Waking From my Food Coma

posted this on November 29th, 2011.
Categorized as lord of the rings online, lotro, OtherMMOs, podcast, secret world, star wars, swtor, the old republic, the secret war, The Secret World, TSW.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/11/29/waking-from-my-food-coma/

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon

While not 100% the issue of why I’ve been quiet lately, certainly Thanksgiving has been a pretty big part of it.  Probably my favorite food holiday, with people coming over this year, we had to do a little more prep work to get ready for things.  Combine that with a needed time of relaxation and a couple things I’ll get to, I haven’t had the time or desire to write much.

Before I get into what else has been going on, I do have episodes recorded that I still need to get edited for both of my podcasts.  I also will be recording new episodes this week, as well as doing interviews with the developers of both.  So there should be a few new episodes coming out soon :)

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Looking Forward and Back

posted this on January 4th, 2011.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, blizzard, diablo 3, Dragon Age, FIFA Online, Free to Play, General, lotro, OtherMMOs, pirates of the burning sea, podcast, Rift, star wars, sto, swtor, TOR.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DocholidaysLotroBlog/~3/37Vj0P_be7w/

I’ve been getting back into a more normal schedule now that I”m back from the holidays and wanted to take a quick look back at 2010 and look forward a bit as well.

I’ve had a bunch of fun not only gaming in 2010 but blogging as well.  Certainly much of my time was spent in LOTRO but Dragon Age was another big game for me in 2010.  I dabbled in a number of others including Eve Online, Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, Vindictus, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and Warhammer but none were able to really capture my attention like LOTRO has.  I’ve also gotten into a couple of EA Sports F2P sports games including Tiger Woods Online and FIFA Online.  I would love for them to continue that trend a release similar titles, but I imagine those would be seen as competition for their big money annual titles like Madden, etc.  I totally didn’t see the LOTRO F2P switch coming but I’m really starting to enjoy it and I do believe it will turn out well not only for Turbine but the players as well.

I’ve been in the process of expanding as I’ve been writing for LOTRO Reporter and TOR Reporter and more recently joining the TGN-Stratics team.  I’ve managed to join in on a couple of podcast episodes for CStM, LOTRO Reporter, MMO Reporter, and the Dunedain all of which have pushed me to start up my own podcast which will be out hopefully this week.

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Cinematic Game Trailers – Do They Work?

posted this on July 26th, 2010.
Categorized as General, lotro, Mirkwood, star wars, swtor, video.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/cinematic-game-trailers-do-they-work/

It seems like many of the highly hyped games are producing very high quality cinematic trailers to help get people excited for their upcoming releases.  For the most part, I do enjoy these trailers but I’m starting to wonder what they really tell us about the games themselves and are they doing more harm then good.  It seems like many of these trailers are given lots of room to expand on what is possible in the game such that they look cooler and tell a better story.  Even from a purely graphical nature these trailers are incredibly misleading as the games never look as good as what they can show cinematically.

The trailer that touched this off for me was the recent DC Universe Online trailer from Comic-Con (which is very cool btw), but I see Star Wars the Old Republic as one of the biggest culprits.  I’m sure there are others doing this exact same thing, but SWTOR sticks out for me mainly because of the effect these trailers have had on my interest for the game.  I know many like myself were absolutely floored when the Deceived trailer hit and then were even more in awe with the recent Hope trailer.  In case you haven’t seen them, check them out here:

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Not as much of a Bioware fan these days

posted this on May 6th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, Dragon Age, General, Single player, star wars, TOR.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/not-as-much-of-a-bioware-fan-these-days/

For those of you not interested in Dragon Age, Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR) or Bioware you can stop reading now as I just wanted to get a few things off my chest :)

I’m going to backtrack a bit and cover some topics that have already been talked about on numerous sites but for me paints a pattern of what we can expect from Bioware in the future.  Previously I’ve been a huge supporter of Bioware and up until recently would gladly give them my money for games they released, but that support is waning quickly.  However, I would be ecstatic to be proven wrong and for things to turn out differently, I’m just starting to get very worried about the warning signs.

I’ll start with Dragon Age as this piece of news was what pushed me over the edge with Bioware.  I’ve been pretty happy overall with Dragon Age although the re-playability of Awakenings was no where near as fun as Origins.  To add on that, there’s been no mention of any sort of patch to Awakenings to fix any of the issues surrounding that title.  Granted, it is pretty good, but still like all games, there are issues with it some of which are pretty severe.  So yesterday they announce a new DLC – Darkspawn Chronicles which does actually sound like a neat idea but continues down the path that has annoyed me with Bioware.  First off, the idea of playing a Darkspawn does sound intriguing, so I will give them credit for putting together a neat concept.  However, with Dragon Age it appears that Bioware is more concerned with getting out content that they can charge for as opposed to getting out and maintaining quality content.  Not to mention that I’m still upset about the whole RtO fiasco in which it appeared they didn’t have the resources to get that content out due to the push to hit the Awakenings in-store release date.  Based on RtO I will be shocked if this DLC actually gets out the door on time and am expecting that the new DLC will disappoint on content.

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