What a week!

This week has been absolutely crazy, first was the trip to Rochester, then when I got back home the Internets were out for two days and then a big test in my XML class. So again come the apologies for the lack of posting.

But I come bearing good news! I have finally installed Vista and am currently patching EQ2! So finally I can see what all the fuss is about, now this patching will take another half-hour so I figured I'd make a post and scour the Internets for news and the like. In sadder news I believe I am going to leave LOTRO for the time being, I just can't get excited about the game anymore, the epic quest is incredibly fun but the rest just seem uninspired and run of the mill.

In other news, MMOpinionated will have a new home soon, in the next month I am going to migrate all of my posts to a privately hosted site, which I will post a link to when I am near complete. Blogger is great but it really makes me feel amateurish and just isn't what I want it to be yet.

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Cheston

LOST

No, I'm not going to ramble on about smoke monsters, and "others". I am lost in the MMO world, I have no game I am seriously into. I'm still trying to set off that spark with LOTRO, the game is great don't get me wrong. It is beautiful, cute, and pretty fun, but I just can't get into it. I'm sure other gamers are the same way where you feel that spark when playing a game for the first time, where you stay up until four in the morning playing and just don't want to stop. Now I used to feel this spark with the release of almost every MMO years ago, and now a days it seems I wade through the sea of MMOs and just can't muster at least one all nighter. And as an old break up line once said "you can't force love baby", and that is certainly true for games. No matter how pretty or how much content there exists in the game sometimes it just doesn't ignite that gamer fuel that we all use to power through those late night raids and get that next level.

Of course I mentioned LOTRO, but I've been in this MMO lull since I really fell out of love with WoW. I've gone back to EQ, SWG, EVE, and others that just havn't done it for me, now part of the reason I think going back to old games just doesn't do it for me, is that I am a social gamer. I love to chat it up with friends and the guild but all of my friends have moved on from these older games, and it seems the only people I know playing MMOs anymore are the WoW devotees and a few out there in EQ2 land. Really friends make the game so much easier, just for chatting, grouping, etc... I really find it tough to play a game where I have no friends. So why not go back to WoW? Well because boyfriend is a hardcore WoW player and so I know what the bleeding edge raid game consists of and frankly it doesn't look all that appealing to me, neither does their PvP, or constantly farming mats. Also really I just don't know how much more of that world I can take right now. I'm currently in a couple of closed betas right now which are pretty fun but not as we say in the software world "feature complete" meaning they are lacking several components that will be in the finished product, and these are pretty big components. And really the beta has a deadline and the fun can't last all that long, so why try and stick around for a character wipe when I'm really not sucked in yet. Now as a note I'd love to get into EQ2, but unfortunately I am having technical issues, that could only be resolved by an upgrade from XP to Vista. Who knows maybe I'll make the jump, I am just worried that I will end up disappointed after having put in all that time to upgrade.

Of course I am waiting on a few new games coming out, namely Age of Conan:Hyborian Adventures, and Warhammer Online:Age of Reckoning. But in the interim I have no idea what I am going to do with myself when I've got that gaming itch, especially during the summer where I actually have free time. Anyways please let me know what you guys out on that interweb think? What are you playing? and should I be playing it?

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Cheston

So what is going on these days?

As a proper post-first post I'm just going to talk a little bit about what I am playing right now. I'll get into in depth discussion later, this is just "where I stand" sort of post.

Anyways, what am I playing?
Lately I've been into the new hotness Lord of the Rings Online(lotro for short). I have a level 21 Human Captain on Gladden, which I don't play all that much anymore, and a level 17 Hobbit Burgler on Silverlode. I switched servers not because of any fault of the community, but because I had a few friends on Silverlode and wanted to see how things went with them. So far things have been great, I've been enjoying the game quite a bit, and though it lacks many features I'd consider a must, it certainly makes up for in eye candy, and general fun.

Now I know a lot of MMO bloggers out there are hot for EverQuest2(EQ2), and honestly I'm interested greatly. As an ex-EQ junkie I can safely say that EQ2 provides a very attractive package at its current stage. Unfortunately I've run into some technical issues that have yet to be resolved, to be specific, as my main gaming machine I have a Macbook Pro. Now of course I run all of my games under Windows XP using Bootcamp, but there seems to be some hardware issue with the MBPs that causes EQ2 to crash after about a minute of playtime. The only solution is to upgrade to Vista, something I havn't really gotten around to doing. So when I do I'll let you all know how it works out, but I just wanted to clarify that I harbor no ill will against EQ2, I just havn't gotten the chance to really explore it in its current state. I did play it a year or so ago, but due to the large changes made I don't think I really have much room to talk about the current state of the game.

Anyways, that is what I am up to. If I have any readers, please share what you are currently playing, I'd be interested to hear what you internet peoples are up to.