It’s the holidays so it means we are gonna have a lot of free time and probably would need something to occupy us away from all the holiday and family chaos, and what better way to that than jump back in World of Warcraft’s newest expansion Cataclysm.  You know what the worst part is?  It’s when you have finally fought the addiction of WOW and called it quits for sure, but then Blizzard comes out and releases an enticing expansion pack with a bunch of cool new features. And inevitably your friends then finally make you cave and buy a copy of Cataclysm, starting you back on the path of the downward spiral.  I have already started lacking proper amount of sleep, and have overheated my laptop a few times now from over use. I already know this isn’t going to turn out so well and Blizzard has got me hooked all over again. With that said, let’s talk about Cataclysm. I’m just curious if anyone who previously played WOW is excited for this expansion pack. And also if this expansion’s new feature is enticing enough to attract any new players to the game who was turned off from it before.

With DC comics in conjunction with Sony Online Entertainment working on DC Universe Online for the PS3 which is set for release in 2011 and Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes/Villains) working on the Xbox 360 version of Champions Online, how do you guys feel about MMOs on gaming consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii).

I personally find it really hard to image and play an MMO on a console where your main source of input is a simple controller. Having played World of Warcraft I can say for sure that I will probably dislike playing an MMO on my Xbox 360. As I play the game on my laptop I remember that when I first bought the game and started playing it, it was a nightmare not having a mouse as I used my touch pad. Even when I bought a mouse for the game I still used a good portion of my keyboard to map shortcut and found it to be a necessity to do well in the game. I can’t begin to image how they will map out all the important keys on something like a Xbox controller. What do you guys think about this?

Yslandia! The highly anticipated US Version MMO for the iPhone platform is coming soon!

Description
“Darkness’s rebellion rumbles on Yslandia, forever disturbing the balance of the Elements. And thus the rhythm of the drums gives way to the whistling of the blade.” Malaïm belief – Book 4, Humiliation 5

Dive into the heart of the Yslandia universe, an MMORPG with innovative game play, finely detailed graphics, and an addictive soundtrack! Wage battles in real time in a conflict where 6 races are vying for the possession of a group of magnificent islands, each with its own unique characteristics.

Create one or more characters from a large selection and embark on an exhilarating adventure!
Through hundreds of quests, discover a rich universe populated by colorful characters and unusual creatures. Explore, fight, trade and collect rare items for the glory of your clan!

Advance on your own or with a team and lead epic battles and duels in real time.
Control the advancement of your character and learn to master spells and new fighting techniques.

Invite your friends to be part of your guild, control their characters when they’re offline and exchange knowledge and items with them.

Proud adventurers, become a legend through the OpenFeint worldwide rankings!

Yslandia and its many challenges steadfastly await you!

Features:

YSLANDIA’S VAST UNIVERSE
Roam Yslandia through hours of game play: many islands to explore with more than 200 entertaining and unusual quests, dynamic dungeons, 18 distinct classes to try, and loads of creatures to discover.

QUALITY GRAPHICS AND INTERFACES
Plunge into a graphic ambiance worthy of the greatest 2D MMORPGs, with finely detailed graphics and a revolutionary control interface with the first dynamic D-Pad.

CHOICE OF GAME MODE
Take part in duels, arena combat, battles, and trials, and explore Yslandia in PVP or PVE, alone or as a team.
Find all of Yslandia’s features in the complete ingame manual translated into 5 languages!

A RICH AND DYNAMIC COMMUNITY
Take part in the first mobile multilingual MMPORG!
Enjoy ingame public or private chat, a list of your friends, and your inbox.
Collect, sell and trade items with no limitations!
Discover an innovative system for managing guilds (teaching spells / controlling offline friends)
Share your experience on OpenFeint

COMING SOON:
Fight for the glory of your faction with a system for controlling territories.
Participate in events and competitions organized in real time.
Discover new islands with new quests, characters and monsters.
Enjoy new spells, items and weapons.

Note: Yslandia requires an internet connection. The game will be selling for $4.99

Source

This shows the popularity of MMOs in the mainstream and also the popularity of Apple Iphone but that’s besides the point. I cannot wait to get my hands on this new game. I am already very tired of playing civilization on my Iphone although if you haven’t tried it it’s definitely a good buy.

