Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Bwah?

So this week's update, Pasquale vs WoW, has been postponed, possibly indefinitely. When I went to re-set up my old WoW account info, I was informed that I had been banned.

***Notice of Account Closure***

Hello,

Account Name: (my account name)

This is a notification regarding your World of Warcraft account. Access to this account has been permanently disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. While we try to be as lenient as possible in our assessments of the results of exploitation investigations, exploitative endeavors on your account have ultimately lead to its closure. The recurring subscription on the account has been disabled to prevent further charges.

I honestly don't know what "exploiting the economy" means. The only part I understood in that whole email was "permanently disabled."

I haven't used the account in forever. I did, however, let my brother use it since I didn't want to play anymore. He swears he did nothing wrong, but who knows.

I e-mailed the douches at Blizzard Support to get a clearer explanation of what happened, but that was a week ago, and no one has responded. I'm sure it's my brother's fault, but I guess I'll never know.

One of these days, if I feel the WoW itch (not bloody likely) I'll get a new account and start from scratch. Until then, this update goes on the back burner.

Next update is number 50, and I have to do something huge for it. That being said, Pasquale vs City of Heroes is on hold for a week, because my 50th update has to be FFXI-licious.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Pasquale vs The Matrix Online

I just want to start by saying that the screen shots used in today's post are not mine. One of the reasons this update is so late is because I couldn't figure out how to get my damn screenshots to work. I knew how to take them, but they were always just black screens. (At first I thought this was because The Matrix Online (TMO) was just too awesome for screen shots, but you'd better believe that is a lie.)

I only put in maybe 10 or so hours but I feel I got a pretty good grip on how things work.

First off, let's talk about character creation and training.

This is the character creation screen. You're probably admiring her ass. I want to repeat, these are not my shots, someone else took a picture of this chick's ass.

There are a handful of choices to make when creating your character. First you pick what type of person is taking the red pill.

Secluded Introvert
New Age Hippie
Suspicious Cynic
Fanatic Self-Improver
True Believer
(Assorted others, all with equally stupid names.)

As far as I can tell, the only thing that changes when choosing one of these is your stats, and it doesn't change by much. After this, you go to the character creation screen pictured above. You can make a male or female, and then pick one of two different shirts, pants, shoes, and sunglasses. Needless to say, when you first start, everyone looks the same.

After you make your guy, its time to learn how to play. TMO is actually really easy to pick up: Move to bad guy, press "1," kung fu his ass off. Repeat as desired. Training lasts a few minutes and then it's time to 'jack in' (a phrase that made me laugh every time I started the game up) and begin your adventure.

After walking around for a little while, you'll come across some street thugs who need to be taught a lesson. After teaching said lesson, you'll find new clothes on them, and you can change your look. Within 10-15 minutes, you'll already be finished looking exactly like Neo.

Here's a shot of me standing next to Morpheus.

There are three types of characters in the game. Hackers are the mage-type, Coders are crafters, (seriously, you're sole purpose is to craft items for other people), and whatever the warrior type is called. Soldier, I think. I forgot, it was boring.

As you level up, you can buy abilities to learn depending on which of the three you choose. As you get higher, you can branch off into other aspects: Hand-to-hand or guns, black or white mage, make clothes or make potions. (Seriously, how lame is that?)

The hand to hand combat is fun to watch for a few minutes, then it gets repetitive. Seeing the same jump kicks and karate chops gets old pretty fast.

This is a shot of me getting kicked in the face. Yowza! (/sigh)

Combat in TMO requires almost no skill whatsoever. You can basically press any buttons you want, and whatever you are fighting will die.

When 'casting' a spell, your character will type on an imaginary computer until the fancy green grid (shown above) appears. Then a virus will infect your enemy, causing whatever type of damage your spell is supposed to do. (While typing on your invisible computer, your character will look like he is flailing his arms, because he is afraid of spiders.)

I expected to find a lot of players with names like Neojunior and Tr1nitygirl, but that proved impossible, because there was never anyone on. Once in a while you see a flash of what you think is another player, but when you chase it around the corner, you see that it was nothing.

One time I saw a pretty big group of high level players, and every single one of them looked the same. They all had matching long black coats, black pants, and black sunglasses. If their names weren't hovering over their heads, I'm confident they would have had no idea who was who.

Missions are pretty standard; Run to building, click on person in building, kill someone, win mission. It probably gets a little more difficult later in the game, but I highly doubt it.

The only spot I had lag was when i was running around in the city. I would be lag free until a car would drive by on the street. For some reason, cars cause massive lag to all players around them. This made traveling very difficult and tiring.

In case I hadn't made it painfully obvious already, this game sucked. The idea of paying monthly for a game where the cars cause lag and the buildings dissapear if you look at them the wrong way blows my mind.

Next week, Pasquale vs World of Warcraft.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

An MMO, by any other name...

Yowzers.

Too much crap going on, and I haven't had a chance to sit down and devote hours to FF. Hopefully that changes next week, as I would like to hit 75 before I die of old age at 28. (Long story, don't ask.)

In order to spice things up a bit, I gave three other MMOs a 'trial run' the last few weeks. I picked MMOs that can be played in small intervals, because if I had ever had hours of free time, I would have played FFXI.

Starting tomorrow, I will review the first MMO I tried, The Matrix Online. On Tuesday, I will review World of Warcraft, and on Friday of next week, I will review City of Heroes.

After my CoH review, I'll be back with FFXI stories, hopefully involving more level-ing and less crying.

I was rummaging through old LiveJournal posts (rummaging, as if they were tangible /sigh) and I found a post about what may be my favorite FFXI moment. It was a brief conversation I had while arguing with someone in my party. I can't remember if I posted it on my blog here or not, so here it is:

Player: "Dude shut up or I'm totally gonna fuck my hot mom"
Pasquale: "Um... tell her I said hello?"
Player: "Oh, I will."

There was a long pause here. No one in the party said anything.

Player: "YOURE MOM NOT MY MOM. YOURE MOM NOT MY MOM!"
Pasquale: "Whatever, Oedipus."

----
Back tomorrow with "Pasquale -vs- The Matrix Online.