Killing Floor

I just pre-ordered a copy of “Killing Floor” yesterday for only $14.99, it looks like it will give L4D a run for its money, and certainly looks much more promising than zombie mod for CSS. You can purchase a copy here, it is set to be released on May 14th, so if you buy it before the release you will only pay $14.99, otherwise it will be $19.99.

Info: Killing Floor is a Co-op Survival Horror FPS set in the devastated cities and countryside of England after a series of cloning experiments for the military goes horribly wrong. You and your friends are members of the military dropped into these locations with a simple mission: Survive long enough to cleanse the area of the failed experiments!

Cooperative gameplay for up to six players against multiple waves of specimens

Persistent Perks system, allowing players to convert their in-game achievements into permanent improvements to their character’s skills and abilities

Over 40 Steam Achievements, including “Dignity for the dead” for killing 10 enemies feeding on dead teammates’ corpses and “Hot Cross Fun” for finishing off 25 burning enemies with a Crossbow

Slow-motion “ZEDtime” to better watch those crucial and violent creature deaths, even in multiplayer

Solo game mode for offline play

Nine different monster types trying to eat your face off, armed with everything from teeth and claws, to chainsaws, chain-guns and rocket-launchers

12+ weapons for the players to chose from, ranging from knives and fire-axes to pump shotguns, rifles and a flamethrower

Equip your team with welders, medical tools and body armor to help your odds of survival

Choose which Perks to play with to best balance out your co-op team against the horrors

Open, non-linear play areas: choose when and where to fight — or run; weld doors closed to direct the monster horde down alternate corridors

Fully-configurable, allowing players to change the difficulty level, number of creature waves, or even set up their own favorite waves of monsters

Support for Steam Friends and other Steamworks features

Includes SDK for the creation of new levels and mods

Valve: Hackers Wanted

Recently while playing Counter-Strike: Source I realized something. I have been playing CS since 2004, back when it was just version 1.6. However, I can not prove this because of the iron fist of valve/steam. Hacking in CS 1.6 and CSS, or any game for that matter is a waste of time, but when I first began playing back in 2004 I was still pretty young, only a freshmen in high school, and I hacked. When I first began hacking in CS it was just for fun, for entertainment, I did not really know if it was all that wrong or not, for this was my first ever FPS.

Shortly after I began hacking in CS: 1.6, I was banned, about three months later. My account was “VerisCode”, if I tried to log into it today I would see the message shown below. For awhile after that I shared an account with my friend, and soon after Counter-Strike: Source was released and I made a new account, and bought the valve complete package on it for the usual fee of $99.99. This new account was called “Nierz”, a name I also used for awhile in other graphic design communities online. Now I began to get really into CSS, not just for fun but competitively. Myself, and a friend from school went through many clans together, often times creating our own. At one point we even owned our own 64 man server, as well as several 20 man servers and some Ventrilo servers. Some of our old teams consisted of [DD] (Destination Death), [zG] Zero Gravity, Delta (the symbol was a weird D with a slash through it which I can not seem to find now), e! (Team eXcite), [FURY] (Team Fury), aTx` (Atroxity), IaD (Infiltrate and Destroy).

Although, in some of my previous teams, such as Fury and Infiltrate and Destory, we played in CAL-Open and some other minor leagues. We would get a PUG from mIRC to practice and it was so obvious that so many people were hacking; we would play teams that would blatantly hack. So we did the only thing we thought was right at the time, we hacked back, and proceeded to do so in CAL. In fact, the hacking was so bad that we could barely even win while hacking, because nearly every team was hacking at the time in CAL-Open. Eventually, my Nierz account also got banned by VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat). This was all during the year 2005, after that I stopped playing CSS for awhile, and picked up WoW in early 2006 and played that until early 2007. However, the Blizzard staff is not nearly as strict as the Valve staff. I got away with so many things while playing WoW without even a warning. First off, I bought so much gold in WoW that it is ridiculous, I used glitches and exploits in battlegrounds, went into unfinished areas such as Hyjal, Under Ironforge, Caverns of Time, and even modified the world to suit my needs.

