King JR The Great In Dunes Of Despair

I'm Finally Finished With Guild Wars:Prophecies

It feels great to be finally over with the 25 missions of Guild Wars:Prophecies, which is the first of 3 Guild Wars settings. I've been playing for over 2 years and have logged over a thousand hours. Ironically, I only got serious only around 5 months ago. The progress of my character over the last 5 months over-shadows the previous 2 years.

This is a picture of my Warrior/Monk "King JR The Great", and my wife "Arianna Wiseheart".

Yesterday I finally finished all the 25 missions that complete the Prophecies' story line. Some may say 'big deal', but what I'm proud of is that I finished all 25 missons by myself, using only NPC's for team mates. My character is finally Ascended, and all my armors are Elite and Infused. My weapons and shields and charms are all Green. In short, this Warrior/Monk is maxed out. Next thing I'm doing now is trying to complete the Grandmaster Cartographer title; I only have 0.7% left to go, and I believe I'll achieve mapping 100% of Tyria this week.

Above is a picture of my guild mates all wearing our exclusive cape which my wife designed herself, it took a couple of hours to do it. We also have a castle that we're proud of, and it cost us an arm and a leg since we acquired it during a time when money was very difficult to make. I remember we just went through Searing and we were not even past level 13; we were lucky though, being able to find around 9 black dye's, so we decided to sell them all to buy the castle.

I played a bit of Factions(2nd setting in the Guild Wars world) around 2 weeks ago, and we finally allied with the Kurzicks, thanks to "Elizabeth Masako", another Warrior/Monk and the newest member of our guild, who convinced us to join and fight in Alliance Battles.

Our guild, the Battle Merchant Protectors, is a very laid-back one. Around half of us are very active and the other half are casual, they log in an average of only once or twice a month. We even have a member who hasn't logged in for over a year. We're usually quiet, you don't get spam from our members, and we encourage helping others who needs it. We make our money the fair way through Running or mission guiding or solo-farming, which is very legal to do in Guild Wars. Occasionally we do Alliance Battles, because it's great fun kicking some Luxon ass!

If you wan't to join our Guild, either as a guest or a member, just ask any of us to invite you:

"King JR The Great", "Hawke The Great", "Jeiaa The Great", "Zerimar Zeugirdor", "Arianna Wiseheart", "Arianne Barbarian", "Arianne Deathstar", "Shinso Arcueid", "Tsunamy Odibus", "King Bakeroux X", "Nonit The Conqueror", "I Will Mesmerize You", "Elizabeth Masako", "Jaycee Jorelle", "King Bentong", "Higoust Wenter"

This is a picture of my Warrior/Monk taken last Halloween. Take note that his armor isn't Elite yet during that time. What I love about special seasons like Halloween and Christmas are the hats that they give away for free. I actually regret that I didn't get any holiday hats before, because I'll never be able to get the past designs anymore. Happily I was able to acquire the Scarecrow hat, but since I didn't have Nightfall I wasn't able to get the Zombie hat. Once you have a hat all your characters can use it, but you can't give it to anyone else, or you probably can, but they won't be able to wear it anyway.

This is another snap-shot of how wild the holidays can get. I can't wait for what's in store this Christmas!!! Till then, I'll be roaming the Eye Of The North, and maybe Cantha on occasion.

I hope my other guildies who haven't logged in will log in soon, for their sakes, and for new hats! If they don't, the beauty of Guild Wars is after you buy the game it's FREE on-line, so you can take your time and not have to worry about your account getting flagged for delinquency.

PARTY ON HEROES!!!!! 8-)

TITAN QUEST – Immortal Throne

Titan Quest – Immortal Throne is the expansion of Titan Quest by THQ. If you've been playing pc games for as long as I have, you'll immediately remember Diablo and it's sequel Diablo II as soon as you start-up TITAN QUEST.

TQ is a third person, mouse frenzy, hack and slash game whose story is deeply immersed in various mythology and ancient religious settings. As soon as the game starts, you'll be asked to help a farmer whose horse is being attacked by Satyr's, then your epic quest starts in the village after helping him.

When you get to level 2 you'll be asked to choose from among 9 different masteries. There really is no right nor wrong choice, so you should select the mastery that best reflects the way you prefer to play, or specifically the type of skills you think are “cool”. When you get to level 8 you'll be asked to choose another mastery from the same list minus the one you already have.

I really recommend that you take the time, however tedious, to read through all the skills that each mastery provides, so you can make the right choice or the best one for you. I learned the hard way when I only read the summary of each mastery and later regretted it, so I had to start over and make the same mistake twice. After my third try, I was finally able to create a character better suited to my gaming style and equipped with skills that I preferred.

Having 72 different combinations, you have to make sure you are sure about your choice. On the upside, this huge variation ensures game replayability. When I reached level 2 I chose
Warfare mastery, and at level 8 I got Defense, thus becoming a Conqueror. The choices are Storm, Earth, Warfare, Spirit, Defense, Nature, Hunting, Rogue, and Dream.

