ArenaNet’s New Blog & The Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto

Yesterday marked a new brick in ArenaNet’s wall on their way to building a successful house with the launch of their new blog and for their first post, Mike O’Brien, president of ArenaNet, wanted to talk about Guild Wars 2 and the MMORPG genre.
Read the rest of this entry »

Mid-Week Note, “Happy Birthday!” All Around

So, yesterday was my brother’s, Blue(as you might know him by from those two Lazy MMO Reviews), birthday and now today(actually, for almost a whole week now) I celebrate with millions of fans and players the 5th anniversary of Guild Wars. Oh, how far both have come in their short time in this world, it brings a tear to my eye. But while I celebrate the continuation of both these things, I also celebrate the passing of a beloved media, the floppy disk. I’ve not much to say there other than, “Finally!”

Back to my first, true, MMO love, Arena Net, to help celebrate Guild Wars’ 5th, yesterday opened the gates to their new blog to discuss some Guild Wars 2, but I’ll talk more about that in my later post! For now, I play GW until the day it dies, no matter how much I may pitch a fit over a skill update. There will never be another like it.

Until Guild Wars 2.

Proper Use of the iPad

The iPad. Oh, the iPad. Recently launched and already hacked but what do you show off first? Emulation.

The video above is showing off a jailbroken iPad playing two N64 games, Super Smash Bros. and Super Mario 64. It looks good. Great, almost, if the sound wasn’t so, well, emulated. Sound has always been a problem for emulators. and then there’s the control issue which just looks painful, but who cares? You can play N64 games on your brand new iPad! Now, when your friends laugh at you for having one, you can show them that.

I still wish I had one.

Video: N64 emulator running on hacked iPad via CrunchGear

Dragon Age: Origins Expansion Spills Dragon Age 2 Release Date?

BioWare’s newest release, Dragon Age’s expansion (Awakening) was released today and I was happy to see it arrive on my doorstep but inside the box was a little card with a picture of a red dragon on it and in the top-left was simply a date, “02.01.2011″. I guess EA likes jumping the gun, though it was said the next game would be out sometime between January and March of 2011, so Dragon Age fans take note and mark your calenders.

Sorry for the shoddy image, my new handycam can’t take a decent picture for it’s life

Get Bonus Points for Linking to My Blog, The Must-Watch Gaming Speech This Week

You get 50 points for visiting my blog!

Apparently, a speech has made its way around the net given by Jesse Schell at the DICE Summit last week which focused on the future of gaming, where it is headed and looking beyond Facebook’s successful games like Mafia Wars and Farmville.

He goes on to talk about the psychological hook that these sort of games have of kids and adults alike and how games are trying to break into reality rather than have players escape that reality by playing games. Total mind-f***, I know. And then he gets to the part about real-world activities gaining achievements and points through what ads you pay attention to and if you decide to walk rather than drive to work and all that jazz. Seems kinda scary, but it could be just a tad exaggerated, but the idea is still there and and the speech itself holds more than what I’ve said above, so click on the jump for 50 more points! Oh and the video…
Read the rest of this entry »