That guy's a Maniac...

In roughly a week a swathe of 30-40 somethings are going to relive and re-start a habit in a bid to re-misspend a misspent youth. There is a swell of hype in niche pockets of the Internet as people get more and more excited for the launch of World of Warcraft Classic . But why? Why is there the familiar toot-toot of the hype-train on the horizon for a product that is over a decade old, has a newer shinier iteration currently out and available to play, and a product that held marmite-like, positive and negative criticism when it was out. Just to clear things up I have bought my ticket (e d: and a train drivers hat, matching t-shirt, undies and socks and the special edition coke cans ) and I am on the hype train! I am genuinely looking forward to Classic, but my goals and approach are going to be massively different to it, as will it be for much of the community. So I'm gonna play a little bit of devils advocate here... Upon launch many, many people will just be diving in fo...

On August 27  Blizzard is launching their WoW re-boot: WoW Classic.  15 years ago, as our steadfast and loyal readership will remember, I just wouldn’t shut up about WoW, offering almost daily updates on the most mundane aspects of my (crappy) fire mage. And I shall be re-joining the masses this August, this time as a Human Paladin.  I have dipped my toe in and out of WoW, over the course of its evolution, to it’s current iteration. Though I have not partook in the past 3-ish expansions. WoW has changed a lot it's so fast paced and it’s almost impossible to die, but I will lay out my grumbles on what it has become at another point . One of my favourite things in WoW was “Transmog”, which initially was collecting pieces of armour or weapons and by taking it to a dude in-game, he could make one look like the other. Previously this worked by having to own the armour you wanted to Transmog with, resulting in bags and banks full of low level armour. Nowadays, however ...

Gamers in their droves pretended that they might stop love/complaining about shoot astronaut simulator Destiny 2: Destiny; Final Destination: The Game  when it was announced last week that developer Bungie had managed to break the orbit of publisher Activision. Gamers rooting for the underdog slightly smaller multimillion pound company took to the streets to celebrate but what does this mean for future Bungie titles and the 'ten year' franchise that is love-crack Destiny 2 ? Was Activision in any way stifling creativity? Does anyone remember Halo Wars ? Will Master Chief make it into Smash? Has anyone, anywhere asked about a new  Marathon this Century? Fortunately, our industry insider has the latest. Here's Alcamoth Citizen reporting live from Bionis with the scoop: Can you believe that? I don't think anyone anticipated that. Thanks Alcamoth Citizen, now we're back to the studio with Ravelle Velvet for Waxing Tips with Ravelle Velvet.

Dear Diary, Last night I dreamed of World of Warcraft: classic. I dreamed I fired up my old account and ventured again into WoW at level 60 . I dreamed of Hunters with mana. I dreamed of saving gold to level skills. I dreamed of running out of quests at lvl 40. I dreamed of buying reagents to cast spells. I dreamed of sitting down for to drink the water you just conjured to replenish the mana you just spent on the conjuring the water. I dreamed of senseless Alterac Valley. I dreamed of waiting for Zeppelins. I dreamed of no navigation. I dreamed of escort quests, and enevitable ganks. I dreamed of corpse crawling. I dreamed of General: LFG 1x Tank 2x DPS I dreamed of Buying bag space If World of Warcraft is a feeling, then as the Red hot Chilli pepper once said "I dont wanna feel like I did that day" #Apt Love and I'll probably play it anyway, Richie X

We were so so lucky over Christmas we're in the ridiculous happy situation of having a stack of games to play through. We picked up Starship Damrey ,  Crimson Shroud, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Star Fox 64 3D, Fire Emblem Awakening , the Pokemon typing game and Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D . It's a great place to be, we're not taking this wonderful wonderful situation for granted. The only downside is what do we play first? Unfortunately, it looks like Nintendo eShop title, Crimson Shroud won't get a look in for a long time. We've played 6 hours of it so far. It got great reviews, technically it's an astonishing feat but with so much other gameplay to get through it's too.... well here's out quick thoughts (tm). What we liked The aesthetic. It looks like a lovingly detailed tabletop game complete with branded characters bases. The ridiculous depth of the statistics. You get to roll virtual die. Second only to rolling real die.  ...

