Guild Wars

A while ago I was one of the World of Warcraft players on a private server called Toxic WoW. It was probably the best server out there. I couldn’t pay a monthly fee to play, since I don’t work and don’t think paying monthly to play a game is a healthy thing to do. Sadly, Toxic was closed, supposedly by Blizzard. I had had trouble with other servers before and jumped around from private server to private server. I liked Toxic and was there to stay, so when it got closed I decided I’d had enough with World of Warcraft and started looking for another MMORPG. At first, I couldn’t find anything free to play that interested me, until I found out I could buy Guild Wars for 20€ and play without monthly fees. I gave it a try and started to like GW more and more and now I’ve finished all the campaigns and the expansion.

All around the web, there are articles that compare Guild Wars and World of Wacraft, but I honestly think they are mostly biased and written by a fan of either game. I currently prefer Guild Wars. Still, I’m gonna try to write an unbiased article comparing both games – because they ARE comparable!

IF YOU’RE A WORLD OF WARCRAFT PLAYER

What Guild Wars doesn’t have

• You can’t swim
• You can’t jump
• There are only human characters
• There is no guild vault
• There is no mailing system
• Everything is instanced, except outposts/cities
• Emotes don’t have sound
• No ongoing explorable map faction war
• No mounts
• Professions (mining, alchemy, etc.)

What Guild Wars has

• Missions – these are like special quests that make you advance on the storyline
• Primary and secondary profession (the equivalent to WoW classes)
• Wide variety of reality inspired looks for the characters
• Guild Halls
• Alliances (kind of like a guild of guilds)
• Heroes (no need to play two separate accounts to control more than one character)
• Tournaments – you need to gather qualifying points to be able to enter

What both have in their own way

• Factions – WoW has Aldor and Scryer, GW has Luxon and Kurzick
• Arenas – like in WoW, in GW you can enter randomly or with a previously made party
• Battlegrounds – GW has Alliance Battles and Competitive Missions
• Titles – I don’t have enough information to go deeper on this
• Cooperative playing – on WoW, you find adventure buddies along the way, on GW you have to pre-form your party
• Competitve playing – WoW’s PvP appealed more to me, but GW has more to choose from

Well, I guess this it for now. I’ve actually started writing this article some months ago and never got the chance to finish it. I’ve probably forgotten something important, so feel free to comment on it and I’ll expand the article with the topic, if I find it relevant.

Have fun!

The Day

The day… Oh, the day! Do you know what get’s me through the day? Listening to a Beatles album, while waiting in the traffic! Damn, it works amazingly good in boosting up my good mood! The lyrics, the arrangements, the ideas… Beautiful, really!

If you’re feeling down, pressured, don’t let yourself get dragged by those negative feelings! Just know deep down that nothing really matters – that’s right, nothing really matters. If you go deep into your mind, disconnect and go deep into your heart, you’ll understand it, believe me. NOTHING matters!

Living your professional life, your student life, isn’t as important as it may seem, there’s something above it all! And, damn it, they got it the 60s, with their crazy ideas about love and peace and freedom!

Death Magnetic

You know what? I’ve been listening to Death Magnetic these paste few days, since it’s been out in England, earlier than it was supposed to, and I have to say I feel disappointed with Metallica. Man, Metallica is number one in my Last.fm Overall Top Artists, which means since I registered in Last.fm, in the year of 2006, the thing I have listened to the most is Metallica, so I guess my opinion will be that of a fan.

What I like in this new album:

• The band worked hard on it – I feel like they cooperated more and opened their minds to new ideas.
• Metallica revived, after almost dying with St. Anger – even though I like the previous album a lot, it was out of Metallica’s scope and was fruit of the problems they were  having at the time.
• Long songs, not focused on commercial radio – still, it’s playing in the radio, even here in Portugal, but BestRock cut one of the singles half, once, and I must say I was pissed off at them!
• Oh man, the solos are BACK!! – Thank god, they “let Kirk out of the cage”!

Now, what I dislike:

• The lyrics… What a disappointment they are to me! I put an exception in Unforgiven III, though – that one’s ok.
• The dynamics in some of the lyrics are terrible… In «The End of the Line», the part when it goes “the slave becomes the master” is fucking great! It grows and grows, until… It’s sang again, where a conclusion should be. I mean, that part really builds up tension and could end amazingly, instead they just repeat it! Meh, that really disappoints me everytime I listen to it!
• I think a lot of the old Metallica feeling is now lost… That, or something isn’t working quite well.

