Diary of a Beta Tester, Day 3

You might be wondering why Day 3 and not Day 1. We’ll get there. First, let’s answer another question – Beta Tester for what? Well, a game that I have been looking forward to for some time, not necessarily for a reason. The game at hand is Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.





I haven’t played World of Warcraft on Day 1 so I don’t know how it went, but people say there were some major problems back then. I’ve played Age of Conan from Day one, and it was a bit annoying, as they started the servers some hours later than initially announced. But, other than that, and ignoring major gameplay bugs, everything went pretty smooth. And, if you come to think about it, some years have passed since WoW was released, and there were other MMORPGs thrown in there, and all had launch problems. You might think people learn from this shit – they don’t…
WAR entered Open Beta this week and, since I preordered the Collector’s Edition, I had a key for this. Basically, Open Beta is there to see if the game servers can hold the tide of players eager to try the new prodigy from Mythic/EA. From the beginning it smelled to me that shit will go bad – the European version was handled by some fuckers called GOA. Never heard of them, and when I say fuckers I’m using a kind word – a better one would be uber idiots… or something like that.





To shorten the story – the fuckers have a site that you can use to create accounts and register and manage your shit. It’s made in flash, so it moves slowly and you can’t understand anything from it. The Beta was supposed to start on Sunday, and the idiots though they could handle shit, so people could register their key on Sunday morning and start playing in the afternoon. That’s some fine thinking – if you have 50-100 players, but not when we’re talking thousands. Needless to say, on Sunday you couldn’t do anything on their site – you couldn’t create accounts, if you managed to create one there was no chance you would get a confirmation and, if by some unknown twist of luck you got the confirmation, there was no chance in hell you could register you key.





So, basically, instead of testing the game servers, they where beta testing the account managing mechanism. The site flooded with apologies – but shit still didn’t work. They also had the nerve to say that “Yeah, we have a problem with the accounts, but the game servers work fine” Dude! Did the thought that only 2-3 players managed to log in so fat?? Funny how the next day, when more players managed to register their keys and enter the game, the game servers crashed. I had nothing against this, as this w3as expected, and this was the purpose of beta… if you can get there.

Well, finally, today I managed to get my account working. And the game seems pretty cool, although still shadowed by WoW. I’ll come back tomorrow with some more interesting shit on this.

-MasterX
I summon the Dogs of War.

WAR is coming!

snowflake

Hi guys, ladies,

I`m proud to announce that as of today I`m father of an 280 grams child called PSP Ceramic White :)
As its name states, it`s white, well shaped, lots of buttons and a crystal clear lcd screen.
I already gave it a spin with a game named "Apes Academy" -- a card based game (like magic the gathering, warcraft card game or, for all the children out there, yu-gi-oh).
What can I say? Game is very childish but the interaction and the game play are great. I could never imagine myself playing such a game, but still, here I am, buttoning left and right, pressing squares and circles, as if my life depends on it :)


If you ever cried for a GameBoy when you were little, you should definetly spend 800 Ryials on this ubercool PSP (btw, 800 ryials = 480 RON = 130 Euro // approx).

MasterX, maybe we can rendez-vous on TNB sometime soon and do a battle royale :) at a couple of beers of course, at stake :P

Until next time,
Game on!

Portables

This vacation I’ve rediscovered my portable console. I’ve bought them this spring, played on them like crazy and then forgot them in my backpack. But every time I rediscover them, I remember how cool shit can be.

There’s not much to say about the PSP – it’s like a Playstation, and you can carry it around. Has great graphics, but its major problem is that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Of course, it has uber cool games like God of War and Final Fantasy VII (or Metal Gear, but I haven’t played this so much so I’m not sure how good it is), but I’ve seen these games somewhere before. Then again – can you ever have enough of Kratos? Don’t think so… And FFVII is such a tease – makes you pray they remake the original game to today’s graphics. And did I mention I almost cried at the end of the game?

The Nintendo DS is a totally different piece of technology, but you have to have a little bit a gamer in you to really appreciate it. I think sharp will love its shit, as it really takes you back to the old days. From hardware standards, the DS suck – sure it has two screen (one of them being a touch screen), two processors, but comparing it to the PSP is like comparing the Voodoo 3 to a GTX280. But I always had this philosophy about games – if you limit the hardware, you let loose the imagination. So, as a developer for the DS, you don’t have to worry your head about squizing polygons on screen – you cand have 2D graphics try to make cool gameplay, so the player doesn’t notice it’s not the best looking thing in the world.

And if you get a DS, you have to play Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It’s the coolest game I’ve played, and you really can’t put it down until you encounter a puzzle that makes you smash your head against the wall. And that is cool. Also, I’m kind of ashamed by this, but I played a Pokemon game (Pokemon Diamond) and I really enjoyed it. Like really enjoyed it.

-MasterX
The God of something.

Nintendo DS Development

I've rediscovered my portable consoles on my vacation. This will be covered in tomorrow's blog, but I just wanted to ask this:

Any 2D graphic artist out there that might be interested in trying to make some game resources?

I'm thinking about doing some DS development tutorials, and I know some programmers, but no artist. So, if you want to give it a try, don't hesitate to contact me.

-MasterX

No games, just a funny video :)

Heya, nothing about games today, just a freaking funny video :) A must-see ;) n`joy!

Wow! Warcraft 3

Heya,

Long time, no wrote ... (not sure English grammar works that way but you`ll get it someday :P)
Well, what have I been up to? I enjoyed a couple of weekends at the sea-side, where I got my skin tanned, except for my yo-yo area :P

Aaaanyway, to get right to business, I was so booooored today that I had to go outside and buy a game, something, anything ... :) and I stumbled upon the infamous World of Warcraft at the games rack. I already had the first edition of WoW, so I was intrigued if I should buy the second edition, called The burning crusade. After a short inspection I noticed it costs around 20~25Euros, it had no pre-paid period (so I have to pay again on internet with my credit card or to buy a pre-paid card). Since last time I played WoW, my account was payed by spitfir3 (another friend of mine, which btw should be entitled to speak about games and not me, since he`s a level designer :P) I took the time to look around for ANY OTHER games ...

I saw there are quite a few MMOG`s nowadays but I also saw Warcraft 3 packs (Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne). Both games are around 10Euros, so that`s a total of 20Euros if you buy both and guess what, it`s free to download DOTA (a cool multiplayer map) and have the best time ever ... so as I`m writting this I`m also installing Warcraft 3 :P

Should I still mention that OLD GAMES rule? I guess you already understood this by now ;)

Until next time, game on!