War... War never changes, but Warcraft does

The end came faster than i realised.
I had been thinking about possible locations to log out before the patch would hit and the whole world (of Warcraft) would change, but i was so busy doing the Pilgrim's quests that i completely forgot. So when the server shutdown message popped up i realised it was too late..
I had plans of logging out i Thousand Needles, but since there was no time left and i was at Undercity i simply walked outside and waited for the server shutdown.



Hoping for some big changes i logged back in today and found myself inside the Ruins of Lordearon instead of outside.



Just to see the changes i of course immediatly went outside, and sure enough, not really breathtaking (Undercity doesn't seem to have changed much).



So "the end" was not as spectacular as i had hoped (i never did get the beta client running so i had no idea about the changes) but still fun, and i think it will be a lot of fun exploring the world again to see the changes.

I am definatly liking the new look of Orgrimmar, looks amazing!

Maybe you would like some WoW with your Oblivion

Hey more Oblivion :)
This time some different kind of mods, especially if you're into WoW you might like them.

First one is Shadowfang Keep, this mod will add Shadowfang Keep as a dungeon to Oblivion.
I have allready played through it once and I have to say this mod is very true to the original WoW version, never did I get lost cause i remembered it from WoW.
Really a lot of fun to play through.

Next one I have not played yet, so I can't say if it's good or not but it's from the same creator as the previous one.
This one is called The Scarlet Monastery, since Shadowfang Keep was pretty true to the original I am going to assume this one will be as well.

Since I enjoyed the first one, I just wanted to share them :)

Reborn into Cyrodiil

Over the weekend i have been playing nothing but Oblivion.
Now this game wouldn't be half as much fun without mods, so a lot of that time was spent trying out and looking for mods, i used to have a lot of mods installed but since i installed Win7 i had to re-install and just to aoid the whole path of installing from disk searching and downloading/installing updates and patches for the game and it's DLC i opted to buy the whole thing (GOTY edition) on Steam.
I do still have my old savegames but from what i remember i used to have a lot of crashing issues with those and did not want to go through the troubles of trying to find all the old mods and try to fix the problems to be able to play, so instead i went with a new game and new mods.

The only mods that i previously used and installed now are Glenvar Castle a really great and fun questline that leads to you becoming the owner of a great looking castle with lots of hidden secrets, i also installed the Lost Spires a mod that ads a new guild to the game and a whole range of quests/dungeon crawling.

A few of the new ones i installed and like to mention, as you can see in the screenshot i went with a new race (and yes it is a night elf) that came from a great mod called Xenius Race Compilation, another great mod is Castle West Weald a great looking castle, the only "downside" is you don't own the castle but can only buy three rooms in it to call your own, but the castle looks absolutly stunning, has a really great feel when walking around in it.

Next to that i have installed many mods that add to the world, more travelling npc's, UI improvements, graphic enhancements, complete overhauls (like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul), a nice mod called OblivionXP that lets you earn XP for killing mobs, reading books and finishing quests (much like you see in MMO's).

Needless to say that this is what makes a game(or in particular this game) great, you can basicly mod the game to your liking and when you're bored with it you can simply remove mods or ad new mods to the game, this is really what i miss the most when playing an MMO, now i know WoW comes pretty close with it's addons (that's one of the reasons i do like WoW) but still..

Into Oblivion

After finishing Dragon Age, or all the DLC to be more precise, i felt a bit let down. Somehow most of it was fun but especially when it came to Witch Hunt i felt like, "was this really neccessary?".
All along it felt like it was leading up to something and when i found Morrigan i thought, now things are going to start... but nope cue credits..
To this moment i still don't really know what i learned here or what the story was about, other than trying to find Morrigan, no revelations, no surprises, nothing..

Anyway while playing i felt like doing a completely new playthrough of Dragon Age from the start, but after finishing Dragon Age i actually felt like re-installing Oblivion :)



Since my old saves were corrupt (constant crashing) and i didn't have all addons that i use to run with the game i decided to roll a new character and do a new playthrough and i have to say that i still enjoy Oblivion a lot, i really enjoy going where ever i wanna go instead of feeling like i am on rails (like Dragon Age), i can follow the questline(s) or just go wandering around in the world and see what crosses my path.

Since starting this new game i have allready discovered some locations that i had never seen before despite the fact that i have allready spend over 170 hours on Oblivion, that combined with the many great addons/mods out there still make it a really great game to play.

