Was just scrolling through my RSS feeds and saw that Brinstar has taken a job as a Community Manager for Guild Wars! Congratulations Brinstar! In celebration I will stop what I’m doing and play Guild Wars for a little while.

*edit* Not sure if it was me or this new version of WordPress but, the original post somehow ended up as a “page” and not a “post” so - I’m fixing that now…

Sometime yesterday afternoon, I received an e-mail from Xbox Live support telling me I should try to recover my account one last time, and if it didn’t work I should then call the tech support line. Well, I’m glad to report that it worked and I was finally able to recover my account. Yay! I really didn’t want to have to call and deal with tech support. My account and achievements are safe - for the time being.

On the Guild Wars front, Saturday saw a flurry of e-mails from PlayNC support which ended in my support request being elevated to a “Senior Support Representative”. Which means “wait till Monday and someone will get back to you”. Sure enough, someone finally got back to me this afternoon. According to the Senior Support Representative Johnny, the charges were approved and did go through but, they “will not capture due to the transaction being voided in our billing system.” It appears that they were not simply able to give me access to the content and had to void the sale. Johnny suggested that I try to place my order again. Once the charges are actually reversed - maybe I’ll give it another shot.

I hate Fridays. Well, from now on I hate Fridays - I had the worst Friday yesterday. After a long day of ‘computer consulting’ I decided to stop off at a friends house so I could finally check out Assassin’s Creed. The first thing I did was attempt to recover my gamer tag to his Xbox - after all, if I’m going to play I better get my achievement points. Anyway, a some point during the recovery process I get a message stating: “Xbox Live sign up is currently unavailable. Please try again later.” No big deal, I’ll try again later. So, after playing the game (and not getting achievements added to my gamer tag) for a while I decide to try and recover again. Still, it’s not working. I returned home and tried several more times over the next couple of hours - only to have it fail each time. Now, I’m starting to get a bit panicked - I don’t want to lose my score or achievements. So, I contact Live support through Xbox.com and this morning I receive a canned e-mail, from someone named June. The e-mail informed me that I could be seeing that error message under certain conditions, most of which seemed to involve moving a Live account from the original Xbox to the Xbox 360. Not something I wanted to hear - I had already read about that. So, that’s where I am with Live right now - unable to full recover my profile and waiting to hear back from tech support. If it isn’t resolved soon I’m going to go crazy. I need my achievements!

While all that is going on, I had decided I would play some Guild Wars. Well, I wanted to play but, I didn’t actually get a chance to. After logging on I decided that I should finally pick up Eye of the North and Nightfall, after all if I bought them now I’d get 50% off Nightfall. I believed I had finally moved past the need to own the physical box and game disc. What a mistake that was. During the check out I received an error: “Product distribution failed (Code=1751126)”. That’s just great! Looking at my debit card account I can clearly see there is a charge pending for the exact cost of the PlayNC transaction. Perfect! The charges go through - and I don’t get my games. I’m so glad I decided to give digital distribution a try. Looking at my PlayNC account you can clearly see that something has happened to my account yesterday - as a new serial number was applied. But, still I don’t have access to the games.

Blargh. I hate Fridays.

Currently Playing

I’m starting to get a bit overwhelmed, trying to find time to check out all the games I want to play. Currently, I’ve got a few titles sitting on my plate that I’m going to focus on - not counting Guild Wars, which I may have to give up sleep for.

The Orange Box (Xbox 360)

It’s been a little while since it’s release but, I finally made it over to Target to grab a copy for the Xbox 360. Over the past week I put in around ten hours and beat my way through Half-Life 2 again. As expected I still love the game. My only gripe about is about the damn load times - I wish Valve had done something about that. It’s that way in all Source engine games, even Portal - which has a excellent area to mask loading during the elevator ride between levels - comes to a screeching halt. Maybe when Half-Life 2 Episode 3 comes out in a few years they will finally have taken care of it. The Orange Box is my absolute favorite game/package of the year.

Orcs & Elves (Nintendo DS)

Although it arrived on Tuesday, I did not have a chance to try it out until yesterday morning. Even then I was only able to put in about ten minutes before I had to put the DS down. It was just enough time for me to realize that this game is going to be awesome - an old-school-style turn-based 3D action-RPG hack-n-slash adventure is just what my DS has been waiting for! I was able to cram in another hour or so of play time before going to sleep last night. During that time I was able to clean out a couple of levels worth of monsters with my trusty talking magic wand. Orcs & Elves puts you in a 3D grid based dungeon where you move square by square hacking your way through enemies in an effort to save dwarves from some orcs and elves. Hopefully, during my Thanksgiving downtime I’ll be about to put in the seven or so more hours needed to complete it.

Fireteam Reloaded (PC)

Way back in 97 or 98, I was involved with a beta test for an awesome on-line only multi-player game called Fireteam. After the beta ended however, I lost touch with everyone I played with because I didn’t have the time, money or a stable enough internet connection to continue playing. I’m pretty sure it’s the first on-line arena style combat game I ever played. Fireteam did receive generally favorable reviews, if I remember correctly but, being sold on-line only at $59.95 limited it’s impact. About a month ago I received a press release for an upcoming game known as Fireteam Reloaded - and much to my joy it turned out to be a re-hash of the classic. It even has a couple of developers from the original game. The game is just entering closed beta - which you all should join - and since I haven’t read the NDA very closely that’s about all I’ll say for now…

Exteel (PC)

I remember hearing about this game a while back and then promptly forgetting about it. Well, yesterday while mucking about on the NCsoft web site I ended up over at the Exteel official site and noticed that the open beta had just started.

Exteel is in no way an MMO - it’s basically a third person giant robot arena combat game. Once the beta ends Exteel will join the ranks of free to play, pay for some item on-line games. So far it seems pretty fun, I’ve only played three deathmatch rounds so far but, I’m hoping to squeeze more in. This might be one to watch.

