Another weekend flew by at a vastly accelerated rate and now time is moving slooooooooowlyyyyy. I still blame the Large Hadron Collider partial experiment.

Friday evening we went out on with some friends and visited Chapitô’s bar. It was pleasent, and as amazing as it may seem, I didn’t remember ever having been there despite living in Lisbon or its general vicinity for over twenty years. We had to leave early as we had something scheduled for the following morning.

Two more event farms visited on Saturday. One excluded already (lack of info on the site = wasting our time/fuel), the other we liked. So we now have a pre reservation in two farms for the exact same day. When we chose we can let the other one know so they have the day freed up. If I recall correctly we now only have one more farm already selected for us to go there, but I’d like to see at least one more other that that one. The thing is, I’m not sure there’s a decent one. Maybe one belonging to the same chain of one of the ones we liked? Hm… We will see.

Between both farm visits we had lunch at a nice restaurant called O Faisão, in Mafra. Yummy food, nice look. Took some photos but just as it’s been usual lately, I have yet uploaded them to flickr. I have however already transfered them from the camera to the hard drive, so with any luck I might post them tonight or tomorrow evening.

We had some friends over for dinner that evening and we watched The Host. I didn’t get why it has 7.1 on IMDb, because it has a lot of ‘what the hell?’ parts, but we did have a laugh at its expense so it was not a complete waste of time. Plus the evening was also pleasent.

On Sunday we planned on going to Intercasa, over at FIL but since it was the final day (we only heard about it Saturday, oops) it was packed and we decided to skip it and just visit the new Fnac at Vasco da Gama and take a walk around Parque das Nações.

What Happens to Science Fiction Writers After They Die - what are the graves of those who were the greatest sci-fi literary geniuses like?

Rock, Paper, Scissors made a list of the 10 Things All PC Games Should Have. Worth a read. Personally, I also think the Escape key should close the present in-game menu, like Blizzard has on its games since at least Diablo.

Thrustmaster has made a wiimote glowing lightsaber add-on. About time someone made this. Too bad The Force Unleashed is so crappy for the Wii, that I bought the XBox 360 version instead. Maybe I can play Zelda using a lightsaber. Hmm…

Mark Jacobs, Mythic’s CEO recently gave an interview about Warhammer Online, MMOs and more. Really nice read if you’re interested in the MMO scene.

Some highlights:

It does seem like a big MMO killer is simply running out of money and having to launch in whatever state the game was in when the money ran out.

MJ: Absolutely

I’ve seen this happen several times, more recently in my memory is Age of Conan’s failure, but another good example was Star Wars Galaxies. I hope BioWare does what it’s known for and waits the right amount of game matureness and stability before releasing their Knights of the Old Republic MMO a few years from now. I’d like a good sci-fi MMO, especially if it’s Star Wars.

It’s the same thing we hope will happen with WoW versus WAR. We’re not saying we’re going to beat them, but we’re not afraid of them. We have our own hook; that’s RvR, and we’re pushing it and we’re pushing it, just as we’re pushing other innovations in the game. Blizzard is number one; we don’t mind being number two, especially if it’s a competitive number two. I can’t worry about that.

Mythic was smart. Instead of aiming to make the WoW-killer game, they decided to go for a niche market, who doesn’t have all their needs fulfilled by World of Warcraft - PvP fans. At the same time they didn’t neglect PvE fans such as myself and made a world, where you can level up by questing.

MJ: Well, you know where the visuals come from. The visuals come from Games Workshop, and if there’s any similarity to the WoW visuals, you need to ask Blizzard where they got their visuals come from. (laughs) We can trace our visuals directly to the Games Workshop IP, which came about before Blizzard was even a company. Just go back and look at the old Games Workshop books.

(…)

So, for the people who look at this and say, “Boy, some of these things are similar,” also keep in mind that we’ve been making MMOs since before Blizzard ever did. A lot of the things in the game, be they RvR or other things, come from Camelot.

But even having said that, knowing that full well, games — MMOs or not — have a tendency to be somewhat derivative of each other.

[ Source: Gamasutra ]

After reading this, I’m getting the sense that Mythic will be more demanding on GOA’s efficiency, and not let months go by where Europe is waiting for patches already out in the US. Today’s MMO reality is not the same as it was five years ago when I was playing Dark Age of Camelot and we accepted it because where else would we go MMO-wise? Mark Jacobs seems to be well aware that things are different now.

So far Warhammer Online managed to impress me. Like MJ says in the interview, I don’t think it will beat World of Warcraft (gimme Universe of StarCraft!). In fact, I’m a firm believer that if there will be an MMO that will beat WoW in numbers, it will be another Blizzard creation, based on WoW’s engine, which has been improved steadly for years.

WAR does manage to have innovations despite the more and more explored area of MMOs. Public Quests are definitely an innovation, the larger amount of things you can do from level one, also is (want to PvP? Go right ahead). I won’t mention Realm versus Realm in this context, because it was already there five years ago, on Mythic’s Dark age of Camelot. While playing it, I’m not looking for a replacement for World of Warcraft, but it is a very nice complimentary game for WoW-players, and a must if you’re more into PvP than PvE.

Maybe this could help me with my book-buying addiction.