When you finish the game you'll be able to play from the beginning but with a higher difficulty. There are 3 levels of difficulties that you wont reach until you complete the game at an easier one first, another reason for replayability. You'll most probably reach a point in the higher difficulty levels where the monsters can kill you with one hit, and that's when you begin to wonder if you chose the right mastery. Well, because of this I believe that you should always select Defense as either primary or secondary mastery, but that's just me.

TQ first immerses you in ancient Greece. At first you'll think that it's just a place and setting for the game, but as you play and speak to NPC's a whole new story and depth unfolds. I learned more about Greek and Egyptian mythology than I expected. It's highly educational actually, if you take the time to listen to each NPC's ramblings, and you'll actually love them for their voice acting are very good. THQ really proved they can make good quality and immersive storyline games with TQ.

I also recommend that you have to install both the original and expansion of TQ, and don't play the original game until after doing so. There are several reasons for this, one is that the original game is very buggy and tends to crash your system every few minutes, even with the latest updates I still am not convinced it fully fixed the stability. Another is that the original game lacks a lot of the features, monsters, items, and character interface upgrades, also only offers only 8 masteries as Dream comes with the expansion. Last and most important reason for me is that the expansion only adds 1 level after the end of the game, and even if you import a veteran character from the original, you'll have to start at the very beginning in the expansion, and you can't jump to where you left off. I found this really boring because my character was too powerful since he was already at the last part of the original game when I imported him to the expansion.

Multi player games are fun, expecially in the more difficult levels where a single player just can't get through anymore. The only lack is a PVP mode, or if it's in there I didn't find it.

TQ is the best Diablo clone I have ever played. Many times better than Sacred and Nox. I very highly recommend it for all players, especially new ones who want to play really good and not very difficult games. Actually, it's one of those games you can recommend to your non-gaming girlfriends, and they'll love you more for it.

StarCraft II - Fan Site Game Reviews

StarCraft II is probably the most awaited game of the year! I remember when I first played StarCraft, it was the best game I had that time, and can still stand up when compared to newer games.



Not only was StarCraft a great game, it also had a very good story. In fact, I'm getting impatient with the release of StarCraft II. What's up with that? I'm sure they're probably done, otherwise they wouldn't have announced it to the world.



If anyone can add URL's of good resource sites for StarCraft II, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it. This is my favorite URL: http://sclegacy.com/

Unification Wars - Another On-Line Game Review

After a few minutes playing Unification Wars, I feel it's better than I expected. It kinda plays like a text game, with some pictures to make it more interesting. It's kinda similar to Sim City and Taipan, combined.

If you're the type who doesn't mind using your wits and logic, or a change from chess but not deviating too much, Unification Wars is the game for you. It's kinda like a breath of fresh air for me playing this game, since I'm a bit of a chess and logic game fan, but I don't think it's for everyone.

Personally I don't think I'll have time to play this game, and even if I do, I won't. Well, unless I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with a pc that has no other game and have an internet or wifi connection. Even then I'll probably play RASTERWERKS instead, unless if the pc I'm using for browsing is a Palm or similar, then Unification Wars will be my choice.

RASTERWERKS - Free Browser Based Game Review

One of the best browser game I've played. Very smooth graphics, great sound effects, good ambient sound. I've had my doubts at first, and after the not-so-long downloading of shockwave and the game itself, I was totally amazed with the quality of this FPS (First Person Shooter) game!

It feels like Unreal Tournament actually, you run around this mountainous map collecting weapons and power-ups, and shoot bots all doing the same thing. You can get totally immersed in this game within seconds, and after only a few minutes of playing, you'll totally forget that you're using your browser and you have other programs running in the background. It's so unbelievable.

Is browser gaming the next best thing? Based on the quality of this game, I can now believe that it is possible to create other types of games and run them in browsers.

I very rarely recommend a game highly, but RASTERWERKS is one of them.

Pardus - Brand New Free MMOG Review

I accidentally stumbled upon a new on-line game named Pardus. You can check it out at http://www.pardus.at/ or just search Pardus in Google.

Registration is very easy, you don't even have to confirm with your e-mail address. In fact as soon as you register you're immediately transfered to your Saber ship and off you go into the 2D world of Pardus. I just wish that playing it is as easy too. This game is not for the slow connectied. You first go through a tutoriala where you can learn a bit about how to get around the basics of the game.

Playing Pardus takes me back to the times when I first played Myst. It's kinda slow, more like a turn based game but in 2D, and an MMO. Maybe for curiosity reasons I can go on, but that's about it. The absense of sound and effects makes its content even less appealing, and there wasn't mush to start with in the first place.

If fun free games are a reason to play this one, why not search for Sierra's dated King's Quest series and download them for free. If you want a free browser game, I had much more fun playing RASTERWERKS in 5 minutes than Pardus for an hour. You can check out RASTERWERKS at http://www.rasterwerks.com/