Steady's Gaming Blog

It looks like the Real ID system for World of Warcraft forums is not going to happen. I have to admit that I was not a fan of this system. I have some folks I have played games with for a few years, and I am not sure if they know my real name or not. I think it is important to have some degree of privacy on the internet these days. On the other hand, I also thing that game developers have a right to protect their product from the forum trolls, who usually do not have many valid points, but just rant about useless crap. It is a shame, because there are some good points made sometimes, they just get drowned out by the trolls. Personally I do not use the forums much, every once in awhile I might post a guild recruitment message, or a if I am looking for more for a dungeon run. What usually happens is some troll comes along and posts something stupid, and I will just delete the message and move on.

The truth be told, something has to be done to clean up the forums. I did not think that Real ID was the solution. Blizzard needs to find something a bit less extreme, a bit of middle ground. What that is anyone’s guess; I sure do not know what it is. With that being said, the forums do belong to Blizzard, not the players of the game like some think. If it was me, I might start tossing a few of them out of the forums.

I did see one thing out of this whole episode that really pissed me off. These parasites that were posting information about employees of Blizzard to make a point. The only point you were making were that you were idiots. I don’t care what your point was you, were WRONG. Posting Google maps, and phone numbers and personal information WAS WRONG. I hope that Blizzard finds every one of you, bans you from the game, and pursues every legal avenue they can to prevent you from doing this type of crap again.

This is so distasteful, I hope nothing happens to anyone’s home, or spouse, or god forbid, a child, because one of you idiots were hoping to make a point. I mean really this is a silly game, and a forum. Not real life and you idiots are going to cause some real life pain for some of these folks. They justified this with the statement, “I am just using the information that they are going to use on me.” What a load of crap, if idiots would not abuse this information, and you trolls joined the civilized world, the use of someone’s real name, would not be problem. The problem was not Blizzards; it was the idiots that abused the policy. I noticed not one of you cowards posted you real name with this distasteful information.

Ok, that is enough, that really went on longer then it should have. I hope that Blizzard does find a way to return the forums, and global chat channels back to the civilized players

My Gaming Community the Combat Engineers is looking for more active gamers. So here is what what we are all about, and what we are looking for.

1. Mature, must be over the age of 18..

2. Respect. We do not do DRAMA, (let me repeat, we do not do DRAMA), fight over gear, taunt or harass. Profanity is not allowed. Any type of racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, or political slurs are not allowed. Stealing from us will get you booted out of the group for sure.

3. Helpful. If you cannot be kind, and helpful to other players, this is not the place for you.

4. We are not in a hurry, if you are looking for farming or power leveling; you are most likely in the wrong place. I am not saying it does not take place in this group, I am just saying it is not the norm.

5. Have fun. We like to have fun. If we fail an instance, or a task force, it is not the end of the world. We will make every effort to complete a task, mission, instance or raid, but we are not going to do it at the expense of not having fun.

6. Able to function on a team. Each event or team will have a clear leader. All we ask is that you follow the direction of the team leader. If you have a suggestion, speaks up, just do it in the right way. The leader may or may not use you suggestion. If you have a better way to do something, sign up to be the leader for the next run.
7. Register for the forums. If you are a leader, list events and other thing there.

Where will you find us.

www.combatengineers.net is our main webpage

http://www.xfire.com/communities/moonb on xfire.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Combat-Engineers-Gaming-Community/248825615272 on Facebook

http://twitter.com/Steadycombateng to follow us on Twitter.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/combatengineers on Steam

Feel free to join any and all of these groups. I encourage all of our current active members to join these groups if they can.

What are we playing; more like what are we not playing.

City of Heroes- We have established SGs on the Freedom, Liberty, Justice, and Virtue Server. Freedom is the most popular. Liberty is dead, Justice and Virtue are very small.

City of Villains- Established VG on Freedom. It is dead, needs active members, willing to run teams and recruit.

Aion- Have a legion on the Kaisinel Server, Elyos. Have a some Asmodians on the Meslamtada Server. Needs leadership and active members.

