Guild Wars 2 on Sale this weekend!

With the new expansion for Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns on the way soon, Arenanet are offering the Digital Heroic Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition for 75% off from April 10th to April 13th.

This is a great bargain for a fantastic buy to play MMO (No Sub required!) and I highly recommend it!

Get Guild Wars 2 today for the lowest price ever!

* Offer applies only to Digital Heroic Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition purchased through buy.guildwars2.com from 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time April 10, 2015 through 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time April 13, 2015.

LOTRO Mount Giveaway #1 ENDED

Last year, Sapience of Extra Life (Formerly of Turbine) offered various rewards for donating to his Extra Life fundraising efforts.

As a result, I have a bunch of codes that I don't need so I'm having a couple of giveaways to distribute them. So here's how it'll work. I'll post a selection here. Please note that these mounts with be applied to your account so you'll get them on every character.

 Leave a comment on the blog post with which items you'd like and you'll go into a draw. Ensure you leave some form of contact detail (email or twitter) and I'll run this first draw on Saturday 11th April.

CREMELLO STEED
Winner: Jonathan Lee

STEED OF THE RED DAWN
Winner: Giggles

STEED OF THE FIRST MARSHALL
Winner: Indra Quintero

STEED OF THE WINGED HERALD
Winner: DKRules

Congrats to all the Winners!

Watch the blog for more freebies...

H1Z1 PVE video

There seems to be lot of speculation about H1Z1 that it is purely PVP. I'm here to tell you this is not the case. There are PVE servers and they are very popular. As you can see from my last few posts, PVE in this game can be a lot of fun.

Today there was a server wipe, all characters and worlds were gone and it gave me an opportunity to start from scratch and build a base using the knowledge I gained over the last couple of weeks. What did surprise me was that I had a serviceable base up and running within two and a half hours, something I was still working on after two weeks, pre wipe. 

I streamed as I did it and recorded it here for anyone that cares to sit through 2 1/2 hours of me running around shooting badly, gathering supplies and not giving any kind of commentary. On the upside, it is a good example of how the games crafting system works so far (I managed to get all he recipes figured in that short time) and how the thig looks outside of PVP.

It's important to mention, this is Alpha. Things are being changed on almost a daily basis but there is so much potential here, this could turn into a great horror survival game. 

http://youtu.be/D_mmM8tYTYY

H1Z1 The continued diary of a survivor part 3

Things have started to come together. Having found a spot on the edge of a mostly deserted town, I have now upgraded the ramshackle shed I used as a base, to a fully fledged platform, with outbuildings, dew collectors for water and even a barbecue for cooking that tasty wolf meat.

Thankfully the local bear has kept his distance but the Dead continue to approach in droves, usually attracted by the sounds of me felling trees or the smoke from the Grill. I'm getting quite proficient with the bow. From the comfort of my raised platform, I can take them out with a shot to the head fairly easily and the endless supply of wooden sticks growing around my camp makes for great ammunition. These sticks can also be fashioned into spike traps, which I've spread liberally around the steps leading up and now a pair of barbed wire fences protect the entrance.

Today was a metal run, many of the cars are abandoned so scrap metal is plenty, and having fashioned a makeshift forge, I can melt this down and make sheets of metal that fortify my base. Today, however, I had a mishap that almost cost my life.

I set out at dawn. Visibility was low but I had seen a number of areas of cars and wanted to get round them all by nightfall, as well as a trip to the local river, my supply running low. As I reached the valley, I was suddenly in a bank of fog. I ran into a couple of the Dead and in the panic, lost my bearings. I spent most of the day walking, trying to find my camp or at least a landmark but the fog wasn't helping.

Soon enough, I hit the river, and though I didn't recognise the stretch I was on, following it seemed like a good idea. As I did, I found a load of survivor camps, though no sign of life. Several hours later, after dodging a bear and countless walking corpses, I saw something I recognised..a water tower that sits about a mile from my base. Making a beeline for it, I saw more familiar scenes, and soon hit the edge of town. The sun was going down, so I ran straight through, scavenging more cars on the way and soon enough found my home, to some relief.

Tomorrow I must get more rabbit traps up to keep me in food  and maybe get more metal to fix up more walls. Life is lonely here, but I'm surviving.

H1Z1 The continued diary of a survivor part 2

Having settled on a server I like - low population, PVE, EU server, I've started to find things from scavenging. SOE have worked on loot tables and it seems to be helping, on this server at least, where there's not tons of people vying for the same salvage.

Today I had a breakthrough, in the form of an axe and a knife. Both make excellent weapons, but the knife allows me to skin animals for meat and cut cloth from zombies. The axe can be use to obtain logs from cutting down trees itself hazardous as it attracts for of the Dead. The wood has multiple uses but most importantly it has given me the opportunity to make a bow drill, a tool to light fires. I've found a little house house with a barbecue out back and using a little charcoal I picked up, I got a fire going and not only cooked the wolf and deer meat I've managed to hunt, with my improvised bow, but I've been able to purify river water and make blackberry juice with all those lovely blackberries that seem to be taking over the world. I now have adequate drinks and food for some time along with weapons to defend myself, so things are looking up. I've also found a turbo for an off-road vehicle, not that I've seen any lying around, and I've manufactured biofuel from animal fat. It would be nice to get some adequate way to communicate with other survivors to set up trades. Right now, the game has audio chat so you can shout at someone within distance, but I don't currently have a mic set up and when I see the audio notice next to someone's name, I can't hear them. Otherwise there's is no text chat so I feel frustrated, unable to communicate.

