MW2 Sucks - Its official

This balanced MW2 review seems to suggest that it might not be all we hoped...

Setting up my World of Warcraft Authenticator

This is the third and final instalment of the perils of getting your WoW account hacked, after Blizzard restored all of my characters, items, gold etc and I'd updated my password, I still didn't feel comfortable with the security on my account, so I invested in a couple of Authenticator tokens.

At 6 euros each they seemed pretty good value, so I got one for me and one for Dog Junior who is also a WoW player, selecting priority postage cost me a further 8 euro's which didn't seem great value, but I sat back and waited for them to arrive.  Two days later a small parcel appeared with two Key's (or tokens as they are referred to) along with a slip of paper telling me where to go to enable my "key".

As it happened these directions were incorrect since Blizzard has just moved everyone over to battlenet, but hey ho - off I went and logged into battlenet and headed for the security options, it was a fairly obvious point and click procedure to register the key which involves entering the serial number off the back of the unit and then a numeric value from the key at the time you are registering it (you just press the button and a 6 digit number appears).

Once it was registered with my account (with a little message to assure you of this) you just login into WoW as normal, after you've entered your e-mail instead of logging in, a small box appears asking for the security number, just press the button on the token and enter the code - hey presto, your in.

It really was pretty simple, the key does some very funky stuff with a pre-programmed series of numbers which I believe change over a set time period (every 10 minutes an hour? I'm not sure) which pretty means unless you give your key up and your login details your account is safe.

It's easy to use and certainly has provided piece of mind, since I've accumulated nearly 150 days of on-line time playing WoW I really wouldn't want some scumbag taking that away from me. (again)

I'm not a doom monger and happily played WoW since launch without one of these little trinkets, but for the cost of 6 euros, I really would recommend getting one.

Modern Warfare 2

Have you seen the launch trailer yet? (below)

Looks great doesn't it - one of the most dramatic and first things to hit me about the first Modern Warfare (well after the game play, sound, graphics, multiplayer, realism, story, voice acting and massive mission variety) was definately the direction, the cinematography. It looked like a hollywood blockbuster. I felt immersed in the atmosphere - even though he had a stupid name I bloody was Soap running around shooting the hell out of East Europe and the Middle East.

MW 1 was THE best FPS I have ever played - I can say that with utter confidence.

Never so often before have I dragged my very bored looking wife to the screen to go "Look, just look how good is that?? See the way the..oi ..where are you going?" well she wasn't very interested to be honest - So I'd tell her she was weak and close the door.

Anyway what was I saying, oh yes it really raised the bar, in fact more than that it replaced the bar with a diamond and gold laser bar. It was a different class.

So how on earth can they follow that......can they beat it, can the improve? Or will it be more of the same, which is no bad thing really but can it really push the envelope still further.....should find out in about 5 days....

Modern Warfare 2 - Launch Trailer

De-hacking my WoW Account

OK, day 3 of de-hacking my WoW account (not exactly sure that's the right phrase - or English) and Blizzard bless then are so far coming up trumps, other than an epic I won the night I got hacked every single item and copper coin has been returned to all but one of my characters.  I've politely dropped then a reminder about  the last character, although as he was the lowest level of the lot (lvl 69) it's not an issue to wait a little while.
The deleted character was returned no issues which was great as it was one of my bigger concerns as I've invested a huge amount of money in crafting for that character. (phew)
The help was pretty simple but effective and all my items were returned to me in the mail, it took my an hour to sort it all out but certainly was a lot quicker than earning it all again...
So full marks to Blizzard for sorting this out without fuss, they also confirmed that my account had been hacked using a keylogger, which I'd figured out for myself but it was nice to see they were fairly on the ball.

After this little incident I've decided to invest in a couple of authenticator units from the Blizzard store (do I sound like a Blizzard lackey again - sigh), only 6 euro's each, but I got robbed for 8 euro's on the "priority" postage, never mind - for peace of mind it seems like a fairly reasonable price.  I've not used one of these babies before so I'll probably drop a quick blog on how that goes and if it's pretty easy to set-up and use.

