A little bit more Minecraft then Second Life, at the moment. Just for fun.
No. I do not want to compare both. I just want to mention that I am not around in SL at the moment because I play Minecraft with my brother currently.
Minecraft is completely differend then Second Life. SL gives me more freedom when I create things and I defenetly will be back soon! But hey! I must admit Minecarft is a lot of fun too,so I will spend some time there as we had some fun and laughing last days. 
We did build a castle out of these Minecraft blocks, so that we are save when it becomes night. Nighttime can be dangerous in Minecraft! There are spawning monsters which will hunt you.
But as I said.. I will be back to SL soon
I think I also do not spend a lot of time on the Second Life road… but there was a Time I did.
Reading a Blogpost of Alicia, I decided to think about if I am a Couch Potatoe in my Second Life. Or should I rather call it Parcel Potatoe, Firefox Potatoe or Windows and Apllication Potatoe?
Alicia thinks that she should once again go somewhere in SL. Looks like she makes a Comparison and found out that there was more Activity back in her Second Life Days.
She noticed that´s not only her. Most of here friends just stand on ther Platforms as well. So talking about my Second Life related Activity, I must say this is my own experience I made in the past as well. I defenetly can agree cos if I login to Second Life, I hang out on my own Parcel (Sky- and Sandbox) most of the time too. And it´s true that I rather spend more time with Forums, SL Marketplace, Twitter, blogging and so on. Sure I call it my SL Activity as all this is mostly related to SL. But the good Point Alicia makes is that it isn´t Inworld Activity. And when she said that she noticed the same with her Friends, I just can sign it cos I notice similar behavior of my Friends.
So in my Case I can explaine it so… back in the Days, Second Life was so new to me that really everything was magical and interesting. I was just amazed about each Place I visited. I became somehwat addicted and soon when I met a Person who introduced me to her Estate, Club and Community, then I became all the more inlove with Second Life. I believe back in these Days I did not minimize the Viewer very often. I remember everything was pretty interesting so that the rest of the Internet just became a minor matter.
The Place where I mostly did hang out was an Estate with a Club and I know I got my first free Inworld Shop there as we became very good Friends soon. At this Time I did rather have a small Collection of Products and they all were everything but not Complex or something someone would need. 
Just my beginner Stuff. And also at this Time I did not spend much Time to produce new Stuff. So apart from hang out my own Products there I worked at her Club as well and I remember back that I got a very good Amount of L$. At least compared to what most of the Dancer´s and Host´s get today in SL. It was 1000 – 2000 L$ (really no Joke!) per Hours for working in her Club and much more then my little Shop income. Sure this was a Reason to stay inworld and it would be a Lie if I would say no. But everyday when the Club were closed we did still hang out together too. So I wasn´t hunting L$ only.. I just enjoyed the Time with my new Friends. We had always cool Topics when we did chat and we had defenetly a lot of fun. So I can say it was rather the Friendship which did bring me online. After some Month I had the feeling it was not just the Team of the Club but rather something like a Family and Federation. The bad End of the Story is that she one Day closed her Estate forever. I believe I would still hang out with her much but she did stop to login regulary and later she wrote me that she wont come online often in the Future as ReaLife keeps her on the Run. I can say I miss her much as it was my most active (inworld) Time in SL. Exploring, chatting, dancing, listening Music, shopping and I cant count it all. Sure is I did see a lot of Places in those Days.
So when my Friend did stop loggin in, I had some more Time to learn more about Conten Creation within Second Life. Soon I became a regular on these bigger Sandbox´s and did experiment a lot with Prims and LSL scripting. As I was still a beginner when we talk about creating Content and from now on very fascinated with all that but a very slow creating one, I would call this Time my second Level of inworld Activity. Even if I still was sad that a Friend leaved Second Life, I can tell you that I in fact now did spend more and more Time inworld. I rented my first own Land and started my Store and later a Mall which I did rent out for Tenants. Managing all this alone did result in much more Activity but not only on my Land. Making connections with other Landowner, renting AdBoards here and there affected me to see more and more Places inworld.
But some day creating things out of Prims became routine anyhow. I just learned to create things I have in mind and now didn´t need to think about it much. I just started to create thing´s I had in mind and this Process became faster then before. With much more finished Products then back in the Days I noticed that Xstreet got a bigger Economy-impact then my Mall. The difference of Sales was so huge that I just started to think about closing my Mall and rent a much smaller Place to just have my Magic Boxes rezzed anywhere and a Skybox for new little Projects.
So what about today? They just merged Xstreet to SL Marketplace and the old good impact of Xstreets Sales were just the beginning. My sales on SL Marketplace even increased compared to the closed Xstreet. And after reading other Blogs I now know and bet that a very heavy Amount of Sales go rather through SL Marketplace instead of Inworld Stores. Not enough… new Features like Mesh Import makes Content Creators stay outside of SL to create Content. I do so now too.
Today? I believe I can get these fascinating Essentials of Second Life without logging in much. And there is for me the Problem. It became creating Content outside of SL, managing these Matters outside of SL, advertise it outside of SL. When things are done, then they get just adjusted inworld and then dropped in a Magic Box. Oh and soon we dont even have to rent Land for a Magic Box as we soon can sell Thing´s out of our Inventory. I believe all this has a huge negative Impact on the Virtual Estate Business too.
For socializing it´s pretty much the same.. Social Networks, Forums, blogging… I believe I spend more Time outside of SL today. You get these Second Life related News and hot Topics outworld.. and you can discuss it with People even if you are not online on the Grid. Do I like it? No I think Alicia is right. We should explore more often again Inworld. What I did now was losing the Fascination of SL, I had early Days in SL . The Question is if we are the Reason for that.. if we are lazy? If we lost Ideas where to go? If we lost Friends inworld? Or is this all due to some changes LL made?
