. I can't join FS cuz they are russian mainly, legion is not much more active than Imperivm, IN has Kadoo and Karigan, CD is a Gustin clan, and then you got lame carebear neutral clans. I'd have to focus on getting to at least 79 anyway, can't do that with wars. Lotro seems alot more simple :)

Watcher

In the mmorpg.com newsletter I noticed how they mentioned there is always a shortage of gaming news and stories around the holidays and I suppose you could apply that to my blog too! The last couple weeks just havnt seemed urgent enough to load blogger and share my stories. Lots of holiday stuff going on, not to mention I got 3 new books from christmas to read. No it doesnt mean I wasnt gaming. Although I does seem these days the only thing I play is Lotro. Not because its the bestest out there, there's just nothing else out there that can keep my attention better than my fantasy Tolkien world (besides this Inheritance trilogy I'm reading).

6 mans, 6 mans, 6 mans, DD, FG, Skumfil, 16th... That's all I saw in my dreams for a week or so for trying soooo hard to get all my radiance gear in Lotro. See, you do little 6 man intances for each piece of teal gear. When you get 6 pieces of radiance gear that means that you can go and slay the mighty new raid boss, The Vile Maw. So, yeah I worked my ass off to do this. I wanted to be one of the first to go in and do this. I also volunteered my time to help others in the kindship get their gear also. I wont get into details cuz I'm still rather bummed about it. Seems there was 1 too many Loremasters with the right gear and I got shafted - for I dunno what reason against the other LM.

To make the story short after 8 tries they downed the boss. And dont get me wrong I am proud to be AoA and be part of that. I was bummed at the same time cuz I wanted it to be me that was celebrating for being in the group that downed it first. And after all the work I put into getting my gear and helping others get gear only one kinmate acknowledged this while the others were showing off gear and bragging how exciting it was to be there. Elchongo posted on main forums something to the likes of "Honorable mention goes to the people who helped get these people gear, so that they could do the raid"
I sent him a message letting him know how much that comment meant to me.

See now I got myself all worked up and it's only a game.