Pirated games work; legitimate copies don’t

I’ve been a long-time fan of The Sims series (although I skipped out on The Sims 2—personally I didn’t see much of a difference from The Sims 1). There’s been quite a bit about The Sims 3, however, that has caught my eye, such as a seamless playing field and the ability of full customization when it came to designing your house and your furnishings. I recently took the plunge and bought The Sims 3 and its two expansion packs, totaling at $110. Short of wondering why half-assed expansions were priced at $30 each, I shrugged it off, hoping that the customization would pay itself off. Well, it did. What didn’t were the numerous complications just to get to that point.

The quest stands on the edge of a knife: LotRo goes F2P

Obviously this is not my first time talking about Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online. By this time you should know some basics about where I am coming from, specifically being a lifetime subscriber and as someone who has played the game since open beta. I’ve seen it all and was there for the best and the worst of it. Recently I’ve been bestowed the title of doomsayer because of my critique of Siege of Mirkwood as a poor expansion pack, calling it the sign that production has been slowing down. But I love the Tolkien mythos, and I like role playing in his world, so I was hoping I was wrong. Sometimes, however, it’s not all that great to be right all the time, as much was proven when Turbine announced that LotRo was going to switch over to a F2P model.

Game Alignments: Mass Effect 2

Yet again we find ourselves for the third writeup of Game Alignments this week. As you might already know, Game Alignments is a weekly writeup I like to do that puts forth a popular idea of throwing the D&D alignment system into the mix with a game’s characters. This time I’ll be taking a crack at everyone’s favorite sci-fi shooter—Mass Effect 2. Believe me, it was a lot easier than you think considering Bioware pretty much threw the characters into typical stereotypes.

Game Alignments: Dragon Age

Once again we return to the next chapter in Game Alignments, a little write up I do each week that attempts to put characters from a title video game in the D&D alignment hot seat. In a perfect world everything has an absolute to it, right? Of course not, which is why we all love to bicker about our favorite characters and how they fit into the rule of things with their habits and actions. This time, however, we are entering dark territory with Dragon Age, a game that is about as gray as the stew Alistair makes for Leliana (too vague?). Anyways, here’s what I came up with.