Really I like new Features like Mesh Import and the upcoming Features. So.. well.. I am not sure. I just know that Content Creation became a very importend Part of my Second Life and so I can just judge it from this Perspective. Linden Lab gave us Tools like SL Marketplace and the Mesh Feature to just handle everything we want but not inworld. So there seems to be just a minimalized Reason for Content Creators to stay online on the Grid. If I could handle all this only Inworld and there was a Time… then I would probably rather be anywhere around on the Grid. I dont want to say that I dislike the changes of Linden Lab. Great Features arrived and will arrive soon. It´s just for me clear that they have a huge impact. They change Second Life.
Ok. Looks like for me socializing became simply suppressed by creating Content for SL. And now I dont do it often inworld. Even if I still have fun with what I do.. I agree.. it´s anyhow sad because there is maybe so much more I could do inworld. I sometimes just dont know what and why if I can do it without being around on the Grid.
However I think Alica found a Topic which might be for some of us pretty up to date. At least for me. I am sure we all have differend Reasons to be Parcel Potatoe´s or People who just login to put some Thing´s up for Sale. Maybe some of us are still often inworld. But I believe fact is that there are a lot of People who aren´t and if then they simply hang out on ther Parcel and have no other Ideas. Maybe I should start again to explore what SL can offer me apart from what I do now. Or maybe all this is just a subjective Feeling as we did spend already so much Time inworld in the past.. maybe it just feels differend then before. The latter would be what I experiences in other Virtual Worlds like World of Warcraft and so as well.
7 Years ago I did explore any Places in World of Warcraft just because I was nosy what there could be behind that Hill on the Horizon. But today I know there might be nothing then some low Level Monsters which wouldn´t even hurt me. That cool feeling of exploring new Worlds comes again when new Content or an Expansion arrives. But also only for a short Period. The Focus of my WoW Gameplay is now mostly Player versus Player Matches, new Dungeons, Raid´s and so. The World is just nothing new to me…
But sure! The World of Second Life does always undergo modifications! Maybe I should write that on a Note in front of my Keyboard so that I sometimes do anything else then now.
So this is a Topic I did think about often in the past two or three Month. So that I lately did make a good new start with exploring the Linden Realms.. another Day I was listening and chatting in a Electronic Music Club. But then I got bored again.. I simply do not often have Ideas what to do in SL. But well… lets see…
Incredible! 20 DLC´s for Call of Duty Modern Warfar 3 in just 9 month! They want to milk you!
I couldn´t believe when I opened my Windows Live Mail today to read RSS news I get from differend websites and magazins I like. One news came from a german gaming magazin called 4players. They wrote today that Call of Duty Modern Warfar 3 will be overwhelmed with 20 DLC´s in just 9 month. And indeed each Download Content will be fee required. The beginning of the DLC Season will be early 2012 and there will be new Multiplayer Maps as well as Special Ops Maps. So Activision will overwhelm you with fee required additional content.
Sorry for the german link but I guess if you google that, you´ll find english news about that topic as well.
However…
Now if we think back, there is a logic, why Publisher and Developer like Activision and EA do not add modding support to there games anymore. In fact they do not want that gamers can create mods and maps because this would flood the game with new and gratis content. Because this would result to a community wich wouldn´t pay for DLC´s because there would be community made content for free which probably would still have better quality then charged content of the Publisher. Another bad thing for these sharks would be that you now spend more time with the game and this is not what they want because they want to sell you Call of Duty Modern Warfar 4 soon as possible. That is not easy if you still have fun with the old Game.
Reading forums I believe that pretty much gamer are pissed about this sales strategy. But you know what? Those games anyway will be sold even with all the 20 DLC´s. Be sure. And that is the real sadness.
Overall what we notice now is that the gaming industry has changed a lot. I do not have much problems with capitalism but this what we notice now is something we rather should call harcore capitalism. You are the cow and they want to milk you. The tempo of releasing 20 DLC´s in just 9 months is decisive here.
So wake up and stop supporting those sharks. The gaming industry was just fine years before. But I see the latest changes very very critical. I look at it in disbelief.
Battlelog, BF3, Amazon and the angry Customer
I wrote already in two of my latest Blogpost what I think about Battlefield 3 and Battlelog here:
- Currently tested Battlefield 3 Beta on PC… Dice maybe promised us to much. I´m disappointed.
- Ten reasons why “Battlelog” is crap that gamers do not want.
However lately I feel vindicated. When I checked out the Battlefield 3 listing on Amazon I noticed that many people share my opinion.
Battlefield 3 got following reviews on Amazon in germany:
5 Star = 125 people
4 Star = 27 people
3 Star = 29 people
2 Star = 34 people
1 Star = 2530 people (EA/Dice.. nice slap in the face but you didn´t want to listen)
This means BF3 got an average rating of just 1 star from overall 2745 ratings.
Here is a screenshot of it:
I did read some of the reviews and most people complain indeed about Battlelog but also about the gameplay. All in all it is just similar to what I wrote in my early blogposts on this topic.
However EA/Dice… I am anyway out of the story.. so do what ever you want but dont notice to late that you banish your fanbase with all your decisions.
Ten reasons why “Battlelog” is crap that gamers do not want
Lately there is a Blogpost and Video around which try´s to tell us on a ridiculous way how importend the “Battlelog” is for us Battlefield gamers:
Although I wrote already about this complete joke called “Battlelog” in one of my latest Blogpost, I thought I anyway need to write down ten reasons why “Battlelog” is irrelevant and ridiculous.
EA and Dice… Ten reasons why people hate your so called “Battlelog” (Yes some people call it already Facebattle or Battlebook):
1. It is wishfulness that people want your social/facebook vibes. They just want to play and not socialize! Most of them have already friends and a clan.
