Sorry for the lack of updates, I've joined the millions of people who have purchased Starcraft II lately and have not resurfaced... yet. Between trying to learn the game (first RTS game ever for me) and messing around with UMS/custom maps - my free time has been severely taken up. :P That being said, I'm maybe a silver quality player in 1v1 but I don't really do 1v1 (I don't even do 2v2 haha). I'm

So this Monday (July 19th) Valve released a free (yes, free) game called Alien Swarm. It is a 4 person birds-eye view shooter that can be played solo, co-op, or multiplayer. This mod was originally created by Black Cat Games for Unreal Tournament 2004 - the developers were hired by Valve (these devs have also been working on the Left 4 Dead series as well as Portal 2). Interesting that they only

Alright, so whenever I have free time at work (aka lunch break) I like to take some time and read Massively articles. Unfortunately I think most of their commenters are haters because finding a positive comment is like digging for a needle in a haystack. Seriously, since when have gamers become so whiny and ranty about games that aren't even released yet (such as SW:TOR)? I'll have to agree with them

Lately I've been playing a lot of Transformice... it has a silly name, and it's a silly game, but it's tons of fun and perfect for people who can only squeeze in a few minutes a day. Just imagine 20+ mice, 1 shaman who can create planks (and more) affected by physics, and a mad scramble to be first to return the cheese. Basically you get to play a mouse, who wants to collect some cheese and return

For those of you checking out free to play mmos: Turbine is making Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) free to play soon! It just entered closed beta and you can sign up for it here. The client is 10gb and their downloader goes pretty slow... Is it worth it? We'll see either tonight or tomorrow when I get my hands on it! I've got the latest Allods patch downloaded, but haven't had a chance to play.

So I didn't have the time last night to log on Allods (or even download the patch haha, gg me) but I'll definitely check in within the next day and have an "impressions" post sometime up this weekend. Perhaps it'll come earlier if the changes infuriate me as much as some of the posters are expressing on the forums. I know Allods gets a lot of flack when patches come, but the onslaught of negativity

I'll be checking out the new patch with my psi (who still hasn't hit 40) - but since all my friends have also quit, I'll need to find a place to call home. With that being said, are there any casual guilds on Tensess recruiting? If not and if everyone is on Nezeb, I feel a reroll coming on... :P (I still have my healer on Nezeb!) With that said, any guilds that are recruiting - please leave your faction/server/contact

Hey readers! Since I'm undergoing revamping of this blog, the name will no longer be "Life in Tensess" and the URL will no longer be "lunith.blogspot.com" Instead, they will change to Just Duet and justduet.blogspot.com respectively. The name "just duet" is a play on my alias Duet and on the phrase "JUST DO IT!" I'll be changing the address on July 9th. Speaking of names, what names do you typically

Alright! I'm finally posting! Right now I seem to be in an MMO slump, over the past half year I've tried out the following games: Left 4 Dead 2, Allods Online, APB (beta), Aion, and now DDO. L4D2 was probably the longest lasting game, something I played almost every night for almost 2 months... However, unlike the first game (which lasted me almost half a year) I don't have a set versus team to run

Hey people, whoever is still left anyways, I'm revamping my blog to a general gaming and art blog. I'll admit I've missed this blog and I've missed writing articles, even though I'm not that good of a writer. :) I've been a fan of user generated guides since forever ago, and I love babbling on about whatever. Since getting a job I've started running out of time to really game, but I still love to

Hey all, I have not played Allods for 3+ weeks now. And have no motivation to do so as my friends have also quit - some to go as far as uninstalling. :P Perhaps I'll be back in the future when there is more content or what not, perhaps not. After 2 years of WoW and plenty of other misc mmorpgs, I think I may just be growing out of / getting bored of the genre... Right now I have far more fun logging

Hey all, I haven't played Allods for about a whole week now - was preoccupied with the EU All Points Bulletin beta (which was pretty fun, but like many MMO betas: has its imba and glitch issues). So how is everyone with Allods? Still having fun? I have a lot to catch up with but we'll see if I'm even up for it... Just redownloaded a psx emulator so I might be MIA for a few more days. ;) My most important

I seem to have a few returning readers - so I'd like to say... thanks for reading! So does anyone else play without sounds and/or turns on their own tunes while playing? If so, what kind of music gets you leveling/pvping/grinding/etc? Youtube links are appreciated, as I'm looking for new music... ;) I find that I grind best to music that is repetitive... I'll admit I also like to sing along to

