Star Wars: The Old Republic–The trailer that will make you weep for joy like a broken and humbled man.

I don’t care that it doesn’t show any game play.  I don’t care that it uses tired slow-down/speed-up tricks.  I don’t care that there is no release date for this game.  All I care is that it’s on the horizon, and there is no way that it will be anything but pure sweet nuggets of joy.  This game is going to be like bacon-wrapped Twinkies–dipped in chocolate.

Seriously, the Star Wars faithful have had to go through a lot this past decade.  It’s time we had something to shine over.

The Secret World: It Won’t Be a WoW Killer, But It Will Be Awesome

I’ve often wondered what an MMORPG without levels or classes would be like, if there was some more elegant and seamless way to gauge your progress in such a game.  Somebody at FunCom must me wondering the same thing.

Age of Conan may not have been the Kick In The Pants that its supporters had hoped for, but I admire it for trying some new ideas.  Here’s hoping that The Secret World will succeed in its ambitions.  It won’t unseat WoW, but it might take some players away or at least inspire other publishers to try something other than the hack/slash/quest/turn-in/kill things/repeat motif.

I’ll be following this game with great interest.  The official forums look to be chock-full of talks about conspiracy theories and such, and it appears the developers were inspired by works of urban fantasy (they mention Neil Gaiman, which is awesome).  Let’s hope the title of this post doesn’t become laughing stock later.

Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, possibly loses battle with cancer.

Please be aware that, as the linked-to article says, this story has not been confirmed.  It’s entirely possible that Dave Arneson is still with us.  I originally wrote the post as if the terrible news were true, but found it in better taste to edit it so it reflects the current state of the matter: unknown.

It’s a sad day for gamers: Dave Arneson, who along with recently-departed Gary Gygax, created Dungeons and Dragons, has passed on according to an unconfirmed source.

You may have never played Dungeons and Dragons, but if you have played World of Warcraft or any MMORPG–or any other kind of RPG for that matter, electronic or otherwise–you need to be thankful for this man’s contribution.  He helped to lay down the template that has worked so very well for so very long.

Take a moment and remember the Arneson family in your thoughts and prayers.  Death is hard on a family, and if Dave Arneson is still with us then he is still battling cancer; something just as trying.

Braaaainssss…….

Saturday night I fell ill.  Terribly ill.  Violently ill.  So ill, that I had already decided that, should I find myself craving human flesh and losing the ability to construct complex abstract thoughts, I would spare my family the horror of my turning and take the noble way out before I succumbed to the Solanum virus.

Now I am well again, and I tried out Gears of War 2 Horde mode.  It is, without a doubt, one of the coolest ways to play a game I have ever seen.  One could even base an entire release off of it.  It’s so good, I no longer even have interest in campaign mode (though I’m sure I’ll finish it eventually).  Speaking of campaign mode, co-op is the way to go.  Whether online or off, this game is so full of chest-thumping bravado and hyper-masculine Hell-yeahness that one person can’t handle it all.  You need a friend to which to shout “Did you see that?  DID YOU SEE THAT?”.  You need a friend to which to scream “I’m down!  I need a revive!”.  You need a friend that will help you set up crossfires, provide cover while you roadie run behind barriers for chainsaw kills, and toss grenades at E-holes while you mow down wave after wave of ass-ugly Locust drones.  If you don’t have a friend to play this game with–or you don’t have an X-Box Live Gold account–I can honestly say “screw it.”  This game was meant to played with others.

Speaking of zombies, I am so psyched for Left 4 Dead.  I have played the demo twice and had more fun with it than I had with the full build of some games.  It’s inherently simple in its set-up, but the possibilities for game play are endless with some of the best random generation I’ve ever seen; plus, different gamers with different styles will change the flow of each game–and force you to learn some lessons as well.  A hot-dogging lone gun will learn quickly to keep his head down and his eyes up, while slow-and-steady sniper types will have to adapt to sudden spikes in intensity, but there is still plenty of room for both native styles.  What I like most is that it really feels like I’m playing a game, with rules and limitations and mechanics, as opposed to a simulation, where everything is trying to look and feel and sound real.

Lich King drops tomorrow, and I have to sit out the midnight launch because I will not only be playing Gears 2 but I really don’t want to get sick again–hence I don’t want to be on my feet around a bunch of people tonight.  Tomorrow night, though, I will be hopping on to…do what I’ve been doing the past damn year.  My rogue is about to ding 40 though, so hopefully by the time WoW 2 drops I can roll a Death Knight!  Woot!  I’m getting the expansion now so that I can have a seamless experience into the new content, once I’m able to access it (like I did for Burning Crusade).  Now, I just need to make a commitment and get there.

Star Wars MMO Revealed, Much to Everyone’s Lack of Surprise

When LucasArts and BioWare revealed they were going to make a big announcement today, everybody with halfway-decent reasoning skills and knew who these two companies were knew it was going to be another Star Wars MMO–especially considering that it was already hinted at during a press event held by EA (BioWare’s parent company) earlier this year.

Sure enough, that’s what it is.

This won’t be the WoW Killer; I highly doubt enough people will want to forsake the time- and money-sink they’ve put into WoW to pick up this game, which is essentially LucasArts calling do-over on the whole Star Wars Galaxies thing.  “Not to meant to replace?”  Sure.

And what is up with the Playskool lightsabers?

Hello Stormwind! Sure is good to see you again.

I have started playing World of Warcraft again after about six months of absence.  I didn’t stop playing, mind you, because I grew tired of the game; I stopped playing because of financial and personal reasons (you know, video games can be a huge money and time sink, in case you haven’t noticed).  Once I made the decision to buy a nice gaming PC, I was either going to jump back into Azeroth or start up an account with The Lord of the Rings Online once I had secured my rig.  However, because I missed my great guildmates (and one of the best guildmasters you could hope for) and the supreme satisfaction that comes with leveling and looting (Too Human is great for that experience, but it doesn’t have that sense of discovery that WoW does), I re-installed the game on to my Macbook, downloaded the 10,548 updates and patches I had missed, and now I’m right back where I belong.

I was going to re-roll, but I decided to go back into the character I had always loved the most: my human rogue (Yes, yes, I know, true hardcore gamers roll Horde, but I never once claimed to be a “true hardcore gamer;” I’m just a dude who loves games.).  So if you’re on the Kilrogg realm and run across a guy named Morgulis, then you have found me.

He’s only level 31 now.  You see, it took me a while to find a character that I felt had real personality, and I only played this guy for the last few weeks of stint in the game.  I don’t actually role-play mind you, but I like for my in-game characters to have a sense of self, and I could just imagine Morgulis being that kind of shifty, drunken, witty bastard who loves a good fight and lives for the next big score.  He was the first such character that I had rolled, so I stuck with him.  Hopefully, I’ll ding 55 soon so that I can make a Death Knight by the time Wrath of the Lich King comes out (though I’m waiting to get that until I do score that PC, so I can experience it in all of its glory from the get-go).

Of course, since I believe in experiencing as much of a game as it has to offer, I also have rolled a dwarf hunter named Craizen (who I can also see having a lot of personality).  I never played as a dwarf, but I also liked them; drunken, ill-tempered good ol’ boys that they are.

What I want to know, however, is how sad is it that playing this game again feels like, as Peter Cullen said of reprising his role as Optimus Prime for last year’s awesome Transformers movie, “slipping into an old pair of very comfortable shoes that you haven’t worn for a while?”