World of Warcraft, we have a pretty active group, Alliance, Elune server. Running instances and leveling right now. Some day we would like to start running some 10 mans. Gear hounds, thief’s, immature people, need not apply.

Champions Online – semi established SG. Lacks leadership, nice for active players that would like to run an established SG.

Dungeons and Dragons Online – Old dead Guild on the Sarlona server. Needs active members, leadership.

Everquest II, on the Bazaar server, have a few active players. Do not have a guild yet, like to find more to start a guild.

Global Agenda- One man agency. Looking for leadership, and active members.

Star Trek Online- Yet another dead, one man fleet. Needs active members, and leadership.

Lord of the Rings- Two man kinship, is at the maxed out level. Needs active members and leadership.

Warhammer Online- No guilds, but we play Destruction on Badlands, and Order on Iron Rock. Looking for more to start a guild

All Points Bulletin – Have a group, just started playing, get in on the ground floor.

Games that we sometimes play and have teamed in are Team Fortress 2, Planetside, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Battlefield Heroes.

So if you are interested in joining the Combat Engineers, contact me at steady@combatengineers.net.

So my twitter feed this evening is full of information about the new mount you can buy in World of Warcraft. Yes, you too can own a Celestial Steed for the low price of $25.00. One tweet has them selling about 54,000 mounts for every percentage tick in the stock queue. Other estimates have about 120,000 people waiting in the queue to purchase the Steed.

Blizzard Executives Wife “Hi honey how was your day”

Blizzard Executive “Pretty good, we made 300 million dollars today selling a make believe mount.”

Like Blizzard, or hate them, they know how to make money. Trade chat is full of haters today. (Yeah, I am really tired of the nightly argument about Gearscore). The purist, the grinders, the elitist are mad. I heard one of them call Blizzard a Korean money hungry company. Others are complaining about spending days picking their nose for some rep, to get a mount, and now any noob can spend $25.00 for a cool mount. Some are appalled, how dare Blizzard open an online store, and actually sell things. Hello, it is about time. Look around people, show me an MMO that is not selling something to make more money, and I will show you an MMO that is long gone.

Here is my point of view. They are not making you buy the darn thing, so shut up, and go grind some more with your elitist freak friends. No one is making you purchase it, go somewhere with your gear checking elitist, snotty friends, and get a life. Go fight the Lich King or something, but really get out of trade chat. Last time I checked, Blizzard was in the business of making money. Blizzard does a pretty good job of making a pretty good game as well. So I have no problem with them making a few bucks off a silly mount. If you owned a business, and could make more money off selling a silly mount, would you not do it? They own the game, not us; they are free to do as they please. I think it is pure genius; they are selling a ton of these mounts, and making a ton of money. Social networking sites like Twitter, and Facebook, are full of chatter about World of Warcraft today. Bingo, you cannot pay for that type of advertising. Pure genius, raises the profile of World of Warcraft, and make money off of it, makes sense to me.

Personally I am not going to purchase one. It is too expensive for my taste. I am not a collector. I have a few mounts that I use, and they meet my needs. So I see no reason to spend $25.00 for another mount. Maybe it is my graphics (which are pretty good), but I do not think that the Celestial Steed looks all that good. In fact, it looks rather crude to me. I do not sit around Stormwind, and show off my mounts to others. So I really have no reason to purchase the mount.

I hope that Blizzard takes all that money, upgrades some of their hardware, and reinvests it into World of Warcraft. It will make an already good game, even better to play. You elitists out there need to figure it out. You are not making World of Warcraft better, you are making it worse. In fact you are killing the game off with your snotty attitudes. The causal gamer is making World of Warcraft popular again. You are becoming as extinct as that free mount you spend days grinding for

Happy April fools day! I really enjoy April Fools, lets face it, the world needs to laugh a bit more then it does. We need a break from healthcare reform, terrorism and who Jesse James is sleeping this week (dude are you stupid, lets see Sandra Bullock, or something in the freak show from the carnival down the street, Helllllllooooooo). To make it even better, all these gaming sites will now even send you their April Fools jokes on Twitter. Good deal.