As of this entry, I'm only 80% away from dinging 40. I'm not too fond of Dragon Ring, after dodging 2 geared 40s with warbanners patrolling the whole map for the entire banner duration... so I've decided to check out Yazes Shard. Fortunately that place has a lot more quests and the terrain is a bit easier to navigate... aka, not filled to the brim with 39 mobs that I can't kill without using spectral

Although it took them almost 5 days to fix the crash - at least its done. The latest patch has cleared majority of users from the annoying memory leak that made many aspects of the game unplayable (notably instances and astral). Even I got a taste of it - ran tt2 with a few new 40s and we wiped on a boss soley due to the fact that all 3 40s managed to crash during a boss encounter. That aside, I can't

I wanted to take this time to remind everyone to take Allods/Gala-net's customer satisfaction survey. This is probably a better way to make them notice that some people aren't happy. With that being said, please be extremely honest with your form so they get the right data. :D Who knows, you might even win some ingame goodies like incense and crystal chips! Another way to get your opinions on the

I've been meaning to draw more art of my characters, but I never seem to get around to doing it. :P So here's a  quick doodle of my league healer... Yup, I rolled a male elf! Although, if you ask me, it's not much different from rolling a female elf... just I don't have the flimsy Disney-like fairy wings. ;) He's only level 8 right now, but I'm out of fatigue for the day. If you see me on Tensess,

As far as I know, there is currently no fix for this. The crashing is caused by a memory leak - the longer your client/game runs (AOgame.exe) the more memory it eats until it crashes. It seems like for most people this is somewhere around 1.5gb of memory. Basically, the game isn't crashing "randomly" and it only feels like its lagging because it's using up so much of your computer's resources. I

I am pretty much busy with finals and projects until mid next week... so I probably won't have time to really write anything long and meaningful like I have planned. I still do check up on the forums whenever I'm taking a break though. :D The forums are a mess and I'm tired of going in there and trying to sort things out. I'm in no way affiliated to Gala-net, so any of my "defending" posts I make

Hello readers (whoever you are!), if you are looking for a faster way to get the latest patch without waiting for the launcher's torrent... look no further! I have uploaded the patch on Filefront: http://www.filefront.com/16303063/1.0.06.36.1_.zip And Megaupload: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CW0IXX39 Includes files for:1.0.05.45.1 -> 1.0.06.35.31.0.06.35.3 -> 1.0.06.36.1 Edit: If you get the

Yesterday I was able to talk to Darren Allarde, or GM Chomp, directly on ventrilo concerning the future of Allods. Darren is the associate producer of Allods, he works for Gala-net and you might have seen him ingame (or just on [world] chat) under the name "CHOMP_". Sometimes you'll also find him on the forums or posting on his developer blog. Novograd Times is doing an interview with him soon and

One can only ignore game imbalances and flaws for so long, and people can only be so patient. It would suffice if the GMs promised balancing patches in the future, but seeing how we get a glimpse of RU patches anyways - the future looks bleak. What's especially questionable is how RU servers are going to add "new content" aka upping the level cap to 42, without fixing all the bugs and glitches of

With the right build and playstyle you'll dominate any other class, but getting up to that level takes a lot of trial-and-error. - TraumaWhat do psionicists do, and why would you play one? It's hard to describe exactly what a psi is, especially compared to WoW, because there is no copy. The closest thing I can find is: CC like a frost mage with spells that look like a mix of arcane mage + shadow priest.

Amount of crying and whining over the new patch notes is making me stay away from the forums, which is also making me not generate any new ideas for content... :P Next post will probably be a Coba Plateau rep guide, but I haven't even found the rep quests yet so...My latest article is an interview with Lockness, an Empire summoner on Tensess. He's the second player in open beta to have reached the

If you've endured the reputation grind in Asee-Teph - I applaud you (just the thought of that keeps me far away) . The grind in Eljune is a lot easier in terms of not having 40s 1-shot you every few minutes, however since Forestfolk is a neutral faction, you will most likely run into the opposite faction. If you like avoiding pvp - I'll promise you, at times you'll really wish you had a war banner...(click

Since we are getting a new patch within the next few weeks, a lot of players are speculating about the "hidden" changes, and other players are upset about the future of cash shops. Although NA servers have Fear of Death, and are not changing it for awhile... our Allods friends in Russia have voted it away, to be replaced with a "cursed" item system. This has caused some unrest in the forums, but no

What I love about faction games is that you can end up really cheering for your own faction. Now, this can go wrong when your own faction has inner disputes and/or players start acting too personal and too insulting towards the other faction (but perhaps some people like this?) I felt like WoW made this work out very well - with catchphrases like "for the horde/alliance!" that you can yell while running