If there is one thing I have still yet to master in World of Warcraft, it is the language used in the chat interface. No not english, I am talking about the abbreviated language all WoW players seem to posses. Now like most of you reading this blog and being on the internet in general, you must possess enough internet skills to understand lol and brb, but the advanced abbreviation language present in WoW still has me stunned.

When thinking of blog posts I knew I wanted to discuss this abbreviation language, yet I had no idea where to begin as I was still learning the language myself. So, as does any person with access to the internet, I punched in “abbreviations in WoW” into Google. The link posted below lead me to another blog post discussing the mysterious language. The post starts off with a question from a WoW player who confesses their confusion with the abbreviations.

Being a totally new player of MMOGs entering this class, I only had msn and text knowledge of abbreviated phrases and words. It wasn’t until this class that I learned what afk meant. Thankfully due to this post I found, all of the abbreviated words I need to know. . . for now. Now I know what it’s like to learn a new language.

So if my translation is correct (according to the post). . . AFAIK I am a n00b, and IKC if you are LF a tank or LFG. ATM I am AFK BTW to fulfill my BIO so STFU.

Pardon my French

If you are not language-abbreviation zealous, here is the link to the language-abbreviation dictionary:

http://wow.joystiq.com/2007/02/20/the-compleat-wow-abbreviations/

Monster Hunter has a lots of impressive animals, beast and dragon. Some of them are small and animal-like but most of the are dragon type monster. Obviously, they have high attack and high defense and some of them can fly. The goal of hunters is to kill the monster and collect monster material to craft a better armor and weapon for next challenge. There are difference damage effect, for example: If hunter focus to hit on the dragon’s head, the horn/eyes/nose would be highly damaged and would drop rare item.

There are about 10 species of monster and  over 100 difference monster . The 10 species are:

-Herbivore, Lynian, Neopteron, Pelagus, Piscine, Carapaceon, Bird Wyvern, Beast Wyvern, Wyvern and Elder Dragon.

In the following, I will show the 5 strongest monsters under the categories of the first 5 species .

1. Herbivore – Popo

The Popo is the largest and the strongest herbivore found living in the Snowy Mountains. Hunters often hunt for their meat and tongue to make foods and potions. Although they look big and tough but they are docile and will run for life when one of their member under attack by hunters or when a Wyvern enters their inhabit area.

2. Lynian – King Shakalaka

The King Shakalaka are normal Shakalaka thatwear mask, club and has fire on the top of the mask. They are the leader of the Shakalaka and inhabit in the area Forest and Hills, they may look cute but in fact- they are tough. King Shakalaka is consider to be a semi-boss in game, they are strong and can do a large sum of damage to hunters. It is more difficult to fight them in group because the normal Shakalaka would cause distraction while the King Shakalaka will throw fire ball to hunters. King Shakalaka ‘s mask can use to craft ” Armor Sphere, Hard Armor Sphere and Royal Armor Sphere”.

3. Neopteron – Queen Vespoid

Vespoid is the strongest in the Neopteron, although they are they strongest in the Neopteron species but they are weak and nobody. However, they are hard to aim and would cause paralyze to hunter and their body parts are useful in making paralyze trap.

4. Pelagus – Golden Rajan

Golden Rajang is a minotaur-like beast with two large horns on its head, they are strong and can release electric in their body system. Unlike normal Rajang, Golden Rajang are rarely see in wild due to their lonesome style. The most notable ability is to shoot electric beam from its mouth and many hunters hate to encounter Golden Rajang due to their power, speed and aggression.

5. Piscine – Red Lavasioth

Red Lavasioth is large Piscine Wyvern , living in the volcano and  lava area and resistance of fire attack. They have hard rock scales to protect them, which means they have high defense power. They can swim in lava and would give a sudden attack, they throw fireballs and meteors, they can also jump and slam themselves on the ground to attack hunters. They also do “Sliding U turn” attack with their tails to stun hunters, they are tough and hard to kill but the Lavasioth scales, teeth and fins can be use to craft  Red Lavasioth armor which called the “Red-Volganos armor” and “Lava-long Sword”. These armor gives hunter a high defense and flame resistance, the Lava-long Sword consists high fire element attack. The are one of the hunter’s favorite.

The pictures shows “Red-Volganos Armor” and “Lava-Long sword”.

P.S the remaining 5 species will be show and discuss in “Beast-Dragon-Monster part 2″

It’s been a week since I have last updated and it’s time for me to dump some random chat logs!

