Just for old times' sake

I don't know what brought it on but lately i really wanna play Tabula Rasa again, but of course (or i should say unfortunately)i can't, that's the downside of an MMO that closes down.
I have always wished this game had an offline/singleplayer part to it like Hellgate London so that i could still occasionaly play it, but alas..

Anyway just for old times' sake i am going to post a couple of random screenshots :)

Damn i really miss this game...

Why do we put up with it?

That is a question i asked myself several times.
Today was no exception, after playing Fallout New Vegas for about 10 minutes the game froze/crashed on me and i had to use the windows task manager to shut down the game.

After buying the latest DLC for Fallout NV, Old World Blues, that so far i have not been able to play cause the game doesn't want to coorporate for more than 10 minutes before crashing, i am really asking myself that question again.

To me that crashing is not unfamiliar and to those playing Fallout 3 or Oblivion, probably not that unfamiliar either.
Those games are very "crash happy", the first Bethesda game i ever played and fell in love with was Oblivion, and eventhough i really enjoy playing it, it is not without problems.
Some might say it's because you're using mods or player made addons, but in my experience even without those mods there are plenty of problems with the game.

One of the first (major) problems i encountered in Oblivion was the "famous" corrupted savegame, that basicly forced me to completely start over from scratch, all progress lost, and then i am talking about 20-30 hours worth of gameplay and that was even before i discovered mods.
I had that same problem with Fallout 3.

Fallout New Vegas, when i first launched it, it crashed after just 15 mins of playing, again without mods, what a (familiar) welcome to the game..

Why do i even put up with these problems?
Well because despite these problems, the games are freaking awesome. They are absolutely the top games when it comes to open world RPG's.
The customization of these games really extend the lifetime of these games, just look at what´s still going on for Oblivion.

For me Bethesda has been an absolute favourite when it came to RPG's/games, but also my major bane.
The times i have cursed them for making such unstable games are countless, yet i am willing to put up with it is because the games are so much fun.

However now with Skyrim coming i have my hopes up, that for once they go on a new road and bring us a stable, working game.
For me Skyrim is going to be the treshold, it will decide my future decisions on wether to buy Bethesda games, cause frankly i am fed up with problems with the games i love so much.
Why can´t they make a game that works and keeps working, so that i can enjoy these games without forcing myself to save every 5 minutes, without the constant worry of the game crashing (cause i know that´s going to happen sooner or later).

So far i have put up with it, because i love Oblivion, because i love Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, but enough is enough.

I have allready pre-purchased Skyrim on steam and i can´t wait to play it, but if they are using the same engine as they have been using for Oblivion/Fallout than i fear the worst and it will start all over again.

But i have made my decision, Skyrim or bust. If Skyrim is just as "crash happy" as Oblivion and Fallout it will be my last purchase of an Bethesda game, no matter how much i love them. I am just sick of the constant crashing and the constant fear of losing my game progress.

I mean it's not impossible, look at other great games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, i have yet to encounter a single problem, so it is quite possible to make stable games.

So Bethesda: Skyrim or bust!
This game is going to decide whether or not you will be getting any of my money in the future, because i am done playing games that should not have left the beta stage like that, because they are not finished when they are glitchy or crash/lock up without a clear reason.

SWTOR: Well it's not a lightsaber but....

Most SWTOR fans probably allready heard/read about this, but i still wanted to make a post about this awesome Razer SWTOR gear.

Razer is releasing a keyboard, mouse, mousemat and headset all awesome looking IMHO.
I regret i recently got myself a new (Razer) keyboard and headphones, cause i definitely want this gear, the keyboard looks absolutely stunning, just check out this video of the keyboard:



I really like the idea of changing the "theme" of the gear depending on which side you are playing at the moment, this is really gonna help the immersion into the game.

I have yet to see it available, but i will be buying some of that gear.

Thanks EA, for not making it complicated...

After recently activating my SWTOR CE code on my SWTOR account i actually found out i have several EA accounts, my SWTOR didn't show up on my games list on Origin along with my other games, SWTOR actually creates an EA account for the same login/password you use for SWTOR.
So i ended up with 2 accounts a SWTOR/EA account and my EA/BioWare/Origin "master" account, i linked all my BioWare stuff (Mass Effect,Dragon Age) up to my main EA account sometime ago, good thing i did or i would have had another EA account to keep track of.

