Thursday, March 25, 2004
The Tourney returns. :)
After a few days off from March Madness, this weekend we'll be getting some more last second 3's from half court. Well at least I hope they're are. So far in my group at ESPN.com I'm winning. It's just a few friends and I did 3 brackets while they only did one each. So I've got the odds in my favor. But actually I think all 3 of mine are above all of theirs :)
I've been playing Lineage 2 closed beta lately. In english this time even. A few months ago I was playing it on the Taiwanese Open Beta. While the game is still a lot of fun it's pretty hard to interact with people when most of them are speaking Chinese. That just made it that much cooler really because any english speaking player would almost automatically be nice to another english speaking player. Now in the US beta the niceness isn't all there. See Lineage 2 is what they call a pvp game. Player vs Player. That means you can attack any player at any time. So if you don't like the way another player is talking to you, try to kill him. That'll shut him up. But watch out because he may come back and stalk you down and kill you when you least expect it. There are monsters in the game that aren't controled by people so there's more to do than just kill your friends and neighbors but the added chance to do that is very cool. It also puts added danger in the game because at any time you could be struck down.
For instance the other night while playing there's a dungeon on the human starting island the ruins. Well normally there's no one on the island over level 20. Because the island is so small compared to the mainland there's not much to see or kill that's difficult to kill for someone over level 20. But the other night two players that most guessed were around level 35 decided not to let anyone in or out of the ruins. To get in the ruins you talk to a npc woman and you teleport into the ruins. Everyone teleports in at the same exact spot. Standing right there were you come in there are these 2 high level players killing everyone in sight that comes in or tries to go out within 3 seconds. They were just causing mayhem for about 2 hours. It was really neat to see. How 2 players can create such impact in the game and gameplay. Because no one on the island could use the ruins if they didn't want them too. Sure a lot of people tried to gang up on them and kill them but I heard stories of a group of 10 players all in their low teens getting mopped up by them. It was an impressive sight.
The good news is everyone can join in the fun in Lineage 2 soon. On the 28th the game is going into Open Beta. That means you don't have to pay for it yet but you get to play it as if you were. Sure they may take the servers down a little more often than if you were paying but hey it's free and it's pretty close to what the game is going to be. It's doubly cool with Lineage 2 for two reasons. One unlike other MMO games that go through the whole closed, open beta, release cycle, Lineage 2 won't be deleting all the characters between open beta and release. They normally call that a player wipe. So all the hard work you put into your character in the free open beta will stay with you if you buy the game upon release on April 28th. The second nice thing about this open beta is that Lineage 2 is a story line MMORPG with chapters. Open beta will be playing in the Prelude chapter. Closed beta was playing in pre-prelude(wonderful name eh?). Prelude added a lot of equipment, new land to explore and new monsters to kill. Upon release the game will be in Chronicle 1, adding more land, monsters, skills, weapons and enable your character to reach a higher level. The world Lineage 2 is played in, Aden, will eventually be the size Korea. So if this sounds as cool to you as it does to me you should try it out while it's free. The open beta starts on March 28th. ¶ 7:36:00 PM
After a few days off from March Madness, this weekend we'll be getting some more last second 3's from half court. Well at least I hope they're are. So far in my group at ESPN.com I'm winning. It's just a few friends and I did 3 brackets while they only did one each. So I've got the odds in my favor. But actually I think all 3 of mine are above all of theirs :)
I've been playing Lineage 2 closed beta lately. In english this time even. A few months ago I was playing it on the Taiwanese Open Beta. While the game is still a lot of fun it's pretty hard to interact with people when most of them are speaking Chinese. That just made it that much cooler really because any english speaking player would almost automatically be nice to another english speaking player. Now in the US beta the niceness isn't all there. See Lineage 2 is what they call a pvp game. Player vs Player. That means you can attack any player at any time. So if you don't like the way another player is talking to you, try to kill him. That'll shut him up. But watch out because he may come back and stalk you down and kill you when you least expect it. There are monsters in the game that aren't controled by people so there's more to do than just kill your friends and neighbors but the added chance to do that is very cool. It also puts added danger in the game because at any time you could be struck down.
For instance the other night while playing there's a dungeon on the human starting island the ruins. Well normally there's no one on the island over level 20. Because the island is so small compared to the mainland there's not much to see or kill that's difficult to kill for someone over level 20. But the other night two players that most guessed were around level 35 decided not to let anyone in or out of the ruins. To get in the ruins you talk to a npc woman and you teleport into the ruins. Everyone teleports in at the same exact spot. Standing right there were you come in there are these 2 high level players killing everyone in sight that comes in or tries to go out within 3 seconds. They were just causing mayhem for about 2 hours. It was really neat to see. How 2 players can create such impact in the game and gameplay. Because no one on the island could use the ruins if they didn't want them too. Sure a lot of people tried to gang up on them and kill them but I heard stories of a group of 10 players all in their low teens getting mopped up by them. It was an impressive sight.
The good news is everyone can join in the fun in Lineage 2 soon. On the 28th the game is going into Open Beta. That means you don't have to pay for it yet but you get to play it as if you were. Sure they may take the servers down a little more often than if you were paying but hey it's free and it's pretty close to what the game is going to be. It's doubly cool with Lineage 2 for two reasons. One unlike other MMO games that go through the whole closed, open beta, release cycle, Lineage 2 won't be deleting all the characters between open beta and release. They normally call that a player wipe. So all the hard work you put into your character in the free open beta will stay with you if you buy the game upon release on April 28th. The second nice thing about this open beta is that Lineage 2 is a story line MMORPG with chapters. Open beta will be playing in the Prelude chapter. Closed beta was playing in pre-prelude(wonderful name eh?). Prelude added a lot of equipment, new land to explore and new monsters to kill. Upon release the game will be in Chronicle 1, adding more land, monsters, skills, weapons and enable your character to reach a higher level. The world Lineage 2 is played in, Aden, will eventually be the size Korea. So if this sounds as cool to you as it does to me you should try it out while it's free. The open beta starts on March 28th. ¶ 7:36:00 PM
