Juju

I got my Wii yesterday. ("my wii", the name still cracks me up) This is awesome. My neck and arm is already sore! Wii Sports has a fitness training system. According to it's measurements my lazy geek ass' fitness age is 56. (I'm 28)

After wasting entirely too much time trying to get it on the internet, I found this site called MapWii, a google maps/wii friend finder mashup. I was impressed to see two people in my city. One even appears to live in my neighborhood. (MapWii puts your marker at a random spot nearby to protect your identity). If anyone out there has a Wii feel free to add me as a friend, by code is:

7705 9722 5338 0231

Went to Amazon, saw a note in red saying some would be available somewhere between 7-11am PST, started hitting reload over and over again... a few minutes later I realize I'm not going to sit here for another 2 hours reloading, so for the hell of it I click see all buying options... there it is for $250. Click buy with 1-click... head explodes.

Update: Who needs a ruby script to poll amazon when you've got such amazing luck? :)

Perpetual Entertainment has a fantastic website (sarcasm) announcing a Massively Multiplayer Online Game set in the Star Trek universe. Didn't anyone tell them that computer games based on Star Trek always suck or are doomed to failure? Not to mention the fact that MMOGs based on Movies/TV Shows either suck or get cancelled. (see: Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix Online, and Middle Earth Online)

Last Updated 5-03-2004: Open Beta is over and L2 is uninstalled. Sorry, I couldn't stand to play long enough to get to 101 reasons. :)

Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle (which I will refer to from now on as Lineage II: The Ass Chronicle* see reasons 10 - 19 below) went into open beta the other day. I downloaded the client from fileplanet to give it a try. I can't believe I actually agreed to subject myself to this game voluntarily. The first Lineage is on my list as the worst game I've ever played. (I dug up a review I wrote for my old website back in 2001) I was swayed by the look of it and the fact that Richard Garriot was involved. (However, it's now pretty obvious that he got into it only for the money) There are so many things wrong with this game, that I figured it wouldn't be too hard to come up with 101 reasons. Ok, so I'm not quite up to 101 yet. (and honestly it probably never will, but it sounds better then 26 reasons it sucks) Over time I will update this story as I continue to play in the open beta. (yes I must be a masochist) If anyone out there would like to contribute their own reasons, post a message and I might add it to the list.

Before I start, I must admit to one thing that is actually good about this game. It looks fantastic visually. Apparently based on the Unreal 2 engine. The artists did an awesome job along with the sound effects and music. Its easily one of the best looking MMOGs out there. The animators did a great job too. It's really great to look at and runs smooth even on my slightly outdated computer. (1.1 ghz, GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, though I do have a gig of ram, it's old pc100) Click the read more link to see what they did wrong. If only they had spent as much time on gameplay as they did on graphics... I’d like to add a disclaimer here: I’ve only been able to actually get past the login and play a handful of times. So some of my observations may be exaggerated, nit picky, or downright incorrect. Please feel free to correct me. :)

Here’s my list, in no particular order of suckiness:

1. NET CONG sucks Yes, it’s called beta for a reason, but why do companies start OPEN betas when they’re not ready to handle the load. I’ve found it nearly impossible to log in except for after midnight EST. The status of the servers nearly always say NET CONG. Which apparently means the servers are full or congested. Why don’t companies realize that the general feelings towards open betas are that they are more like previews? When players see a new game that is due to be released soon and that anyone can download and play for free, you don’t want their first impression to be that the servers are so poor they can’t play. The fact that they’re greeted with a cryptic NET CONG status speaks to the next problem.

2. Poor translation sucks In case you didn’t know, the Lineage games were created by NCSoft in Korea. Just like the first Lineage, Lineage 2’s text reads like they had an intern run things through Babel Fish. Think: All Your Base Are Belong To Us, despite the fact that Lineage 2 was designed to break through to the US market. Here's an example where they seemed to go from Korean to French to English?

3. Avatar customization sucks Unlike the original Lineage you can actually make changes to the way your avatar looks. However, when I say you can make changes, I mean you can make changes so slight you still look almost identical to everyone else. I’m talking 2 or 3 different hair styles, maybe 2 different faces, and if you’re lucky depending on race you can choose between 3 different hair colors. Thats about it. You can’t change the height or weight of your character. It’s like attack of the clones. At least in Lineage 2 when you put on different armor, your body looks different, however there’s still a severe lack of originality between avatars. It’s a real shame because the graphics are fantastic.