(screenshot from Novograd Times - healer casting circle of healing)If you've ever visited the healer archetype forum on the official Allods forums, you'll notice that the majority of the threads are about melee healers. Well, what about the players who don't want to play melee healer? Occasionally you'll also come upon a few threads discussing pve healing... but what about people like me who want

(I don't have a cool Allods guild screenie yet, so I'll leave you with this instead)I'm not sure how many people read my blog, since a lot of the newer comments I've been getting are guest posts... but how are your all's experiences with the social aspect of Allods? Have you joined a guild? Did you start the game with a group of friends? Did you make some friends along the way? Or maybe, you're just

Yes, a lot of my entries will be discussing pvp... because I like pvp, but I don't like Allods pvp.I love how much e-peen waving there is on the forums right now about pvp. Specifically certain guild members vs other guild members of another faction. I can't believe people are already using words like "skill" and calling other players bad. I'm sorry, but if WoW arenas was viewed as one of the least

Before anything else is said, here is a shameless plug for the Novograd Times - I will be starting up a "guiding new players" column on there soon. But no worries, all my opinionated observations and such will still be posted on this blog.There is a thread on the forums asking about the possibility of including battlegrounds or arenas in Allods. The replies are fairly interesting, some people agree

If you have played a caster, you will notice that sometimes your cast bar will go to 100% but your spell will not cast (especially if you are getting hit by a mob/player). Spell push back is a good mechanic, but is fairly useless when your cast bar does not work properly - all you can do is guess when your spell will actually go off. This happens to other classes as well, such as scouts not doing

Pardon my earlier rant, we'll now return to regular posts. :DAs of this moment I'm not far level 27 - where I will finish up some key quests in Asee-Teph and move onto Eljune. Overall, my experience in this zone was good; the ganking didn't see as "game-breaking" as many forum posts suggested. However, I do agree that there are a lot of things in the area that make pvp less fun than it ought to be,

Putting it under a cut because it is wholeheartedly ranting, mostly about game mechanics. Call it whining if you wa

Making speedy progress, I'm actually halfway through level 25 now. :) I spent a good hour grinding out about 40% of a level, then grouped up with a player I met in Dead Sea and knocked out about 10 quests. Fortunately, we didn't run into many league players! But lots of thanks to Teggycon the summoner for helping me with my quests even though he had already finished them.Anyways, grinding is not bad

There's an excellent post on the official Allods forums giving some tips on surviving in a pvp environment. Here are my additions:Be aware. In most mmorpgs, basic player awareness will keep you alive a lot longer. This means panning your camera around every once in awhile to know your surroundings. Better awareness is usually something good pvpers have, and will also aid in pve. In AT, make sure you

Well, I'll just start this off by saying I died... a LOT. And today is only my first day in the notorious Holy lands, aka Asee-Teph! Did it take me a long time to finally ding 24? Yes... yes it did. Was it THAT bad? Nope.Several times it was my own fault (man those League Defenders have a huuge aggro radius, I got hit for 87k by one before I even saw him on my screen) for running around with my flag

Today I logged on happily to idle in Nezeb, typing "/z lfg lab13" every couple of minutes in hopes of starting a group. Fortunately the party filled up quickly, and we all teleported down within 20 minutes of the party creation. I felt like I was blessed with patient players, as my previous attempts at creating a legit instance group failed miserably. Everyone was nice and understanding (in our noob

Alright I just spent the last few minutes looking over templates and tweaking things, I'm not particularly happy with any of these pre-set themes so it'll be awhile before this blog gets its correct look.I'm trying to search for a template that is simple and will actually allow minor changes without causing headaches. :) Hopefully I'll find what I'm looking for before the end of tod

I've officially reached the much anticipated Holy lands, and in my first 10 minutes I've already seen 3 League players, 2 of which were labeled as level ??. I figured questing during the mornings would be fairly quiet, but I guess I'm wrong! Unfortunately I'm still 20% away from level 23, and have not run Lab13 yet, so I will be enjoying a few days idling in Nezeb until I ding before I continue questing.

Hello! This is Lunith from Empire on Tensess... This blog will just be a recording of my adventure on Allods Online.A little about my gaming past:The only other mmorpg I played for an extended period of time was World of Warcraft. I joined during the 1st expansion (Burning Crusade) and played on and off all the way until Wrath of the Lich King. I did a fair share of raiding (from casual 10mans to