2. There is no reason to develop a game that starts through a web browser and website when people didn´t complain about exe-files, shortcuts and an ingame menu. In fact they rather like to manage things ingame (things like serverbrowser and so on)! Hey Battlelog is fine for people who like it but please make it not mandatory!
3. Anti-piracy, hack security and so on is no benefit compared to the profit you´ll lose by customer who cancel pre-order or wont buy the game. Apart from this it is not clear if your system is safe. Oh and we saw already the first cheaters. How can that be when “Battlelog” is suppost to keep them out?
4. People hate it to install additionaly extensions and plugins to the browser just to be able to play your game.
5. Problem solving and compatibility will be much more complexe and harder to ensure and questions like “Which browser do you use?”, “What version?”, “Do you have other plugins installed and have you tried disabling those plug-ins? (except ours, of course)?”, “Are scripts enabled and is Java and Active X up to date?”, will come up. Do you really think people will set up there browser so that it is compatible with your game and chuck out ther own customisation?
6. Most people I talked to have said “Battlelog” is just hideous, cluttered, broken, unexpedient and has no usability!
7. Welcome to social gaming! Even people who just wanna play single player have to stay online! What is if internet is down? Welcome to the future of gaming. You maybe paid the game but that doesn´t mean its yours. They decide when you can start the game!
8. Its so… You have to join a match so that you can set up controls, graphics and every other options. But be aware your character has to be alive! Just because there is no menu. Also you need to constantly closing and opening the game when looking for new game servers! Hey but you can socialize when opening your internet browser! Innovation? No, its a step backward.
9. Its better to start one application (standalone / the game) instead of three applications (the game, Origin and Webbrowser with Battlelog).
10. “Battlelog” is implemented to capture valuable marketing data on each player’s activities and maybe to directly supply you with advertising in the future.
You wanna read more reasons? Go for it.. Why we gamers dislike Battlelog
Also read my latest Article about Battlefield 3 Beta
Currently tested Battlefield 3 Beta on PC… Dice maybe promised us to much. I´m disappointed.
Currently I am testing Battlefield 3
I just thought I give my 2 bits on that topic.
(Please note my native language is german so you probably find some misspelling)
Overall I must say this game was pretty much hyped. Can Battlefield 3 satisfy expectations of the people?
Well. If you ask me, I would defenetly say “No!”. If you would ask my friends and mates you would defenetly get the same answer.
If you search your answers in the Battlefield 3 UK, US or EU Forums, then you probably find differend opinions.
Ok so I want to share my experience with the game. My experience is collected both from my own gameplay experience but also from several discusions with
friends and people in the forums.
About the delivery of the game:
For me as a gamer since the 80´s I saw pretty much games. I must say when I dislike something than it is, if a game is delivered through detours. Yes you can say I am happy if I just can install the game, make a shortcut on the desktop and just start the game. I also do not have anyproblems with menues which are ingame. In fact I expect that everything related to the game IS ingame.
That is the reason why I was shocked how EA/Dice delivers Battlefield 3. First you need to install a tool called origin which is a houseown selling platform for games from EA. This tool has defenetly no advantages for a game instead of shopping. The overall download of the game is minimalistic and it looks that you cant even choose a installation directory. Yea the tool will just put all the content on your clean OS partition which is horrible. Maybe you can choose anywhere how to install the games but if you ask me.. I did not want to watch where I can find that option in Origin. I just want it as it was in the past. Give me an installation file and then I choose where I want the game to be and not such a tool like origin. So origin is not my taste. For me it is useless and for my friends as well.
But not enough. After you have downloaded and installed all files, you need to click on the game in the origin manager. Then you will be redirected to a website called battlelog. That is something like a facebook-styled app where you can start the game. Honestly.. start a game through a website feels like playing an facebook app.. feels like playing this battlefield play4free crap. In fact they force you to start the game by a devious route. Usability? Not existing. Its just the same bullshit like facebook. Untidy navigation and hey it tooks me and my friends more then 30 minutes to join a game together. What the heck is so wrong with an ingame sever browser and menue? Why the heck is there need to develop such a mess? We all had similar opinion. Battlelog is completely cluttered, has no usability and its useless. And hell yes we want back our good old ingame menues and server browser. We dont really need improvement here and infact battlelog is not an improvement. If you want to know how others think.. just read on here, its very interesting: Battlelog is INSULTING to the PC Gaming Platform or read my other blogpost about Battlelog “Ten reasons why Battlelog is crap that we dont want!”
I think that most people have already there friends and clans and if not there are enough ways to find new game mates so that there is no need for something like the battlelog. Yes I know its a trend to say “Peopls want to socialice!” but in fact that statement is not true. Most people are already socialized and anyway this facebook trend is not copyable to whatever. Do we gamers need it? I asked people and they expect game features instead of that. I think it is just a wet dream of any social media expert involved to this product and it reminds me also somewhat to stuff like gamespy which never did establish. This battlelog alone and the detour to start the game was already the only reason to cancel my pre-order. What I forget to write here is that you need to install garbage browser extensions and plugins so that you can start the game. I already see it coming that if you have problems they will ask you how many plugins you did installed, which browser you use and so before they can fix your problem. All this is a complete mess and I do not want to support this lalalala-facebook-trend.
I understand from business perspective that it might be easy for the company to pull out updates through this system but the biggest reason seems to be that they can now supply you on this way with ads in the future. They also can gather stats about you and analyze them. Also my theory is that they want to kill the second-hand market. Really and again.. I do not support this system and I wont buy the game.
About the graphics:
I must admit I was somewhat suprised when I saw all these early Battlefield 3 videos. In fact I was amazed.
