H4ck3d - An Online Gaming Blog
Online Games of Today

Okay, I’m gonna make one thing straight here. I DO NOT endorse, encourage, or support gold selling, yet that is all my comments around here seem to be. Now, It’s cool that I have this whole Admin thing, because it allows me to delete comments. If I see a gold selling advert, I will delete your comment. It’s as simple as that. Don’t expect any ads to stay up long, because I actively watch this blog, and I will delete a comment if I even see one mention of gold selling. Okay? Got it? Good.

~Aaron

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Hey everyone. I haven’t told anyone this, but I’ve been working on a forum for my viewers to discuss online gaming, and some console gaming. I’ve added the link to the sidebar, and I’ll provide one right here:

http://forums.h4ck3d-blog.com

Be sure to sign up ASAP, and have some good conversations. Tell your friends about my blog, and be sure to always check in for updates and new posts. Remember: H4ck3d Blog - Your blogging resource for online gaming.

~ Aaron

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Hey everyone, I’m back from… well, not posting. If you found this website through StumbleUpon or Digg, awesome, I hope you enjoy it.

With Wrath of the Lich King coming out soon and me getting a Warhammer Online Beta Key, you can expect a lot more posting here. However, not so much with Warhammer, because I’m under the Non-Disclosure agreement, haha!

In other news, I’ve been to MMORPG.com lately, and they have a lot of great offers for Beta Keys and prizes. I recently got a beta key for Atlantica Online, which I will post an article about shortly. I’ve also gotten a gift key for Zu Online, and a Beta Key for Perfect World, and you can expect coverage on all of these games.

Keep checking back, because I’ve started up again, and this time It’s gonna be good.

~ Aaron

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I had heard a lot about Age of Conan from one of my friends, who had beta tested it before it came out. He acclaimed the game to be ‘fantastic’, ‘epic’, and above all a “WoW killer.” I believed that it was a good game, but I wasn’t quite sure it would take down WoW. However, all of that dis-belief changed when I got my hands on a copy. After watching a preview movie and several videos on YouTube, I was psyched to finally get to play. Boy, I was not disappointed.

Above all, the game is huge. In terms of game area, it’s completely massive. In terms of how much of your hard drive it will need, that’s also massive. The early release downloader that I got took 8 hours on a 500kb/s speed. In total, the game comes to a whopping 14GB. However, none of that is wasted space.

After I had installed it and got into the game, I watched a wonderfully made cut scene. Afterwards, I logged into the game and created my character. The character customization was impressive. You can change parts of your character from It’s height down to how crooked the nose is. With this, basically every character in the game is different looking, so if someone looks like you, they did it wrong. After I had made my character, I watched another cut scene, which had voice narration. In fact, everything about this game has voice narration. Quest givers, common people, and traders all have voices. Enough of that. It was time for me to take on my first quest.

As I took my first steps into the new world, I found myself face to face with a woman chained between two trees. As I spoke to her, she asked for help in a heavy Dutch accent. Because I’m a nice guy, and not because she was wearing a skimpy suit of gold armor, I decided to help. After killing several people, I freed her from her chains, then had to escort her to the nearest city. After savagely fighting my way through a forest full of tribal warriors, using the games unique combat system, I was blocked by a hefty guard at the gate. He explained something about a demon, but I paid no attention as I spammed threats. This is another good thing about Age of Conan; you can pick more than one way to interact with NPCs. Upon talking, you can choose several options. For example, in this situation, I was able to choose somethings along the lines of “Keep talking”, “I’m going to kill you, you son of a whore.”, and “Goodbye.” I simply loved this customization. Regardless, I killed him, killed a demon, then opened the gate and entered the city. Also, I forgot to mention, that the woman I was saving kept referencing to sex as a reward for saving her. This game is not for kids, people.

So, I was happy with my first quest, and I wasn’t surprised at the amount of busty women in the game. Regardless, pretty much everything about the game is good. The graphics are beautiful, the sound quality is fantastic, the user interface is decent, and overall, the game is fun. However, I need to go over the combat system.