Back in the old days of WoW you used to be able to modify the world slightly, in the plague lands there are numerous broken down towers that have no ladder to get to the top. However, by modifying the world, very similar to adding a skin in CSS, I replaced the old broken down tower with a fully working and normal tower, so to me I could just climb to the top and attack people that wondered by (I was a shadow priest on a PvP server – The Forgotten Coast), However, to people that looked at me, I was floating at the top of a broken down tower, and no one could get near me. I did all of this in WoW and never received any kind of punishment, they were getting their $15 a month, so they were happy.

However, with Valve, any kind of infraction and you are finished, banned instantly. During the summer of 2008 I was wondering how I could redeem my status on Steam that I once had, having a low Steam ID, because my 8 Digit on my newest “Dvsclarity” account just was not working for me. So I purchased an account on eBay, it was a six digit account made in 2003. I purchased the Valve Complete package on it, and one day went to log in and it said the account was locked, they said it was flagged because of “to many purchases” – seriously? They wanted proof that the account was mine now, and wanted the serial key for the copy of CSS that was already on the account when I purchased it; I could not produce the key so they disabled that account as well, including my new “Dvsclarity” account. They love locking accounts; they will disable every account you have for no apparent reason. I actually did have the CD key for my “Dvsclarity” account so I had to take a picture of it and send it to Steam Support, and they reluctantly unlocked it, but warned me that any more shenanigans and this account would be disabled as well.

So I got my account back, and also made another account, my “j4z” account, for some other games. You must be wondering, wow – all of these accounts, and all of this money wasted. Yes, I have bought the Valve Complete Package three times now, and guess what, this is exactly how Steam/Valve makes their money. Now, as I began, I was playing CSS the other day and realized something, Valve wants hackers. I have been playing some Dust2 lately, and noticed that there are still lots of hackers, in fact, I could not go into a 24/7 Dust2 server without at least a few people with a 100/1 kill-death ratio. And the “voteban” feature was in regular use on most of these servers.

I thought to myself… I have been here; I used to hack back in the day. It is extremely stupid as I have already stated, but I did not know better back then, I am an adult now and see why it is such a waste of time. I always imagined though, that they would eventually bring an end to hacking in general, however, while playing I noticed hackers are just as prolific, if not even more numerous than they were back in 2004! “They still have not figured out this hacker problem”, I said. But it is not a problem to them; it is how they make their money. It is also why the steam support staffs will ban/disable your account without a second thought, because they know the majority of people will just rebuy their games.

Could valve reduce or even eliminate the amount of hackers? Most likely yes they could. Do they want to? No they do not. I would even go as far as saying that Valve/Steam supports and even distributes hacks behind doors, just so players will find them, use them, get banned, and rebuy their games. Notice Counter-Strike: Source is still the number four seller on the “top sellers” list on Steams website, because people continue to get banned and rebuy CSS. Will I ever try to play CSS competitively again? No I will not, not when the company running the games supports hacking.

Unveiling the White Lion Class

Amid the death and destruction that will befall the high elf land of Ulthuan when Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning releases later this year, there is a little bit of love. Hailing from the land of Chrace, the newly revealed white lion class will raise a war lion from a baby cub to a valiant beast of war. Players will be able to name their pet, choose distinctive fur patterns, and train it in the art of battle. Eventually, the war lion will grow into a loyal companion on the battlefield, elf’s best friend. The folks over at gamespot got a chance to talk with Adam Gershowitz, associate art director and lead of combat and careers on Warhammer Online, to get the skinny on the new white lion class. I picked out some of the more interesting questions from the interview.

Gamespot: We are proud to unveil the new white lion class, which joins the swordmaster and the archmage as classes of high elf. Give us an overview of these beast-masters from the north.

Adam Gershowitz: In short, the white lions of Chrace are more savage than their southern cousins, striking out with great axe and claw to rend through their opponents. They fill the role of the melee damage-per-second (DPS) or “brawler” career for the high elves. Their most unique feature is the war lion that accompanies them. While capable fighters on their own, the white lion really shines when working together with his feline companion. In WAR, we’ve chosen to delve deeper into the lore of the white lions of Chrace, working with Games Workshop to fill out the backstory and history of these noble hunters from the north. The most notable part of the backstory is the concept of the war lion and how certain courageous and skilled white lion warriors train these beasts to be powerful and loyal companions.