So Warcraft decided to put Pokemon in their latest expansion but is it any good? Well sort answer is no, but there are some plus points to it. Mainly it shows Pokemon could be an MMO of sorts, but it also uses some nice graphics to do it. It actually puts the old Pokemon stadiums to shame because the pets actually interact with each other during attacks, as opposed to the shoddy cutscene of an attack being done, then cut to attacked Pokemon flinching in pain. But there are many, many issues with the "Pet battles" within the WoW interface. The biggest and most annoying one, it is buggy as hell: There was several times when playing through my character would be facing the wrong way, sure its just an aesthetic thing but, cmon... Its cheaty! now I read this may have been fixed now, but apparently there was something wrong with the RNG with pet battles, I found that the AI was able to dodge attacks way more than I did, making it frustrating to beat the gym leaders.  Some ...

Fuck all y'all bitches, be sitting up on yo azerothes, I be in Pallet all up in you mommas ass singin that I be a master... catchin' em all Details released for WoWs Pet battles. And on first perusal, its really fucking pokemony, similar stats and all, though rather than 4 moves it's 3 moves, hell even some of the moves are English pokemon move names. It seems just enough similarities to dodge a law suit. Most of the details are over here Also, do they have the EV system ? DO THEY? if not imma flip this shit upside! There doesn't seem to be a levelling system, or indeed mechanics much beyond the fighting system , I'm sure there will be rewards for winning, like cheevos, cosmetic armours and such. Meh, Love and Omastar used Blizzard, Richie X

The Ironman Challenge I'm not keen on following WoW nowadays, but this challenge is interesting. Its essentially a community of WoW players who have created a personal challenge to make the game, well... Challenging. WoW nowadays is very easy. There is far too many quests, there are items to increase how fast you can level, you can instantly transport to dungeons with randoms etc etc.  For a while now I always wanted a Diablo like Hardcore version of WoW, you die... you are Dead. and it seems so do others a proper Solo challenge! So should I, make: That Guy's an Ironmaniac? If you care suggest Class/Race combos for me. Love and bits of metal in your heart, Richie X

There is a fantastic piece on video-game addiction floating about the internet, describing evolutionary reasons fro addiction, and more importantly discussing "Unethical Game Design". The tricks that developers use to trap the user into wanting to come back for more. A very thought provoking piece, check it out here or here: It's only 15 mins... c'mon. Love and Obscure Skyrim memes, Richie X.

NOT BEN10 that hideous cartoon that isn't as good as all those cartoons we grew up on M.A.S.K etc. but a charming little Belgian film. When we're used to getting excited about, analyzing and dismissing media before it has even been released it was nice to be taken by surprise by this little film. I hadn't heard of it and in fact wasn't really aware of it being at all video game themed and a quick Google seems to suggest it wasn't picked up by the monolith of websites calling themselves video game blogs. It's a touching tale 'based on real life events' that quite heavily features video games but not in a brainless sense a la Gamer or a massive advert a la Wizard but featuring a video game ( ArchLord , missed that on the wikipedia page didn't ya, wiki cunts ) as part of a normal life. Dare-we-say-it even in a positive light? For gamers out there I'd recommend giving it a watch. Not only is it the best video game related film out there at the moment...

World of Warcraft. As much as I hate to admit it, WoW makes it on this top moments in gaming, one of the best moments in gaming was downing Ragnaros for the first time. I first joined the guild for Molten Core at level 58, as they were missing a ranged DPS, I didn't contribute much, but still, I was better than nothing... It was fun because, I was a lower level, I was a bit of a liability, as I had a bigger agro radius, and the guild were having fun with it too, using warlocks to summon me past nasty mobs, which we were just ignoring for this run. A while into this run a few folks noticed that I was set up to do fire spells, this was all very amusing to the guild, a little fire-mage in "Molten core", a place full of fire type enemies.  Suffice it to say, very shortly after that I proceeded to get to level 60 and I was helping the raid out with my continued Fire DPS on a weekly basis. The guild had been having a go at Molten core for a few weeks by the time ...

Another fucked day for our brute, she lost 3 matches... She's currently struggling her way though level 3. We do have some new recruits: Wilfmadbloke and pisspants Fingers crossed they have better luck than our brute/punching-bag Laters, Richie X

Right so I may have been outed as a bit of a WoWophile with my many characters and such. I usually play with the Belkin Nostromo N52 , which is a great piece of hardware, nicely customisable and extremely functional. So when the Steelseries WoW mouse with it's 15 mouse buttons was announced I have to admit I was straight in there with a pre-order. Which incidentally was pegged for a November 2008 release date (to coincide with the release of the latest expansion pack Wrath of the Lich King) After over a few weeks of waiting on December 11th I get this in my email: Array with kind regards, SteelSeries Order Support Seriously that is all I got just the word "Array", so I reply: Hi there, Not sure what 'Array' means, is the mouse now available? They reply: The demand for the World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse has been much higher than anticipated, even compared to our most optimistic forecasts. As a result, the mouse is still delayed, ...

