The Gaming Journey of Khannage

WoW - Death Knight - Bloody Breakout Quest

2010-08-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

It's been many years since I've played World of Warcraft and a few of my friends want to play on a weekly occurrence to experience the new Wrath of the Litch King content. I re-roll a Death Knight and I'm happily running through the content until I hit the quest "Bloody Breakout". This is a quest where you protect and injured/captured Death Knight in a keep and he casts a bubble to protect you whilst you attack the waves of bad guys. The quest is completed by taking the last bad guys head (Valroth's Head).

The key to the quest (after a couple of tries) is to stand on the grate on the floor within the bubble. Here you are in melee range of some of the mobs and can pull them to you using your Death Knight ability. It also means you can hit Valroth without being outside the bubble and should make it easy to complete.

Hope this helps!

Khannage

Battlefield Bad Company 2 PC Install Issues

2010-03-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

I finally got Bad Company 2 for the PC arrive today from Play.com and started the install at 8pm, here we are 2 hours later and we're finally patching!

The first time, it took a long time to install and after the copy of files was complete the installer asks how you wish to activate your product. I chose to activate online with a maximum 10 time install . After selecting this option the installer froze and I had to force the application to close.

I ran the game and it came up with a "paul.dll" (strange DLL name I know) error, but I clicked OK and it logged me into the game. When I logged into Multi player however it said it couldn't authenticate at this time.

It turns out that after the activation online, it installs Punk Buster and it looks like my issues were related to that. So if you get the Paul.DLL error or can't connect, try re-installing to make sure it finishes the process.

Hope to see you on the Battlefield!

Update 1 - I deleted Paul.DLL and it works without that error now, I think it may have been related to Punk Buster.

Update 2 - If you get kicked from servers, try this URL to manually download and update PunkBuster: http://evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.php

Screw the queues! Give me my Assault Rifle

2010-02-07T14:39:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday night here in the UK and I've just finished playing football, had dinner and watched some TV with the Mrs. It's the only real time of the weekend when I usually get a solid hour of gaming before going to bed in preparation for the week ahead. I logged into Star Trek Online to try and invest more effort into my character because I haven't spent much time in the game since launch but I've been enjoying it so far. I logged into the game to see there was a queue of 650 people and the number was going up fast. In about five minutes I went down 3 places so I thought screw this, I'll go and play some Battlefield Bad Company 2.

I pre-ordered Bad Company 2 based on some feedback I've been reading on the LANArchy forums, a group of gamers who organise LAN events near London. I knew they would be playing it at the next couple of LAN's so I saw the £26 bargain on Play.com and took advantage. If you pre-order you get into the beta with a single large map with a push and take style of objective gameplay. When I first tried the game something didn't feel right, first of all I died a lot... now this isn't really something new when it came to FPS games but usually I get the odd lucky shot or something, the points also went up really slowly and I started to think there was a huge learning curve. Before I went to football tonight I changed the settings to medium (textures still set to height) and the game really opened up. It was so much more responsive, still looked amazing and I got 3 kills in a row right after the change!!

I thought I would get low FPS with PC performance issues, but it didn't feel like the usually frame rate drop, it seem to loose it's responsiveness in combat but didn't feel like it was frame rate related. If you're playing it and having a hard time then it's maybe something to try.

I've been playing the game for the last hour and had some great matches. It's been a while since I've had the same sort of feeling I had when I used to play Battlefield 1942 and the Desert Combat mod. The infantry combat is a mix of intense gun duals and strategic placement and tactics, there are just enough vehicles to provide those "Oh shit... it's a tank" moments whilst not spoiling things. The built in stats and leveling system is also great fun, I looked forward to checking the stats and unlocks after each game and they persist which almost adds those MMO elements of progression to the game play but the core game is what it's all about.

There is only a single level in the beta so I can only imagine the other 7 that are being included in the retail release in March. So from having a bad experience waiting in line in STO it's actually turned out pretty good as I've had some of the best FPS style combat that's not been at a LAN for a long time. Thank you the 650 people waiting in line for the STO server!

Star Trek Online - First few steps

2010-02-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

I pre-ordered StarTrek Online from HMV in the UK just after Christmas because I was looking for something a little different. I've been playing WAR for over a year now and wanted to try something new and maybe come back to WAR when/if an expansion is announced.

Although I play MMO's most days, I'm quite casual when it comes to session time, some days I can play just over an hour, sometimes less. I've always liked the idea of Eve Online but know I wouldn't be able to invest the time required to progress as I would like. When I first saw Star Trek Online I thought this would give me the opportunity to try a space based MMO (well 60% of it is anyway) without requiring the hard core play styles you hear about for Eve.

Because I pre-ordered, I got access to the head start which started last Friday 29th Jan. I had a fairly busy weekend out of game so wasn't able to put in more than a couple of hours but I did manage to create Khannage of the USS Eisenstein who is a Tactical Officer. From what I can see I chose the DPS class and have a smaller ship that other classes but higher firepower.

When you begin you start on a ship within a fleet fighting a Borg invasion, it's pretty cool to feel as though you're in the middle of a battle and you want to get going picking up the actions/abilities etc. You start on foot but soon move into space which is my favorite part of Start Trek Online so far. The space combat is 3D and requires a lot of maneuvering and shield adjustment whilst picking the correct weapons and abilities to use.Some missions automatically enter you into a group and it's great fun to see numerous ships fighting a common enemy. These work in very much the same drop in/out play style as Warhammer Online's Public Quest system which is great to see in other MMO's.