GS: It sounds like training your personal war lion allows for an even greater level of customization. What are the different ways to approach raising your lion? Will they become sad without enough tender loving care, like the puppies in Nintendogs?

AG: The war lion is meant to be a long-term companion unlike the disposable (yet lovable) squigs the squig herder gets. As such, we wanted to give players more options on their pet since they will only get one. These options are fairly simple but significant and include naming your pet and choosing distinctive fur patterns and markings when you first receive your lion. This allows for different white lion players to have semiunique war lions to accompany them. These distinctive markings stay with your war lion for the life of your character and dictate what your fully grown war lion will look like. Yes, I said fully grown; and yes, you get the war lion as an adolescent, and it grows as the player grows.

GS: We’ve talked a lot recently about the different paths of mastery available to each class. What additional skills will the white lion master have access to?

AG: The white lion, like all careers, has three paths of mastery available to it. The path of the hunter, the path of the axeman, and path of the guardian. Each of these emphasizes a particular aspect of play style for both the master and the pet.

The path of the hunter focuses on equality between elf and war lion; both stride into battle side-by-side, lashing out in powerful combination attacks that can hit multiple opponents at once.

The path of the axeman focuses the offensive role onto the player, while the war lion takes a more defensive role. This line focuses on large, single-target damage, causing the player to rely on his or her war lion or group mates to distract opponents so that the player can make a flank attack.

The path of guardian focuses on helping defend your war lion or group by disabling and reducing your opponents combat abilities and reducing the threat generated by your allies. This allows your war lion or group to take a more offensive role, striking harder with less fear of retribution.

GS: What are the best ways to utilize the white lion? And, if you’re a dark elf, what’s the best way to counter a man-eating feline besides enchanting it with a pile of catnip?

AG: The war lion is a very flexible pet; since players have access to all of the “training” strategies, they can choose how their lion behaves on the fly. However, each of the pet behaviors is designed to complement a player’s mastery. So players who have chosen a specific play style will generally have a pet that’s stronger at complementing that play style.

Fighting against a white lion is all about observing its strategy. You need to identify what type of play style it is using and take out the bigger of the two threats first. There are some obvious indications [as] to who is going to put the hurt on you first. Generally, it’s the one trying to circle around you to get an exposed flank!

Warhammer Online: The Shaman

The wait for Warhammer Online continues, the release is due now in Q4 2008, approximately Early October. I personally cannot wait for the game to come out, it is going to be amazing, and I am glad they decided to delay the game, it will give the developers time to really make the game shine and add all kinds of features in, as well it will be less buggy than a rushed release. I am also glad the game release was delayed as it gives me more time to get a new gaming PC, I wont be able to get one until summer time when I start working full time again, so it works out. I am especially excited that the guy I am rooming with also picked up the Collectors Edition, so we will both be completely ready to go into WAR on the day of release, both probably with fresh new gaming PC’s. So now with all of the hustle and bustle with news of WAR coming in daily, you have to think about what class you want to play, its really hard to say. At first I was looking towards the Black Orc, but now I’m starting to lean towards the Goblin Shaman, I really enjoyed playing a Shadow Priest in WoW and a Shaman would be quite similar in a sense, DPS’ing and Healing.

Shaman Specialty

Greenskins live for battle, and fighting provides the strange and twisted power that fuels their magic. By participating in battle – calling down the wrath of Gork and Mork, or just being up in the fight with the lads – the Shaman taps into the collective frenzy to gain Waaagh! power. This gathered Waaagh! energy drives the strength of his supporting magic to new heights. With Waaagh! power blazing in his eyes, his spells can heal more wounds or empower his allies to achieve feats of unbelievable destruction.

Playing as a Shaman

As a Shaman, you’ll have to walk a careful line in balancing your offensive and support abilities. You can achieve the greatest rate of healing by focusing on that skill exclusively. You can maximize your rate of damage by focusing purely on those abilities. However, focusing on a single talent will lessen your overall impact on the battle. The strength your support skills gain from an ongoing Waaagh! is significant. Using your offensive magic to contribute directly to the fight will increase the power of your support magic, allowing you to better help your group.