I'm not an MMORPG fan. This you may know and I'll say it upfront. Some of the stuff that happens in MMORPGs is interesting to read about and there are some creative folk who can spin a nice tale around something they experienced in an MMORPG. For me though the problem is that the worlds just aren't compelling enough. Okay, that isn't entirely correct, the worlds are compelling but as soon as you set foot in it the effect rapidly wears off. The cutscene generates excitement but then grinding and questing and PvE events etc. etc. work to make the game into some kind of numbers and skills drive. Nice if you like it, total immersion breaking if you don't know what you are signing up for in an MMORPG. Case in point? I recently had a look at WAR. It looked nice and everything (immersion breaking HUD aside). My friend (playing as a Magus) summoned his disk of Tzeentch, left the beautiful crystal cave he was in and then crested a hill to end up in the middle of an Elven for...

Gone since September. Ha he been working hard? Doing research? Travelling the world and conversing with the interesting people he found therein? I am proud to reveal the answer in a rare email from the estranged co-author of this blog. Okay so playing Wow for some of it but not for 3 months surely? Oh okay so maybe one month. Anything else? Jesus Christ. Expansions work people is the lesson here. Some people are just happy in Wow I guess. Seriously though, I'm informed they are all level 70+. This is a lapse for him. Perhaps we should send over the big ass crane that winches WoW fatties from their bed to his house before he explodes. Thank god! A casual game. There's hope for her yet. RIP in Richie.

P.S. Fable 2 is just Fable with a dog. Richie.

Yeah, WAR. WAR is hell. What is it good for etc. All those cliches. Insert them all here! Well WAR is good for losing five friends. That's what it is good for. A bunch of my staple geek friends all got themselves playing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, through a combination of relationships ending, boredom and geographical distance. Now they play it. A lot. (Un)fortunately, I am copied into all their emails so daily I get 145 emails which roughly broken down are: When we gonna meet up tonight, tomorrow, weekend (45%), what we did last night for those who couldn't make it (35%), hey guys I just read the wiki and we should.... (10%), microphone, PC, problems (10%). And dps jokes and all other acronyms which I couldn't care to google are the new order of the day. Just today I got sent this: LOLLERCAUST you will all no doubt agree. But do I despair? Nah. It's how MMORPGs work and the mix of my friends who now play WAR is testament to the tried...

So yeah, it has been a while since I did a bit of blogeriferousness… What have I been up to? Well mainly I have been achievement whoring on Soul Calibur IV which is going well apart from the Tower being a bitch to get through. But in a strange twist of events I went back to Guitar hero 2 and 3 on the Xbox 360, after pretty much getting sick of Rockband. I have done the “Endless setlist” twice now, once on hard and then a second time on expert, though I totally nabbed out on the second time, as the guys I was playing with were on a lower difficulty, and I had got it in my head that I would still get the expert achievement… I have flirted with singin, but I really can’t sing, I failed “Tom Sawyer” on EASY! Though my Glados interpretation was apparently spot on! Drums bug the shit out of me, I’m not willing to put in the hours of practice needed to get my leg working independently of my arms. And bass just makes be really jealous of whoever is playing the guitar part. Then couple that w...

That's not what we're going to do here children. No sir. You see, the group: "gamers" can be divided up into neat little slices and everyone within a particular slice demonstrates exactly the same behaviours and acts in a similar way. Schools in America and "the man" will have you believe that we are all different. We're not. Most of us can be neatly pigeonholed and our every behaviour predicted from a mile away. "Diablo players" is the name of one such pigeonhole-slice as is "gays" and "the sikhs"*. So for example, if I said "All the people who like Diablo I, II or III are keeping gaming from becoming a progressive medium in the modern world", I would be: a) Correct and b) A total wanker. All the people who like Diablo I, II or III are keeping gaming from becoming a progressive medium in the modern world. It is true. Don't believe me? Check this utter piece of shite over at MTV Multiplayer. I read it and thou...

WEWT! In Soul Calibur you can customize your character right down to the underwear ! Though I do wonder for my sexuality, I saw this picture and the first thing i thought was, "Ooooh those icons kinna look like WoW icons." Fig. 1. Power - Some sword from the Warrior talent tree. Fig. 2. Impact - Some shieldy talent. Fig. 3. Boost - Sheath of Light, Paladin talent Fig. 4. Gauge - Spirally green thing Fig. 5. Special - Primal Mana innit Namco... We're watching you. Richie X