All Posts by Taera

We're all sitting in the hotel writing articles.

We just did the wave. 

Thought I'd share.

Laura, out!

Woah!  Sorry for the lack of blog entries lately.  I have had a busy last two days, and have lots to talk about!

Ok, so yesterday's highlight of the show was my Lineage 2 interview.  I had tons of Chronicle 5 questions ready, and was looking forward to tortur-interviewing producer Adam Davidson.  Sadly, though, Davidson had the "We can't talk about that yet" shield skill leveled up.  I had to reroute my line of questioning to be 50% innocent questioning and 50% weedling.  My efforts did have some reward, though.  While asking Davidson about bots and farmer-fighting policy, I remarked "Man, I can't wait for that Demon Sword Zariche" and Adam answered "Yeah, me- hey...you're crafty."

After that I wandered around the floor a bit.  I played through the NCSoft suite and got many, many T-Shirts, then tried my hand at Aegia's shooter game.  I got rocked, but I found out some cool tricks in the game.

After the show, I went to the NCSoft party.  The place was packed and I think my biggest accomplishment was not falling in the pool.  I had a great time.

Today I wandered around a bit more, finally hitting West Hall up.  We wandered through the PS3 area and saw a great looking game, Heavenly Sword.  It was so gorgeous and engaging that I wish the PS3 wasn't oh...500 dollars.  Damn consoles.

I tried the Aegia game again and this time came in second place.  It's a really fun game and I wish I had a physics card.  Why must all the cool things be expensive?!

NCSoft did!  After my Vanguard and NCSoft interviews, I dragged Jon to the NCSoft booth for the opening act of Mutator.  They weren't as impressive as last year (IMHO) but they were still really cool.  For those of you who haven't heard of Mutator, they're a band that plays with fire.  And hoola-hoops.  Pictures hopefully to come tomorrow morning.

I wandered around with some friends for a bit, checking out the 2k and Webzen booths.  Then I had my AutoAssault and CoH interviews, and those went AWESOMELY!  Actual articles will be up tomorrow, but here's a teaser, CoH/V people: I know something you've all wanted to know since I2! Nyah nyah!

Afternoon consisted of a lot of sitting down and dazing out.  There were a few highlights, though.  I played a bit of Aion at the NC booth, and when I found out there was PvP...I've got a couple of mathces lined up with friends tomorrow.  They're going down.  Like that one wizard did, 5 times in a row...melee power!

Culmination of the day was in the AGEIA booth.  They had a tournement set up where 12 players could compete in an FPS (I don't know the name of it, but it was crazy awesome!).  I was hanging out with a friend, Philip, who signed up for one of the last matches of the day.  I got to watch him school the competition.

Well, ok.  At first, it looked like he had no chance.  He easily had the majority of the players beat, gunning or grenading them down or running them over, Halo-hog style.  But there was one player who had found an airship type vehicle, that could get out of everything elses' range and fire devastating missles down on everyone else.  The airship dude finally wiped out, and my Philip grabbed the ship and got the winning kill in the *last second of the game*.  Literally, the timer clicked down to zero just as his missle landed on the ground next to some poor defenseless player.  It was awesome.

We're probably going to head back tomorrow, and this time I might get into the action.  I'm not the best at FPSes, but...I'm pretty good at running people over! :)

We've got an early morning tomorrow - hotel 'net is too slow for picture uploading, so we're going to the press room early - so... Laura, out!

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Originally posted by Obiyer

Oh, Stradden said the restaurant name was the "Saddle Ranch". Did you ride the mechanical bull too?

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4:45 am - Tuesday, May 9th.  This was when my day started.  This was 20 minutes after my last day ended.

But even after a largely sleepless night and a long, cross-country flight, I'm nothing but excited to be in LA and at e3.

Laura here (aliases: the dark mistress of mimes, NCSoft Bane) , representing the female faction of MMORPG.com.  Carolyn and Danielle will be joining me soon (I think they get here today! Yey!) but for now it's just me and the guys.

Yesterday I had a long, long flight from Lynchburg, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia to LA.  My first flight was really boring, but on my second flight I was surrounded by fellow gamers headed to the conference.  We made Wii jokes and compared Halo stories.  Ah, gamer bonding! :)

I met up with the rest of the gang at the hotel.  We went to get some Mexican food, where Garrett gave Dana lessons in Fajita crafting.  For MMORPG.com's patanted Fajita methods, see Garrett's upcoming blog entry ;)

Next up for my day: I have a Vanguard interview at 9 and I take over - I mean interview - NCSoft at 10.  Excited! Yey!  I'll post again soon!

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Originally posted by Tidic

So if you ask 5 girls and 5 guys on WoW PvP how they play the game, they are more likely to say the same thing since its largely only thing that offers progress and success.

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This is a very good point.  Games are, by their nature, largely competitve.  Even if players are working together and cooperating to combat another force (i.e. NPCs) they are usually still competitive among their own ranks, comparing levels, gear, etc.  Even if this were not the case, players are still competing against SOMETHING - that something just happens to be the NPC server instead of each other.

I have played a variety of MMOs in my time, and my behavior varies dependant on where I go and how I have chosen to progress.  In Lineage 2 I'm a healer, and my goal to to keep my party alive while we kill anything that dares to breath within a 5 foot radius of us.  In City of Villains I am a brute, and my goal is to draw as much aggro as I can, usually by means of smashing.  In ATITD I grew flowers.  In Guild Wars I camped the arenas.

And guess what?  When I played City of Villains,  I never met any botanists.

If you're looking for a tank that can deal a little damage, I'd go for the Shillien Knight (Dark Elf) or the Dark Avenger (Human).  The SK has life drain abilities that help you keep your HP up as you fight...I've tanked for groups in white or yellow con dungeons with no healer.  The Dark Avenger gets a really cool panther summon, but it costs crystals and EXP.

Paladins are often thought of as "gimped", but truth is, it's just one of the most area-dependant classes.  If you aren't hunting undead, yeah, you're gimped...but NCSoft has been adding more areas with undead monsters and smart Paladins should be just fine.