I like Death Magnetic, but I don’t think it’s so different from St. Anger, even though it sounds completely different, almost like old Metallica. Death Magnetic is a logical follow up to St. Anger, in my opinion. I still haven’t lost faith in Metallica, I feel like the next album should be one of their best, at least that’s what I’m hoping for!

Let’s face it, those guys were much better when they were alcoholic and drug consumers, that’s just the truth. I’m happy they’re putting their lifes together, though, and I support them totally! Their contribute to music was and is almost as big as The Beatles or Motörhead. I’ll keep listening to «Ride The Lightening» and «Master of Puppets» until I’m dead!

Introducing Clem

Today, I’ve decided to introduce Clem to you all. Clem is my World of Warcraft character. He’s an Affliction Gnome Warlock. I wanted to choose Demonoloy, which let’s me summon the ultimate minion, called Felguard, but, unfortunately, since I play in a private server, a lot of the Demonology spells are bugged. I’m probably gonna pay to play, in the official, when I have a steady work and can afford it.

So, I’ve reached level 70, some days ago, and now I’m doing all sorts of Reputation quests, so I can buy better gear, and Daily Quests, for the gold, so I can buy a flying mount and have access to new places. Battlegrounds could be better, there’s not enough people on a private server, so you have to wait in queue forever or play in specific times, when everybody’s online. Also, the Arena should work, but it doesn’t, from what I’ve heard… I’m still waiting to form a 2v2 Team and try it out.

Anyway, the best way to introduce Clem is with screenshots, so here they are:

Hello Warhammer Online, bye bye World of Warcraft?

18 September 2008, 10 days from now, Warhammer Online is due to be released and man, it looks promising! I watched a video from GameTrailers.com – it was actually posted in Lazy Imperium – and I was amazed! The guy talking is the Creative Director. He used a band metaphor to describe where this game is trying to go, comparing World of Warcraft to The Beatles and Warhammer Online to Led Zeppelin.

I think the goblin skill of summoning a creature and then getting inside it, controlling the creature, is damn cool! In fact, the reason I seem to be so excited about this new game is probably because it’s like World of Warcraft all over again. That’s right, it’s pretty much inspired in WoW – even though they won’t admit it -, but hopefully it’ll be innovative and it’s that innovation I’m expecting for!

Just like WoW had Warcraft, Warhammer Online had Warhammer 40,000. They both started by having a strategy game that the MMORPG built on, so they both had experience in the matter of fantasy worlds and the art of war.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I’m going to play it… I didn’t confirm it, but it probably has a month fee, which I’m not gonna pay. Also, it sounded like he said $14.99, when he actually said $49.99 – I’ve confirmed the price at Amazon. If you pay for the game once, like it happens in Guild Wars, I’ll give it a chance though.

For now, it’s all the info I’ve got on the matter, but I’ll post something later and please be kind enough to leave a comment if you have anything to say regarding Warhammer!

Google is the new Microsoft

Yeah, that’s right, Google is taking over the market and becoming more powerful than Microsoft ever was! At first, I had a tremendous love for Google, but with their new web browser, Chrome, there were some privacy issues that I’m sure most of you knew about – it’s been fixed now. It basically stated that any data running through Google Chrome – blog posts, email, documents – would be property of Google. I can’t go into details, because there’s a lot I’m not sure about. What matters is that Google responded to that and edited the license agreement, so I was satisfied, even though suspicious.

Today, I found out that, if the suggestions on the omnibox – Chrome’s location bar and search engine -, were turned on, all the data would be sent to Google. Even though Google is probably trying to use that data to improve their products, I feel like they’re trying to get things out of people, simply because people don’t really care and read the licenses or take the time to make sure that their privacy is safe.

So, in a rage against Google’s crescent monopoly, I tried to make Firefox behave like Chrome – at least the things I like – and you know what? Firefox does the same exact job, except I feel home and I feel safe with Mozilla. I’ve been into the Open Source community for years and Mozilla is certainly a strong part of this community!

Personally, I’m avoiding going Google, without checking for alternatives. Gmail’s still my mail service of choice and though I tried I couldn’t use another RSS aggregator to replace Google Reader. They are simply the best at what they do, but my trust in their philosophy is fading quickly. I just need to know that I’m safe with Google!

Blogger User in WordPress

For a couple of years, I’ve been an active and affectioned blogger user. I liked it before, but it’s getting better and better ever since Google bought it. Nevertheless, I felt like WordPress could be more writer-friendly than blogger, so I wanted to try it. This is my first post in here and I’m loving it! Also, Google seems to be getting to a point where it is, more and more, monopolizing everything and I don’t like monopoly very much – competition is healthy though and acts as a progress catalyst.