In Age of Conan, there are directional attacks and combos. Basically, with directional attacks, you can attack the left, right, or the center of the enemy. These different directions come in use when you use combo attacks. One skill I have requires me to use a right directional attack before I can do it. After I use the right directional, it uses the skill for me. It takes some getting used to, but It’s nice once you warm up to it.

I’m not that high of a level yet, but I plan to reach level 80 in the near future. Age of Conan has lived up to it’s acclaim, and I’m happy being a player of it. Sure, it has a few kinks and glitches that need to be worked out, but I’m sure they will be dealt with. The future of Age of Conan looks bright, and I’m in full support of the game. I suggest trying it out.

Until next time, I’ll be out spilling the blood of my enemies. FOR CONAN!

~Aaron

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No, I’m not going to give you a bunch of links to gold farming websites, or a link to a massive guide about how to get gold. I’m simply going to give you a location: The Isle of Quel’Danas.

This recent addition to the game looks like Blizzard’s solution to people complaining about being poor. Here’s the highlights of the island: It’s small, and it has tons of daily quests. Literally, I can do every daily quest on Quel’Danas within an hour. In that one hour time period, I can also rack up at least 100 gold. Yeah, that’s right, 100 gold, for running around doing quests.

However, it isn’t only the quests that get you money. For you Aldor guys out there, there are plenty of Blood Elf mobs to kill, and these will drop Sunfury Signets that you can put on the auction house for some nice money. For the Scryer players, there are several demons that will drop Marks of Sargeras to sell. Along with these marks, items and Netherweave will drop. Pretty much, Quel’Danas is a gold mine.

If you’re looking for a fast, efficient, and in some cases FUN way to get more gold, just head over to Quel’Danas and get started. The quests are incredibly easy, ranging from simply killing mobs to going on bombing runs. In fact, for your convenience, here’s a list of all of the quests that you can do on Quel’Danas, and how much gold and reputation they give.

• A Charitable Donation - 0 Gold / 150 Reputation
• Arm the Wards! - 9 Gold, 10 Silver / 150 Reputation
• Crush the Dawnblade - 11 Gold, 99 Silver / 250 Reputation
• Disrupt the Greengill Coast - 11 Gold, 99 Silver / 250 Reputation
• Distraction at the Dead Scar - 9 Gold, 10 Silver / 150 Reputation
• Erratic Behavior - 9 Gold, 10 Silver / 150 Reputation
• Further Conversions - 9 Gold, 10 Silver / 150 Reputation
• Keeping the Enemy at Bay - 7 Gold, 59 Silver / 250 Reputation
• Know Your Ley Lines - 11 Gold, 99 Silver / 250 Reputation / Darnarian’s Scroll of Teleportation
• The Battle Must Go On - 10 Gold, 10 Silver / 250 Reputation

All of those you can do on Quel’Danas, and I’m not even including the ones that you can do in other areas for the same faction. Have fun getting your flying mounts, everyone!

~ Aaron

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So, I tried out Fiesta today. I quickly realized that this was a bad idea. The first thing I noticed is the poor character customization. There’s a total of one face, three hairstyles, and three hair colors. Also, the hair colors are Blue, Light Blue, and Purple. Yeah, that’s all you get. This is already bad.

Next, the classes. You can pick Fighter, Cleric, Archer, and Magician. Sound familiar? Yeah, just like every other MMORPG available. Fighters are the typical warrior that can use swords, shields, and axes. Clerics can heal, buff, and use maces and hammers. Archers use bows and crossbows, and are apparently overpowered at the start of the game. Finally, Magicians have low health and huge magic attack. Interesting. It’s pretty relevant that gaming companies need to pull some original ideas from one orifice or another.

