Just surpassed the 40,000 achievement points mark (1558 Achievements unlocked) on my XBOX 360 with the achievement “Campaign Complete: Legendary (125)” from Halo 3. It’s been a long and interesting trip. Many good games and just as many bad… Lets hope 50,000 isn’t to far away.
While surfing a gaming looking for the latest developers chat log I saw an image for the game called EVE and it has a 14 day trial period. And being that I’m curious as to how other MMO’s play I decided to give it a shot.
My first MMO was Star Wars Galaxies back in the summer of 05. Then on 15 November I stopped playing (along with 90% of the population) when the game totally switch the game mechanics and class and everything. Yet to this day SOE still holds true to that decision despite the negative flack. To this day this is the best MMO I ever played (Pre SOE redesign)
Then I joined the humongous World of Warcraft shortly after that. Played WOW till around January 07. The main interest I had in the game was raiding but in order to raid you had to be dedicated to a very tough schedule and after doing it for month’s n months on end the same thing over n over with no real other enjoyment in the game it got to be too much. Looking back now with more MMO’s under my belt two things about this game that sticks out is the Warrior Charge and Hunters being able to train pets from beasts of the wild.
The around February I got accepted into a “Stress Test” for The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO) and shortly after beta and then in April full time when the game released. I have been playing it for Approx 10 months now on the live servers. I have a life time subscription for this game so I will always be playing it in some form or another. Over all it’s a good solid game, but with any MMO’s things that make u wonder “Who in this Galaxy thought this crap idea?”.
And then I’ve beta tested parts of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning , Pirates of the Burning Sea and Tabula Rasa.
Warhammer is PVP based and it’s not something I really get into. Either that or I just never found a game that makes is awesome to me.
Pirates were just weird to me. It was like playing a cartoon. I am sure if I gave it effort and time I might of come around to it, but with others out there that appealed more I moved on.
Tabula Rasa was my favorite I’ve beta tested so far; but its combat is a lot like the new SWG with the shooter fast action paced click spam buttons that I don’t like. It saddened me because this game had a good story and some of the guts of it really interested me.
And that brings my MMO past to a close.
And now it brings me to EVE. The only question I have to ask is: “Why didn’t I find this game back in 2003 when it came out?” I’ve always enjoyed space based combat and this game is nothing but that. It’s also FREAKING HUGE game world with one server for all.
Being that it’s been out for 5 years a new player I am nothing but LOST. I got the basic stuff but wow. There is so much to learn to get it all.
Also the skills and training is based on real world time. I skill takes 20 minutes to learn means 20 minutes go by before you learn it, and it can be learned while u r offline. Pretty much means everyone who started to play before u will always be ahead. Not sure I like that.
But I am going to give this game a shot for the moment and see where it goes. If nothing else it’s filler till this winter.
And the future:
One MMO’s I really want to check out.
Stargate Worlds which is set for winter of this year. It is based off of the TV shows Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis. Being that I have seen ever episode of Stargate SG-1 multiple times one can’t help but check it out.
Two MMO’s that looked sweet that has since folded.
Star Trek Online: My love for space combat with a series I have seen every episode except the originals. It could have been a sweet game. Last I knew the rights where bought by another company and hopefully we will see news of it soon.
Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising was into beta status before it the company pulled the plug on this game. This game was going to ROCK. Maybe someone will buy the rights to it and continue it.
And these two games had one thing in common; Perpetual Entertainment was building them and both of them where pulled.
According to theliveeye.com I spent 4 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes playing this game. Which at the moment of posting ranks 4th on time of games played since Thursday, August 02, 2007 (UTC)
The game is nowhere near worthy of that time, but being that XBOX 360 have achievements I spent that time trying to get them. Due to failure at the developers end and bugs in the game it’s only possible to get 720 out of 1000. I manage to get 700 of those. The game is time consuming to say the least.
It’s a nice concept but plainly the developers never fished a day in their life.
You toss the lure in the water and real it in. When the lure icon blinks red you stop reeling and the fish majority of the time will bite.
Each lake has certain hot spots for the fish and can be fished constantly day after day in the tournaments and never seem to run out of fish.
But being that I like fishing despite the other comments saying pretty much what I said, I played it, and once I started I wanted to maximize my achievements.
Best thing 360 has ever done.
Refer to Here for background info on the Dun Universe.
Five months after I finished reading my last book I got in the mood to continue reading and Friday I finished Dune: The Battle for Corrin which is the finial book of this trilogy within the dune universe.
I’ve really enjoyed reading them. Being a big fan of Dune Universe and reading The Original Series it was nice to fill in the blank and see how a lot of the stuff came about.
What the whole Machine war was about.
How the Freman came to be.
How the three big house Atreides – Harkonnon - Corrino early story took place.
How the Witches came to power.
How instant interstellar travel came about.
Etc.
And now I plan to read the three house books and I hope it doesn’t take 5 month layoff to finish the first one. Sure these three will also add to the better understanding of the Dune universe.
