woe is me, woe is me

over the last few days my computer has been acting up. Ever since I bought the new RAM everything is on the fritz and has been testing my patience and ability to dive deep into Advanced settings tabs and BIOS…. uhhg.  So until I can resolve the issue of my comp randomly crashing into the blue flames of computer hell WAR beta will have to wait until I can tackle this issue. On a last note, I have not checked yet to see if my motherboard can actually support 4 GiGs of ram and I hope that is not the issue

Round 2 comming up next…

28.5% ready.

The last few days have got away from me. Like others, I too have been upgrading my system to ensure smooth play in large RvR battles. My processor and graphics card are the weakest part of my system right now but they still rank above the minimum line by a decent amount so I’ll keep those units. Up until now I was running 1.5GB RAM with windows Vista so i picked up two sticks of Super Talent 2gb 800MHz RAM putting me at a very comfortable 4Gigs.  I got home and threw off my tower door like the hulk and begun to unpacked my RAM. The heat sinks on the sticks made it a tight fit and almost impossible to install and nearly missing a component on my motherboard. I booted up Windows and checked my system specs…. RAM: 3gig…..huh? I ran Dxdiag and updated my beta account anyways. As it turns out the salesman gave me the wrong chip and I had to wait till yesterday to exchange it.

My next move was obtaining Fraps since I plan on making short movies, strats vids, Epic RvR vids, and anything of the like.  I ran an unofficial stress test on my machine. This was easy, I started by recording fraps, ran a movie, opened 6-8 web pages, ran itunes, signed into Vent, signed into msn, and did my best to bogg my system down. I’m happy to say everything ran perfectly, but not for too long.

After receiving my Beta invite via CE reserve, set up Vuze with the task of DLing the 9+ gig beta file. Vuse would end up shanking my system repeatably and displaying “the blue screen of death”  <grumble>  I spent an hour or two researching the problem and trying to correct it. AHHHRRGG! I have a good amount of patience normally, but not today!! /uninstall and downloaded Utorrent to do the job. I left this morning at 28.5% the way to WAR!

The Pre-WAR hum.

I finnaly got my Beta Invite and DLing now! Most of the guild is reporting invites as well. There is a steady buzz of preperation across the net, like runners before a marathon and hundreds of thousands of people deep. Tape your nipples down, stretch them legs, and get into your happy place because WARs Open Beta is about to begin!

ToK: The Adventures of Gompers!

Now I Want to play WAR as Order,  and more specifically the Engineer but this quote makes me want to play both sides! Not to mention thanks to Book of Grudges for steering me toward this Gamespy Journal of Press in closed Beta seemingly immune to the NDA sword.

In this case I unlocked one of ten potential flavor entries on Norsca about the Chaos Portal, receiving a small xp reward along with a well-written and fun short (about a page) about a Chaos Sorcerer and a Marauder checking out a Chaos Portal. When the Sorcerer asks the Marauder what he thinks of it, well, I’ll just let the text speak for itself:

“Bjorn was lying on the ground in the fetal position, gently rocking and humming to himself. His hands were covered with blood: his own. The Sorcerer stared into the ragged mess of the Marauder’s eye sockets. The man had clawed out his own eyes.”

This is the kind of news got me excited about the ToK and PvE in general. This might be the single best original Idea that Mythic has brought to the MMOG market. Now this isn’t clearly “new” because almost every game to date puts you in the hero shoes or shoes of great importance. Every game creates a huge land with great mountains, ruins, landmarks, easter eggs, and cinematics to progress a storyline. Every game gives your the scene but no story! In every OTHER game that storlyline is the same for anyone that plays it and that’s the key to the ToK being so utterly huge to the MMO genre. The great thing is that everyones ToK will be different, but equally fascinating to read.The ToK is like a choose your own adventure novel if the ToK Is infact as deep as Carrie G. (ToK creator and spokeswomen) claims.

I can hope that Mythic will print it into an Italian leather bound book upon the inevitable day I choose to leave the WAR effort, just for me to keep(I really do).