Fighting the Shaman

With the Shaman’s power to support and enhance his allies, he is at his strongest when he fights with a team. With this in mind, you’d be advised to take the earliest opportunity to eliminate him – an opportunity his group mates will do their best to deny you. In each fight you must carefully weigh the opposition, and determine the best time to strike at the Shaman. Attack too early and you risk facing deadly reprisals from the Shaman’s uninjured allies. Attack too late and you may lack the power to overcome the group’s Waaagh! enhanced defenses.

All of this seems quite great, so I can’t wait to really test it out in open Beta! Also, if you would like to see the Shaman in action, here is a neat video of a Shaman in Beta PvP RvR. Shaman Video

Warhammer Online Collectors Edition Released!

The Official Warhammer Online Collectors Edition was released on March 26th, I just purchased mine today for $92.20 with shipping and tax included at the EA Store, get yours while they last! The folks over at EA Mythic have this to say:

EA Mythic is proud to present the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector’s Edition, a limited-run, premium version of the game for true Warhammer fans. It is the perfect addition to any Warhammer collection and can be proudly displayed alongside your army of miniatures. This special oversized box contains unique collectibles and exciting in-game content to help you get the most out of your journeys through the battlefields of the Age of Reckoning. Only 60,000 units of the Collector’s Edition will be available in North America. (We’re making a couple extra, but those are for us!)

The collectors edition includes 7 pounds of swag! An exclusive games workshop miniature which depicts the greenskin warboss, Grumlok, and his shaman, Gazbag, in rich detail.

A full-color 128 page graphic novel, Warhammer Online: Prelude to War. Written by acclaimed Games Workshop writer, Graham McNeill, the oversized book is richly illustrated by Chad Hardin, Joe Abraham, Rahsan Ekedal, Tony Parker, and Kevin Hopgood. Each of the graphic novel’s six chapters tells a unique story that together detail the events leading up to the Age of Reckoning.

A 224-page hardcover collection of original art from the game. Each of the glossy, full-color pages showcases the talented work of the concept artists and offers a glimpse at a world in the making.

Bonus in-game content such as “The Librams of Insight”: Readers of the Librams of Insight are granted special insight into their own actions and earn experience at a higher rate for a limited time. (+10% XP modifier for 60 minutes, 3 uses, 90 minute reuse timer.)

Purchasers of the Collector’s Edition will begin their adventures in the Age of Reckoning with twelve (12) additional quests awaiting them in the Tome of Knowledge. Each quest offers an exciting reward, as well as an exclusive character title, that will aid the player in their battles on the frontlines.

The WAR Collector’s Edition includes twelve (12) bonus heads for additional character customization options. Each race gets a truly unique look (with male and female versions) that is sure to turn heads on the battlefields and be the envy of everyone in the army.

Along with all of this great stuff, the WAR Collectors Edition also includes Open Beta Access, Live Game Head Start, and additional in-game items. I certainly can’t wait for Open Beta and the official release of WAR!

Top 5 Botched PC Game Launches

A staff member at 1Up wrote this article about the “Top 5 Botched PC Game Launches”, and their horrible beginning first days of release. Number two on the list just happens to be Steam/Half-Life 2, which I personally experienced and it wasn’t enjoyable.

Installing a new PC game can be something like a blind date. Yeah, sure, it may have sounded great when your friend was saying you’d be perfect for each other, but if things start off on a bad foot — like, say, she vomits in your car — you may just not want to bother with the rest of the night. Plenty of atrocious PC game launches litter the past, but what we have here are our five “favorites” — the ones that still make us shake our heads and cluck our tongues and make other such disapproving gestures with our bodies as we recount their particular horrors. And while it would be easy enough to fill this entire list at least two times over with MMOs alone, we decided not to do that, as it’s just too much fish-in-the-barrel shooting even for us. So let’s laugh, cry, and get annoyed all over again at five of the all-time worst PC game launches. We promise, reading this list will not automatically reformat your hard drive!

