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)