However by going through some of my other EA games that didn't show up in Origin either i found that i actually have a third account used for a few other games (Sims, Spore). Great three different accounts/logins, to make it more complicated.

Initially i figured to just change emails on all those accounts to match, but unfortianetly that didn't work, everytime when i try to put in my main EA account email it just says email adress allready in use and won't allow me to change it. Not to mention that by going through the options to change email or find out more about my account i ended up on several different account (login) pages for the same account and that's without going to Origin.

Then i contacted SWTOR support to see if they could help me out in merging at least my SWTOR account together with my main EA account, but they send me on to EA customer service and said they couldn't really help me as my SWTOR account was linked to an EA account.

So next i contacted EA and all i got was a message that they undestood it was inconvenient to keep up with several different accounts but that due to technical reasons it was not possible to merge accounts together.
That's just great..

All i would need is for them to allow me to link the accounts to one and the same email adress on all the different logins, doesn't sound to difficult to me, but apperantly "technical reasons" prevent me from doing so.
I mean why even prevent people from using an "existing" email to an account, i really don't understand the reason behind it, i mean it should be my choice only wether or not i want to change my email adress to an existing one, all they need to send me is a confirmation link email asking if i am sure i want to change that email adress.

I had some hope that with the upcoming changes to accounts because of their new Origin accounts it was possible to merge them, so i could keep all my games together in the same Origin client/login, but it looks like EA likes to keep it simple and i am going to have to use different logins to keep track of my stuff. Thanks for the "effort" EA... thanks for keeping things easy.

EDIT: If you have the same issue of different accounts, let's flood EA CS with requests to merge accounts, let's get them to work on this as i am sure i am not the only one with this problem.

Mists of Pandaria... Really??

For some reason i can not see this as the next expansion.
A title for a patch or some added content maybe, but not for a full expansion.

To me it just doesn't fit, i mean look at the expansions so far (and imagine Chris Metzen with his Thrall voice mentioning them):
Burning Crusade
Wrath of the Lich King
Cataclysm

It just fits Warcraft but when i hear Mists of Pandoria i only hear a very small wispering voice mentioning it, it just doesn't sound "Warcraft'ish" to me, maybe for a patch but definatly not for a full expansion.
Heck maybe a new (panda) game but not Warcraft.

Maybe it's just me but i just can't see a new expansion with this title, it's probably some other project they are working on, or just something to through people off so their announcement at Blizzcon has more impact (if there is an announcement).

Have to say i am curious, but i think it's just Blizzard throwing out a smokescreen.

If you can't beat 'em, Join 'em.

The latest news on Diablo 3's Real Money-Powered auction house is probably gonna raise some rage in people (i only just read about it, not checked the blogs yet).
Personally i think, why should it be so bad, people are buying/selling stuff anyway.
Look at WoW and how much spam and phising is going on, we all know how big the gold selling market is.
Whether you buy gold or not, a lot of people do, otherwise there would be so much gold spam going on, admit it the market is huge.

To me it only makes sense, if you can't beat 'em, join them!
This way Blizzard will have control over the market, sure gold sellers might be selling cheaper, but when Blizzard is giving you the option to buy from them instead of some shady gold seller, many people are going to buy from Blizzard, simply because is is more trustworthy, Blizzard is likely not going to steal your CC info.

Sure they are probably going to make a lot of money from this, but hey, personally i would rather see the creators of the game making money off of their own game than some chinese gold company.

Personally i think it was only a matter of time, the gold selling business is huge and despite efforts being made so far, no company has succeeded in banning it completely and probably never will.
I think they would be stupid not to try get the monopoly in their own game's gold/item selling market.
People who have the money and want to buy gold/items will buy them anyway, no matter if it's legal or not.

Whether you like it or not i do believe this is the furture of gaming, this is were we are heading, and be honest, who would you rather see making money off of the ingame market: the creators of the game themself or some shady gold selling company.