I have to point out the best one of the day for me. World of Warcrafts, Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number, or EPEEN, for short. EPEEN is short for an internet slang term for ego, pride, or attitude in the virtual world. Basically it is short for the mine is bigger then yours argument. ROFL, this is just killing me. I hate the elitist that populate WOW, so Blizzard poking fun at them is just classic. They are making fun of Gearscore, and I hate Gearscore, so this is by far the funniest one of the day.

EPEEN System

City of Heroes has the city of Sidekicks which is fairly funny, but they will never be able to do better then they did a few years ago with the now legendary “freem” joke. Where they introduced a new system that when you punched a bad guy the word “Freem” would pop up on the screen, like in the old Batman shows of the 60’s. I remember reading the forums and people complaining about this new system for a few hours before figuring out it was an April Fools joke. Serves you right you forum trolls.

City of Sidekicks

So try to find something to chuckle about today, smile a little, I promise you it will not hurt.

Just a few interesting tweets today, that I wanted to share with others..

First, the good folks at wow.com have created an impressive list of resources for World of Warcraft. You have been warned, be prepared to spend a few hours looking at websites. Lots of good World of Warcraft information here. Nice to have all this info in one place, a must have bookmark for anyone that plays World of Warcraft.

Wow.com, Guide to Wow resources

Second, City of Heroes updated the Going Rogue website today. Calvin Scott and Ghouls are introduced, are they friend or foe? Nobody knows. Just more fluff, still no hard facts. Come on Paragon, I need some facts here, enough fluff.

Going Rogue

So that is my Twitter Roll for today, everyone have a great gaming day.

Becketts massive online gamer released its reader choice awards for the best MMO’s of 2009.

Here are the results.

Best MMO of 2009
World of Warcraft, but not by much. It defeated Dungeons and Dragons online by a mere 68 votes. That is a shocking development. I remember when D & D was a ghost town before Turbine changed the pricing model. Some of these gaming developers need to pay attention to what Turbine has done, and how they have done it. I mean really, they brought D & D back from the dead. Wizards 101, Aion and City of Heroes were also in the top five. Looks like NCsoft has two of the top five games.

Best New Release of 2009

Aion, no big surprise here. This game is Ok; it looks nice, but lacks content. It is a grind fest after level 25. Aion winning is more about all of the bad games released this year, not the fact that it is a good game. The little engine that could took second place, Fallen Earth. I like this game, it has some bugs, but is one of the few games I have played this year where I felt the developers actually gave a damn about the product they were producing. Champions Online was third, which is a total embarrassment for Cryptic. Champions has been out for six months, and still lacks content in the mid 20’s and 30’s. It is painful to level in this game. They have ignored this fact, and done nothing to improve their game. In fact, the world famous kitchen sink patch was an epic fail, causing more problems then it fixed.

Best Fantasy MMO of 2009

D & D slays the dragon and beats out World of Warcraft. Who says a free to play game cannot be successful. I need to spend a bit more time playing D&D.

Best Sci-fi/Superhero MMO of 2009

City of Heroes followed by Star Wars: Galaxies. Anyone who reads this blog knows I am a big City of Heroes fan. I have not played Star Wars Galaxies in a bit, but might have to go back. Fallen Earth was third. This has to be a total embarrassment for Cryptic. It was beat out by two older then dirt games (in MMO years, like dog years), and an independent developer with about half the budget that Champions had.

Best MMO expansion.

Turbine takes the top two with D & D, Eberron Unlimited, and Lord of the Rings, Siege of Mirkwood. Both good expansions that were well planned, and well done. Turbine had a really good year.

Best Kid Friendly/All Ages MMO of 2009
Wizard 101 wins by a large margin. Steady jr., is allowed to play Wizards for a few hours each week. It is a very entertaining game. Pirates of the Caribbean comes in second. Not sure about this one, last time I was in there, the chat was full of profanity.

