9 Happy 2012

For everyone visiting this blog, happy new year and please be careful with the fireworks. Keep all your fingers in 2012, you'll need them for typing. ;)

See you next year!

14 Star Wars; The Old Republic has 1 million players

 I've been playing quite some mmo games in my day. Starting in 2002 with EVE Online, Planetside and World of Warcraft i've been in the beta game for a while. When live i played WoW for several years, now retired i spend my days back in the Eve Universe making a living in a huge sandbox where everything could happen to you or the universe. Back in the WoW days that wasn't my worry, raiding and leveling were enough for me.

Although WoW had different servers all of them contained more than 11 million players. To be honest i have no idea when they hit the 1 million mark after the launch, but as of now Star Wars: The Old Republic has it.

The Source is a bit unclear, but USA Today published a list with facts about the game. It reports that the game now has a million active players, who in total created 3.8 million characters. The average playtime is now at 5 hours per day, wich in total makes up for 28 million play hours. In that time a staggering 2 billion enemy's died.

Want to join the Dark Side? Sure, but don't think you're the only one. A slight majority has the overhand in choosing for the Dark side. 550.00 Sith Warriors against 510.00 Jedi Warriors.

Save travels young padawan. May the force be with you!

11 What if Wheatley had won

Lol. I just laughed my ass off watching this video. Apparantly Wheatley, the 'other' robot in Portal 2 had been nominated in the VGA's (Video Game Awards). It turns out he didn't win, but Valve did make a video about him what he would say if he won the trophy.

In the end The Joker won. Shamefull. The other two entrants were Nathan Drake and Marcus Fenix, appearing in the third games of their respective trilogies. Shamefull. Anyway, here is the video

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0 New hope for Stalker 2 ?

GSC Gameworld. Not one of my top-developers, but i'm a huge fan of Stalker. Okay so i'll be honest, i've never completed the game. There are three of them and from none of 'em i have seen the end. But still, the games have this special feeling. Not 'spechul', even though all of the games have it shortcomings, but the ambience and how the world was build, felt so good.

So it was quite a shock to hear GSC Gameworld going bankrupt. Tbh i don't care about them, i care about Stalker 2! There is no way another company is going to take the game over. But then again, the first Stalker also didn't go over roses.

So i was glad to hear something. A surprise Christmas present you might say.

“Dear Stalkers: We will not be releasing any official news until around mid January. However there is cause for hope! Good hunting!”

Don't know if i can count it as a suprise, but i'm glad there is at least something. Maybe they will make a new start, i sure hope so. 

4 Play Skyrim smoother

When i first played the game i was flabbergasted. Not just that it was ENORMOUS and AWESOME, but that my pc could run it. I can still remember Oblivion running and my computer was like okay, but meh. So when the game put everything on high before i could even set it up it raised a question, still it's playing smooth like a just shaven head.

Even better though, an unofficial path-maker named Arisu found a solution to a FPS problem other people do have. I did not test it yet, since i live by the 'if it isn't broken, don't fix' term. Bethesda already patched the game so that it would use more then 2 gigs of ram, but still it isn't enough for a lot of people.

What Arisu has to say about it: “It works mostly by rewriting some x87 FPU code and inlining a whole ton of useless getter functions along the critical paths because the developers at Bethesda, for some reason, compiled the game without using any of the optimization flags for release builds.” Also, “They’d just have to add the string “/O2 /GL” to their Makefile”. 

To install the unofficial patch, first you’ll need to grab the Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) from here and extract its contents into your main Skyrim directory. Then, grab the TESV Acceleration Layer from here and dump the DLL file within into [your Skyrim folder]/Data/SKSE/Plugins, creating the latter two directories if necessary. Then, launch the game by running skse_loader.exe from the Skyrim root folder.


I hope this works for you peeps out there. Give me a shout if this made your (Skyrim) life even better.

0 I love Air Buccaneers!

It's probably one of the most weird but fun mods i have ever played. It involves getting an ancient gun, get into an air balloon and shoot the other guys. It's not like a blimp or any such, you are at the mercy of the wind and really act like its a real hot air balloon. Frustating but so much fun.

SEASON’S GREETINGS FROM LUDOCRAFT!

As this holiday season approaches its inevitable highlight and the distinct laughter of a certain fat man in his red overalls echoes in the distance, we here at LudoCraft decided it was time to give our little present to all the gamers around the world. So here it is:

AIRBUCCANEERS HD PRE-ALPHA! FREE FOR ALL!

Yes, AirBuccaneers HD has now reached the Pre-Alpha phase and is available for playing.  It is still work in progress, though, and all your feedback is highly valuable for us. There are still graphics, sounds, features and effects missing, but we hope that it quenches your thirst for buccaneering and plundering for now. 

You can download it from the official site. http://www.ludocraft.com/games/airbuccaneers/ 

4 Terraria on Steam sale

I really haven't found any time to play it. In fact i've been keeping myself from it. The reason is quite obvious: study. But since it's vacation time i'm gonna do it anyway, i'm gonna buy and play it.