Chat Log #1:  Chatting with other Noobs

I give out free shrimps to my interviewees

Chat Log #2 Talking about real life fishing while fishing in Runescape

Chat Log# 3 : SOme Rnadom Dudes saying that they love each other after a trade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtbNCTYcWAU&feature=relate

I saw this clip on Youtube and I think this video is kind of fake but this is actually a good example of how a Noob should look like. People always call me a noob in Runescape , especially when I trying to interview other players….they call me a noob mainly because I ask too much questions and I blocked their views or their fishing / mining spot….The word “Noob” is really hard to define and it is hard to prevent someone from calling me a Noob…so tell me guys how do you define the word Noob?

12 million people can’t be wrong.

This was my reasoning when I choose World of Warcraft as my game to study for this course. There were other games that were free, but I found some of them (Runescape) to be very lackluster in graphics quality. I had signed up as a Blood Elf Priest, and I only had 7 days until my trial period would expire. I decided, hey, if I like it, I might as well play it. However I soon realized that trial accounts have severe limitations. For one, they cannot communicate with other paying players *unless* that player has you on his buddy list or messages you first. Trial players also cannot talk in /2 (which is the public trade channel). I suspect this is as a result of Gold Farmers who have gone berserk over spamming trade and general channels looking for new customers.

So here I was, a noOb in azeroth, level one. I played for about 1 hour until my bags were full and I couldnt figure out how to get rid of the junk items. I had progressed to level 5 and this game was becoming more and more fun. I had already made a couple of friends, that I wanted to play with and eventually use them as subjects for my interviews.

I learned a lot from my friends and I’ve come to understand that much of the entails learning, socializing, and exploring with friends. The game really isnt about the loot that you get from killing monsters, or defeating difficult bosses, because loot will always become obsollete every few months and new bosses will always come up. Much like life, I think the purpose of this game is not the destination, but the journey. The steps you took to defeat the boss is more important than the actual slay.

I am now level 33, and I learned rather shockingly that trial accounts can only go up to level 20. In my 5th day of playing I was at lvl 20 and because I liked the game so much and the friends that I made in it were so entertaining, I decided to pay for the game. I had become emotionally attached to my avatar. Here are some of the pics of my adventures in Azeroth.

When you start a new MMOG or virtual world one of the very first things that you are asked to do is choose a name for your avatar. Depending on the game or virtual world that you are using there might be different restrictions associated with what type of name you can and can’t choose. For instance in Second Life you are allowed to pick any first name that you like, so long as it isn’t already being extensively used at which point they tell you that it isn’t available. For the last name you have to select from the list of possible names that are provided, which changes slightly every time you refresh your page, which can make it tricky if you find a last name that you like but have to go back to change your first name. Getting a first and last name that go well together can also be a challenge and I will admit that I probably spent a good 20 minutes going through all the possible last names in order to find one that went well with the first name I had chosen, which was also a challenge considering so many of the common names were no longer available and I didn’t really want to have a name with numbers or other such nonsense in it. Picking a name can be as important or unimportant as any individual player wants it to and it may or may not have a particular or important meaning for the person choosing. The degree to which your avatar name reflects the real you will vary for every person, some might want a name that is close to their real one while others might want a name that is totally different. There is no one reason for choosing a particular name for your avatar and it will only ever be as meaningful to a player as they want it to be.

Runescape is one of the most popular free online game, it is a MMOPRG released in 2001 and it’s a graphical brower game that runs Java. Players won’t have to install anything to play, all you need is an account and you are ready to go.

I use to have an account back in 2002 and I have played it for 2 years, but for some reason my account is deleted after the huge update in 2008 and  I will have to start all over again!

World Map of RuneScape : http://www.rshaven.com/images/runesacpe-world-map-2007.jpg

Day 1 : Mining and Smithing

Runescape offers a lot of character classes , players can also customize their own avatar. I picked slayer as my occupation and i customized my avatar.  BTW my player name is Neet120 if any of you guys are playing this game feel free to add me

After customizing the character, player will enter a dragon slaying quest which is a tutorial and you will learn some basic skills such as (battle, combining & using objects, mining, chopping trees…etc)

Runescape has a very unique or old school battle system, players will take turn hitting each other and players can only attack one target at a time.

Here is a video

After the tutorial players are free to do what ever they want.

