I love playing mmorpg’s. The one thing I like better than playing mmo’s is reading about those really shitty ones that seem to come out of the woodwork from no where. My favorite train wreck used to be Shadowbane. But now I have to switch over to the mmorpg Thrones of Chaos. A game that has had many names: Realms of Krel, Realms of Torment, and Age of Mourning. Who if you remember (or read the wikipedia entry) was the focus of a Something Awful’s article and then legal threats made by the developer.

So it surprised me when I read an article over at mmreviews.com and followed the link to the games forums to see a forum post announcing an interview over at Shacknews. The article called Shacknews – Thrones of Chaos Q&A, which naturally made me wonder does the Shack do pr spin for those assholes now? That forum post was up late last night. Yet there is no link to this article on the Shacknews frontpage or a comments page like the other articles have. And they can’t ask anything about the “games” troubled past at the least? Just seems odd.

I’m sure it’s nothing. But it is odd that such an ass kissing write up like that is posted before the actual post date and then the fact it’s missing from the main page of Shacknews. It will be interesting to see if this article ever appears on Shacknews, I would love to see the comments section once it does. The way it’s going this game will have more drama than Dark and Light.

Update
Shacknews finally “published” their Throne of Chaos piece at 10:55 am. The comment thread for the article is here.

Eve Online, another mmorpg. Like I need another one. This one is the closest thing you will find to Earth & Beyond.

I played it for 16 hours on Friday. From 7am to 11pm. I haven’t done that in a long time.

Dark & Light is a supposed next gen mmorpg. It comes out next late year sometime. In the mean time you can play the prequel game Settlers of Ganareth for free. Except when they say play for free they mean not play some buggy piece of shit hack job of a game.

And don’t think your going to find any help on the official forums, because they are a cesspool. If you really want to try playing this piece of shit head over here if you have problems.

The sad thing is they duped some poor souls into actually buying the privilege to play (test) this game. I guess some people like throwing their money away. I think it’s safe to say this one can be added to the list of mmorpg’s to stay clear of. Good luck if you do try it and I hope you have more patience than me.

Fileplanet has a sign up for the beta of Dungeon and Dragons Online going on right now. You have to be a registered member of Fileplanet to sign up. Not to be confused with the paying member of Fileplanet.

Sign Up Now! for the Dungeons & Dragons® Online: Stormreach Beta for your chance to join thousands of other adventurers in playing the first-ever Massively Multiplayer adaptation of the fantasy game that started it all, Dungeons & Dragons®. During the Beta you will be able to explore dangerous dungeons, defuse cunning traps, and defeat iconic enemies that could only come from the legendary world of D&D.

I’m very curious about this one. I’m a fan of pen and paper D&D. I hear that it’s a little like Guild Wars in the way it handles the game world. Cities are open for players to hang in mass, but everything else is an instance.

I picked up a copy of Horizons: Empire of Istaria today. It’s a game I had the “pleasure” of beta testing. Not that the beta was as bad as Shadowbane or anything. Horizons does have a very cool trade skill system. But that is really it.

I install and patch. When the game loads it tells you your in que for authorization. I was 150 something in line. Finally the game loads. All I see is sky and fog, and a few buttons for character creation that don’t do anything when clicked on. I decide to go look at the support page over at the games site. These two paragraphs were in red:

3/10/04 Following today’s maintenance, players are reporting that when they login the only thing they see is the sky and fog. Our development team is aware of this issue and we are currently working on a resolution for this. Please do not open a case regarding this since it is an issue that we are already looking into.

3/10/04 (3PM PST) There is currently an issue with players logging into the website and into the game. We are aware of the current situation and we are limiting the number of players that can login at once, lessening the load on the web and game servers. If you are having difficultly logging in, please do not submit a support case. Instead please wait 15 minutes and then try logging in again.

So I’m supposed to wait? I can’t open a support case. I can’t do dick with this game I wasted 50 bucks on? But I did do something. I uninstalled the game and canceled my free 30 days for this piece of shit. It’s now my back drink coaster, just in case my Shadowbane disk fails in that job.

This is just another event that makes me really happy with Mythic and their game Dark Age of Camelot. Some of these game developers should quit before they have to inflict this shit on the people that play these games.

So in summary. If you see this game on the shelves in your local software retailer just walk away. It’s not worth the trouble. Play Camelot or even that god damned EQ if you have to.

Well I got the game Shadowbane and I installed it and I tried to play it. My first problem is that the games auto patcher is all fucked up. The first screen shot shows what I’m talking about. It tells me and lots of other people that one or more of the .cache files are corrupt. It advises you to reinstall this piece of shit. And this doesn’t work. Check out this thread at the Shadowbane forums for what the developers tell their paying customers to do. And what they have you do has about a 1% chance of working. Check out pages 9 and 10 of that thread for my comments.

Needless to say I’m done with this steaming pile of shit called Shadowbane. I wish I could return this game. But it was purchased at Walmart and those guys are impossible to get then to give refunds. So my Shadowbane disk has become my new beverage coaster. Stay away from this game if you know what’s good for you.

So I mentioned before how I got into the Star Wars Galaxies beta. The beta is now into it’s third phase. In beta 2 it was hard for me to get any play time in. With beta 3 the servers are up more and I have actually played the game for a long stretch now.

I’m under a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) so I can’t divulge any real details. But let me say that my opinion of the game has changed. At first I thought it was just a Star Wars EverQuest mod. And maybe it is in a way. But the environments are right out of the movies. And so far I have yet to notice the leveling treadmill that so many mmorpg’s have. I’m sure it’s there, I just have been caught up in the movie like worlds I’m exploring to notice.

The beta has even been getting in the way of my time playing Dark Age of Camelot. Which sucks, because Turk (my main) is still holding at level 39. Of course I’m not quiting Camelot. SWG has a long way to go before it’s in any shape that would make me quit playing DAoC. Time will tell.