. : : Marc Sez : : .

Darkstar One

Looking at the games section in Odyssey for the latest games (so that I can go home and download them for free), I stumbled across a copy of Darkstar Alpha and I vaguely remembered that it was a good game.

Back home I checked and it looked like it was what I was looking for. Ever since I finished Freelancer I had been looking for a similar game. The mods weren’t great and Freespace 2 (though big and complex) was lame. Now normally I wouldn’t buy games but Darkstar One was priced at Rs. 300 so I went ahead and bought it.

See? This is how you reduce piracy. You price things reasonably. The distributors of this game did and they got my money. If it cost Rs. 1000 I would have definitely downloaded a cracked version of the game instead.

The Dancing Bears At Orgrimmar

In World of Warcraft (and almost every other MMORPG), capital cities are places that have a high concentration of players. In WoW all the action is concentrated around the bank since the auction house and the mailbox is nearby.

I was at Orgrimmar today and some Druids went into bear form and started dancing. (You can make your character dance by typing /dance in the general purpose console.) It was quite funny so I pressed Ctrl Z to hide the game interface and took a screenshot.

Varimathras and I

I was playing WoW yesterday and had to go to the Throne Room in The Undercity (home of the Forsaken, the rebel Undead) for a quest. I decided to take a screenshot of Varimathras to show Gowtham.

That’s my character standing before him so you can compare sizes. Lots more screenshots at my old Multiply site here.

Hunters Rule!

Here’s a link to my character profile on the WoW Armory: Animor

I’m playing an Orc Hunter now and I’m at level 14. I must say the Hunter is much more interesting to play than the Rogue and you also get nice crowd control features because of your pet that come in useful in emergency situations.

For example, if you are running away from a huge fight you can use your pet to delay a monster than is following you. Or you can get the pet to tank an opponent while you engage another.

My WoW Chars

I was last playing an Undead Rogue on a private server so I created the same character on official (I play on the Shadowmoon server). Even though the rogue playing style is interesting and I had fun playing with the character it seemed a bit repetitive. Also the Barrens and Orgrimmar and more populated than Tirisfal Glades and Silverpine Forest and it is fun to watch the high level characters move around now and then.

I decided to try another class and so made an Orc Hunter. Surprisingly I like the hunter more since all the spells and abilities are new and it feels fresh. A hunter can also tame almost any creature you see in the world (except elite creatures I think) which adds an interesting element to the gameplay. So I’m going to play the hunter while the rogue character rests and vice versa. (Resting a character gives you a temporary experience points boost when playing with that character until the rested effect wears off.) This means that I will be levelling slower and I hope Adithya waits for me to catch up to him.

WoW Official… Soon!

Finally. I bought a World of Warcraft key for cheap. (Want one, Sanchan?) It gives me 30 days free too, after which it will cost me $15 per month to play the game.

Now I tried to create an account at the official site using Adithya’s invite key but that didn’t work. Apparently he gets some free game days if I use his invite key and then later add a real key so I’ve emailed support asking why the invite he sent me doesn’t work. I don’t think they’ll reply soon enough with the weekend coming up and all so I’ll get a new invite from him or just create a new account with my full key.

Of course there is the matter of getting WoW. I’m definitely not going to install and patch it. Takes forever. Over 2 hours actually. So I’ll just get the game files from him. I have to take Ragha’s DVD drive to his place and then burn the game on to 3 DVDs. Yes, that’s how big it is. Hopefully I’ll get it done tomorrow.

Meanwhile, there’s always Neverwinter Nights 2 - Mask of the Betrayer (spirit hunger is irritating!) and World in Conflict.

WoW Official Or Not?

Adithya’s playing World of Warcraft on official servers and I’m wondering if I should join him.

The thing is, it costs $15 a month to play, and even though I can afford it now it still seems costly. I’m also wondering if I still have the time and interest to spend hours on the game.

Playing on private servers really sucks a lot with all the bugs so official is a much better option. It would also be nice if Suren and some other people came to play with us but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Stats Algorithm Updated

The Ampli5 Stats program has been updated with a new algorithm. Now this should show more accurate rankings.

Right now the badges seem to broken but George will fix it soon.

We’re also planning to diversify into Quake 3 CTF. Is there any stats tool for that?

Arun’s Epic Helmet Shoulderpads

After many hours of intense studying, Arun has obtained Epic Helmet Shoulderpads.

Is he now powerful enough to challenge Ragha?

The sad truth is, no one is powerful enough to fight Ragha. Not even this guy.

Florchakh posted a link in the comments of this post about an emo freakshow and there is a photo of Arun there!

Downloading Day of Defeat

I finally managed to find a place to download Day of Defeat, an older version running on the Half Life engine (not the recent awesome version that runs on the Source engine). I need the older version because collegemates have pretty crappy computers that cannot run Source engine based games very well. In fact, I can’t run them at high resolution either ever since my AGP card died.

Surprisingly, DoD is only a 350 MB download so it should be as easy as Counter Strike Condition Zero to distribute to collegemates. Getting them to learn how to play the game is another matter. I’ll review the game once I have completed downloading it.