And talking about buying, it is now on sale on steam for only € 2,49. So heck why not do it. It wont bankrupt me, or you.

"Dig, fight, explore, build! Nothing is impossible in this action-packed adventure game. The world is your canvas and the ground itself is your paint. Grab your tools and go! Make weapons to fight off a variety of enemies in numerous biomes. Dig deep underground to find accessories, money, and other useful things."

 

Fight unicorns, heck yea!

0 The big EVE changover

So talking about Eve and Dust 514 made me forgot about a newer post about the universe. Lately CCP, the developer of the game has been under fire for a lot of reasons. Trying to get micro-transfers into the game in wich you can buy PLEX (30 days gametime bought by ingame money) wich would mean an unfair advantage. is probably the biggest.

More recently, devs CCP they would be sadly pruning their ranks, refocusing on the core EVE game and trying to win back their fans’ ardour. Part of that involves occasionally notorious senior producer Arnar “CCP Zulu” Gylfason handing his captain position to someone else.

“This has been an incredibly intense time. The EVE team here at CCP has certainly been pushed to the limit and beyond and we as a company learnt quite a few harsh lessons. It‘s been a tough time but I know we will use this as an opportunity to improve, to grow and to mature.

To ensure and facilitate that happening properly I‘ve decided to step down as Senior Producer and Jon Lander, previously the head of our Carbon Technology group, will take the reins while we transition the EVE project into a better and more efficient organization.

Lander, aka CCP Unifex, has been quick to make reassuring noises to the playerbase:

“We are changing EVE’s internal project structure to bring it in line with a product that has nearly 200 people working on it and making sure that everyone is concentrating on delivering a game which has real value for our players. As well as changing the project organization, we will also be spending time on improving our internal tools, pipelines and processes to improve our efficiency and effectiveness for the future.

Finally, we will be concentrating on those features we already have in the game after 8 years of development. Yes, we will be iterating (it‘s not a dirty word) on those features which need some polish, balance, fixes and general love. The releases throughout 2012 will be an extension of the type of release we had with Crucible with the addition of a theme to help us scope and tie the work into a really compelling and coherent package. The first theme is going to be War and everyone is getting very excited about it.”

All in all this means that CCP is getting EVE back into the way it was. They have other projects like Dust 514 and World of Darkness (new MMO) but will get their main focus back on EVE Online, since they realized that is their only income making the business go forward.

As an EVE player i sure hope that all of the news is true. We recently already had the 'Winter update' wich made a lot of improvements and got the game back on path again.

3 Eve Online

Yeah so i play Eve Online. You too? Because if you do, you have a very big chance to get into the beta for DUST 514.

If you have a active account you can sign up now on the official site.

http://eveonline.com 

For months we have observed as fans asked for a Beta date on DUST 514, our PlayStation® 3 exclusive persistent shooter. During that time the DUST 514 team has worked busily on the game, preparing for the moment when the first inhabitants of New Eden descend from the skies to the planets below.

That time is now.

It is with great joy that I can now officially announce that registration for DUST 514: Mordu’s Private Trials, our gated access beta test, has finally begun!

For now, registration is available exclusively to active subscribers of EVE Online who will join the pool of participants that we will be using to allow entry into early testing and special events for DUST 514. Registration for Mordu’s Private Trials does not guarantee entry, but as an active EVE subscriber, you are the first to have access to sign up for the closed beta.

We’re hugely excited to be able to extend this exclusive opportunity to our player community.

Don’t miss out on your chance to take part in this historic moment, sign up now! I will see you on the battlefields of New Eden soon.

CCP_CmdrWang

And the DUST 514 Team

How awesome is that!

2 Portal 2

Now you're thinking with portals. As you've been reading the title probably thinking 'nah more lag then portals', thats is absolutely right.

Steam is having its yearly winter sale, and finally the game had a sweet price reduction so i finally bought it.

So far the last 3 days have been amazing.  Didn't have much time before, but now i have it my god i love gaming again. Takes up time having a gf and a life..

Anyway, without crying, today i finally managed to get to the end. I was expecting more or less a similar experience as the first sequal. Little did i know it was this big! What an experience, i'm still flabbergasted by it. I loved how GlaDOS takes you back into an old journey testing rooms, then having someone helping you, and suddenly everything is upside down and you are helping her instead of fighting (Oh yeah, spoilers).

Shame this is end. Probably not for Portal, but for the test subject. Now, speechless, left into the wild with her companion cube.

*sniff*

1 Ticket playing games

Hey guys. Welcome to my freshly new blog. I had some previsous experiences with writing reviews for gaming- and techsites. Don't have time for those anymore, but this blog will help me with that.

Here i can write and review games on my own paste. I already got some ideas.


Coming up:

Portal 2
Eve Online
 Terraria

Godspeed and have fun!