Well, after you go through the class selection and character customization, you can start. The first thing I noticed was bright pink text. Everywhere. I’m not quite sure what the developers had in mind when they decided to make the text pink. Maybe they were playing “Pin the tail on the color,” and they just laid out a pallet of annoying colors. Regardless, I ignored the annoying text and decided to actually play.

It seems to be the trend these days to make MMORPGs based off of “cute” anime characters. This is pretty much the first thing you’re greeted by. A blonde anime girl gives you some basics about the game, in a surprisingly literate text box. I went along with it and started the tutorial. It’s basic stuff. I had to talk to a NPC, who then instructed me to kill some monsters: slimes and mushrooms. This sounds oddly familiar. Maple Story, anyone? Regardless, I went after some slimes.

Small, purple creatures greeted me after an arduous walk through a mushroom infested town. And no, they weren’t enemy mushrooms, they were little mushroom “houses” that your character can enter to regain health and ’spirit.’ At least that was original. However, the mushroom houses are annoying, along with mushroom stores, with more horrible pink text. What is with this game and pink, purple, and blue? Whatever.

So, the monsters are alright. I’ll give them that. The slimes are cutesy and they talk when they die, and the looting system is similar to FlyFF. The mushrooms are horrifying looking, and that’s a good kind of horrifying. They were scary looking. The better to kill, I say. Now, after killing some mushrooms and slimes, I leveled up. You get some stat points, but I couldn’t find any skills that I could use. After that, I was left clueless with what to do, so I quit the game and promptly un-installed it. Now, let’s go over the Pros and Cons of Fiesta:

Pros:

• Good Monsters
• Decent Effects
• Nice Music
• Nice UI

Cons:

• Horrible Text
• Bad Gameplay
• Camera Is Awful
• Control Is Awful
• Poor System Of Leveling
• OMG ANIME

So, in short, save yourself some time and hard drive space. Don’t play Fiesta.

~ Aaron

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I was introduced to a new type of game recently: Browser Games. The two that I have played, Ikariam and Tribal Wars, have actually proven to be entertaining, to a degree. First though, a little background on the two.

Ikariam started a mere three months ago, back in late January. It is a Browser Game with a Roman/Greek theme to it. The basis of it is simple. You collect resources, research new technology, and expand your empire. To do this, you construct buildings and create an army.

Tribal Wars is an older game; at least three years old. It has a middle age theme to it, and you build towns and armies, similar to Ikariam.

Both of these games have a unique aspect, which is a very long amount of time to build anything. For example, in Ikariam, my Town Hall is Level 11. To upgrade it, I need roughly 1500 Lumber and 800 Stone, and it’ll take eight hours of real time. Also, researching a new rank of technology for me takes about two days of real time. This is the perk that Browser Games have. They are easily playable for someone without a lot of time, and you can pick it up and put it down easily. In some cases, that’s the only thing you can do.

Right now I’m playing Ikariam on the Alpha server under the name Giggers, and on Tribal Wars, Server 19, with the same name. Links to both games are below:

Tribal Wars - www.tribalwars.net

Ikariam - www.ikariam.com

Now, excuse me while I wait for my Iron Mine to finish.

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I have two things to cover this time around, and they both involve Nexon’s prize game, Maple Story.

Nexon recently released something called the “Monster Carnival” in Patch 0.53, and I must say, it’s probably the best thing since the game came out of beta. Here’s how it works. You can enter in groups of 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, and fight against other parties of the same size. You get your own map and you win by getting the most Carnival points. You can summon monsters, debuffs for the other party, and buffs for your ow monsters. After playing it for a while, it has proved to be quite fun. It has made getting from levels 30 - 51 incredibly easy.

Now, with that said, we have another issue to cover. The Item Trading shop.

