Crazy. I used to be all obsessed with Steam, especially the sales. If there was a potentially good game on sale for a few dollars, I would pick it up. My Steam game collection is over 100 deep now. Games that have lately been on sale I've passed on because of Starcraft.
But now, since Starcraft 2 came out, I haven't even booted up Steam except for to find people to play Starcraft with. The way things are going, I don't think my Starcraft 2 addiction will be slowing down any time soon. Oh well. I don't mind.
I will be buying a PS3 in the next few months to go along with a new HDTV. There are a handful of games that I want to play on it, but we will also be using it as a Blue Ray player... which is the main reason for the purchase. To me, the PS3 is surviving because of the inclusion of Blue Ray... the exclusive games alone don't provide a big enough reason to buy one just for gaming.
We bought a house about 8 months ago and the Wii is still packed away. I can't remember the last game I played or bought for it.
I still purchase 360 games and PC games on a regular basis.
I'm trying to recover from the extra life 24 hour gaming marathon that we had last night. It was crazy. As part of the marathon my brother and I put together a nice LAN party at my house and invited all those who wished to attend to donate a minimum of $10 to Extralife. We ended up with around 8 people stacked in my basement with their PCs and some were not able to make it but donated anyways! Thanks to the LAN party, our we raised over $100 for Extralife and boosted our team to over $900. Last night was fun, but I haven't stayed up that late since before I was married.
We all played a mix of games... but I think a big focus was on Unreal Tournament 3, Warcraft 3 and World of Goo. My nephew quietly sat in the chair next to me and got in around 14 or so hours of Halo 3. He was the only one on the xbox 360. Overall, I think Extralife went extremely well and I look forward to next year when we can do it all over again.
Also, as far as Unreal Tournament 3 is concerned... that game is severely under appreciated. That game is awesome! Especially in a LAN party situation. We played it for several hours and wondered why there aren't many people online. It really is the only modern FPS of it's kind. Maybe that type of shooter is just not as popular any more... but I love it. If you enjoyed Quake, old Unreal Tournament, or even Half Life 2 Deathmatch but haven't tried UT3.. you need to.
I mentioned before that I chose a healing class because I was sick of idiots in scenarios playing a healing class and not healing at all. Well, I just entered into a tier 3 zone last night at rank 19 and immediately queued up for the tier 3 scenarios using the "join all" feature. I got into the Tor Anroc scenario twice in a row after using join all. It was a good time and happened to be my favorite type... the murderball (skull or whatever). I was bolstered up to rank 28 and began to throw out heals to all my team mates. It was awesome. Even though I was the lowest rank in the match, I came out second in heals overall and first on my team. That's what makes scenarios awesome in WAR is that no matter what level you are, you can contribute. I don't know if it's the same for DPS classes or tanks, but for a healer, it was a blast.
So I have been playing WAR since open beta and have been loving it. While I don't have a ton of time to play (family and such), I try to play a bit every night. I currently play a level 19 shaman on the Wurtbad server called Knarnak. Hopefully I can be consistent and post on this blog about my doings in WAR and other things for my own personal enjoyment and perhaps for others.
I played World of Warcraft since launch until around April 2008... or so... just before the launch of Age of Conan. I tried out several classes in WoW but ended up playing a Night Elf Druid. I raided Molten Core with the homies and Zul Gurub before the launch of Burning Crusade during which I played the balance spec. After the release of Burning Crusade, I decided to try feral and stuck with that until I quit. I was big into PVE until I decided that I didn't want the crazy time commitments and switched my focus to PVP. The PVP in WoW pissed me off so much in that it felt like in order to compete you had to dump hundreds of hours into battlegrounds to get enough honor to buy gear etc. This was a huge turn off for me and I eventually just quit. Some of the things they are doing in Wrath look interesting for PVP, but I doubt it's going to be much different... but I'll save that rant for another day. I guess I just got bored of WoW. Age of Conan released shortly after I quit wow and I picked it up after listening to my brother tell me how awesome it was. It was awesome. I enjoyed the time I put into it (around 2 months) but ultimately shelfed if for other games. I guess it didn't have enough to keep me going. I got one character to level 50 (out of 80) and several others in their 20s. That leads up to WAR. In between AoC and WAR I got caught up in several games I had missed on the xbox 360 and played a bunch of Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3. I preordered WAR for $5 for the right to play in the open beta, knowing that the open beta would be basically the finished product.
During the WAR open beta I basically played 2 classes... the shaman and the witch elf. I got both of them to around rank 9. It was awesome and I liked it enough to pick up the full game on day 1. I've been loving it ever since with the exception of some initial bugs in the beginning stemming from EAX incompatibilites that basically blue screened my computer. The reason I chose to play a shaman over other DPS or tank classes is that while playing a bit with the witch elf in beta, I got tired of playing in scenarios and having shitty healers who thought they could DPS and neglected their primary duties. I had never played as a healer in any MMO previous so I decided to give it a shot. It has been great.
Last night, I finally got to participate in a keep siege for the first time. The Barak Varr zone in the greenskin/dwarf pairing tier 2 had been captured and I joined an open party and entered the fray. We captured both control points and headed for the keep. The siege warfare in WAR is awesome. It is now my favorite part of the game. There are so many aspects to it that make is so fun, from the siege weapons and the defense mechanisms to the random crazy fighting when the other faction shows up to defend. We ended up taking the keep and got a bunch of renown. While there wasn't a ton of defense of the keep, I can only imagine how crazy the fighting will get when the majority of the players are at rank 40 and only PVPing. It is something I am looking forward to and creates a goal for me to reach that point to be able to compete and fight in the crazy RVR that WAR has built.
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