November 2004
What The Hell

A little, and a little short, as the past month has unfortunately not offered any real surprise. I have mostly been playing Planetside Aftershock over the course of the past three weeks, with like 8 hours being the most played in a single session. Planetside is the ultimate in instant action MMOFPS gaming, I can proudly say. It even has a button labeled "instant action" that directly transports you to one of the hot spots of action throughout Auraxis - and there are plenty of those! I knew Planetside was fun like this, for a while, because I played about 5-6 of the 14-Day Trials but never wanted any more of it after they had ended. This time, unfortunately, it is no different. Planetside is the hottest fast-paced massive shooter fun you can get, but it has near to no end-game. You can shoot the enemy and conquer bases from level 1 through level 20, but as you might have guessed, that is about it. Some people invest a lot of time in getting Battlerank 20 and Commandrank 5 to acquire the ability to blast people into oblivion with their mighty orbital strike, but I don't really see where that is something I would play weeks for. Anyway, don't let my ramblings take away any anticipation, now is probably the best time for any newcomer to join Planetside. With the Aftershock Box being only $19.95, including the Core Combat expansion, and therefore Battleframe Robotics (large mech-like robots), you could get yourself a month or two of fun while waiting for one of the games that offer more depth.

Like what, you ask? Well it's near Christmas, the time of releases and releases and releases. But what's to come until Christmas? I honestly can't think of anything worthwhile. EverQuest II and World of Warcraft have both recently launched in North America, and offer new material for every type of player. World of Warcraft for those who are into the faster Player versus Player end-game, or into the Warcraft Universe, or like comical graphics, ...and EverQuest II for those that like the fancy realistic style it offers, paired with a ****load of story. It's really your choice which of these two you prefer, and you should really get one of them, as there is nothing that can compare to them coming out this year.

Other than the choice of what you want to lay beneath the plastic tree, there are a lot of things that are coming up early next year. Like Guild Wars. Guild Wars is running Beta Weekends, and if you're fast, you can still get one of our Keys for this weekend. Shiny graphics and a lot of whacking each other in instanced arena style are waiting for you.

If you're not willing to put up with the launch confusion of any of the new games, you might want to join Eve Online: Exodus, which is a free expansion to the largest single-world universe in existance. They recently broke the 12,000 concurrent user barrier! After breaking the record for concurrent players in a single universe several times, there seems no stop to that course. Can you imagine 12,000 player ships being displayed at once, on your screen? No? Well you don't have to, because it is very unlikely that this is going to happen. But knowing there are so many people in the world gives a real massive feeling, I think. If EVE is your choice, which is a good one I might note, then $19.95 brings you right into it. And while you're at it, you can create a weblog for your Eve endeavors. Our system will display it correctly in the in-game browser of Eve Online too!

That's pretty much it for November, I guess. Our Battle of the Year polls are almost coming to an end as well, and winners are pretty clear. I will announce the ending date somewhen in the coming week, and will launch the run for the "Best of the Best" awards then.

Enjoy Christmas and your vacation!