4. Female dwarves suck I mean look at them. They look like 10 year old human anime chicks. At least the male dwarves look like dwarves. Oh and see reason #3 above - they all look the same. About all you can do to differentiate them is with or without pony tails. They had an april fools joke where they announced they did a major overhaul to make them look more dwarven… I thought thank god, until I saw it was a joke and they just photoshopped on some beards. I only wish you could choose between that many beard styles. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

5. Classes suck The skill tree is so simplistic, it looks more like an arcade game. You can’t really call it a skill tree. Each race can be either a Fighter or a Mage. Actually a dwarf can only be a fighter. Then there’s 2 profession levels above Fighter or Mage. Those levels have only 2 or 3 different paths. Dwarves really get the short end of the stick. They can only be basically one of two things - a fighter that crafts or a fighter that collects resources. Thats it. So not only does everyone pretty much look alike, but everyone pretty much does the same thing. At first I thought it might be a good thing. Its usually a good idea to keep things simple, but its not good when its so simple its boring.

6. Skills suck Not only are the classes limited, but so are the skills. There’s very few skills and quite a few of them are copied across races. There are skills that are unique to a race/class. I’ll reserve judgment on how much it sucks because I haven’t progressed very far yet, but according to the website a 20th level human knight only has 10 different skills. Out of those 10 only 3 of them are knight specific, the rest are shared with all the other fighter classes.

7. Practically pornographic avatars suck If I was a woman, I’d probably never play this game. If you thought wood elf newbie females in EQ were bad. Just wait till you get a load of the dark elf females… screenshots don’t really do it justice. Not to mention the regular elf chicks that raise up their skirts and show lacy panties whenever they cast a spell. Orc chicks are also unusually well endowed. Not to mention various half naked monsters. I can just imagine the sweaty little Korean pervert that modeled the characters in this game. Which brings me to the next reason…

8. Bouncing breasts suck Ok, ok, so bouncing breasts in general don’t really suck, but it’s just gratuitous sometimes. They have to be seen animated to be truely appreciated. The animators seem to have learned from that Dead or Alive Volleyball game with their realistic simulation of bouncing breasts. I mean every movement involves a nice boob bounce. The different emotes are especially amusing because at the beginning of the animation sequence the breasts magically seem to firm up, lifted by invisible hands and then wobble around when finished. And to think just a few years ago the controversy caused by the cover of the EQ Ruins of Kunark box art with the chained elf maiden sticking out her chest. I’m sure all this pr0n will attract even more 12 year old boys which seems to be the target demographic for this game.

9. The way dark elves run Why in god’s name do dark elves run around head first? Does that make them seem more… oooOOoOOoooo evil? What the? I mean they literally run around bent at the hips, staring down at the ground. Here’s a video showing the absurd running stance. This leads me to the next 10 reasons Lineage 2 sucks…

10. - 19. Dark elf women running around sticking out their ass sucks This is why I like to call Lineage 2 the Ass Chronicles. When I saw this, my jaw dropped and I very nearly deleted it from my hard drive. wtf were they thinking? When you run around as a dark elf female, you bend over and you’re screen is filled with two lovely round realistically rendered bouncing ass cheeks in a thong. (err ok yeah I created a female dark elf character… uhm… how can I write a fair review without trying out every option? Yeah thats my story and I’m sticking to it) When I get a chance, I’ll have to take a screenshot of this… if I can bring myself to log that character back on. Here’s a pic showing the dark elf en-thonged ass. Here’s a pic of the front view of a running dark elf.

20. Pretentious poses suck The way all the characters stand there striking poses like some kinda supermodel just makes me cringe. Especially all the female characters with their identical belly in, chest out, over the shoulder stare with their noses in the air. Its kind of spooky sometimes, like I’m standing in the middle of a mall surrounded by mannequins.

21. Orc avatars suck Most of them look more like the Hulk with tiny heads. It’s pretty obvious that they just took human models and changed their proportions and gave them a new skin. It’s a shame too, because the orc monsters don’t look half bad.

22. Movement sucks It’s an over the shoulder 3rd person game where all movement is done by clicking the mouse on the ground where you want your character to go? You can’t use wasd or the arrow keys. Even when you switch to first person view, you still have to click the ground to move around. Very awkward. Update: Yes you can use the arrow keys but you have to click out of typing mode and the arrow key movement is very slow making it useless for normal movement.

23. Loot pops on the ground sucks When you kill a mob, the loot appears on the ground next to the corpse and you have to click on all the items to pick them up. Meaning anyone walking by can pick it up. er? On top of that, the fact that movement is so awkward it can take a few seconds just to move your character or the camera around so you can see them to click on them. To be fair there is a macro you can run that will automatically run around picking up nearby loot. But that only makes it easier for people to steel your loot. To add more confusion, some items do automatically appear in your inventory, but I think thats only quest items and its real easy to miss the notification in the text box that says you got the item between all the text spam.