I have not posted in ages. Every Attempt to maintain a blog has crashed just at lift-off. It’s the dang faulty parts keeping me down. And I still buy the Junker 
Not much going on in life. I have been spending heavy amounts of time with 360 Gamming. There are so many recent games that have been released and just not enough time to play them all.
I have gotten through some of them, but even with them there are still achievements I’d like to get.
So yeah, me alive, and now going back to gaming
That was my time for the 1.5 mile today.
It’s the best I’ve ever done so far.
In May I was pumping out at 14:00 plus. The result of slacking off all winter long
Last year’s PT test I pumped out 11:36. Sometime in October I test again, so I might do even better.
The only thing is I currently run at the HS track; but not sure if it is allowed for the PT test. Trying to find out where the PT test is run. If it’s where I think it is at, the same place we do Squadron PT then I will be mega bummed. The place has Start-Turnaround-finish marked.
I have always done way better when I can pace myself. Free running like that place would make me do is only going to make me worse. I have got to find out where we can go do it.
My long term goal is to get to sub 10:00. Only time can tell if my body can get me there. It’s getting old and many years of not taking care of it to overcome.
It has finally stopped raining. Last night around 6pm it turned to a light sprinkle. I took the chance not knowing if it would stay that way and went jogging. By the time I was finished jogging it completely stopped. And to this point it has not rained. Although now it looks like it could start again. That is fine as long as it stops by tomorrow afternoon. Already got a bike ride in today.
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And on another topic. Up until now I did not mind the time difference (Plus 13 to
It is going to make it a long couple of months for me.
Since this past Saturday it’s done nothing but rain expect one day; Monday. I don’t mind rain so much, but when you have to walk everywhere or bike rain just makes it horrible. We get issued rain gear, but it’s a catch-22. It does its job with keeping the rain out, but it doesn’t let you breathe so you sweat and get just as wet as if you didn’t wear it. What else can you do?
It also messes with my Jogging. I’ve done it in the rain before (Many times), in fact this morning we had squadron physical training and ended up jogging in the rain; but it just annoying more then anything.
And, I just spend 100 bucks to get my bike serviced, and I want to ride it. They put a new chain on it and greased/oiled the bearings. In the short time I got to ride it; it made a huge difference. So much smoother and manageable vs. what it was. Plus I can shift gears again :-D.
Not bad considering the bike is over 6 years old and I haven’t done the maintenance like I should have. I do plan to stay on top of it this time.
So yeah, the moral is… it needs to stop raining.
Yet another month come and gone and for me they are not going bye fast enough.
26 movies watched during August. Most of the month was dominated by Lost and 24.
For me it seems like 24 is getting repetitive but I will still watch the last season I have. I might as well knock it out.
Along the same lines as the Movie log I created a Book Log. It can be found here and in the link section above. 10 books so far, although the first six of them were books on CD I’ve listened to.
I’ve got nine books in que to read in my possession (most of them will be listed below) and a bigger list of ones that I want to read. So hopefully this read book list will continue to increase in time.
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I just finished reading The Butlerian Jihad (more information about the book can be found by clicking on book title).
The Butlerian Jihad is book one of the fifteen books currently included in the Dune Universe (Info Here); the latest which was just released this month. Chronological order can be found here.
The Dune Universe was imagined by a great man named Frank Herbert (Born October 8th, 1920 - Died February 11th, 1986) He wrote the original series consisting of the 6 books below.
~Three of the books have been made into mini-series’s. First Dune (1984) and more recently the Sci-fi channel re-imagined “Dune” (2000) (mini) and followed with “Children of Dune” (2003) (mini). Children of Dune mini-series was broken into three parts. Part one is based off the book Dune Messiah and parts two and three are from Children of Dune. The mini’s did a good job at capturing the Essence of the books, but I highly recommend anyone wanting a book to read to check these out. But be for-warned, as I said above it’s a 15 book series and can be very addicting.
After he died his son Brian Herbert took up the mighty task of continuing to add to the Dune Universe with the notes and partial books left behind by his dad. He enlisted the help of Kevin J. Anderson with this task.
This is what they have done so far.
The prequel trilogy Prelude to Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson is set in the years leading up to the events in Dune.
Brian Herbert and Anderson followed with a second prequel trilogy called the Legends of Dune. This series is set at an earlier time in the history of the Dune universe, when humans and sentient machines waged war with one another.
Brian Herbert and Anderson have just completed this trilogy which wraps up storylines that began with Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune. The first is The Road to Dune, a collection of Brian Herbert/Anderson short stories, and letters and unused chapters written by Frank Herbert. Hunters of Dune is the first of two novels based on an existing framework that Frank Herbert wrote prior to his death (the working title of that framework is known as Dune 7). The second, Sandworms of Dune, has been published as of August 7, 2007.
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So that is the background of the books I will be reading for a time to come. Couple of years ago I read the original Dune series but never followed through with the rest of them; well the ones that where out at the time. So now I am working on them.
Since Butlerian Jihad is one of a three book series, I will wait till I have read them all before I comment on it.
