Monthly Archives: December 2011

Really not much to report, just hoping like hell I can get this one does being freaking Christmas time and all.

City of Heroes is going well enough, but it’s a little intimidating, knowing how long the game’s been around, and how much I’m probably going to miss when talking about it. If you want to look for me in game I’m “Ciann Magnol” on the Guardian Server (Hero side) and “Violetshade” on the Virtue Server (Villain Side).

If you are considering playing CoH, allow me to inform you of an issue I had installing it to help you in the event you want to try. I’m going to mention this in the review as well, but this is more for people looking to find me in game now.

If you are a former CoH Player, looking to get back in, or you played a few NCSoft games a while back and haven’t updated them in a while (i.e. Guild Wars, Lineage II, Aion) make absolute certain you delete your old NCSoft launcher if it’s still installed on your system. CoH will NOT let you install the game and instead will give you a vague error message and refuse to patch the game. Delete the launcher from your system, then run the installer, and everything should work normally.

Fantasy Tennis was kind of a dud review views wise, but I kind of expected that. Can you believe there are still people who think I’m not part of Blistered Thumbs yet? I’m posting weekly over there… not like I’m that hard to miss. Well, hopefully I can keep this up with this episode. More working on it tomorrow I guess. I think I’m just over compensating for the amount of time I’ll be out and about for holiday stuff.

So since I won’t be finished with the episode before Christmas, I’ll just take this time to say Happy Holiday of your preference this December and maybe I’ll see you at MAGFest 2012 if you’re heading there. I’ll probably be really drunk though… pretty sure of it.

So League of Legends is out of the way and I’d like to clarify a few things.

One.
Again I don’t hate this game, but I sure as hell can see why people wouldn’t like it. It’s an odd game of push and pull, where the people who are good at the game seem capable of superhuman feats. I know I’ll pick a champion, have people console me for not doing well with them, and then MegaGWolf will pick the same champion next round, and lead in kills, making me look like an absolute tool. He’s unholy at this game… Or he’s got better runes. One of the two.
Any reservation I may have seemed to have, or constant repetition of basic facts was entirely to quell the more rabid of the fans. Those who’d be ready to jump on me because I didn’t mention a single nuance about something. While that did happen to a much lesser extent, overall it was pretty well received. So I’ve got that going for me… which is nice.

Two.
Why did I repeatedly state it wasn’t an MMO? Because in my mind, it wasn’t. DId I place it until the “MMO category” of Blistered Thumbs? Of course. My show is “MMO Grinder” after all. And as I stated there’s a lot of MMO like stuff in the game. There’s level grinding, there’s skill trees. There’s items to equip, and skills to upgrade. Why was I so explicit about stating a game with a different playstyle was not an MMO. Well, some of you might point out that Pangya (now posted on Blistered Thumbs) doesn’t count as an MMO. Hell, the next one I’m doing might not fit with some people’s ideal of an MMO. But it fits with mine. Both of them. Why?

Self contained community. In case you’re wondering what I mean by that… League of Legends doesn’t have one. In the game your only means of talking to others are in game, in the lobby or in specific set aside chat channels.
“Ok, fine.” you might say, “but the same goes for Pangya doesn’t it?” Sure. The game itself is limited to 4-30 people at a time, and some might argue that’s not much more then LoL. And I’d agree… but there’s so much more to an MMO then the game. Think about it.

In Pangya, you can join guilds. You can set up holes as chat areas specifically to interact and talk with dozens of people. There are items to sell and trade. There’s a community with an economy, and that in itself is also part of the game.

League of Legends doesn’t have this. Only until recently could you actually form groups of players, and those are just limited to team sizes. Unless you are with friends, you are on your own. You can’t post on in-game bulletin boards to set time to play with others.  You can’t send other players mail. You can’t buy or trade items from other players.

So my reason for LoL not being an MMO probably isn’t the same reason you have… but I like to think it makes sense.

In other news, the next episode should be finished early, and I’m positive no rabid fans of the game are out to get me this time. There’s really not too much to talk about, so I’m hoping to be scripted by the end of the week.

Speaking of rabid fans, (I AM NOT MAD AT YOU GUYS, SERIOUSLY. I swear I come off as an asshole in text AND speech.) the Superhero MMO is pretty much a lock for the victor. Still, I know weirder things have happened, but expect that announcement very soon.

Also since I’m been blabbing about LoL so much, Andrew “Andycak” Leavitt and myself have been working on a stupid side project on Youtube… I’ll embed a video here and let it speak for itself. There are currently 18 videos out of the 80+ champions. I’ll keep it going until neither of us want to live anymore.

If you want to join any of us goofy bastards in a round of League of Legends, message “Nios” in game and maybe I’ll have time to play. Also if you haven’t signed up for League of Legends, you can do so by clicking here. There is no ulterior motive involved with you signing up through that link. Fer realz and stuff.