24. Hotkeys suck Every other game ever made pretty much uses the I key to open your inventory. Lineage 2 uses the tab key… or some strange ALT-something command. Opening other information panels use similar awkward command keys. On top of that (unless I missed it) there doesn’t seem to be a way to remap key commands to something more sane.

25. The way you attack sucks To attack something, you click it to select it, then click it again to attack it. Easy to use, but awkward and results in many unintended attacks. Thats worse then EQ where the default attack command was the A key which resulted in many newbie deaths due to people forgetting to press enter before typing to talk while they had a guard selected. It would be much better if you had to do something like double clicking to attack or something.

26. Login procedure sucks This is petty, but I'm bitter. (in case you hadn't noticed) Come on, at least save the username when you logon. Don't make me type in my username every time. On top of that, when you inevitably go to select your server, it immediately drops you back to the beginning because the server is full. So you have to type your password in again and click twice to retry. It's so bad that people have resorted to writing macros, JUST to logon to the game! I guess it's made difficult and annoying on purpose so that people will stop trying and lessen the load. There's so many ways it could be improved. Something as simple as making the server list update in real time. Showing the current/max players and letting you sit there and wait until there's an open slot instead of the repeated logon attempts.

27. Private store sucks They added a feature where you can go into a sell mode. So that players can click on you to see what you have for sale and buy it from you automatically. Basically turning your avatar into a vending machine. This results in dozens of people sitting down in the middle of town, going afk, and then probably going to bed. Meanwhile, they sit there using up resources and bandwidth as well as clogging the server making it even harder for people to login because the server thinks it’s full when it’s probably really just full of players in afk sell mode. (yes that was a run on sentence) Not only is this really bad game design, but it just looks awful having all these people sitting there in one place. I don’t know I guess it’s better then UO with a bunch of people shouting in all caps at the bank.

28. Castle siege probably sucks Never took part in one, but everyone looks the same. At this scale how do you know who to attack??

Update 4-4-2004:

29. another reason private store sucks I just learned that the reason you see so many people sitting around in private store sell mode is because it never logs your character out. Since its so hard to logon because the servers are so full, people just go into private store mode and logout so they can logon easier which just makes it harder for other people to login.

30. text wrapping sucks I suppose it’s due to the poor langu

age translation from Korean to Engl ish, but nearly every NPC dialog loo ks something like this. Text just do esn’t wrap very well. It looks like cr ap and is hard to read. This combi ned with the bad translations gives m e a head ache. Here's an example.

31. The community sucks It appears the average age of a Lineage 2 player is about 11. Not that all 11 year olds are immature, but nearly everyone playing the game seems to be there for the sole purpose of annoying people. Now that this page has made it into google and posted to a few message boards, I’m sure I’ll be getting a lot of flames in the comments as examples. Or just take a look at the official message boards to get an idea of what most players are like. I suppose this might improve once the game is released and you have to pay to play.

32. Quest item looting sucks At least when you are on a quest to get an item from a mob, it doesn't appear on the ground like other loot for anyone else to take. The problem is, they way it works is whoever gets the kill shot, gets the item in their inventory. In other words, you could be fighting something and just about to kill it and along comes a mage, blasts it's final few hit points and walks away with the quest item.

Update 4-5-2004:

33. Crafting system sucks Talk about taking several steps backwards in game design compared to most all modern MMOGs. The crafting system only contributes to reinforcing the leveling treadmill. Even worse than what I remember from EQ. First of all only dwarves can craft. (which is fine, my main character is a dwarf) In order to learn to craft you need to spend skill points which can only be gotten from combat. (I suppose this is why dwarves have hardly any combat skills to spend them on) To craft an item you first have to get the recipe which can only be gotten from combat. The trainer actually describes why by saying "The greatest craftsmen deliberately place their own recipes inside strong monsters, so that only the mightiest may carry on their trade secrets"... wtf? On top of that, you need to gather resources which, you guessed it, can only be gotten from combat. There's no way to progress as a crafter without serious fighting time. If you enjoy crafting, don't bother with this game.

34. Auto target sucks The target nearest enemy... well doesn't. I've never gotten it to target a mob. Not even when standing right on top of one.

35. Name filter sucks Or should I say lack of name filter sucks. I'm having nightmares of the good olde days of UO surrounded by PsyCHoBiOCH, xXxShadowWeeniexXx, and 4G0ttenBr4in.