Crafting plays an important role in Runescape and a lot of skills are related to each other for example:

Mining and Smithing

Fishing, Tree Chopping , Fire Making and cooking

Attack and defence

From the picture above we cans see that there are a lot of skills that plpayers can level up and specialized in,the the skills that are highlighted in blue are only for members are free members are not able to train or speicalize in them.

The level cap for the skills are lvl 99 and players will be rewarded a special cape when their skill reach lvl 99

Mining and Smithing are the skills that I wanted to lvl up first, because i can smith my own weapons , tools and chainmails  once i reach a certain lvl. There are different ores in runescape and new players are only able to mine clay, tin and copper. Clay is for crafting and players are able to craft bowls, pots …etc  Other ores are for smithing.

Mining ores will lvl up you mining skills and as you lvl up you will be able to mine faster, different pick axes can also increase the speed of mining.

After mining the ores, players will have to bring them to the nearest furnace to make metal bars, tin and copper will make a bronze bar. Here’s a picture of me smithing in front of the furnace and my inventory is on the right hand corner you can see that there are copper and tin ores , there are also a few bronze bars.

These are the items that players can smith, players can smith almost all the weapons and armour types in Runescape , after smithing players can sell the things they smith or give them to the noobs beside them, since money is actually useless when players are able to craft anything they want.

Mining is a slow and boring work to do, so players will have a lot random conversations. You can see players mining at the same place for hours and some players might think that they are bots but actually bots are strictly banned in Runescape, bots are also less efficient. Runescape has added in some new functions to prevent bots they are called the special events and they occurs randomly. Here are some pictures:

Players will encounter these special events easily when they are doing the same action continuouslyfor example mining, fishing, chopping wood…etc and they are require to do certain things according to finish the event, players will be rewarded when they finish the event .

That’s all my findings for now, I will continue to mine and smith until the next time I update my blog

feel free to make comments and Happy Thanks Giving Everyone

Cheers

N.E.E.T

Recently I’ve started online gaming again, partly for this module, so I can get a bit of practice with the controls before we have to research properly and I have to multi-task alongside my role in the Legion, and partly for something to do as a cool down from essays.  I figured since it’s been such a long time since I last dabbled in any online world I should do a bit of research and forum-stalk for a while before starting to play. In many ways this pre-gaming research has been crucial in the shaping of my character and approach to others in the virtual world.

I never realised how seriously people took the naming of their avatars. Before it was always a ‘this sounds half-decent and it’s free’ kind of job, I realise now that this is perhaps why it was always harder to join a group. I found one thread on the naming process, and then had to look around for some more; I wasn’t altogether convinced it wasn’t a phenomenon amongst the hard core WoW players. Apparently it’s not.

On the threads were also discussions of other players they had seen with an attempted copy of a name. It doesn’t go down well. At all. This led me to reconsider the connection between the avatar and the player. For some it seemed like the name was just a habit, and one they didn’t like to have broken by other players, most of whom were deemed to be n00bs for carrying out virtual identity theft. For others the naming was more serious, like the name was a figurative embodiment of a personality so they could transfer it between platforms and remain unchanged.  As someone who has never previously had any attachment or ‘bond’ with an avatar, it was a little odd at first ‘hearing’ someone talk about a name as though it was a child; because for me, and presumably to anyone else reading the thread, that’s all it was, no embodiment or image, just a name in a forum.

A slightly sadistic part of me considered stealing a name from the forum to use during research, but seeing the reactions against people who had done, fairly rapidly decided against it. So for the first time, I put effort into thinking of a name for my avatar. One that would reflect both the race and class of character I was likely to pick based on other forum stalking I had done, and maybe even a little bit of myself that was likely to show through the character when I was playing. It took really a lot longer than I thought it would. But it does seem to have paid off; I was recruited at a really low level to a Legion (the Aion equivalent of a guild) largely because of the name, and in the second region avatars appeared to be conspicuously avoiding ones who were jumping everywhere. As much as I wouldn’t have thought it would make a difference, the extra effort I put into thinking of the name, and therefore the character, seems to have given me a slightly greater sense of connection to the avatar; not quite on a ‘my child’ level, more of a Frankenstein-esque ‘It’s alive!’ kind of way that I don’t normally get until the end of games.

Hopefully all of this, including the initial being freaked out stage, will all come to be of benefit as the class, and my avatar progress. It has definitely made me reconsider virtual identities across platforms and the age old adage ‘what’s in a name?’