Posted by Spooner | 2 Comments

Blizzard releases official Gnomeregan and Echo Isles Cataclysm info

We dont’ have an official date yet but Blizzard posted about the the Cataclysm prologue event and according to the website link, it will happen after the release of Patch 3.9 on live servers. I’ve got the official page updates and information as well as some image galleries after the break so check it out now for more details.

Read More

Posted by Spooner | 1 Comment

FTL Podcast Drunk Tank Round 2!

Every 10 episodes me and the guys from For the Lore have decided to get hammered and run the show with little to no direction. Last time we had a lot of audience influence and this time apparently we have a designated driver int he form a guest host from the audience on the air with us. I’ve no idea who it is but I’ll be too burnt to even realize what’s going on so it’s all good all courtesy of my wonderful amazing wife that got me my very own camelbak! I will fill this with various beverages of the flammable variety and progressively dissolve my liver in a shallow pool of moonshine over the next few hours.

7:00 PM EST at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/for-the-lore

Read More

Posted by Spooner | 6 Comments

WTFSpooner: What’s up for 1st QTR 2010?

So a little update for the sake of updating. I’m still doing occasional news stories here on the site but for the most part there isn’t anything massive going on right now that I want to talk about. Blizzard CMs on the World of Warcraft forums are either boring or very silent, more the latter to be honest. We’re going to be seeing a lot of activity overall in February since there are a lot of titles being released that month (Feb. 9th is Bioshock 2) and hopefully we’ll get Starcraft 2 beta information (and that client download email).

Also on the awesome news front, I got a job! Hell yeah son no more losing sleep or stress from the big bad unemployment monster. On the Rogue front I’ve made it a point to try and bring the balls back to my home server. I see a lot of the PvP has left this PvP server as people are content to sit in their little holes and run raids all the time and the only noteworthy aggressor are a couple of retards in trade chat that have been around for years and can’t seem to move on.

So yeah here be the deal:

• WoW – Just ganking like a motherfucker every chance I can whether it’s a losing or winning battle. You’d be surprised how often the most geared and elitist swinging-dick types are downright OWNED when not backed up by their team. Not saying I’m the best Rogue ever (far from it) but it’s nice to see that the vaunted RAIDCORE players aren’t as immortal as their titles and mounts let them pretend to be.
• APB – I want in the Beta right now please. Seriously, there’s pain in my soul for this game. So much pain. Going to be making a lot of videos for this title and probably going to be consumed completely as the only other game I play besides WoW for any MMO.
• Starcraft 2 – “When it’s Ready.”
• Bioshock 2 – Going to do a lot of videos of this too to share an amazing story and wonderful characters. Also looking to dominate the multiplayer.
• Star Wars/Star Trek – Not going to play or buy either. Good games don’t get me wrong, but not my style anymore.
• Dragon Age/Mass Effect 2 – I want to play it just like I want to play Mass Effect 1 but I probably never will unless somebody gives it to me for free. Can’t justify spending money on another Choose Your Own Adventure. Also there’s nothing at all about the story in DA:O that I find appealing, even the gay dwarf sex.

Read More

Posted by J.A. Laraque | 3 Comments

Shaman tracked down by Hunter in World of Warcraft

So you’re sitting behind your keyboard at home typing away thinking the vast wasteland that is the internet will keep your identity a secret, think again. Two weeks ago, Howard County Sheriff’s Department deputy Matt Roberson tracked down a wanted fugitive through one of the most popular games on the Internet — World of Warcraft.

I’ve always known the Horde were a bunch of criminals, but this takes the cake. Alfred Hightower, also known as the Taren Shaman Rastlynn was wanted for dealing a variety of drugs including marijuana. He has had an arrest warrant out on him since 2007, but had eluded capture for the past two years. After some keen detective work and a tip from a childhood friend Roberson was able to discover that Hightower had fled to Canada and started playing Warcraft.

“We received information that this guy was a regular player of an online game, which was referred to as ‘some warlock and witches’ game,” said Roberson. “None of that information was sound enough to pursue on its own, but putting everything we had together gave me enough evidence to send a subpoena to Blizzard Entertainment. I knew exactly what he was playing — World of Warcraft. I used to play it. It’s one of the largest online games in the world.”

Roberson then sent a subpoena to Blizzard HQ in California, but he knew it was a long shot. Because of jurisdiction, the ambiguity of the internet and the fact that Blizzard was not compelled by law to respond chances were that Roberson would never hear back from them.

Three months had gone by and Roberson had put the subpoena in the back of his mind when he received a package from Blizzard. They had provided him with all the information on Hightower including his IP address, his account information and history, his billing address, and even his online screen name and preferred server.

“I did a search off the IP address to locate him,” said Roberson. “I got a longitude and latitude. Then I went to Google Earth. It works wonders. It uses longitude and latitude. Boom! I had an address. I was not able to go streetside at the location, but I had him.”