36. Bugs suck Sure, technically Lineage 2 is still in beta here in the US. However, you have to understand the game is FINISHED. It was released months ago in Korea. The only reason it's in beta here is to finish issues related to language translations and server configurations. Yet there are several bugs such as getting stuck in buildings. I get stuck in a building almost 50% of the time. The only way out is to click out of text mode and use the arrow keys. There's movement issues inside buildings as well due to the use of clicking on the ground to move. Half the time it gets confused and you run in the opposite direction you intended. Yes, it's true you can use the arrow keys to move around, however it seems sluggish and not very responsive. Half the time the arrow keys don't work because you forgot to click off the text input.

Update 4-9-2004:

37. Death penalty sucks The amount of experience lost due to death is not proportional to the amount of experience gained. It's also possible to de-level from level 20 to level 1 if you're monumentally unlucky.

38. Skill point cost for spoil and sweep sucks As a dwarf at level 10, 2 of the skills you can get are spoil and sweep. They help you gain more resources from kills (thank god). To use do it, you must first cast spoil on a live mob. This does some kinda incomprehensible mojo to their bodies. (I don't know, but if a warewolf doesn't have any coal, why am I casting a spell on him to give him coal so I can get some when I kill him?) Then once you kill the spoiled mob, you have to cast sweep on the corpse to get those extra resources. Are you following me? Sweep is useless if you don't have spoil. Spoil is useless if you don't have sweep. So why in god's name are they two seperate EXPENSIVE skills? At this rate I won't be able to have them both probably until level 12, since there are other equally expensive fighting skills that I should probably get. So even though I've had the create item skill since probably level 6 and even though I've gathered a handfull of resources and 3 recipes, I have yet to create any item. And I probably won't be able to create anything until level 15 at this rate. I suppose I could sit in private store mode while I'm offline for a few days and maybe just maybe buy enough resources from other people eventually, or now that I have spoil, find somebody that has sweep and split the loot. Neither option sounds very attractive to me.

* At this point I must admit, since I've moved to one of the newer servers, turned off shout in the chat filter, and progressed to level 11, I'm not nearly as angry at the game as I once was. Don't get me wrong, I still think the game sucks and has numerous flaws. However, it's gone from a 0/10 to a 1/10. Making it the second worse game I've ever played above Lineage 1. At this point I will probably play through the rest of the free open beta, but no way am I paying for it when it goes gold. Just another game to tide me over until a_new_mmorpg_02 comes out. *

Update 4-10-2004:

39. Karma system sucks The PVP system is almost good, however it has some serious flaws. The way it works is anyone can attack anyone at any time. If you attack someone who is white, you turn temporarily purple. If they fight back, they also turn temporarily purple. If you kill someone who is purple, there is no penalty except experience loss and a chance to lose a random item if you die because it's considered consenual PVP. If the other person doesn't fight back and they remain white and you kill them, you gain karma and turn red. If you're red, anyone can attack you with no penalty and if you die while red, you have a greater chance of losing a random item. To work off karma you can either die several times or fight a lot of mobs.

40. Karma and healing sucks Now there are a few problems with this system. For one, a tactic people like to use is to go around in groups with several people and a healer. They start fights by randomly punching people, kill stealing, etc in an attempt to get a poor sucker to fight back. The healers can heal or resurrect the attacker without going red or purple themselves.

41. Turning purple doesn't last long enough and sucks If someone attacks you and you attack back then you're both purple. This is now consenual PVP. However, if the other person runs away and you chase them and they stop attacking you and trying to heal themselves, then there is a very good chance that the purple timer will run out too soon and they will turn white in the middle of a fight. You will end up killing him by accident while they turned white and you will gain karma and turn red. At which point their friends could ambush you. (along with everyone else in the world who doesn't care about the circumstances)

42. Higher levels greifing karma system sucks If you're minding your own business hunting and a group of much higher level people come in and start kill stealing and randomly attacking you but not killing you, you have no recourse but to leave or die. You have no hope of killing them and little chance of banding together with other people in your level and killing them without taking serious penalties. Its way too easy for people to be real asses.

43. Lack of info on other players sucks I suppose this is to make PVP more interesting (and so people can't just run around looking for people with low health and attacking them). In Lineage 2, when you click on another player, all you see is their name. You can't see anything else about them. You don't know their level, their class, their hitpoints or mana or know anything about their equipment. If anything you should at least be able to see their level. If some griefer or PK comes over and starts messing with you, then you just have to roll the dice and take a chance if you want to fight them. They could have taken off all their good equipment to pretend to be weaker. It would also help a lot to know people's level and class when looking for a group instead of having to ask everyone.