When I first logged into the game I did notice my computer can handle the settings very very well. Ok ok.
But looks like videos can give you another impression. Ingame my thrill of anticipation did bust in the very first minutes.
To be true I do not want to say that the graphics are ugly or so. But anyway I noticed some huge gamebrakers in this engine.
Battlefield 3 is very colorful and some people might like it but me and my friends didnt. The overal opinion was that the game has to much
brightness in textures, the lightning is overdriven, everything is glowing even the soldiers looks like sparklers, the reflection on textures is overdriven as well so that the overall setting looks very very plastically and in some situations cartoony. Im suprised that it appeal ingame differend to the video previews.But the reason should be that I was now able to run through the whole maps and thats why I got overall impression and not single cut scenes like in a video.
From the aspect of the engine it also doesnt look innovative it rather did remind me to Crysis 2 mixed with Mirror´s Edge graphics.
I dont know why but the Frostbyte 2 engine is not my taste. Its to much make up and overdone. As I said plastically. It didnt gave me the Battlefield look and feel. It is hard to descripe.
About the sound engine:
Here I must say that it was in some situations very very bombastic. I really did like the sounds. Not much to say here. I just would prefer it if the weapon sounds coming from my own character would sounds a bit more like the weapon sounds I hear from my team mates and near me (Enviroment sounds). I mean a little bit more acoustic and echo would do it but that could be a matter of taste and I dont know what others think about it. Really… I dont want to complain much here as the sound engine seems to be modern and top-notch. I want to stay fair and I really want to say again that it is overall bombastic and the sound immersed me pretty good when I used my headset but I guess it is not much differend if you use your speakers. Let me call this part of the game almost perfect.
Gameplay:
Here I did feel the biggest disappointments. The complete handling (movement, controls) of the character was a major turn off for me and my friends. We played with keyboard and mouse but it still does feel like you play it on xbox or ps3 with an controlpad. Moving and shooting feels rather like any console game or is at least more comparable with Bad Company 2 or any of the latest Call of Duty games. I did like the complete control, handling and game feeling of Battlefield 2 or Battlefield 2143 but Battlefield 3 feels like a pain. I would not like to get used to it. Its just not what I expected and I am sure it is rather optimized so that the dev team can easily port it to xbox and ps3. And then we come to…
Hitboxes or Hitzones. It looks like they are optimized for people who will play the game with control pads on console. Its defenetly nevermind where you shoot at as long as an enemy is in front of you. You will notice you will hit him/her anyway. My theory here is that a control pad is inaccurate in aiming but a mouse not. So the game is optimized for consoles but not for PC. You defenetly dont need to search and aim the head of an enemy. You just shot as long someone is in front of you and if you are the first who shoots, you will survive and get a kill credited. A real major turn off from the game. We talked about that on our Teamspeak Server and we all had the same opinion, it is not good. But we had also the same opinion that the produced damage by the weapons is just fine and makes a bit more hardcore. The hitzones are defenetly not contemporary for a PC game and might only work on consoles with controlpad. If you take shelter for example behind a stone, then it doesn´t mean you are safe. I seems to me that there are still problems and bullets can go through very heavy objects. If bullets can go through soft objects I would understand it. But in BF3 they in some cases I had the feeling the bullets can go through any object so that I didnt feel safe often. But that problem might be fixed in the full release and thats why I do not want to complain much about it as long it will be fixed.
Classes. I did not really see a reason for such hard class changes. It has defenetly not anything to do with BF2 or BF2142 anymore. They changed so much that I dont want to start listing all that here. For BF2 veterans that is a real pain. They moved complete weapon sets to other classes. We said also that we rather would like it if we have more classes like in Battlefield 2. They also removed the commander mode. I did not play commander much in BF2 but anyway this feature was really great. I did like it to destroy the commander buildings with c4. Indeed I do not understand why they removed the commander.
Squads? Squad management in BF3 is a real catastrophe. At least in beta you cant join or create squads for your friends. I defenetly feel no teamplay. The system puts you randomly in a squad or on a team and it is a real pain to get all your friends playing together. I am not sure if there will be big changes until release.
Do you remember the great squad management in BF2 and BF2142? Dont expect much from BF3. Loos like they thought this Battlelog management would amaze peoples.. but where is the sense when you create a group in Battlelog if the system randomly throw your friends apart ingame? Right, it makes no sense. In BF3 you need defenetly more communication with your friends and it is often so that you ask your mates “Hey do you go over the right, middle or left flank?” and that is something we didnt really need when we played BF2. You joined squads with your friends in the past and the good thing was you could easily find your frinds on the map and radar as a squad was colored in green. It was perfect. This system alone makes BF2 to a better game then BF3. No problem if you shed bitter tears now.
Commandrose is also not in the beta but we believe they will add it in the releaseversion (Yea I did read that now, its true).
Let me write down some words about the rank-progression or let me say level-up-system. Im not sure if they reduced the distances between each rank due to test reasons. If not.. then it is a real problem. I rather favour the system from BF2 and it tooks me a very long time to go up all the ranks there. in BF3 Beta it feels just like “Ding-Ding-Level-Up” and “Ding-Ding-Next-Level-Up”. First I got a new rank each match or at least each second match. Yea I noticed the distance between each rank will be bigger the higher your rank gets. However it still feels like the progression is easy and fast to master. Also I miss a tier-tree where I can spend points and unlock weapons. I favour the system of BF2142 but the new system is not a real problem for me. Some peoples might like it. I just think you go up all the ranks way to fast and that must be changes. Holy sheep… Yes! I did like the tedious way in BF2!