My next task is to find a crowbar. This elusive item, it appears, is the key to getting scrap metal from old cars and the metal can be used for many things, most importantly nails to start forming a defensive base in which to hole up.

Overall, H1Z1 is shaping up to be excellent. SOE are making almost daily updates to fix bugs and add things and the dev tracker clearly shows how transparent they are being in the development of the game.

H1Z1 First Impressions

For the first time I've decided to get involved with an early access game, a few days in to the much talked about Steam Early Access Alpha of Sony's Zombie Survival game, H1Z1.

I heard about this game some time ago and being a fan of The Zed Genre in general and played to bits Left for Dead 1 and 2, it really piqued my interest. When news of the release of forerunner, Day Z came out with it's horrific PVP making it a griefers holiday, I was excited that not only would H1Z1 focus more on crafting and building but would have PVE servers. Being the Care Bear I am, I was sold and when the opportunity to get in early in the game's development appeared, I jumped in, having watched a few Twitch streams first (and reading about Belghast's experience, over on Tales of the Aggronaut)

Being early access, I was ready for a battle to just get in the game, and it was that. A couple of hours fiddling various settings but eventually I got in. Finding a medium populated PVE server, I was thrown in to field of blackberries with nothing but my wits.

I won't lie, there was a definite feeling of excitement entering, something I've not felt from a game in some time. I had no clue where I was or what to do, but I set about picking blackberries, knowing food would be scarce, and found a nice solid branch for a weapon. After filling my pockets, I spotted a deer, so started stalking it. I couldn't get close enough so set about sprinting, trying to smack it down. I failed miserably. Hunger was setting in and the blackberries weren't cutting it. I stumbled across a road  full of deserted wrecked cars. Searching about twenty, I found nothing. It's hard to know if that's as intended, they'd be ransacked already or it's just bugged. Either way, it was disappointing. Soon enough I found a town, a deserted church offered nothing until I spotted a police station. I figured there must be an armoury of some kind, if not a gun in a desk somewhere, so I moved in, dodging the odd zombie on the way.

I searched every desk and drawer and went to the basement where I found the armoury. Nothing. Again, cleared out or bugged, but very frustrating. Hunger had almost killed me, so I headed upstairs, noticing wooden spikes on the stairs. I must have stepped on one, as I collapsed onto them and died.

Not a great start to my career, but it was fun if frustrating. I had to log out and have been unable to get back in following a patch, something a number of players have reported.

Overall, I'm enjoying H1Z1. My main complaint, aside from the lack of loot, are the zombies. Graphically they are not great, Left 4 Dead did a better job, but I'm assuming that will improve as the game develops. They are also not especially active. One stood stock still, arms out, staring at me then vanished as I got close. The patch today has apparently dealt with loot issues, though not much use to me if I can't log in. Hopefully will get to try again tomorrow.

2015 in LOTRO and what's coming!

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The new Producer's letter has just been released with some very exciting news for PVMP players.

Major 2015 Initiatives:

Legendary Items: With the Osgiliath update, you will be able to Imbue Level 100 Legendary Items. An Imbued item continues to gain experience and will no longer need to be deconstructed to advance. These items are already in internal testing! There are many details still to work out, but you should expect a developer diary on the topic early this year.

Osgiliath is one area I've been excited to see from day one, and I always felt it would make an awesome PVP zone...

New Fellowship Challenges: As we push into the heart of the War of the Ring, this is the perfect time for us to renew our focus on group content and instances. Expect new instances in Osgiliath, along with additional Roving Threats and group content on the landscape.

Much of the playerbase will welcome new instances. I'm not much of a raider myself but I'd love to get involved for this area.

Quality of Life: We have been working to identify your most persistent bugs. You can expect a renewed focus on resolving issues that may be small but troublesome, to improve overall gameplay experience.

Finally!

Episodic Content: We are currently in development on a new type of quest content that will roll out like an episodic TV show, a little at a time, as you follow a new friend across Middle-earth seeing familiar places in a new light.

This sounds very interesting. Perhaps Turbine are taking notes from Guild War's Living Story and Star Trek Online's episodic model.

Server Populations: Based on your feedback, we’re taking measures to get everyone onto the more populous servers, so that finding parties is easier and festivals and live events are more fun. We are working on both improved server transfer tools and upgrades to our environments to improve playability. Also we will be moving our European servers back to the EU! More details on this coming soon!

Key for me is that they drop the price, or do away with charging altogether.  Making it easier is all very well, but if I wanted to transfer all nine toons from Windfola to Landroval, we're talking $200+, plus the charge for extra slots to accommodate the characters.

 

PvMP: The team is also seriously investigating a new PvMP map in Osgiliath. This landscape would tell the story of the Battle of Osgiliath, and the layout of the city (split by the Anduin) is perfect for smaller and more tightly focused conflicts than the Ettenmoors. This would make the perfect platform for gradual improvements to the PvMP experience, overall. We’ll provide additional updates on this initiative as we get deeper into 2015.

I Called this back in 2009. Awesome idea and I really hope it pans out. Turbine have made promises about PVMP before and not fulfilled those promises.