With the patch that came out yesterday, the Item Trading shop has finally opened. It turns out that you can buy and sell in game items here… for NX. That’s right, NX. Now, you can get NX for selling your shiny, scrolled item. Or, on the contrary, you can spend your own money to buy a shiny, scrolled item. I don’t know how this will affect Nexon’s profit, but I’m sure any impact won’t hurt the company for now. The only thing I’m concerned with now is the economy, which has always been terrible. It might get worse from this, or it could get better. The latter is highly unlikely, however. If what I predict happens, it’ll go something like this: Newly found items will start going into the Trade Shop instead of the market, thus making them harder to get with mesos. Then, people will sell these items at inflated prices to get more mesos than what the item is worth. At the same time, these people are paying money to Nexon to buy in game items for a cheaper price.

This may happen, this might not. I can’t say what direction this is going in, but I have a feeling this won’t be good.

Until then, off to the Monster Carnival.

~Aaron

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If you have seen any of the SC2 videos or screen shots, you will know what I’m talking about when I say Blizzard is making this SciFi game into a fantasy. Now, before you jump down my throat, I understand the game is still in development, but bare with me for a bit. If you haven’t seen any of the trailers yet, head on over to starcraft2.com to find the latest. Now that you have seen the trailers, you might be starting to understand what is nagging at me. StarCraft is not supposed to look like some kind of game consisting of little plastic men and toy cannons. I know this is a new game, and that Blizzard intends on making it so. Also, it isn’t the graphics that make the game, as we all have seen with the original StarCraft. The game play is what is important here, and that is what I want to focus on.

Lately Blizzard has been infamous for making their games sell, rather than making them good. To the Blizzard employee, it is better to make a generic game and have it sell decently well, than to take the risk of making something interesting, and in turn, having more sales than they expected. Blizzard hit the nail on the head with SC1, and the real question is, can they do it again? Blizzard is full of very talented people, but can we really expect them to take that talent and put it to use? As I have said before, Blizzard has showed how content they are with making a mediocre game, targeted at a very large audience, just to get sales. When you make a game like StarCraft, it is very easy to get distracted by making it just for sales. How confident can we be that Blizzard wants to make something that we, their consumers, really will enjoy?

StarCraft was developed as it came, they didn’t even finish game design before they started making units, and balancing the game. At the time they were completely focused on bringing something fun to gamers. Now, with millions of guaranteed purchases, is Blizzard really going to take the time to develop something that really hits the mark? It has become more important to Blizzard to follow certain standards and protocols when developing a game. This is important, after all it makes the process much easier and quicker to develop, however, it also makes Blizzard a “game machine” pumping out generic games and content quickly, and effectively, to a stupid audience who is ready to gobble up anything thrown at them.

Having the fan base that Blizzard does only compounds the issue. With so many fan boys, Blizzard is commonly headed down the wrong road. Criticism, people, is a good thing. It tells people what they are doing wrong, and what you want changed. Don’t hesitate to tell someone what they are doing fucking sucks, for the love of god. That is why they have forums, so you can give your input. If they wanted it otherwise, they wouldn’t give you the chance to criticize them. So take that opportunity, and go out and tell Blizzard what the fuck you think they are doing wrong.

Blizzard has their set style of game play. They showed it with War3, and with WoW. They like something people can really get into, something people can get addicted to, something easy for them to develop. Blizzard has shown that this “simple and stupid” game play is popular, and easy to pick up; something good for them; bad for competitive gaming, and there is where the real fun lies. I understand Blizzard is a company thats goal is to make money, but really, if we are playing this game, Blizzard should make it for their costumers. I’m not content with some generic game that will lose its interest a few years in. StarCraft is ageless, and I am hoping for another game like it. Its too early to tell where Blizzard is going with SC2, so for now, all we can do is hope.

Also, check out this blog on GameRiot.

~Ross

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A ton of new information was recently released pertaining to Zerg units in Starcraft II, and from what i’ve read, i’m kinda scared. Just watch this video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SKayh7mb9PQ

Cry. Do it.

More information is available here: http://www.sclegacy.com/content/editorials-8/march-starcraft-ii-zerg-coverage—information-61/

I’ll discuss this more when all the information is released, but until then…

AFK, crying in the corner.

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