The Interface (UI). Here me and my friends had again same opinion. You defenetly feel lost. The little radar map and the color of it is a complete joke. You just feel lost and we also said it will be impossible to get used to it. Same for the map. You´re lost and we asked our self why they did decide to make it all in blue color. The Scorecard has no ping tracking (why?) and you cant see which class each name in the scorecard plays.
There was tons of bugs and the whole games looks more like pre-alpha stage but not beta. If they can fix this in just one month, then they have a mission. I do not want to list every bug here as the list is big. I also think that bugs are ok for an beta. My overall review here is not based on any bugs its based on gameplay experience. The bugs will probably removed when ever. But the gameplay wont change in the future! So to argue its just a beta wont change my overall opinion about the game.
When we played the metro, we had the feeling that EA/Dice trys to copy Call of Duty. Also the bigger map called caspian border which we did access with an leaked password, doesnt gave us the good old BF feeling. Thats where Bad Company 2 already failed. Suprising the Battlefield PC Community positive as such.
Caspian Border has closer flag points then the bigger BF2 maps have. It was very soon clear that the devs provide more instant rambo battles like in Call of Duty
and Bad Company 2 instead of the nice exploded battles in Battlefield 2. And those battles in each corner on a big map, thats what at least me and my friends expected from a title called Battlefield. Warfar here and there in whide spreaded flag points with much posibility.
I could go on and tell you that I am not a real fan of the idea that they didn´t even add a commander but as I said the screwed already the whole classes up. Everything looks like it makes no sense. Why would you remove so much elements and features of a game which had a real big inpact and a huge fanbase (BF2)?
For the BF2 players BF3 seems to be a kick in the arse… yea it is a deliberate provocation.
Concluding:
Im tired and I probably missed lots of points in my little review but most of them was anyway negative for the game.
Concluding my judgement is devastating. They should have called the Game Battlefield Bad Company 3 instead of Battlefield 3. Its not much similar and I would not call it a sequel to Battlefield 2. I played Battlefield 2 over 5 years and it was a hell of fun. I think that isnt the target of this industry anymore. You do not have to be pleased with a game for a long time as they want to sell you new games in the future and that soon as possible. 5 years fun is something they see as a problem. The keyword today is shares and stocks and those sharks will do anything to prevent that you are pleased. Battlefield 3 would propably be a game if I would buy it, it would be soon in my gameshelf and get dusty til Battlefield 4 which will propably the same mess. The game industry has changed negative.
Is Battlefield 3 really not a console port? Bad Company 2 defenetly was. Now they told you that the main development-platform was the PC but Battlefield 3 is still crossplatform. And thats is what you feel ingame. I feel they produced it so that it can get easily ported over to these consoles. It is a pain and insulting us PC gamers very hard. Those days seems to be gone when PC had there own games with great quality and longterm fun. Today its mass consumption and mass food forced into line for the casuals. Thats how I did experience Battlefield 3. As I said I am not comepletly sure about the difference between Medal of Honor, Crysis 2, Bad Company 2, Call of Duty and Battlefield 3. Its all the same instand 5 minutes battle stuff. No innovation.. nothing improved then grafics (matter of taste) and sound. Does grafic and sound dazzle me so that gameplay is indifferent? Hell.. no! Gameplay is much more importend for me. If I want to watch a movie, then I sit in front of my TV and DvD player. But when we talk about games I want to get immersed by funny gameplay and that please for a very long time!
I do not want to get assimilated neither thourgh facebook-trend, xbox, ps3 or what ever. I stay PC Gamer and I choose my games carefuly like all my friends will.
Will Battlefield 3 flop? Again my theory is that this game will be sold much anyway on the casual and fast mass consumption market and I believe there is demand for such a game otherwise Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty would not be sold so much. But I also believe that many people will be soon bored so that they can come up with new sequels. And those people will buy this junk food again and again. From the otherside I defenetly did read and hear from people that they canceled ther pre-order due to several reasons. Me and my friends included. But the market is still so huge that this fact wont be a leg fracture for EA. Buy or buy not.. get used to it or not.. as long as you are happy with your decision. I am!
Please notice this blogpost and my opinion are the subjective thoughts of me and some of my friends. Everyone is free to have there opinion, also you. If you like Battlefield 3 then it is ok. Opinions and favor can be differend. I do not like this game and my friends dont too. I am free to blog about it even if im aware of the fact that it could start a controversy. But thats how it is. EA has divided the BF Community into two differend camps since Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3. That is obvious.
So long…
Greetings.
See also another Article about EA on a Friends Blog: Criticsm on EA, BioWare and SWTOR
Battlefield 3 Beta Date confirmed
Battlefield 3 Beta Test will start on 29. September and will end on 10. October. Peoples who purchased Medal of Honor can start playing Beta already on 27. September.
You get more infos here:
http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3/1/beta
If you want to know more about the System Requirments.. see my other Blogpost:
Battlefield 3 System Requirments
It´s official: Battlefield 3 System Requirements revealed
Electronic Arts revealed how much power you need under the hood to play Battlefield 3:
Minimum
- OS: Vista Service Pack 2 32-bit
- Processor: 2GHZ Dual Core (Core 2 Duo 2.4GHZ or Athlon x2 2.7GHZ)
- Memory: 2GB RAM
- Hard drive: 20GB
- Graphics card AMD: DirextX 10.1 compatible with 512MB RAM (ATI Radion 3000, 4000, 5000 or 6000 series, with ATI Radion 3870 or higher performance)
- Graphics card Nvidia: DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512MB RAM (Nvidia GeForce 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 or 500 series with Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance)
- Sound card: DirectX compatible
- Keyboard and mouse
- DVD ROM drive
Recommended
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit
- Processor: Quad Core CPU
- Memory: 4GB RAM
- Hard drive: 20GB
- Graphics card: DirectX 11 compatible with 1024MB RAM (Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon 6950)
- Sound card: DirectX compatible
- Keyboard and mouse
- DVD ROM drive
So all in all it is not that hard as many peoples expected.