Update 4-23-2004:

I haven't had much time nor desire to play much lately. I started a few other characters for some variety... guess its time to throw out a few more reasons before open beta is over.

44. nephytirs? suck So does every newbie quest for all races have typos? The first quest a newbie gets is to go kill nephytirs to get fangs. Problem is, there's no such thing as a nephytir. The game goes gold next week, you can't tell me no one has noticed this typo? wtf? Is nephytir Korean for keltir?

45. Boring combat sucks Talk about mind numbing combat... sure most all MMORPGs consist of walking up to a mob, clicking attack and then sitting there and watching the screen. Somehow Lineage 2 has managed to make this feel even more boring then normal. I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact that nearly all mobs are statically distributed and hardly move around at all, lack of variety, and insane level grind. I spend most of my time watching tv while I play. I make sure I have enough health, walk up, attack, watch tv... mob dies, I sit down to heal and wait for it to respawn (which usually takes just as much time as it takes to heal what I lost) and start the process over again. I must admit I've played mostly fighter types and haven't gotten any to level 20 yet. Maybe it improves later.

46. mob distribution sucks At least up until level 15, all mobs pretty much sit in one place. Everywhere you go, weather its in a dungeon or out in the wilderness. Virtually no challenge, low or no aggro, most don't help eachother. Boring.

47. item variety sucks Through nearly half the game levels there's only a handful (4 or 5) of different kinds of armor and weapons. This goes along with the lack of avatar customization. Some people say you start to look different as you get new armor and weapons. Problem is, everyone tends to have the same armor for their level. So everyone continues to look the same. Then there's the differences between weapons for example... you can choose from about 5 different weapons. Like 3 different swords, and 2 kinds of blunt weapons. Then when you can afford the next more powerful blunt weapon, it pretty much looks the same as the last one. And the differences between weapons of the same level isn't that different. So it doesn't really matter what weapon you choose.

48 - 52. crafting recipes suck I've talked about how much crafting sucks already, but here's a few more reasons... I've now collected probably 30 different recipes and I've only just scratched the surface. One of the problems with having so many recipes is each one takes up a slot in your inventory and they don't stack or anything. Your inventory can't be resized and only shows like 15 slots at a time. All the recipes look the same. All this equals a major pain in the ass to try and find anything in your inventory.

53 - 54. crafting requirements suck (yeah I really hate crafting in this game) I'm now level 15. I've had the create item skill since level 10 and I've created 0, zip, zilch, nada, no items. I take that back, I created 1 leather from animal skins and like 2 twine from stems. However, that doesn't count. Because they're useless because they're just more components for items. And what I've made is maybe 1/30th of what is required for any actual items. On top of that, I might as well delete half my recipes because I probably won't be able to get the components to create something for a level 5 character until I'm level 20. The only recipe I have that would make me something I could use right now would take at least 5 more levels to get expecially considering it would be 100x easier to make the cash and buy it from a shop or another player. Crafting is useless until the end game when you can make siege bots and really high level stuff.

55. Being all about elder game sucks Seems like everything about this game is just filler until you get to the high level game. Problem is, why should I have to suffer through months of lame gameplay just so I can go raid a castle?

… thats all I can think of for now. Maybe if I ever make it past the login screen again, I’ll have more.

For reference and more information, reviews, and screenshots check out the Lineage 2 page at RPGDot.

Twin Rose Software - What D&D Character Are You?

Sweet. Beware, apparently I'm a Chaotic Neutral Elf Cleric Ranger.

This is just too damn funny. A bot to play Star Wars Galaxies for you. Dude!

Gamespot reviews the best Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: Real Life. I don't know how it managed to get a 9.6 out of 10. The graphics and gameplay could use some work. (or maybe I just need glasses and get some exercise?)

Maybe I should have went to college. At the University of Washington, you can take a class in Everquest!

Course Requirements In lieu of a textbook, you are expected to purchase a copy of the Everquest Trilogy software (approximately $20 retail). You must also commit to a three-month subscription at the rate of $12.95 per month. Since the first month is free, the total expenditure for computer supplies is approximately $46. A significant amount of class time will be spent in the virtual world, but you are also expected to conduct on-line research outside of class.

GameSpy is celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Man I feel old!

Thailand's online gamers face curfew - "Game servers, both local and overseas, will be blocked from 10.00pm to 6.00am daily from July 15 to Sept 30, while Internet cafes will also have their hours curbed to those times, Mr Surapong told reporters."

haha... my wife probably wishes we lived in Thailand now.