Best Free MMO of 2009

Runes of Magic, followed by D&D, and Maplestory. I avoid free to play games other then D & D, too many trolls for me.

Most Anticipated MMO of 2009

Star Wars: The Old Republic, followed by Star Trek. Score one for the old gamers like me, two games with themes from the past. You know we do have more money to spend then those youngsters.

So just my thoughts on Becketts games of the year for 2009. Everyone have a great gaming day.

Just a few thoughts to start the new year. These are my top three games of the year.

1. Team Fortress 2 . I am as shocked as you are, I never thought a FPS would make it to the top of my favorite game list. This one has, I really enjoy this game. It is very well done; Valve does a nice job of adding content. I do not have to pay a monthly fee. I think I only paid $19.99 for the game. So when you consider the hours I play this game, cost, and content, it is my number one game for 2009.

2. City of Heroes. Pretty much still my most played MMO. I have put in well over 1,000 hours of game play this year. Mission Architect almost killed this game off for me. At the height of the AE farms, where you could not find a team that was not farming. I almost stopped playing. I enjoy the holiday events in this game; they add something new each year. I still run a Task Force once a week with my SG. I still find new and fresh things to do. Mission Architect extended this game for me. It gives me endless new content to explore. I have switched to the Freedom Server, from the Liberty. This game will have to raise the level cap, and find some type of endgame, to stay this high on my list of games. I am hoping the expansion planned for later this year “Going Rogue” will keep this game fresh.

3. World of Warcraft. I enjoy the vast content, and constant updates. It is a great game, one of the most popular games ever. So why is it only number three on my list? The elitist in this game make me crazy. Gear scores and DPS checks drive me crazy in this game. Being asked to join a group, and telling them before hand, I do not have the highest gear. Oh no problem, join anyway. Then being berated by party members because of my gear. I also do not like that most of the holiday achievements; you have to be level 80 to complete them. I do like the new dungeon group finder. I also like the changes in PVP battlegrounds; I no longer have to fight those nasty twinks. The community in this game keeps it from being higher in my game play list.

Most disappointing game of 2009.

1. Borderlands for the PC. This game is just terrible. I cannot save my progress in this game. I cannot update it. You cannot play multiplayer over the internet without having a degree in computer programming. I spent $50.00 on a game a few months ago, and I still cannot play the game. Just an epic fail all the way around. I thought maybe it was just me, but one of the most searched terms that I get hits on this blog from is “borderlands cannot save game progress.” Really disappointing.

Best New MMO for 2009.

1. Fallen Earth. Score one for the little guys. A very nice game. The content seems to be vast. Lots of area to cover in this game. The leveling system is different. Lots of collecting and crafting. It is not without it problems, my Frames per second is pretty bad sometimes. Has a very small gaming community, but it is growing. It is rare be in game and not see a GM helping someone. The devs seem to be a small, passionate group that really cares about the game. Something that some of the big boys like Champions Online has failed to do.

Most anticipated game for 2010.

1. Global Agenda. I am tired of reading about it. Pre-purchased on Steam, you know were I will be on 2/1/2010, playing Global Agenda.

Every one have a safe and prosperous New Year. Have a great gaming year, looking for a good gaming community to join check out the Combat Engineers; we are always looking for a few good gamers.

As the year draws to a close, I decided to blog a bit about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Best tool or content update.

1. It has to be the new dungeon finder in World of Warcraft. I am not a raider, but I am a 5 man dungeon crawler. This tool is by far the most useful tool that I have seen introduced in any game this year. You no longer have to hang out with the trolls in order to find a team for dungeons. Have I had a bad group or two, you bet, still I have had more good groups then bad. I like the fact that each group has to have a healer and a tank to start, or continue.

2. Mission Architect Arcs in City of Heroes. Yes, it had some problems when it first came out. Yes, since they made it so you could no longer make killer farming missions, it is largely being ignored. People are missing the point here. It is a great artistic outlet for some players. If you take the time to look, there are some really good missions. It extends the game for some players. I no longer have to run the same story arcs to level, lets face it. I have ran most of them. I can now go to the Mission Architect, and find some fresh arcs to run.

