Talk to me. Who knows what about this?

1. Woke up on the sofa
2. Stumbled to bathroom & had a wash + 2 brushes of teeth to make up for missed one last night. Mouth still tastes of Thai Red Curry.
3. Made breakfast; cerial & a cuppa tea. Discovered it buuuurns to gargle with hot tea
4. Sat down at P.C & fumbled for the "on" button
5. Checked out Black Temple, EvE Corp site & Van Hemlock Podcast update (no new podcast)
6. Logged into EvE Online
7. Undocked ship, flew to asteroid belt, killed 2 pirates, started to mine
8. Notice screen message "Server will shut down in 5 minutes for non-scheduled maintenance"

Players in select states around the U.S. have found that their monthly subscription fee is slightly higher than expected. With the rise of many online subscription-based services, several states have begun to apply a tax to services that use such a model, and this tax is an additional cost that players are seeing added onto the base subscription rate.

Specifically, residents of the following states will be charged this tax:
- Arizona
- Illinois
- Massachusetts
- New York
- Texas
- Washington

I wonder if they'll have PvP.

Titan Online – Beta Launch

Just sitting here listening to Episode 48 of the Van Hemlock podcast (ifyourenotlisteningtoitwhynot TM) and they mentioned that a new MMO game launches this month called Titan Online. Being a dutiful casual gamer, I decided to take a peek at the website.

Funcom annoyed me. Not that niggling bit of annoyance but a sense of outrage and anger. I felt their handling of the release of Age of Conan, the non-delivery of features they promised and the back handed insults to those who pre-ordered and secured CE copies of the game was atrocious. To such a degree that I never wanted to give them a red cent of my money ever again and wouldn't even send them poison laced cookies. I remember the discussions and arguments we had over my stubborn refusal to even try the game. Then, last weekend, I became so fed up with Warhammer Online and Electronic Arts that I binned it.

And what did I do? I scoured my gaming nook to see what else there is to play. Wrath of the Lich King, still sealed. That was tempting, but it would mean resubscribing and I really wasn't in the mood to go find a credit card or a game card. Mirror's Edge? Assassin's Creed? Good games, but I wanted something online. Something with forums where I could laugh and joke and marvel at the meltdown some people experienced.

And what did my eyes light on? Age of Conan. Sealed. Wrapped up snugly and tucked somewhere underneath my Dungeon Siege boxes. I pulled it out and put it next to me. Then pondered the moral dilemma.

Let's count the classes that Warhammer Online released with. For Destruction there are:

Chaos

• Chosen - Tank
• Magus - RDPS
• Zealot - Healer
• Marauder - MDPS

Greenskins

• Black Orc - Tank
• Squig Herder - RDPS
• Shaman - Healer
• Choppa - MDPS (Coming soon)

Dark Elves

• Black Guard - Tank
• Sorcer - RDPS
• Disciple of Khaine - Healer
• Witch Elf - MDPS

Now, let's look at Order!

Dwarves

• Ironbreaker - Tank
• Engineer - RDPS
• Rune Priest - Healer
• Hammerer - MDPS (Coming soon)

Empire

• Knight of the Blazing Sun - Tank
• Bright Wizard - RDPS
• Warrior Priest - Healer
• Witch Hunter - MDPS

High Elves

• Swordmaster - Tank
• Shadow Hunter - RDPS
• Archmage - Healer
• White Lion - MDPS

So, count all of those up. That is 24 classes, but the two sides are mirrors. The Swordmaster and the Black Orc are relatively similar. The Chosen and the Knight of the Blazing Sun are relatively similar. And so on and so forth. So 12 effective classes. What's my point? That's too many. Way too many.

I spoke to my old gaming pal yesterday. He's still playing a bit of WoW, a lot of EVE and recently something called Requiem Bloodymare. http://www.playrequiem.com/ which was released to the world in a rather quiet manner around the back end of June this year.

Guess what? It's free to play - or at least mostly. It's one of those ones where if you want special items you pay for them but essentially the basic game is free. You can even buy a mount at level 1 if you want, and he e-mailed me a pic of his mount which is a bi-plane lol.

For their second attempt at a Star Wars MMO, LucasArts made the wise choice of going for the company that put the Star Wars name back in the world of gaming a few years ago.

Link

No official announcement yet, but I doubt EA's CEO would just throw a blatant lie at E3.

This piece of news doubles my interest in Warhammer Online, only to see how EA handles it. I sincerely hope they won't ruin the KotOR series, which is arguably the only good Star Wars thing left (I'm not sold on the supposed awesomeness of Force Unleashed).

Half of me is incredibly excited about this, a good non-fantasy MMO would be a nice change. Still, this kind of means that there won't be a proper KotOR 3 (at least for the time being), which is a shame.

A Perfect World, if you remember correctly, was the MMO that made such a big splash because their website looked so remarkably similar to that of World of Warcraft. Similar? Who am I kidding - the word is exactly. They also attracted a fairly high profile for their theme song, which was sung by a rather prominent Malaysian / Chinese pop artist. And is actually not a bad song, even for boy-pop. Well, the good news is that they released on the 28th of May. And the strange news is that I have had a look at the game.