Gold sellers and spammers in Second Life Forum
So now the Gold sellers and spammers we know from other Games (MMO´s) like World of Warcraft are arrived in Second Life. The official Second Life Forum is full of “Buy Linden Dollars” spam.
So be careful… I bet you catch malware if you click on one of those links. And you know.. you just can get L$ from Linden Labs on the official Second Life Website. So dont buy L$ on any of these dubious Websites they spam in the Forums.
Hey fellow… It´s just a game! Chill!
One thing I really hate is when peoples behave aggressively just because the own team did lose a match in a game. Today we did play World of Warcraft with friends. We did join battlegrounds and talked about our tacticts on our teamspeak server. One of our friends is know for freaking out when anything in the game goes wrong. I think its ok to get upset sometimes if it is in a funny or smooth tune. But he sound like he is before destroying his microphone or maybe his computer. Today again and it was absolotly annoying. We lost a match and he was screaming that we all got bad mood.
I always have an public opinion and thats why I told him “Hey fellow.. can you please chill? It is really just a game and if we lose, we wont die!”. I did add “You drive us all mad.. You are 29 years old but seriously.. you act like a little frustrated child..” and “Get a life or chill out!”. Then… 30 seconds silence………………………………
Then he said “I do not have to put up with that”" and we all did hear a friendly teamspeak server voice “Player leaved your channel” which means he left. Ah k… just as well.
Seriously.. whats wrong with him? We play games in the evening because we want to chill out from the day. Peoples now said to me.. “Yea your right.. he´s just annoying.. someone had to told him”. We all were the same opinion. There is sometimes something wrong in a game and sure we can get upset sometimes. But its the tune… we often are upset but laugh.. it is fun.. a game. But he was freaking out and screaming in our all ears. Seriously I have neighbours and I did put down my speakers because I thought it is awkward if my neighbors can hear him.
However.. after he did leave our Voice Server, we had fun again nevermind if we did lose or win. Thats what I call great gaming and not stressful as he would be there. He is now probably angry with me. But I dont care. I had to tell him.
Did you ever have similar experience with someone? If so.. do you just listen and think your part? Or do you also prefer to tell peoples your opinion?
When we remember great gaming times! World of Warcraft was fun..
You must know this post here will be a general blogpost.. yes maybe a complain specially about World of Warcraft. I had an interesting discussion yesterday with my friends from reallife.
Today we are five of our clique who still play World of Warcraft sometimes. Sometimes we are one more or less. But let me compare this to some years ago. We were more then twenty peoples of our real life clique who played together World of Warcraft. Additionaly we had twenty and more peoples we met in World of Warcraft. We said they are friends too. Lets count together… we was able to setup a guild with over fourty and I believe we had more then fifty players in our guild. But it was not an anonymously guild because most did know each other from real life and the others became friends as well, with the difference that they did live just not in our hometown but instead of that in another town. However.. there was something which hold us all together and it was World of Warcraft and a nice guild constitution. Yes we had rules! No flaming! If there is a problem… only real and fair discussion! We had more rules.. and we kicked anyone who wanted to brake our rules. But we didnt need to do often. Our guild was a bunch of peoples who did respect each other even if they had another opinion sometimes. But we had peoples with great attitude. Something else did hold us together. We had success but something which is more vital, we had fun together!
Yes when I talk about fun then I really mean fun!
Have you ever been on a teamspeak server (voice chat) where fourty peoples celebrate loud that they have just killed an heavy raidboss (non player character)? If so.. you know what fun is. If not.. you missed something. But I can tell you this was often a real party. Peoples really couldn´t calm oneself. I think this did hold us together. We did go raiding in Molten Core with fourty players, we did go raiding Blackwing Lair with fourty players and we did invade Temple of Ahn’Qiraj with fourty players. We had real partys when we completed these runs. Peoples did laugh, kidding and scream on our voice server just because they was happy to complete something which was difficult enough. We had success together and we became strong company.
Ok back to our discussion yesterday. We did remember this time. And we all were the opinion it was an extraordinary experience. Something great!
So you maybe ask why we have been over fourty players some time ago and today only four, five or six players? Some of you think it was maybe due to reallife? You think peoples became mature and didnt want to play games anymore? If you think that.. then you are wrong. I can tell you the truth as I still talk with some friends. Many of them are still my reallife friends. Most of them became just disapointed with the game and many belive there were some pretty ugly and design decisions from “Blizzard” the maker of “World of Warcraft”. If you are able to setup a fourty player guild, it is just sad if Blizzard removes these fourty player raids. They did change it so that there was now twentyfive and ten player raids. Our guild did burst on that design decision pretty soon. We was a team and didn´t really want to split our guild in two sections. That was not our target but we had to do. Soon we did lose a half of our players. I think it was just more diffiuclt to manage two raids instead of one huge raidgroup. Ok but now were still enough players to join twentyfive player raids.
Blizzard never stops to install patches on your computer and they never stop to make changes. If new content arrives, players like it. But if they change to much on the mechanic.. to much changings on the base frame.. yea at least the old players might be scared of these decisiones then. But some of us believe today that these decisions came because Blizzard wanted to bring in many new players. You can say World of Warcraft was a hardcore game.. a niche and maybe something peoples called “Nerd Game”.So we think Blizzard´s targed was to get more into the casual market. So they changed the game so much that it was easy now.. easy enough for the casual who anyway just want to play 6 hours a week. You was now able to get any ingame item faster then before. But those who liked the game before.. the hardcore´s.. they had trouble with this gamedesign decision´s. At least it was the reason why our guild lost many players. It was a complete renovation also for every class. Maybe they did success by getting new and lots of new players. But as I said.. some oldboys and oldgirls from the very first minutes of World of Warcraft became scared so that they stopped to play.