So I'm back and ready for the Thursday night run and I've even been looking at some shiny new epics in the AH to celebrate getting all my gear getting back, then I saw some of the prices and my tightness of wallet ruled the day.

So until the authenticator arrives, I'll be crafting and mining my way to another epic flying mount and as they used to say on Hills Street Blues - "let's be careful out there"
The Dog

Borderlands - Day 3.....

Loving it!!

It is really addictive. I feel ashamed that I'm so easily impressed...after all these years....

The constant slight improvement to my kit - its such an obvious attempt to keep me hooked. I smirked as I realised this early on, they won't get me that easily. I'm a seasoned gamer and I want, no I expect more. You can't buy me with your tricks!

But then I got my first purple...(BTW since when was the green/ blue/ purple epic item code colouring become the industry standard ? Did I miss a meeting?). Anyway I'd taken down my first boss - he wasn't so bad, but it took me a full 3 minutes to pick up all the loot. Then there she was, his purple pistol just lying there. I picked it up and checked out the stats - I got a little shot of adrenaline - and I wanted more. Where could I get my next one, and I think my sniper rifle I was so proud of now looked a little lame next to this beauty...

Then 3 hours flew by, my constant slight kit improvement (with the occassional big jump in quality) had sucked me in. I was leaning forward in my chair, rushing from quest to quest more more more.

All you gamers out there will recognise these symptoms as the best bit about a new game that has really hit the mark. You know it can only last a while - the game lust, but when you're there its the best. Its like when you hear a record you love, you cant get enough you can play it again and again "iIll never tire of this"...you think knowing all the time that you will ...but ....not just yet.....

Anyway this concludes Day 3....

Borderland - First impressions....

Just bought Borderland for the PC. I bought it through Steam, all from the comfort of my own home. Brilliant!

I got it because I'm looking for a game that I can play with my 3 mates. There are so few games that you can play with 4 people so we've been mainly playing World of Warcraft, which does us proud. But sometimes it woul be nice to have a faster paced game we can all play. Enter Boarderland.

There are a number of massive similarities to Fall Out 3, in fact you're even looking for a mystical Vault.....sounds a bit familiar.

However it kicks off with a really good intro and tutorial level. Its an arcadey quest based FPS with good quality cartoony graphics. So I put in 3 or 4 hours and I'm delighted to report its really quite good. Huge variety of guns and equipment, it ticks all the boxes of a basic RPG with classes, skill points and experience.

I've managed to get up to level 11 and some of the missions listed as tough or hard are starting to live up to their rating. I think it may have legs.

It really reminds me of a few other games the vehicle I've tried so far is straight out of Halo, the look and feel reminds me a little bit of 13 (if you can remember that far back). The mobs are from Fall out 3 a couple of them are really funny (pygmy psycho). Its clearly been written for a console with some slightly annoying UI controls but this is a truly minor gripe. A little bit repetitive here and there but it is fun and addictive.

So now I need to persuade my 3 mates to buy it so we can check out the supposedly impressive co-op play....

Steam actually helpfully offer 4 copies for sale in a bumper pack, although it is actually a couple of pence dearer to buy the bumper pack than 4 separate copies which is a bit silly.

My WoW account was hacked !!!