Not long after locating Hightower’s address the U.S. Marshals contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Border Services Agency. Soon after Hightower was arrested in Ottawa, Ontario and was deported.

So the next time you are in a horrible pug and the Shaman goes AFK forever he might just have been arrested on drug charges. Remember kids, the internet might be the wild west, but even in the west the long arm of the law can find you.

P.S. Check out Hightower’s Armory profile, lolz!

Read More

Posted by J.A. Laraque | 1 Comment

What went wrong with The Matrix Online

SOE has closed the door on The Matrix Online for a while now and most likely deleted all records of its existence from its database. Normally I would not bother talking about a game that is no longer in existence, but Matrix was different. It was not that I thought the movies were a cinematic masterpiece, but I loved them for what they were. I did not get into debates about the differences between Matrix 1, 2 & 3 choosing to walk away knowing I enjoyed the series. So when I heard about an online game I figured it should be fun because how could you mess up a game with kung-fu, computer hacking and cool shades?

Mission Failure

When games like Everquest came out many of had to learn that when creating an MMO you had to expect a lot of fixes and patches during the first few months of a game. However, once you have a good number of titles released and you are calling yourself a MMO conglomerate you would think you would be able to release games with less and less bugs and flaws at release. While this is not specific to Matrix Online they were pretty bad at release with the bugs, worse yet, months later many where still there.

One particular place where bugs seriously irked the player base was in missions. One of the most frustrating bugs was found in rescue missions where you would find the guy only to be attacked by agents. You would think you could run with the guy to the exit, but no. He or she would wait until you killed every agent before following you. It gets worse. Sometimes even after you killed every agent the NPC would not recognize that you had done so and so he or she would never move and your mission failed.

In other missions you would be sent into areas with NPC’s who could one shot you. It seems either your mission NPC’s thought you were the next Neo or mistakenly thought you slept with his virtual wife and wanted revenge. Either way a simple mission would turn into Saving Private Ryan as you were thrown deep into the shit.

A kick to the face

I was playing City of Heroes at the time I came across this game and I noticed it had something in common with it, no real content. I wished it also had something else in common with it, the combat system. Sadly, it did not.

Matrix Online had two types of combat, ranged, with weapons or hacking (magic) or close quarters combat. Personally, I played because I wanted to do some cool kung-fu moves and the way the hacking animation and graphics looked I did not want to shoot that crap out of my hands because it looked way to stupid.

So close quarters it was. MO used a system called interlock. When engaged, you are linked to your opponent with the battle arranged into rounds like rolls of the dice in D&D. In each round you and your opponent decide which attack you’re using for that period, after which the statistics of each are compared, a random element added and somebody wins, damaging the loser. This was done so you could see counters and blocks and all those cool choreographed moved you saw in the movies, but, just like the missions, it was buggy and flawed.

First off sometimes the interlock did not work correctly and you ended up facing away from each other but still performing the moves. This looks especially silly if you were jumping off a building. Another, more upsetting flaw, was that if you were fighting more than one NPC at a time you could be blasted from range unable to do anything because you were locked in close combat with your interlocked opponent.

Now you could disengage but this took Inner Strength (mana) and some moves could prevent you from using the escape option. So not only did it take time to try and escape, it could be blocked and there was also a lag when you did escape. When this occurred you could either be spun around or get re-interlocked by one of the ranged mobs. This led to a ton of frustration a lots and lots of death.

The human factor

While not plagued with hacks and bots and cheats like Aion, Matrix Online had its share of community leaches which helped to make the playing experience less than enjoyable. Early on there was a leveling bug which allowed many players to outpace the server level by a mile. There were also bugged missions which you could exploit and places on the map where you could trap a NPC or a fellow player.

When SOE took over the ship had already sailed. Developers were dropping left and right. Though they had a small strong community the word from above was that the game would soon be shut down permanently.

I did not play MO too much because it just did not live up to the lowest standards I gave MMO’s at the time. Strangely enough there were a good number of people upset to see the game go, but like television shows, a small group of loyal fans normally cannot save a failing product. One would have hopped that if anything other MMO developers would have learned from MO, but as we have seen with games like Warhammer, Conan and Aion, any lesson has fallen on deaf ears.

Read More

Posted by Spooner | 0 Comments

For the Lore: Last Show of 2009 Tomorrow…

We do our show on Monday nights but because of the holidays, we’re doing the final show of the year tomorrow Wednesday December 30th and it’s kicking off at 8:30 PM EST.

Tonight’s show is our Best of the Decade offering where we go back to the cream of the crop for the past 10 years (which have been mega for the gaming industry). So come and join us and disagree with our selections or laugh as I get ripped into as that is the ongoing theme since episode 1.

Check us out for the live recording here at our U-Stream Page!

Read More