Me and four, five and maybe six player of our clique still play World of Warcraft time to time. But often we remember back to our great times and we said it will never be as it was. But we still have fun today.. we are a little group who now mostly join player versus player battlegrounds. Yes and sometimes we go raid with other peoples we dont know. But World of Warcraft has changed. Or maybe we changed? At least it is not as it was and thats why we are so honest to say sometimes that this soon will have an end also for us. We already play other games more often then before. Its not only World of Warcraft anymore. We have already alternatives as the overall experience in WoW has changed to much for us. And thats why we did discuss it yesterday. When we do.. we do it sad.
But hey!…
One thing we learned.. a game isn´t just a game. Thats only what those flaming news in television telling you. No! A game is more! You bring in your friends and you meet new friends. Those who dont understand.. they never will understand. Apart from playing a game together we had great conversations on our teamspeak server over several years and not only related to World of Warcraft… No in fact we did talk about anything from our world. Oh and we did visit peoples from our guild, which we didnt know before in real life. We traveled by train and had a great weekend with peoples we never seen before. That means we did make new friends we still have today.
This is something we got from this experience. Maybe the game will stop to be interesting for us sometime. But our friendship wont!
I am back to SL for a while.. maybe with new inspiration. :)
Hello. I am back. Maybe you read some new stuff next time.. as I am back in SL with new inspiration.
But I still play World of Warcraft aside as well.
Crossplatform.. the Poison for PC-Games… at least what I think!
I downloaded the Crysis 2 Demo to check out the Game but also to check out my Hardware and if this Engine would run on my System. I had no problems with the system requirements so that the game runs on the highest Settings without problems.
It was a multiplayer demo so I checked that out then. But I wasnt happy as the grafics was completely overdriven.. To much glow, bloom and whater ever. Everythign was just bling bling! It looks more like a PS3 or Xbox Game.. well, it is one of the latest Crossplatform games.. Just a port. You did feel it already in the settings screen.. no need for custom settings here. In the grafic settings screen you couldn´t do much more then choose between three settings! Just wow! Is this a trend? Maybe because peoples didnt understand the grafic settings screens from the past? Must everything be so casual and easy today? Where are now? Thats not what I call PC Game. What is if I want to disable all this bling bling, glow and bloom? It looks just horrible and I thought Crysis 1 did impress me more.. but maybe I just dont remember right.
I didnt feel that only with grafics.. No I did feel it with the controls as well. Everythings feels like you play with a Controlpad while you play with Keyboard and Mouse! And that is mad! I thought “Do I play an PS3 or Xbox Game here?”… Well I forgot.. it is a Crossplatform game. However.. it wasnt possible to target enemys as these controls are just bad.
Im still afraid that Battlefield 3 will be the same fail! Ok I wont write a blogpost here “Why Crysis 2 failed” or “Why Battlefield 3 wil fail” but in my opinion the first failed already, at least for my flavor and the second.. who knows? But yes.. its just about flavor.. so create your own opinion about that please. These games will sell anyway even if I dont know why
Im just not a fan of Crossplaform Games.. I see to many drawbacks here. I dont even want to write about all them because it might be that I would end with a wall of text.
I just can say.. less innovation, to much grafic bling bling, bad usability and so on.. yes your maybe right if you say “Oh noes.. is this a flame blogpost here?”. Yep it is.
I just had to install the Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo very fast.
I just did need to write down my opinion here as I am schocked about direction and trend, where PC Games are today. As I said.. everyone can have an own opinion at this point 
Software Piracy.. Minecraft creator Markus Persson said: “Piracy is not a theft”.
Markus Persson said this Week on the GDC 2011 “Piracy is not a theft” reported by Edge Online.
He said: “If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world.” and “There is no such thing as a lost sale. Is a bad review a lost sale? What about a missed ship date?”
Persson’s advice is to “make a game last longer than a week” and to “treat game development as a service”. I think it is true if we take World of Warcraft or any other MMO as an example.
“You can’t pirate an online account,” he truth. I think this is not complete true.. There are already tons Pirare Servers for World of Warcraft and other MMO´s available.. in fact you could download a ripped copy of World of Warcraft and join one of the illegal Servers. But it wouldnt be a real Account from Blizzard Servers and thats why Markus Persson is true with this argument. And..
If Game-Companys offer constant content updates, Quality and a good service.. and if you need an online Account to enjoy this service… the Topic of Software Piracy gets irrelevant. You wont get those great content updates on a pirate software and if, then these updates will be very late. So if you want quality you will join the real Servers of Blizzard and pay for the service. And thats why legal Servers are more popular then illegal ones.
So the question is true… Is Software Piracy still a topic for those companys? I dont think so. For companys who offer games which arent account-tied, software piracy might be still a big deal. So “make a game last longer than a week”, “treat game development as a service” and “You can’t pirate an online account,” is a good advice. But I think most Companys learned it already.
What is your Top-Five-List of Computer Games and why?
Here is the list of my top five favorite games I usually love and play:
1. World of Warcraft ( For me this game is pretty relaxing and i can immerse in this world.. all my friends play it so I do too.)
2. Second Life (I love the creativity of all the peoples there.. I also like to be creative by my self there..)
3. Civilization IV (My brother did show me this game.. since then I install it from time to time and play some rounds!)
4. Battlefield 2 (yea my friends coerced me to play but today I love it and now we wait for Battlefield 3)
5. The Sims 3 (This game can be fun.. create your family and create your house.. I can spend hours with this game!)
How looks your top five and why do you play these games?
Battlefield 3 System Requirements revealed!
