In this last regular edition of Mitra's Method for 2007, we take a look at the "year that was..." for 'Age of Conan'.
" If this year had bumps, then bring on the dips and loop-the-loops, by Crom!"
Is there truly merit into looking to the past to determine where one is headed in the future? This fortnight, you can be the judge of that.
This week's EverQuest 2 zone review from SOE features the Nektropos Castle zone. If you're curious about this area of the world and would like some tips from players, don't miss out on this feature.
Here is a chance for you, the EQII Community, to offer your critiques about selected zones in EQII and help influence your fellow community members on where and how they spend their time. This week's selected zone is Nektropos Castle.
You can read the full zone review by clicking 'read more' below.
JR "razor" Sutich reviews the new OTTO Digital Gaming Headset in our latest gaming hardware review. He used this with a variety of games, including MMOs like World of Warcraft.
The OTTO Digital Gaming Headset (Model OT-8) arrived at our offices last month and I have been using it almost exclusively when playing online games since then. At first I didn't think I was going to like it, but now I prefer to game with them on.
Read more after the jump.
It's been a few months since we took a peek at DDO and in that time, based on community feedback and the server merges Turbine are doing, we've decided it was time for a second look at Dungeons and Dragons Online. JR Sutich re-reviews the game in this new article.
First off, I stopped using Auto-Attack. I can see where taking a more active role in fighting improves results and makes it more interesting. The next step to making the game more fun was joining a guild. Having others online who are willing to do quests or answer questions made a lot of the difference. Getting run one time through Waterworks on Elite got me Level 3 and I had easy access to The Marketplace.
I had gotten to Level 4 when I noticed something interesting. That total Favor (not Faction, Favor) number that I had been obsessing over wasn't as big a problem as I had believed. Sure, I still think that the whole idea of making Drow and 32-point builds unlockables is a poor one, but I had managed to get 270 out of 400 necessary for the extra race without much trouble at all. I hadn't even completed all of the quests listed for Level 2. The only chain quests I had done were Catacombs and Tangleroot on Normal, and the Waterworks run on Elite. Getting 400 Favor is nothing to worry about. I should have it by the time I hit Level 6 or 7. Now, working on getting 1750 Favor might take a bit more effort, but I no longer see it as a horrible grind. It's still poor design, but not game breaking.
Read more after the click.
Harry Potter WarCry has released their reviews of the 7th and final book in the series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Lumina offers us two versions, one that is free of spoilers and one that has quite a few.
This is the non-spoiler review.
Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers ahead.
Spoiler review, click at risk!
Since it launched on April 24th, we've had a writer on the ground exploring Lord of the Rings Online. MMORPGs are huge things and we believe it is important to give it much more time than say a single player before we release a review. Now, after several weeks of playing, JR Sutich has given us his opinion of the game.
Player characters can enter The Ettenmoors once they reach Level 40 and engage the monsters for control of several strongholds in the area. The more strongholds you control, the more quests are available, allowing you to gain even more Destiny Points. Player characters can use the Destiny Points to purchase enhancements that work like timed buffs. Gaining more armor, health, or even increased XP for periods of time can greatly improve chances of survival and rate of leveling. I plan to spend a majority of my time doing Monster Play on the side of the monsters. Evil is good.
Read more after the click.
When the first anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach ticked by in February, our own JR Sutich decided to take a second look at the game. While it had launched originally to less than rave reviews, after a year, many MMOs hit their stride. Find out if DDO is one of them in our review.
One of the detractions from DDO that I found was the necessity of repeating quests. The quests are fun and interesting the first time, but after the fifth or sixth time I ran through them, I began to lose my sense of fun. It became even more evident when I found groups and they were just running straight through them without pause and I didn't get a chance to really enjoy much of the discovery elements from being in them for the first time.
Read his full review after the click.
500 years after an apocalyptic war on Earth, civilization is far from what it once was. It was bloomed into something new. The Catholic Church is a major military power that protects the humans--also known as Terran--from creatures known as Methuselahs, also known as vampires. The two races rest in uneasy tension, with war on the horizon if either side should make a wrong move.
In our second Zboard keyset review of the day, we look at Ideazon's offering for World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade. Whitney Butts took this one for a spin and came back with a more mixed review then Sutich did for Guild Wars Factions.
You can also get a chance to win your own World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade keyset and Zboard in a contest we're holding.
The overall functionality of the custom buttons seems cheap. They don't always work and there is a bit of delay. You press the button and in game you'll see your chat cursor activate. Once the cursor activates you will see the slash command for the action being entered in the chat window. At times, the delay was so long I likely could have typed the slash command faster than it took the keyboard to enter it in. Overall, the buttons seem like a glorified macro interface for slash commands that didn't quite work all of the time.
Click below for the full article.
Today we have a review of the Guild Wars Factions Zboard keyset. Ideazon, the makers of these keysets, specializes in custom keysets that plug into their own keyboard. These are designed to swap in and out and work specifically for each game. Our own JR Sutich had a chance to review one.
You can also get a chance to win your own World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade keyset and Zboard in a contest we're holding.
Do one thing and do it well. The Zboard is a great example of that, as it chooses to focus on being a great custom keyboard layout for various videogames. The specific layout I had the chance to use was for Guild Wars Factions.
Setting up the keyboard was a fairly simple operation, once I had figured out that the newer keysets were not compatible with older Zboard bases. After installing the drivers, it was only a matter of plugging in the USB Zboard in and letting the system detect it. The Zboard application was immediately able to show what keyset had been used, with a graphical representation of the Guild Wars Faction layout.
The full review can be found at the link below.