5. Hellgate: London

When Hellgate opened on Halloween, 2007, s*** hit the fan. Never mind the ongoing demonic invasion and dimensional gash in no-longer-jolly-old England; players paid up to fight it off. But persistent crash bugs were a bad start. And while lost progress in an action-RPG is always painful, double and triple billings chafe in any context. Many subscribers to Hellgate: London’s optional membership program, who exchanged $9.99 a month or a flat lifetime fee of $149 for priority server access, easier in-game transportation, and other perks, reported massive problems and mistaken charges. According to popular gaming site Shacklenews, one user claimed that he was “charged two times on November 3, one time on November 4, and one time on November 5″ and summarized the situation as “the worst online gaming experience I have ever had.” On developer Flagship Studios‘ support forum, others claimed to have proof of payment with no subscription to show for it.

Asian gamers encountered another crisis altogether. In November 2007, Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which operates Hellgate’s Southeast Asia server, apologetically announced that a forthcoming patch would entirely erase all progress players had made over the previous two weeks. The proposed compensation — a 30-day free subscription — couldn’t cut it with an increasingly irate audience. According to Singapore-based paper The Straights Times, “the resulting uproar…sent IAH back to the drawing board” in search of a less drastic solution. In the end, and with Flagship’s intervention, IAH avoided the reset switch. By then, however, it was Hellgate’s reputation that needed a reboot — and perhaps someone, somewhere learned that any PR points gained by launching a demonic-themed game on Halloween aren’t always worth the hassle.

4. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Books could be written about everything that went wrong with Vanguard, and that’s before you do any real digging into the early development mess, where the money bled off to, what Everquest co-creator and Sigil CEO Brad McQuaid was doing through all of it, and what happened in the parking lot afterward. Shoved out the door way too early for what were admitted to be financial reasons, the game was just plain half-baked, plagued by enough bugs, missing content, and instability to compete with the very best of the worst. From little things like a “display hoods/helmets” option that didn’t do anything because none of the hoods or helmets in the game even had any graphics to frequently previewed back-of-the-box features like flying mounts that didn’t make it into the game until long, long after release.

Vanguard staggered away from its absolute train wreck of a launch and slowly, steadily recovered. These days, it’s pretty well healed up and finally living up to promises that were made and broken long before. But it’s still hard to forget that, until lately, players were paying for the privilege of participating in a really, really long beta.

3. World War II Online

Where Germany waged lightning war that engulfed Europe in 1939, MMOFPS World War II Online sputtered into history with all the majesty of Jed Clampett on the highway to Beverly Hills, shooing off many potential players with its opening salvo in 2001. Would-be warriors were forced to download a 70MB patch before fighting — massive in the age of 56K modems — followed by subsequent hotfixes for slide-show framerates, audio oddities, a faulty interface, flat-out missing features, Hitler’s monorchism, and much more. In fact, for months, there was no war worth mentioning. Fed up players sought refunds, and as they continued to complain online, sales tanked. Codeveloper Playnet waived subscription fees for a few months before cutting costs and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Despite these setbacks, WWII Online soldiered on with an improved infrastructure, yet more patches, and multiple rereleases.

2. Steam/Half-Life 2

Yes, yes, we all love Steam now (not). It’s the model of digital distribution and community management in PC gaming right now, utterly shaming Microsoft’s embarrassingly inept Games for Windows Live initiative. But back in the day, we were even harsher on Valve than we now are on Microsoft — because the official launch of Steam on November 16, 2004, which coincided with the launch of Half-Life 2, was an utter nightmare. Or at least it seemed that way at the time. To be fair, some of what we complained about at the time was simply because we had never seen it before. Like, for example, a single-player game that required you to be online to play it. What seemed unreasonable and demanding back in the day is now more par for the course. That said, the initial launch was a disaster, with Valve’s servers backed up and crashing due to bottlenecks and general instability, making it literally impossible for many players — whether they’d bought a boxed copy or a direct download — to validate and play Half-Life 2. Yes, gamers finally had the most anticipated PC game in years in their hot little hands, but they couldn’t play it because the online validation was busted. As an advertisement for Valve’s new distribution system, you couldn’t have asked for anything worse. Since then, of course, Valve has gone out of their way to fix and improve Steam, and now we can’t imagine living without it. On November 16, 2004, though, it felt like one of the biggest WTF moments in PC gaming history.