EDIT and Update: System Requirements are now really official revealed: Click here – Battlefield 3 System Requirments
Ok the heading of the blogpost is a lie. In fact the System Requirements for Battlefield 3 aren´t revealed now and that is my problem!
Long time ago I did play Battlefield 2 with all my friends but after that time we had a huge brake with ego shooter´s because we did play World of Warcaft most of our time then.
But few days ago I did get a phone call from one of my old friends and BF2 clan members.. he said “Hey cutie.. did you hear about BF 3 which will be released soon at autumn 2011?”…
He did continue.. “I did speak with all our old clan mates and most of them will play BF 3 because it wont be similar like that crap Bad Company 2.. it will be a real sequel of BF 2 and BF 2142!”
I must admit he infected me with his euphorias about the coming Battlefield 3.
Ok so I checked the internet if there are any System Requirements revealed but in fact they arent revealed yet. All what we know is that it will use the Frostbite 2 Engine.
So now I am not sure what to do.. here is my hardware equipment I use at the moment:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz Dual-Core Prozessor PiB Sockel AM2 2x1024kByte L2-Cache 1000MHz FSB
RAM: Corsair TwinX 2 x 2GB CL5 with 5-5-5-18 XMS DDR2-800 RAM (4gb)
Videocard: NVIDIA GeForce Gainward GTS 250 with 512 mb
Mainboard: Gigabyte M56S-S3
OS: Windows 7
So I am not sure if this will be enough. Should I upgrade to a better videocard? I also could upgrade my 4gb Ram to 8gb Ram? I dont know if those games use 8gb.. Im not sure if this will be an improvement.
If I would need a new CPU.. Then I can buy a new mainboard because I cant use higher CPU`s then this with my mainboard.. Oh and if I would need a new mainboard.. then I also need new DDR3 Ram and that would cost me a lot all together.
So thats why I hope that upgrading will do it! Whats your opinion or suggestion? And what do you think will Battlefield 3 require? I would be happy if you leave a comment here.
EDIT: Since I was able to start the BETA of Battlefield 3, I can tell you that the game works on my system very very well without performance issues. The only change on my system is that I bought a Gainward GTX 570 Phantom. No FPS Problems. BF3 is running smooth on my system.
World of Warcraft Cataclysm is arrived yesterday!
So yesterday in the afternoon Amazon did deliver my World of Warcraft Cataclysm and finaly I was able to play the whole night! Hell.. that was fun! So this blogpost will be a really shot one because of my World of Warcraft addiction… 
I cant write a big blogpost about it.. there is really to much to do in Cataclysm and thats why I will start the game in the next minutes,
All I can say is thtat I already reached Level 81 and Im not far away from Level 82. I made round about one and a half Level yesterday. But you know what? Some peoples already reached the Levelcap 85 in 6 hours! Are they crazy? How do they do that? However,.. I do not want that stress while gaming. I take my time and enjoy the whole enviroment. Why should I play it like a race? There is just to much new stuff to visit and to explore. I want to enjoy it with time.
Ok but as I said.. I need to go back to World of Warcraft ingame now. So this blogpost is a short one.
My Amazon World of Warcraft Cataclysm Delivery is still not arrived..
I am still waiting for World of Warcraft Cataclysm. The Package arrived in Neumünster which is not to far away from my Hometown. I think 60km. So I think it will be delivered in the next hours for sure. Im excited and cant wait. Just like a little child! I must admit that I had more luck with Wrath of the Lich King. That time they delivered it one day before the Expansion Servers opens. But this time with Cataclysm my Package come a little bit late. However.. finaly I am sure I can play it today in the afternoon.
Why Warhammer failed and why SWTOR will fail too…
Found a Blogpost of a EA employee who will be dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA coming this November. Im not sure if it is true what this person is writing but at least lots of his words sounds true in my opinion.
Here you can read on: Why Warhammer failed
From 7th December.. Second Life brake for World of Warcraft Cataclysm?
Today I´ve got an Email that the World of Warcraft Expansion called Cataclysm will be released on 7th December this Year. I talked already with some friends and everybody will play that game for a period of some month or maybe more. We even did play World of Warcraft but lately it became extremely bored for me as I had already all what I can get for my Character and anyhow I did see everything ingame. But with Cataclysm there are lot of changes incoming which means that it wont be bored for me anymore. It will be a new adventure for me and much fun to play again with my friends from Germany.
I will bring my lovely and evil Horde Icemage (Bloodelve) which I play already since over 3 Years, to level 85.When we reach the Levelcap, we probably will once again play “Player versus Player” most of our time. Every now and then we will visit Raids too. Thats our gameplay procedure in short.
Anyhow I like all the teamplay in World of Warcraft. Its a game which can bring lot of fun if you play it with your real life friends. But I also did meet new Peoples in this game.
And what I really like, is the fact that this time when I will play World of Warcraft, will give me new creativity and ideas so that I can come back to Second Life when World of Warcraft Cataclysm starts to get bored. Backwards it is the same. This is how I get my variety.
Second Life alone cant occupy me a complete Year. World of Warcraft cant do that too. Rotational, both give me variety.
So yea… it might be that I will write about my adventures in World of Warcraft in December too. I even thought about why I only blog about Second Life when I have so much more other activitys as well? Might be that I write about other topics as well in the future. But I am not sure at this point.
So what about you? Have you ever played World of Warcraft? Do you still play? Will you hold a Second Life brake when Cataclysm is released? Feel free to comment here.
Greetings
Bluemars Online BETA started…
Bluemars Online BETA started…
Thats what someone told me today. I did submit to the BETA too but i didn´t get a key.
Well. Maybe another time. I hope i can get some first views too.
I think I will hear or read enough about the BETA soon.
For all who want to sign in too, here is the URL to the Bluemars Online Website:
