gaming companies (i’m looking at you Square Enix and SOE) should not release an unfinished game. it is unacceptable for them to expect gamers to purchase their games when the games are not ready to leave beta testing stage.

i’m not going into details but i’ll just say that rather than paying $14.99 for a gold membership in Everquest 2′s free-to-play server, i resubbed in their live server. the problem with me is that i get bored really easily so hopefully this time around i’ll stick to the game. especially since i paid for Sentinel’s Fate expansion pack.

as for Age of Conan, i resubbed to see how is the environment is like. i was tempted to get the expansion pack but i’m holding back for now. check back to see how i survive in my readventure back in mmorpgs.

my PC died while i was enjoying Dungeon and Dragon Online and Mass Effect 2. since i’m now back on my MacBook Pro, i refused to resub WoW (well…i paid for a month’s worth but played less than 15 minutes in total) so my only option is PoxNora. I started PoxNora about 2 years ago, i love the idea of Warhammer Fantasy meets Magic: The Gathering meets Shining Force (or any other SRPG). i can’t exactly remember the reason why i stopped playing it but i gathered that it’s the high barrier cost (similar to Magic, you need a good pool of runes in order to build a good army) and the usual metagame (where all the top 10 decks are rather similar to each other).

Since PoxNora was acquired by Sony Entertainment, i’ve lost the good hundred over bucks worth of runes. i don’t have any of my invoices pertaining to 2008 and Sony Entertainment can’t trace ownership. but i’ve already spent a few more hundred dollars on getting new boosters so i guess i’ll just stick it out for now.

i’m a huge fan of tactical games, my first experience of the likes will be Shining Force 2. it’s a charming strategy RPG filled with cliches (hero saving the princess, hero that doesn’t talk, a warrior dwarf, a female elven healer) but it works extremely well, especially for a game created in the 90s. which perplex me whenever i play bad SRPG.

case in point, i randomly picked up Dawn of Heroes yesterday when i saw it in my local hobby store. i’ve not heard of it before but i was yearning for a good tatical game. i’m only an hour into the game – which might be too early to really do a full review – but in my totally biased opinion, the game is bad. the storyline and character dialogues are funny but it’s the battle that makes the game frustrating to get through. fighting in Dawn of Heroes is extremely tedious due to the animation cutscene. so let’s say, my character has a passive ability called ‘combustion’ that makes an enemy vulnerable to his attack. and whenever i attack an enemy, the animation for ‘combustion’ runs. just a normal attack on an enemy takes an average of 7-10 seconds. take that and multiply with the number of times you have to attack and you will understand how i feel.

i’ll give the game a few more hours before deciding that i really hate it.

i’m on The Wizards Community so add me to your friend!

to my devoted readers (all 2 of you) who are dying to know what’s new in The Magic Flunkies world, mel has a new gf and he has picked up warhammer 40k! being a rich fuck and a spoilt brat, he is now collecting (read: not playing) warhammer 40k, warmachine, hordes and magic: the gathering. as for me, under the influence of mel, i have been buying (read: not playing, not collecting) warhammer fantasy (dwarf), warmachine (menoth), hordes (circles of oboros), magic: the gathering, world of warcraft and the latest addition – warhammer online.

i’ll write an entire post dedicate to warhammer online in a while, but i just want to rant on magic’s new expansion – shards of alara. favourwise, i think bill rose and mark rosewater did an awesome job on it. 5 different planes co-existing without the knowledge of others, each plane deprived of 2 other colours. it’s amazing how the team can churn out shit (in a good way) like that when they are basically just rehashing the same concept. i’m not as hardcore as i used to be, but i make an effort to read about the new cards and buy the fatpack whenever a new expansion is launched.

Shards of Alara booster box

Some Singaporeans have been complaining about the lack of supply of Wii here as well as the ‘exorbitant’ price of a set. While US is selling a set at S$560 (US$369.99) Singapore has been selling a ‘bundled’ set at $649 (US$420?). It seems that the bundled set has been forced upon by us by our cutthroat games distributor (Maxsoft).

I caved in to peer pressure and got myself a set of Wii. And i must say, that $700 odd i paid is money well spent. Never have my body ached from playing console, and here i was, spent and aching after playing 3 sets of Wii Tennis and Wii Boxing.

I enjoy playing with Godfather too. IMHO, it’s the best game so far for Wii. The action, the blood, the violent and the language. Plus the added RPG character development. It’s one solid title for Wii.

Interesting Wii site: http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com

Do take a look if you’re interested in both D20 stuff and Harry Potter.

Let’s take a look at the hits and misses of Future Sight:

Firstly, i must applaud WoTC for taking a risk on creating the new card frame and citing them to be ‘future-shifted’. We all know that WoTC is just testing the waters with something like this. In fact, i would think that Future Sight is all about testing the waters. First off, 50 (or less…or more..i don’t care) over keywords and most of them are pretty unimpressive. Being a player for almost 10 years, i miss the good old days of ‘can’t be affected by summoning sickness’ instead of haste. So i didn’t quite understand why they have to create an entirely new keyword (a very unimpressive Shroud, by the way) for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities’ So what will the keyword for ‘can’t be target of spells and abilities opponent control’? Shroud Them? Or what about ‘can’t be the target of spells and abilities you control’? Shroud You? I was wondering why Imperial Mask didn’t have that Shroud keyword. Was it because they didn’t want it to be named as…Shroud Player? Or ‘You gain Shroud.’ Or ‘You are Shrouded’. Well, you get the drill.

