So I closed my World of Warcraft account. Then yesterday my account was hacked. Look at my guy down below in his underwear.

Both of my high level characters were stripped of all their gear. I’m guessing that the guild bank was emptied. I know they took all my gold. I wonder how this happened. I’m pretty good about securing my computers. I’ve never shared my password with anyone. Overall I’m not really worried about all this. I’m done with WoW for now. The next time I play again I’m sure I’ll have to work a little bit harder to outfit my characters. With any luck Blizzard will be able to recover my stuff.

I used to have to install some roster php script just to be able to take a look at my characters offline. World of Warcraft now does all of that for you. Here is my Death Knight in all of his 3D rendered glory:

You can click this link to see all kinds of details about him.

I’ve been playing WoW again for a few months now. Here is a quick video of me and my nephew Death Knight’s taking out an undead dragon.

Click To Play

Filename: wow-dragon-kill.avi

Downloads: 38 Size: 44.4 MB Version: 1.0 Updated: April 3, 2010

This videos uses the xvid codec.

So I’m playing Warhammer Online again. I had to transfer my highest level (only 15) off of the closed server he was on. I think there is are only four servers left. It took Mythic 4 days to fix the problem with transfers. In their defense they probably only have a staff of two. For some reason I really like the easy to get into RvR of Warhammer. Below is one of the result screens from a scenario match.

I’m currently playing on a free ten day come back type of deal. Not totally decided if I’ll stay and pay after the ten days are up.

To get an idea what the RvR is all about here are a bunch of screenshots of a little skirmish in front of a castle that happened last night.

Edit
Ten days was all I needed. Not coming back for $14.99 a month.

Torchlight is the direct descendant of the first Diablo game. It follows the first Diablo in every aspect. One town to get quest. A deep deep dungeon to kill monster for items and gold. Just about everything in that first Diablo game you can find here in Torchlight. The game has a number of old Blizzard devs on board that helped make the first Diablo game so the similarities maybe obvious. The music was done by the same guy who did the music for the first Diablo. So it is no surprise that on more than one occasion it reminded me of the music from the First Diablo.

Torchlight has a very cartoony feel that one suspects was influenced by World of Warcraft.

The game does bring a few things from the Fate games (which themselves are inspired by Diablo). The pet for instance is pretty much something retained from Fate. This pet though is handy since you can send your trusty dog (or cat) off to the surface to sell when you fill up your inventory. A few other things worth mentioning is that once you beat the main quest you get the option to retire your character and pass down an item to a new character. When you do this an infinite dungeon opens up as well. So reply value is up there.

The game has three classes. Follows the usual templates with minor variations. You got a big bad warrior, a magic user, and a ranged type of rogue. All of them can specialize in melee and they all get 4 spell slots. And of course a three tiered skill tree to specialize in different buffs and powers.

Torchlight is single player only. Only on the pc. The game sells for twenty bucks. They eventually will put out the games editor so you can make you own levels, monsters, and items (just for a start). This currently is only available online from the games website or third parties like Steam. The devs mention a free to play mmo is on the table next.

Wow what happened to October? Games happened. To many good games to play. Two in particular that grabbed me and took up my time. These two came out towards the end of October. Borderlands and Torchlight. Both of these games share a few things in common with the Diablo games. The only thing in common with Borderlands and Torchlight is that they both have loot. Wonderful abundant loot. But the similarities end there between the two games.

Borderlands is first and foremost a first person shooter. It has a cell shaded style that may turn some off. I think it’s more of a comic book cross hatching style myself. You can see in the screenshots what I’m talking (maybe) about.

Borderlands has a very light rpg mechanic pasted into the shooter. And these guys get it right by keeping the shooter aspects dominate and letting the rpg stuff be secondary. As mentioned Borderlands has loot. Lots and lots of loot. They borrow from Diablo and World of Warcraft so you if you played either of those the loot will look familiar. You got white vendor trash, green, blue, purple and orange items. Each color denotes a higher quality of item.

Borderlands is out now on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Be warned despite what the developer of the game may say the pc version is port of the console game. It currently suffers from a number of problems and I suggest the console versions over the pc game.

I’m playing WoW again. Here is a quick video of my Death Knight kicking some ass.

Click To Play

Filename: wow-darkturk.avi

Downloads: 148 Size: 21.31 MB Version: 1.0 Updated: July 26, 2009

This videos uses the xvid codec.