It’s about time we jumped on the bandwagon for Minecraft! Below you will see the first video installment of my Minecraft Adventures of my projects that I have worked on in Creative Mode, and you have seen screenshots of on our Lore Hound Facebook page.
As I said in the video, you can download the texture pack either in HD here, or in SD, here. Please make sure you think you can run HD textures, if you’re not sure, grab the SD version instead. I am not held responsible for hard drive failures due to over-clocking RAM. It is a very powerful texture pack.
You also need to download MC Patcher, which you can get the PC version from here; and the OS X version from here.
However, you must also grab the “MCPatcher” file, for whichever OS you’re running, in order for it to work. If you do not, the images will be broken. We will be adding updates to our texture pack periodically, and when it is updated each time officially, a tweet and Facebook status update will be given to let you know, and a text document with a list of changes will be linked. You don’t have to patch the texture pack in, you only need to patch “HD Textures” in for it to work.
How to do all of this is explained after the jump, below the video; enjoy!
I thought my attempts at Loremaster were hard enough — how about the anti-Loremaster? Recently, I’ve been coming across a bunch of stories of patient and creative WoW players who have set crazy goals for themselves and reached them, against all odds.
Take Everbloom, for example, who posted her story on the official WoW forums of how she leveled to 85 without killing anything (mob, monster, critter, PvP or otherwise) and without (intentionally) completing any quests. After reaching level cap five days ago, her story has garnered her congratulations and even a little in-game fame. Here’s what she said of the experience:
Well I did it lol, it was certainly a different way of leveling, requires lots of patience, but I did get to see the whole game in a new light.
Being on the ground and sneaking around mining and herbing and eventually archaeology, going everywhere to get every single point of discovery xp that you can, really gives you a chance to see an amazing world up close and personal. I spent hours swimming around reefs and flying to the farthest reaches of the maps.
If you like to explore, and enjoy a challenge I really REALLY recommend this, I have been playing since day 1 on other characters and I even have an original Loremaster (you know, back when it was hard) and I saw so MANY new things with Everbloom that it really made it worthwhile for me to continue on with this character, and each level was a major achievement! Continue Reading
Yeah. That stupid android never saw it coming. And neither did I, because I was asleep the whole time!
I’ve been plowing through Global Agenda like a barnstormer through, well… a barn, lately. I’ve crammed so much of my free time into the game over the past few days that I’ve even neglected to my precious little Lore Hounds. That’s why I was surprised to see, upon logging in today, that I was magically Level 33. I was only 30 the night before! Had I been playing so hard that I entered the zombie state? Was I so obsessed that Global Agenda had become part of my muscle memory, and I continued sniping fools in a somnambulatory state? Did I reach that elusive, almost god-like status of MMO nirvana — sleep-leveling?!
Turns out I was (a little) more normal than I thought. I had, in fact, gone properly to bed last night (late this morning). Hi-Rez had simply implemented a maintenance patch in the meantime that, amongst other things, gave out what amounts to free levels.
Whew.
Well, that’s not quite right. What they actually did was change the experience requirements for the earlier levels in the game, and in fairness to all players that had already surpassed that part of the game, gave them an equivalent boost. So that jump from 30 to 33 was essentially all that extra XP they just took out of the game. I was really hoping the patch might’ve included the next phase of Sandstorm (I’m really itching to dive into some AvA combat, and they’d be wise not to hold off on that for too long as it seems to comprise the real meat of Global Agenda). It didn’t, but it did offer a few other minor change to the game, including the reintroduction of balanced teams in PvE and up-to-4-player queues for PvP. That should make iTZKooPA slightly more happy.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t MMORPGs supposed to be huge dynamic worlds where anything and everything could happen. Yet instead it seems that they are becoming just like single player RPGs, except you can play along with friends. Think about it. In a single player RPG, you create a character out of a half dozen or so choices and then build them to become the type of warrior, mage or whatever else you want. When you start the game there is a beginning and end, with a few hundred quests in between, some part of the main storyline some optional. Now stop me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that sound like nearly all the MMORPGs that have come out over the last few years? There are obviously a few exceptions to this, but for the most part they are.
You start your character and complete quests to get XP and since quests give you the most XP players tend to do all the quests possible to level up quickly. Now by doing all these quests you are following a straight line, go here and do this. Go here and bring this back, go deliver this. Nothing dynamic about this at all. Yes you can choose if you want to skip a quest and in what order you do the quests, but the main point is that everyone is doing basically all the same quests. Everyone is basically playing a single player RPG online with a few hundred other people at the same time.
Now once you complete all the quests and reach the level limit at least now the game should become more dynamic, and it does for many games. However it only does if your playing a MMORPG with PvP. If your playing a game that does not offer this than you are stuck in a lifeless linear game, nothing to do except what the developers tell you to do. Yes you can chat and explore where ever you want, but you are confined to what the developers allow you to do. Once you have completed the game and maxed your character out, theres really nothing to do except start a new character or play a different game until an expansion or patch with new content is released. Sorry, just not my thing.
However most RPGs do have some PvP which offers some dynamic interaction. Fighting against other real people offers a much greater challenge to gamers which enhances the game play. However even todays PvP are watered down. You can’t loot, no penalty for PK and no penalty for dying. Basically it has become bragging rights. “Haha I pwn u”. Again there are games out there that are exceptions to this, but most of them are many years old at this point. There really hasn’t been a new MMORPG that has taken PvP to the next level and we desperately need one.
A few days ago I mentioned that NCSoft’s Exteel opened up it’s Beta up to the public. So I went ahead, signed up and now have a few hrs into the game with my level 9 Corporal Mech. I gotta say that I’m loving the game so far, its basically like a extremely fasted paced version of Counter Strike. You log into a central chat area, similar to Blizzard’s BattleNet, and you can chat with other players as well as see a list of open games.
Once you join a game it’s strictly a FPS. There are all the usual game types, FFA, team, control points, as well as a survival type where players battle NPC mechs for a set period of time. There are no rounds, its all set to a timer with unlimited respawns for players, however the more often you die the longer it takes for you to respawn. Once the timer expires, the game ends and players receive XP and money(credits) depending how they did.
Once your back in the main chat room, you can go to your hangar to upgrade your Mech by purchasing better armor or weapons. Aside from upgrading your mech, you also earn XP to use on your Pilot to increase attributes, such as health, energy, aim, etc.
There are also Skills you can add to your mech to give them special moves to do. Currently you have to purchase these skills with credits, an idea I’m not very fond of. Even more so since these skills aren’t permanent, they have a 30 day timer, so you will eventually lose them and considering they aren’t cheap it seems like a waste of money. I think skills should be earned by winning matches as opposed to buying them, hopefully they’ll change this later on.
Aside from that, the graphics are pretty good, controls are very easy to learn and fun. Considering this is still in beta, I think the game can only get better.
