Istaria now ships a free2play account

I wanted to share with you that a MMO which i had always wanted to try out but never got around to now offers a free2play account, the MMO i am referring to is Istaria (formerly known as Horizons).

First off, if you have no idea what this is i offer the following promotional video.

You might wonder, why is Tarskin talking about this game? Well, i suggest you to read the below mini-review

The Good

1. This may sound silly but Istaria gives me that old Everquest feeling again, where nothing is truely easy and there are no quests that allow you to do them blindfolded because they include giant neon markers of what to kill and where it is. Basically it requires you to use your brain.

2. The graphics aren't great sure, but they still are better then what i expected from a game off this age (2003/2004 if i remember correctly). The graphic style is somewhere in between Everquest 1 and Everquest 2 if i had to put a word on it, this results in that you can see that some of the scenery is built up of angles and surfaces but in most cases it is quite crisp and can be scaled up to near-everquest 2 like detail. The only sad part is that it will run like crap then (even on i7 based computers).

3. The way the crafting system works is quite intricate, The game has a group of basic resources which have to be turned into intermediate resources which can in turn be used to craft the final item. The truely interesting part comes from the fact that any item can be customized, for example one client could request a longsword which has a chance to inflict more damage while another client wants the same longsword but with a shorter delay. This sounds suspiciously close to item enchants when i am reading this myself now but it's not... trust me.

4. The game offers a free account, what else could we want in the current economic climate

The Bad

1. The biggest problem right now is the small player base. The regular server (Chaos) has enough players so that you run into them every now and then while questing but sadly the roleplay server (Order) is not that full. The people on Order are quite active however so if you join the chat channels you will see it's not that lonely as it might sound ;)

2. The last issue i have with the game is choppy performance, sometimes without any reason (as far as i can tell) the game just 'lags' so that you can stand in a completely empty area (it loads as you move like WoW does) when suddenly everything around you appears (trees, monsters and everything).

The verdict

Graphics: 7 (Not as bad as you might expect)
Gameplay: 8 (Quite intricate game-mechanics, similar experience to EQ1)
Stability: 6 (Suffers from some un-explainable slowness, could be due to that i'm in Europe)
Community: 6 (Small but active)
Cost: 10 (It's free! If you play a human)

Want to try it out? Click here

Eve Online

The bear is no longer present in space, the reason for that being that while as appealing it sounds that your avatar trains even when you are not off-line it means that there is no levelling. Specifically this means that to me it felt like there was no reward for actually playing the game yourself beyond just earning cash for new ships.

The community and the feeling of the game were quite nice however but were not enough to actually keep me playing this game so no more Eve Online for me.

Cheers,
Tar

Bears in space ?

Space, the final frontier...

NOT ANYMORE !

You all must be thinking that i somehow made a starfleet bear but i'm sorry to disappoint you on that, i was looking at Star Trek Online however when i saw the latest news on Eve Online and i was like 'might as well try that, always did seem interesting'.

So here is a screenie of a bear piloting a freighter, quite hazardous to my surroundings and stations that i attempt to dock with however. Damn lack of opposable thumbs ;(



I know i have only played it for a few days so far but i must say it fits a lot better in my current lifestyle then world of warcraft did as (at least so far) you can play it for about one or two hours and still feel you managed to do something. The only problem is that my name was allready taken ;( which meant i had to use my old eq1 name: "Tarskin Ranawen".

Another little game i picked up and play occasionally is Navyfield (Hood server), which means that there is bears in battleships as well (random screenie included) ;P



That was it for the latest update, planning to start using this blog a bit more actively but from now on it will be dedicated to Eve Online, Navyfield and whatever else keeps me occupied as far as gaming goes. This will require a change to the layout and name of the blog however *shrug*.

Furry hug,
Tarskin

Where in the world has tarskin been??

Entertaining the idle hope that some people actually care about more then just warcraft related news i figured i should give those people an update on what has happened to me (aka where have i been):

1. Parrot decided i played too much warcraft
She started plucking her feathers which is quite painful to look at, she comes running to me for help as 'something' is hurting her. She relaxes as she believes i will protect her, followed by her plucking another feather and repeating the cycle.

2. Major stress-related trouble because of master's degree research
The stress of finising my degree combined with writing the thesis and the feather plucking problem turned me into a neurotic that couldn't sleep. That problem got fixed but now i'm going cold turkey on stress/sleep medicine ftw

3. Motor cycle accident during vacation to the french alps
Racing down a slippery mountain road on my Suzuki RF900R (see picture) was not the smartest thing i ever did. I locked up my rear tire going into a turn at 90kph which resulted in me rolling over the road a bit.



4. Busted hands during a 'adventure park' visit
The motor cycle crash took me about 1 week to 'recover' from and when i decided i needed to go out and do something so i went to an adventure park. There i managed to tumble down from a obstacle and like an idiot i tried to hang on to the rope resulting in open/bleeding hands... woot.

The only good thing i really have to mention is that i am now a 'Master of Science' in genetics... Time to start praying for a Ph.d position, which could be a pain because of the credit crunch.

Cheers,
Tar

[Feral] 3.2 Patch Notes

Kitty nerfs below

# Mangle: Ranks 4 and 5 base points reduced by about 11%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
# Rake: Ranks 6 and 7 base points on initial and periodic damage reduced by about 7%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
# Rip: Ranks 8 and 9 base points and points per combo point reduced by about 6%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
# Savage Defense: The animation for gaining this buff will no longer make the bear stand upright
# Shred: Ranks 8 and 9 base points reduced by about 10%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
# Swipe (Cat): Percent of weapon damage done reduced from 260% to 250%.

All of these changes are clearly designed to lower the starting kitty druid's dps a bit which makes perfect sense as a proper player can easily outperform anyone else at that gear level. The one thing i am unsure about is they'r mangle change, i WOULD assume that it refers only to the cat version of it as i personally do not believe that anyone would argue that bears need a nerf right now -.-

Mount Change and the effect on Flight Form

The latest blue posts show that the way mounts work are going to be changed, below is a copy/paste of the relevant part:

Expert Riding (Skill 225)

150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
Requires level 60
Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply)
Mount Cost: 50 gold
Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

Flight Form is something we learn at level 68 and it only grants 60% speed increase, the logical thing for Blizzard would be to lower it's level to 60 and also increase the speed by 150%.

I have seen nothing to suggest that they are doing that but i'm pretty sure they will once they realize this -.-

WoW nearing it's end?

As i have nothing interesting myself this week i thought i'd share a interesting read i found yesterday (thank you Karthis for the link):

Is Alexa Charting the Decline of WoW?

Now on a WoW related note, being trial sucks.... I didn't get to raid yesterday and behold, twisted visage drops *crai*.