While I do agree that keywords like Reach (can block creatures with flying) does clear up the rules a little, especially for newbies, they should really just implement it in the core sets. With other keywords that only appear in one or a few cards, like Transfigure, Delve, Fateseal, Absorb and a very uncreative Life Link, one can only imagine how bleak and unoriginal the future of Magic will be like.

What i do like about Future Sight…hmm, i do think that the Grandeur is a nice touch to the legends cycle, it encourages players to include 2 or more copies of the same card. I hope this is one ability that will be reappearing in the future. I’m also interested to see how the new cycle of rare lands will play out in block. It would be nice to see a separate cycle of the individual land in the upcoming expansions.

We all have our share of crap rares…Moonlace…Mudhole…But imagine this, you open your first pack of booster and excitedly reveal part of your last card. It’s a red rare! Could it be Tarox Bladewing?! And then you reveal the entire card and realised that it’s Steamflogger Boss. Oh man. That’s just a bad decision on WoTC’s part. It’s an unimpressive 3R for a 3/3 that grants what? Riggers? +1/+1 and what was that? Contracep…Contraptions? Simply useless. I’m not sure which is worse, Force of Savagery or Steamflogger Boss.

I’m not exactly giddy with the prospect of the future sets, but i’m glad that WoTC took a proactive

-Jar

In this first segment (and The Magic Flunkies first update of the year) of The Magic Flunkies’ What If, we imagine how a MMORPG would be like in the world of magic and wizardy.

Background Story

The game takes place way after Book 7. The World of Witchcraft and Wizardry is in turmoils again. The Death Eaters have risen in power in a couple of years and they managed to secure a huge following who believes in superiority of the pure-bloods.

Reports of muggles missing appear on the headlines everyday, paranoid grew among the wizardry world and everyone starts to wonder who’s the traitor among them.

As the Order of the Phoenix prepare themselves for war, the Death Eaters secretly found a way to rise Voldemort back from the grave again…

Character Customization

The character customization’s interface would be as user-friendly as The Sim2. While you can only be human in this game, there are a variety of customization to choose from.

Players start the game in Hogwarts, regardless of whether they choose to be in the Order of the Phoenix or the Death Eaters. PvP action starts only when you’re level 10.

All characters start off as a level 1 wizard/witch with only basic cantrips spells like lumos and wingardium leviosa. And they begin their adventure by completing basic tasks for the teachers. Basic tasks can be in form of running errands (ie, fetch me 10 feathers!) or can be in form of getting rid of vermins (ie, kill 10 rats in the basement). And they would gain experience points from these tasks to level up.

Leveling up in HP Online is similar to WoW. You got to find your teacher (trainer) and learn new spells.

Our attempts to update the blog have been thwarted by the release of Time Spiral, World of Warcraft TCG, World of Warcraft online game (but more about it later) and my 10 days trial period on Matrix Online.

Firstly – Time Spiral – We were totally caught off guard about the Time-shifted cards and i must say that it was a good move. It was nice seeing old favourite cards of mine getting reprinted. Like Bad Moon, Auratag, Feldon’s Cane, Gaea’s Blessing and Mystic Snake.

Moving on to World of Warcraft TCG , the sale of it was crazy! out of stock at the local stores within a few days of release and also the surge of the pricing. It sort of reminds of the days when Pokemon was still hot in the card game market and the demand for it was so huge that each booster pack cost about $10. It seems to me that most of the WoW TCG players are also Magic players, which made the learning experience a lot easier. The game in a whole, is a pretty easy game to pick up, yet perhaps being a new game, some parts of the rules seem pretty buggy. I shared several boxes with Mel, built a deck and played a couple of times. I enjoyed playing it only because im playing the online game, it’s fun to see characters on the game appearing as my ally in the card game. But give me Magic anytime!

And the main reason why i havent been updating much is because of WoW online game. I finally hit 60 after 8 months of procrasinating and i still can’t believe that im 60 now. Well, being a level 60 mage (Alliance in Runetotem) really means nothing since i couldn’t really solo elite mobs of my levels, but at the same time im having great fun running Scholo and Strat UD almost on a daily basis with my guild members and trying to get my Magister’s set items. Mel has been trying to level up his mage as well, but the funny thing is that he got his girlfriend hooked up to WoW and now she’s more hardcore than both of us. She has like 4, 5 characters in the server and they range from 20s to 40s. I didn’t have much patience leveling up one main character, not to mention her training 5 characters at one go!

Also, i tried the 10 days trial for Matrix Online…and I hated it. Really hated the gameplay, the interface and just the game in general. I just got the trial cd for Dungeon and Dragon Online and I might try it one day when im free. Pretty eager to play that game, being a huge D&D buff, but now im trying out Neverwinter Night 2 that just got released.

A really lengthy update i know. I shall try to update this at least once per week. Been trying out this d20/homebrew Magic: The Gathering rpg and maybe i shall log the process with this blog. Meanwhile for those WoW players, head over to The Weekly Murloc for my favourite WoW podcast these days.

-Jar-