Worst tool or content update

1. Champions Online is the big winner here. First, the new chat features were I have to listen to every idiot in Millinimun City talk at the same time. So if there are 15 instances of MC, I have to see the chat for all 15. That is annoying, so annoying in fact that I have turned off zone chat. If you leave it on, it moves too fast, and your friends and Supergroup mates think you are ignoring them, because you never see your chat. Plus, the trolls take over the channel, and it has become useless.

2. Champions holiday content. Nothing new, the Christmas content is just a City of Heroes rip-off. Run around and open presents, lets see where have I seen that before. The whole Clarence thing was a giant bust. Travel from instance to instance killing him, in hopes of some loot, boring. The Halloween content, was repetitive, did not scale to your level, and no fun at all.

My merry band of World of Warcraft players (all four of us) ran Gnomeregan a few weeks ago. The only trouble we had was getting into the darn instance. I know that Blizzard is working on this, but man it is frustrating standing at the entrance to an instance, and not being able to get in. So here are a few friendly pointers. Again, this is not a full blown guide, just a few helpful pointers from a noob (me).

1. In the Damaged tunnel, stand back. Watch out for the explosions, and falling rocks. No need to enter the cave either. The mobs will come out and fight you.

2. Watch what you sell in the Clean room. I auto sell junk, I sold my red punch card. When we got to the Engineering Labs, I did not have the right card.

3. When you leave the Launch Bay, use the high path, the one all the way to the left when facing the passage way. You will come to a passage that leads to the left. This is to the Engineering Lab. Very simple, only have to kill a few mobs to get to the final punch card upgrade.

4. Kill those little mobile alert systems fast. It seemed to be if he gets his little “alert, alert” message out three times, an ambush will occur.

5. Stay together and organized, there are a lot of patrols in this instance. Especially in the passageways that have an upper and lower path. Try not to aggro the lower path if you are on the upper one, it will not be pretty.

6. It is nice to have a hunter with cheetah speed. In the last room, have them send their pet in to fight the boss, while they run around and push the red buttons at the bottom of the bomb dispensing machines. This will stop they bombs from dropping, and they hurt.

So far this is my favorite instance that we have ran. It was funny, good xp, and pretty challenging. Have fun.

The Stepping Stones ran the Stormwind Stockades the other night. Either the group I am running with is really getting good, or this instance was really easy. I think it is a bit of both. This instance was really not very exciting or profitable. So here are a few simple pointers.

1. Skip it if you must, the loot was poor, level 24 elites, dropping level 18 gear. Really poor loot and we are not loot hounds, but man even we like to make a bit of gold once in a while.

2. It is very small, and the XP is not very good……

3. Only problem we had was Dextren Ward, he feared the silly priest (me), and I attracted a few adds, and got myself killed. A silly mistake made by me. (Our other problem was one member of our party was dropped by the server, and could not get in for ten minutes, the authentication bug, but hopefully they will fix that soon.)

4. The big prize at the end of the Rainbow is the Seal of Wrynn at the end of the Lescover Incident quest chain, which started with a letter off the body of Edwn VanCleef in the Deadmines. The stockade riots quest is a step in this chain. Which is fine, you can complete that quest very easily. The problem is the seventh mission in the quest “Infiltrating the Castle”. It has some sort of bug, because Tyrion in the garden at Stormwind Keep garden after two days still does not have a question mark over his head. Some type of bug.

5. The mobs respawn very fast, so you can rack up a bit of easy XP, which we did for a bit waiting for one party member to be get back on line past the authentication bug.

6. So far, the lamest instance we have been in, which is just compounded by the lack of being able to finish the Lescover Incident quest chain. Will the achievement looks pretty cool, so was not a total loss.

We are off to the Razorfen Kraul, next week. I really hope it is a bit more of a challenge.