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So Long one MMO
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I normally don't pay all that much attention to the world of Massively Multiplayer Online games that much anymore. I think the most recent game that I tried to get into was the Star Trek Online game that was put out last year or the year before, but neither of my computers have the ability to run them. I was shocked to read on one of the geeky sites that I go to on a regular basis that the company NCSoft was shutting down their City of Heroes servers on November 30, 2012 and had fired all the staff attached to the game.
Having not played City of Heroes in several years, I had planned to start up my account again after we moved, but what is the point in doing it if you are only going to have about two months of play time before everything you worked so hard for is gone because some company decided to reorganize, and shut down its servers?
Granted the game has not aged well, but it along with World of Warcraft are the only MMO games that I could get to run on either my four year old laptop or six year old desktop. I'm not a big fan of advanced graphics and things of that nature. If I can run it at a decent frame rate and be able to play without lag then I am a happy man.
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WOW Introduces a pair of new races
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Blizzard has put out their latest expansion pack for the game World of Warcraft and not only does it totally tweak the game, but it also introduces a pair of new races. The only one I have seen any information on is what I like to call the Kung-Fu Panda's or Pandarian's. The only thing that I have been able to find out about them through my various message boards readings is that they may or may not be a player character race. It would seem very un-Blizzard-like to have a new expansion and not introduce new races for both sides.
I have not played WoW in ages. It was right before it went free to play for the first 20 levels that I played last. I remember some things about the game that were good for me were the addition of Jewelcrafting (I harbor a secret fantasy of being a jewelry maker). I also had a few alts that I was using to send materials to that the other characters to up their profession skills. Classes seemed pretty much unchanged when I stopped playing.
Looking at the WoW web site; they have totally changed things around for classes as professions as well. There're some things like removing all talent trees for the classes as well as putting a cap on the Mana pool. Not that that matters to me, I don't play spell orientated characters. No longer do you need the tools of the trade to start doing your profession such as a mining pick or skinning knife. Instead the tools are optional and grant bonuses to your skill numbers if you have them when you are out running around. Possibly the biggest thing that they added to the game was the ability for your hunters on the same account to share pets. Kind of makes me wish I had more than Piggy on my one hunter account. I so wanted a Velociraptor for my hunter to have as a pet. Also the biggest change for hunters is that they are now an all ranged weapon class. No axes or other blades for you to use when you want to get in close. On one hand I like it, but on the other I had invested a lot of time getting my two handed skill on my hunter a long time ago. I think there was something in the third expansion pack that allowed most of the races to have any of the classes that you wanted so that is a +1 in my book.
Looking at this new expansion for the game it makes me want to go out and buy it as well as the last one that came out and a time card as well. That would be about $100 right there and there is a lot of stuff I can do with $100 that would not require me to sit in front of a computer for hours at a time playing a game. That kind of kills any idea I had of playing the game. It's just a giant time suck and all I really like to do in the game is the gathering of materials to up your profession points.
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Frank Miller Justice League Movie?
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This link to Bleeding Cool has a report of some feelers that DC Comics has put out into Los Angeles comic shops asking certain questions of the stores employees. It was very obvious by the way that these people were talking when they walked in that they were plants for DC and Warner Brothers. They had not been seen in the store before, one was wearing a brand new Batman t-shirt (you could see the creases from the package and everything), they acted dumb about certain things but knew that the Jonah Hex movie had bombed and were bad mouthing the Marvel movies when asked about them. Not individually something to raise your antenna about, but when all of those things are combined; something smells fishy.
One of the questions they asked store employees was:
"What would fan reaction be to a Justice League movie with Frank Miller's name attached?"
I don't know what the employees would say, but let me tell you as a fan what I think about a possible Frank Miller Justice League Movie. It'll be bad; it would be so bad in fact that it would make the Green Lantern movie look Oscar caliber. It would be so bad that it would make the idea of David Letterman hosting the Oscars look like a good one.
I think this link to bleeding cool about Kevin Maguire's reaction to the question from his Twitter Feed sums everything up about it quite nicely.
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Quickie News Bite
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I will be at the Dallas Fan Days Convention this month covering it for the Collector Times. I know I'll be there Saturday and Sunday, and the show runs Friday as well, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to make that day.
This time I intend to do some actual reporting from the show, not just writing about what I picked up like I did for the Dallas Comic-Con back in May. I know one day I'll be there in my black Batman T-shirt that I am dragging out again since summer is pretty much over here in Dallas. I know I'll be taking hastily scribbled notes when I am in the panel room since my audio recorder and software are in a box somewhere waiting to be unpacked. I won't be in the VIP section of the Panel Room like I had planned when I wrote last because I dragged my feet getting a VIP ticket and they had sold out before I could gather the $95 together to buy one. I had to settle for a press pass instead and sitting with the riff-raff in the general admission seats.
I do intend to be buying two major groups of things from the show. Those two groups are lots of original sketches/artwork and some Star Wars items that have to do with the droids from the original trilogy. My room in the new house may be a bit small and I no longer have my large computer desk to store things, but anything to put some color onto these plain white walls would be nice. I just have to see if I can get to a art supply or craft/hobby store to pick up a sketchbook that won't bleed ink through the pages like the one I had that I got the Spider-Man drawing on back in May. Maybe I should just get off my lazy ass and start bringing thongs over out of storage so I can have that sketchbook since that is what I already have started.
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An Actual Star Wars Miniatures game
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The company, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG), wrestled the miniatures and card game license away from Wizards of the Coast a few years ago and has finally released their first product for the license. It is a miniatures space combat game based on star fighter scale craft.
I thought to myself, "Finally a Star Wars game that is miniatures based and is not blind boxed or super expensive." My interest was piqued in the game, but nothing beyond the basic news was what I looked at for a long time.
I was at first skeptical when I read something about it on another web site. Mostly because it was an interview with someone from the company who helped make and promote the game and they might be a bit biased. I also normally don't put a lot of stock into what someone says on the internet about something, but when I went to one of the message boards I frequent and they were talking about the game and how good it was, I had to do some more research on it.
A quick trip to the FFG web page gets me all the pertinent information about the game as well as a PDF of the rules. I just got through with reading the rules and they are good solid rules like you would expect from a Fantasy Flight product. My only complaint is that the "boosters" for the game are anywhere between $14.95 and $24.95 retail and that is only for one ship and all the stuff that you need to play with it.
I'm hoping to go out sometime this month and pick it up or buy it online and have a review just in time for the busy holiday season that starts in November.
That's all for this month. Catch up with me at the Dallas Fan Days or I'll be here next month with more juicy stuff.
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Copyright © 2012 Mathew "thehammer" Bredfeldt
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