I am stil very excited for Dragon Age 2, but for now i am perfectly happy playing Oblivion :)

Dragon Age: The Hunt is on

Well the fix i wrote about yesterday did seem to fix the problems i was having, i managed to finish Awakenings and played through Liliana's Song and Golems of Amgarrak and am now on (the) Witch Hunt.

Have to say the both Liliana's Song and Golems of Amgarrak were a bit to short for my taste, but fun, playing Lelliana's Song was definatly fun, eventhough i allready kinda knew the story it was still fun to play through.

Golem's of Amgarrak had a very difficult boss fight (maybe to difficult), i was playing on easy and the only way to win this was by "spamming" health potions inbetween swings, all my companions went down almost instantly dispite me trying to (micro) between them and having them take health potions as often as possible. Luckily i had plenty of health potions in my inventory to get my warden through the fight, yay for stacking up on those.



Another thing i had to change though was a bit more complicated, i had since i purchased Dragon Age, moved my folder containing the game and for some reason the authentication thing wouldn't work no more, so i couldn't access my recently bought DLC, luckily i managed to find a forum post containing a fix that worked for me.
Unfortianatly it involved messing around with the Command Promt (CMD) under windows (something i haven't done in years), but thanks to this forumpost here i managed to get it uninstalled and installed/working again (the section .3.2.4. "Uninstalling and reinstalling Dragon Age Updater Service if you receive errors at point 3.2.2 or everything else failed" did it for me).

It is something that really annoys me, really, i know companies are trying to protect their property/IP/game against piracy, however in the end it's always the (legally) paying costumer that suffers. If everything works properly, no problems, but if i have to go through so many loopholes to get your authentication "service" working, you are punishing the wrong people here.
And the fact that there is such a huge problem shooting guide on how to get your DLC to work, is (i think) evidence enough your authentication system is flawed.
Besides those who wanna pirate are gonna do it anyway, they will find a way to crack it, so why punish those who support you..

Almost all of those systems depend on an internet connection, which is fine as long as it works, but when you for whatever reason loose your connection, you can't even play those games you payed for, another example i recently encountered was with Blizzard, now there system (Battle.net) works almost perfectly (well most of the time), but recently Battle.net went down and i could not play WoW or even play Starcraft 2 in single player mode because of it.

Anyway enough about me ranting :)
So here's to hoping for no more troubles!!

Dragon Age: Finally Awake

Way back i started playing Dragon Age: Awakening and i got lots of crashes from the start. Initially turning of some mods fixed it, but when i got a bit further along into the quest line, to the point were i was thrown into "The Fade" i would get a crash no matter what as soon as i got around the first corner and started that second fight (you have the first fight after the cut scene).

The game would simply crash to the desktop, no matter how many times i tried and as a result i haven't touched Dragon Age since, eventhough i loved the game.

Yesterday i figured i would try to play again, hoping that there might have been some fixes in a patch or something, but no luck, as soon as i got into that particular fight the game would crash again.

After some google searching and reading through posts on forums i did however found something that made sence, apperantly it's much like the problems i had with WoW, "too much" memory in my system (Win7 64-bit 4g ram), or in other words, the game client is designed to run with 2g ram and as soon as it gets over that the game simply crashes, eventhough my system can run with 4g.

This post/thread here actually had the thing that fixed it for me.
I used a program called CFF Eplorer, that has a "patch" to make the game client work with 4gigs of memory and for now i have to say it fixed the problem, i am now getting past that dreaded fight and am able to continue.

I haven't had a lot of time yet to play more so i still have to see in the long run how it does (if there's a memory leak in the game it's bound to crash later on), but finally getting past that fight without crashing felt like a huge victory.

I still can't believe it was so easy to fix, after all i tried (like re-installing etc.), all it needed was a little patch to the .EXE file, basicly a few seconds work.

Now to play the rest of the story of Awakenings and all the DLC after it (hopefully).

To the other side.

Most of my time in WoW has been spend playing my hunter, still my nr.1 class, as i really think this is the most fun class to play.

However this weekend i decided to go for something new and different (for me at least) so i went and made a Gnome Warlock :)
So say hi to Glimnottin...

Also for a little change, i decided to go Alliance this time, i still think Horde is the way to go (more fun), but i figured i should at least try to get a max level character on the Horde side.

Currently Glimnottin is level 13 so she still has a long way to go, but you have to admit, she looks cute :)