I logged of last night just after ten, a fairly average run on Azjol Nerub having just occupied the last two hours and logged out from my beloved WoW account (playing since beta - over 150 days of play time on existing characters - 9 in total).
I logged in this morning to have a quick look at my auctions before work and straight away one of my characters isn't showing.... I know it's only a game, but a feeling of cold dread started to creep up on me - quickly logging in to one of my characters I straight away knew there was a problem, I was in a different location and some items of gear were clearly missing (epics of course), a quick check of my bags revealed pretty much empty and the 1600 gold on this character was gone!
Now that was annoying (understatement), but then I got logged out and I just knew the hacker was still in my account and I'd probably kicked them by logging on, so I logged back in again only be kicked again 20 seconds later! Then started a 10 minute battle of logging in and getting disconnected, my character in a slightly different location each time I logged back in while I quickly changed my e-mail on BattleNet - finally logging in with a new password and hopefully banishing the scum sucking hacker for good.
The damage was horrendous, but could have been worse - one of my main crafting characters was deleted (bizarrely this one had high level guild bank access but they hadn't taken anything) and four of my highest level characters (2x 80's and 2x 70+) had been been completely cleaned out, about 4000G and whole host of epics and banks full of mats (I'd been saving up for transmutes and skilling up).
A quick GM ticket later and Blizzard are working to fix my issues, whether I'll get the deleted character back, and all my items and gold we'll have to see - so fingers crossed and temper currently held until I know what's happening.
My account was hacked by a new key-logger, my AV now finds it but in the few days while it was new it sailed past my AV (from a free games sites accessed by my the kids I believe), obviously a fairly professional set-up and quite a lot of effort to get my gold.
But it did get me to thinking, if you do buy wow gold from web-site, where has it come from ? I'm guessing there's a fair number of these sites that get their money from hacks and other illegal behaviour - so you might be getting some easy gold, but some other player has suffered hard for it, maybe think about that the next time you see cheap gold advertised. ( I do wholly support abusing gold sellers btw)

Just a final note, this blog is actually written by a couple of different people who share a few things, we're early-middle-aged(ish) and keen gamers with probably 50+ years of gaming between us - we're not paid by anyone to write this, we do it because we love gaming and the activities that surround it and we're interested in the whole web 2.0 experience.
So don't think that this is some Blizzard sponsored rant about evil gold sellers, it's someone who has friends who have bought gold and also used power levelling services, I don't judge them, that's their choice but it's not for me. But it's quite clear that other gamers are being ripped off for the few who want to take short-cuts, now whether or not this is fuelled by the long term grind created by the game itself and it's focus on success driven by items and gold rather than individual skill is perhaps a blog for another day.
I'll post an update on how the recovery process goes later, for now, I'm out of here
The Dog

Computer Game A.I.

I heard recently that gamers are typically quiet loyal about which MMO games they play. We only spend time on one. I think its the same with other genres too. At the moment if I fancy a bit of shooting its COD4 (I think I'm getting excited about Modern Warfare 2). If I want to do some subjugating and conquering I'm playing Empire Total War...again.

Its such a deep game - the mix between real time and turn based is still the best I've seen. I've completed it a few time but its got me thinking about AI in today's strategy games.

I'm not a developer and I'm no techie but the AI seems to be a little bit substandard. For instance, If I'm defending a fort, and the sieging army has managed to blow a hole in the wall - you'd imagine it would be bad news. But no due to AI problems it means you can hardly lose. Simply line up 3 rows of soldiers (and a puckle gun if you've got it) and the opposing army will stream through the hole in the wall - the first wave of attack will be obliterated very quickly. So surely a bit of basic AI would say, hmmm don't do that again. But alas no, they keep on coming and they keep on dying. The poor AI has caused a loop hole which basically means I can complete the game very very easily - even on the hardest setting.

So my point - is it really so difficult to have slightly more thoughtful AI in a strategy game. Is a strong single player game experience no longer so important? It wasn't so long ago that FARCRY came out. Its enemy soldier AI was remarkable they'd flush you out with pincer movements and do what you least wanted them to - brilliant!

I hoped that the more thoughtful, intelligent AI would find its way into strategy games too. But no - there seems to be the rush approach, the turtle approach and that is about it. I want clever thoughtful strategy which isn't obvious. Clearly the multi player settings mean that you can have a more realistic challenge against another person, but again it often comes down to who knows the latest rush trick. Very rarely will you have a well balanced game. I want single player clever AI strategy games. Is it too much to ask?