Upcoming - once I finish (or get bored) with something else

Assassins Creed (Xbox 360)
Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360)
Guild Wars: Nightfall (PC)
Guild Wars: Eye of the North (PC)

Earlier today Kris and I were discussing the upcoming Christmas season when she asked me what I wanted. My reply was along the lines of “A stack of games please!”. So, along those lines I was just browsing around the Internet and I ended up on the Guild Wars web site and saw that there is a new holiday promotion! It seems that with a purchase of Eye of the North you can get a second campaign 50% off! Which is right up my alley since I need Eye of the North and Nightfall. The offer is good from now until December 31 so, if you haven’t picked up GW:EN and one of the other campaigns now may be the time.

Now, all I have to do is get over my need for the physical boxed copy… I suppose paying the same price as a brick and mortar store can be over looked in this time since there are no subscription fees and there is the whole 50% off thing.

After spending some time last night in the wilds of Kryta working on finishing up the open quests I had in the area. I decided that I would stop at Lion’s Arch and board a ship bound for Cantha. It turned out to be a great decision! The handful of quests that I had been working on finishing up carried a reward of 500xp - while the ones in and around Kaineng Center dish out a monstrous 3000xp. Needless to say, within about an hour I quickly went from 14% into level 17 up to the level cap of 20. Now, it’s all about earning experience which will earn more skill points. Anyway, after hitting the level cap I traveled back over to Kryta so I could continue working my way through the Prophecies campaign.

I have so much stuff left to do in the game it’s not funny. I have 17 co-op missions and who knows how many quests left to complete before I move away from Prophecies and on to Factions. I’m thinking now that I’m going to tackle them in the order they were released - and hopefully finish up everything with my main character sometime before Guild Wars 2 comes out. I’m going to try and tackle at least a couple of the co-op missions over the weekend - also I’ve got to pick up the bonus objective in the D’Alessio Seaboard mission.

“The Mad King is coming!” At least that’s what I was told when I first reached Lion’s Arch yesterday afternoon. I realized earlier in the day that my entire moving fiasco had seriously cut into the time I was trying to spend continuing my way through Guild Wars. I knew from past Halloween events the King would be making his way to Lion’s Arch so, I checked the map to see where I was in relation. Thankfully, I was not too far away and figured I should make the trek from the Gates of Kryta since they are right next to each other. I haven’t had the time to sit and play the last week or so but I figured an hour or two wouldn’t hurt. So, after trekking over I checked out the town and the ghosts - which was all I had time for before logging off.

This morning I arrived in Lion’s Arch just before noon and proceed to wait around with a large number of people for the king to arrive. Having people call out the minutes to arrival made the wait seem to take forever. After what seemed like forever, he finally turned up and the ‘party’ began. There was much rejoicing. After receiving 25 or so Trick or Treat bags for taking part in the festivities the Mad King gave everyone a nice new mask.
It’s too bad I don’t have a Nightfall account then I could head over to Kamadan and see if there is an alternate mask. Oh well. Actually, on a side note I noticed today that Shindakun Koji had received his second birthday present. Which wasn’t there yesterday so I guess the 31st is his ‘birthday’. I’ll have to check /age next time I log on - which might be just before 3 PM.

After my last post, I spent a good amount of time working on the Guild Wars: Prophecies campaign.  During that time I’ve managed to make to level 16 and to the Gates of Kryta.  Not too bad - considering I didn’t think I’d ever even see the Shiverpeaks a month ago.  Oh, and to top it all off I finally picked up a copy of Guild Wars: Factions and started a new character - “Shindakun Shuya”.  I was able to bring Shuya up to level 15 in just over six hours.  If only my Prophecies character had gone up that quick!  I’ll be working on that character on and off over the next little while, my main focus is finishing Prophecies and possibly moving my character on to Eye of the North.  Brinstar has offered to play with me but, I have not yet had a chance to take her up on it.  Hopefully, I’ll get a chance soon - I have to try a mission with a real person at least once, it is an MMO, after all.

A couple of days ago I beat BioShock (with the “good” ending - don’t worry I’m not going to spoil it) and I suddenly found myself with some extra time on my hands. So, I did something I haven’t done in a while - I logged into Guild Wars. Since buying the game I haven’t really kept up with it. Partly because none of my friends are playing and I end up soloing everything. For the most part I can’t take most of my fellow players - I’m sure you can figure out why - and my play habits are no where near stable enough to bother weeding through the rabble to find a group to play with.

I spent some time finishing up a couple of quests that have sat in my quest log, longer then I can remember and bringing my Necromancer/Warrior up to level 12. Currently, I’m sitting at with about 25% level till I reach 13. Hopefully, I’ll be able to run my way through the Asalon Foothills and make it all the way to Yak’s Bend one of these days. I’ve attempted it a couple of times and so far it’s been no go.

One thing I did notice logging back in for the first time was - I had a birthday present. I vaguely remember getting that once my characters first birthday had passed, for some reason though I never opened it. I’ll be getting my next birthday present in about three months, maybe then I’ll open the first one.

Anyway, I need to get back to working on my “build“.

It looks like Mikey is going to pick up a copy of ‘Guild Wars‘. Which means I’ll probably join (or start) a guild (finally). Of course then I’ll have to squeeze in a bit more time to play � which won’t be a problem.

In other news I’m thinking about moving the site over to WordPress and PixelPost. I don’t really use deviantArt any more and I still want to be able to post some of my pictures *somewhere*. Maybe I’ll install start with installing WordPress and moving all my posts over�

If I do make the change then I’m guessing I’m going to have to hack some stuff together so both scripts play together nicely…