1. Ultima IX: Ascension

All hail the king of gaffed game launches: Though Ultima IX hit store shelves in 1999 (following a troubled development cycle that saw at least four different versions of the game and its engine), the box may as well have been empty. Eager RPG fans booted the game up on their fancy Voodoo3-equipped Pentium II rigs, only to run headlong into myriad 3D engine bugs and crash after game-halting crash. Eventually (after several half-assed attempts on publisher EA’s part to fix U9’s flubs), an unofficial patch was released anonymously by one of the game’s developers, which at least made U9 playable. Given how much dirty laundry’s come out in the years following U9’s release (the usual corporate drama, repeated design reboots, and “creative differences”), we can’t say we’re surprised at how terrible it turned out — and despite several sequel attempts, Ultima’s never regained the ground it lost thanks to this dud. Such an unfitting end for such a magnificent series.

Earthrise

I have spent the last couple of hours reading and posting on the Earthrise forums about this upcoming game. Earthrise is a post-apocalyptic MMORPG estimated to be released in 2009. This game looks promising, it is certainly going to have a lot of PvP and a new PvP looting system. I have been a longstanding fan of open world non-consensual PvP, there is nothing funner in an MMORPG to me, than a fight that you cannot predict nor expect, it takes more skill to fight unprepared in the open than it does in a fixed battle. I added some high res screen shots from the Earthrise website, as you can see the game looks great, so its a good thing I will have a new desktop to run this game by 2009. Here is a brief overview of the game:

“In the aftermath of the Third World War, mankind has managed to survive and build a new society: the prosperous city of Sal Vitas. Cloning, nanotechnology and quantum engineering are part of a new reality. Thanks to these technological advances, the human species has become immortal; each individual’s consciousness is stored in a data vault, ready to be uploaded into a cloned body as necessary. New energy sources have been discovered. There is a unified government that takes good care of those citizens who abide by its strict laws. Paradise, it appears, might really have come to Earth, and the people have embraced it.”

Sounds promising, and the dev team for this game seem like they are on the ball with things, so hopefully this game will prove to be as good as it looks now, we will have to wait. I’ll keep you updated on future Earthrise updates, and you can visit their website @ Earthrise, feel free to join their forums and begin discussing the future of this game.

New Laptop!

I have just received an HP Pavilion dv2025nr Entertainment Notebook PC, it is an early graduation present from my parents. I enjoy this laptop quite a lot, and it has been working well so far. It has an AMD Turion 64×2 GFX Card, touch sensitive media controls, 1 gig of RAM, 100 gigs of hard drive space. Although it is for my school work, I have been playing a lot of audiosurf on it, which is a very fun game.

New Blog!

I just created this blog courtesy of wordpress.com, I have used their blogs in the past and they always seem to work great. I felt a need to start documenting and posting some of the games I play in the PC World. Most of my games are distributed by Steam, such as Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source, which are two of my favorites. Once I get out of high school (about 2.5 months left of my senior year) I will quit my part time job at KFC and take up my summer job doing structural repair before college. I am going to Ferris State University with my friend TJ (Gilo).

Anyway, once summer starts and I am working full time again I will be able to afford a new PC, currently I am still using my old Dell from 2003! It has lasted a long time and has been through several graphics card updates as well as power supply replacements. For my new computer I am looking for something with a good price, I rather like this one, which I can get at my local best buy. It is a Gateway 9600, yes I know Gateway doesn’t have the greatest rep and are mostly remembered as those huge white monsters we all owned back in the mid 90’s. However, I’ve been looking around for a PC for quite awhile now, at places such as iBuyPower, Dell XPS, Velocity Micro, Vigor, Alienware, and others. Many of these offer overpriced computers with fancy cases, so I have decided I am just going to buy mine locally at a Best Buy or Circuit City to avoid all the annoyances of purchasing a PC online.

So hopefully soon I can get rid of this old rig and move onto something a bit faster, actually a lot faster. The specs on the Gateway 9600 are as follows: AMD Phenom quad-core processor 9600, 3GB RAM, 500GB Serial ATA II hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, the only bad part is it comes with Vista, and I can always update the graphics card. This Gateway 9600 comes to $1,099.99, which is a great price for what you are getting, to make a machine even close to as good as this on Alienware the prices were up in the 4K range!