The ground combat isn't bad, it's just not great. The movement seems a little unresponsive and generally the enemy try to rush into you for melee. The inclusion of flanking and cover is very interesting and does add a little to the combat however I think had the game only had this aspect then it wouldn't have been anywhere near to where it is now.

The head start has been pretty shaky so far, with the downtime, disconnects and 1000 player queue times (Sunday evening). I think Cryptic need to get some work done to the infrastructure as soon as possible so it doesn't impact the retail release.

As I play more I will post more of my experiences!

TIP: Oh and the menu to queue for PVP and go on your bridge is in the top right hand corner, to the right of the mini-map when you click the downward pointing arrow (to expand the options).

My Warhammer On-line Top 5 Desired Features

2010-01-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

I've been playing Warhammer Online since beta and continue to play (Jan 2010). I was thinking of things I would like to see in the game over the coming months and hope that we continue to see updates even though Mythic has experience recent cutbacks. Below is a list of the top 5 features I think and hope would increase the potential of the game (for me anyway).

5. Tier 4, Pre-Rank 40 Scenarios

Once you hit Rank 32 (of 40) in Warhammer Online you are forced into Tier 4, whilst this is great to see how the end game plays out, it's quite hard to continue with scenarios until you increase your Rank and get better gears. This is because you are included in the 32-40 Ranks and many of the Rank 40 players have extremely good gear and it can leave you feeling really useless. I think there should be a 32-38 range scenario queue however I guess the main issue with that is population and making sure enough people are around to make the scenarios pop.

4. Lifetime Subscriber Option

Even though I want to try other MMO's (Star Trek Online), I would love to retain my WAR fix by paying a one of fee and then being able to come back at any point. I think the only options at the moment are continue to pay the subs or use an unlimited trial account.

3.New EU WAR Website

The EU WAR website (created by GOA, the EU publisher of WAR) has always bugged me, it's Flash based, looks like it's from the 90's and is nothing near the standard of the WAR US site. I understand it needs to be multilingual but for the love of god copy the US site and add the development to that!

2.Cross Server Scenario Queues

I guess there aren't that many WAR servers anymore but I think cross server queues for scenarios would always mean that there are scenarios popping(or more anyway) and more varied teams.

1. Third Faction

I've left the easy one until last... I don't really understand why 3 factions wasn't built in from day one. DAoC had it, Planetside had it and I think it balances the factions a lot better than two. For example, one side has more people and is kicking the other factions butt, the 3rd faction can either form a limited alliance and fight back, or start taking objectives from the larger faction and therefore bringing the fight on two fronts. This is by no means easy but would really make me happy if this came in an expansion later this year (we'll see...).

Gaming in 2009

2009-12-24T02:43:00.000-08:00

2009 has has been a year of a single MMO and numerous single player titles for me. The MMO I've played this year is Warhammer Online which has filled my "MMO Time" full of PVP content and as a result, I have a rank 40 Archmage and various alts (2 rank 20+, 1 rank 30+). I've not really done much PVE content in Warhammer Online because I think it's really not needed and I don't play it for that type of content. You can level in PVP and it's much more varied and allows you to play with the time you have and achieve something.

Other gaming titles this year include Dawn of War 2, which I played a little but I actually prefer the original base building type of game play found in Dawn of War. It was a shame they removed that game mechanic but I guess they wanted you to focus on single/small squads and enjoying that experience.

I have also played the single player of Modern Warfare 2, which was a great cinematic experience, played Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 mostly at a small LAN event I attend. I also played FarCry 2 and some other titles at the LAN.

Next year I plan to try Star Trek Online, I'm not really a big Star Trek fan but I loved the latest movie and really like some of the elements of the MMO which is due out in February. We may also see the new Star Wars MMO coming out in 2010, I have to try that as it looks like a great PVE experience so far.

I hope everyone had a great 09 in gaming like I did and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

A little history

2009-12-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

I've always blogged about the games I've played but I wanted to create a home for all of the gaming blogs I write that aren't just specific to a single title. So here we are, khannage.blogspot.com.

I am a male in my late twenties and have been gaming for most of my life, I started with the Gameboy and old NES consoles but slowly moved on to PC gaming (1994/1995). I remember a Christmas Eve being around a friends house who was having a party and we went up stairs to find his dad's laptop and played Doom shareware all night, that was my first taste of FPS gaming on the PC. Around the same time I played Civ, Reunion, Transport Tycoon and then later Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D. From there the list grows rather large, but I mainly play MMO's and FPS titles at present.

My first MMO was Planetside back in 2004 and loved it! A mix of FPS and persistent world really did things for me and I really hope SOE create something similar with Planetside 2 when it's out. From Planetside I spent a couple of years playing WoW (everyone has right?) and the played a number of the MMO titles until lately I've been playing Warhammer Online (since launch).

In the future I hope to try the Star Trek MMO (I'm not a huge Start Trek fan but the game looks great), however the game I am waiting for most is the Warhammer 40k MMO in development at Vigil games which is due out in 2011. I'm a big fan of the 40K universe and read a lot of the Black Library novels.

I hope this explains a little about me and I hope you check back soon for more updates!