This was the one weekend of the year where I end up meeting up with almost all my friends. Unlike what I had originally thought there was actually some Sun on Saturday, and the rain was timed well because we were all inside the restaurant having dinner while it started and ended, just in time for us to leave and head over to the bar were some of us stayed until close time.

After this huge meet-up, I realized once more that I need to not only go out more instead of spending most the weekend at home, but also that I should make the effort (not that there’s much effort involved) to arrange weekend meet-ups with people I see less of during the year and who I always love to see again.

It was a busy weekend, but it all turned out great, despite our almost meltdown inside the restaurant, where three different explanations were given to the reason why the AC was not working as it should. I didn’t enjoy my Calzone pizza as much as I did last year’s lasagna, but now I know better. Also, if I schedule another event to that particular restaurant, I’ll ask if they’re AC is fixed because this year there was a ridiculously high temperature inside.

Meantime, I’m almost completely out of my parent’s house for good. Some more shopping and moving of stuff this next couple of weeks and I should be 100% away. Then to proceed to move some more stuff while already living on my new place.

I managed to play a couple of hours of WAR during the weekend and am now at level 14 on my Disciple of Khaine, plus I also tried out playing a Bright Wizard and a Sorceress, both only until rank 3, and I didn’t dislike either. I’ll post more stuff about WAR soon, since I’ve tried out new stuff including Realm versus Realm since my last post.

Still no The Force Unleashed, but I don’t mind waiting a little longer if I save 15 euros in the process.

Blizzard has updated the World of Warcraft official site stating that the release date for the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King is indeed 13th of November.

Not only that but they’ve revealed the Collector’s Edition’s details:

World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King on DVD-ROM.

The Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, a 208-page book featuring never-before-seen images from the game.

An exclusive in-game pet: Frosty, the baby frost wyrm.

A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, the Wrath of the Lich King intro cinematic with director’s commentary, and more.

The official soundtrack CD, containing 21 epic tracks from the game, along with exclusive bonus tracks.

A mouse pad featuring a map of the newly opened continent of Northrend.

Two World of Warcraft Trading Card Game March of the Legion™ starter decks, along with two exclusive cards available only in the Collector’s Edition.

I’m thinking of getting mine on an online store, but the one I usually purchase games from doesn’t have the Collector’s Edition listed yet.

Only wondering about one thing: where is my pet penguin?

Droppin’ some Star Wars links.

A friend linked me this: The Jedi Gym. Mostly amusing towards the end.

Rumour time! LucasArts Planning Wii MotionPlus Lightsaber game? And here I am thinking they should have done a decent use of the wiimote for the upcoming The Force Unleashed. Since they didn’t, I’m going for the XBox 360 version.

Keep your snacks fresh inside this very rare R2-D2 mini fridge.

This guy built a Boba Fett armor out of LEGO pieces. I wish I had that much free time (and spare LEGO parts) in my hands.

Used to spend all your saving on tradeable card games? Guess what, not you can, but in

. Right.

I’ve been back from my vacations for a few days now and lots of stuff has happened, but I’m too lazy to write about everything and some stuff I’ll only be able to talk about later on. So I’ll just write about whatever else comes to mind.

My Kotobukiya 1/7 ARTFX Clone Trooper has finally arrived. Thanks to our crappy national smail system it took 25 days to get here, and we were already wondering if it ever would. The eBay seller, actually a nice guy who posted the thing asap (and the UK smail stamp confirms it) was ready to return our money if it didn’t get here in a month, but fortunately it got here safely and he got a very nice review on eBay. I’ve assembled it already and it’s happily overlooking my living room. I’ll take and post photos of it at some later time this week. Mister Vader and Mister Boba Fett will have to wait longer, but I’ll keep an eye out on eBay to see if I also get them at a bargain price later on.

Anyway, I found this article on morality stories in games, specifically BioWare games, and thought it was an interesting enough read.

While I’m on the subject of games, yesterday it came to my knowledge that there’s a Games + Music event coming up close by; MyGames ZON. The gaming event activities seem a bit poor in all honesty - Almost no game launch or preview events and it’s so close to the Warhammer Online game launch that I wonder why the Hell are they not having an event centered on that? You know… EA a.k.a. the owner of Mythic who’s WAR’s developer is one of the sponsors listed there. I guess it was very difficult to understand the high expectations surrounding the game. Also, The Force Unleashed is coming out next month and XBox 360, one of the consoles where the game will be available, is also in the list of sponsors. Again, too hard to bother doing a preview event of some kind? Who organizes these things? Oh wait, the name of the event is MyGames ZON. Zon, yeah I can definitely see why there are such huge and silly wholes are in the events’ programming.

I might go there anyway since it’s very unlikely we’ll ever host a decent gaming event here in Tatooine, erm– I mean Portugal. The geographically closest thing we’ll ever get is something like the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational which was in Paris this year, or if our Spanish neighbours ever host something like that. I wish I was rich just so I could happily attend the huge gaming/comics conventions we see in the US and in some European countries.

With this rant I leave you. Later!

Video of David Hasselhoff fighting a stop motion robot with lightsaber-wannabe thingie. The rimel/eyeliner on his determined face give it a touch of pricelessness.

Speaking of robots, this guy in Japan created what looks like an artificially intelligent arm, that spent its days reading and rating stuff on Digg. The inventor was was arrested, for reasons beyond me.

Here are some screenshots of my Age of Conan character - a Tempest of Set.