Vaccuming asteroids

The universe sure is a messy place, and someone needs to scoop up all those asteroids!  Nothing much to report today, just a relaxing day mining with a little trading on the side.  Hope everyone is having fun out there. :)

Taking a break from good old Darkfall

Alright, well, I suppose it was fated to happen someday. I can proudly say that I have stuck with darkfall longer than I have many other mmo's. This is a testament to how fun, addicting, and engaging the darkfall experience is. But, everyone burns out eventually. It's not even the grind exactly, I actually have had a fairly powerful character for a while now, it's just that I feel like I have been there and seen and experienced much of what darkfall has to offer.

It's time to explore a new land! (And maybe revitalize this blog a little more).

First off, let me say that I am a complete sucker for new things and the next mmo does have some of my interest.

The game is called Final Fantasy XIV, a name I'm sure your familiar with. It is a very PvE focused game, in fact it has no PvP whatsoever. This is such a big change over DarkFall that I'm honestly not sure if I'll be able to adjust.

Final Fantasy has a number of positive aspects and I'm sure it will be a success. I do not think that the game will be hugely popular.

The reason for this has to do with the controls and the style of the game. FF14 just does not have a smooth and familiar enough control scheme to be a success on the PC. I'm sure the game will fare far better on the PS3.

If they are able to implement a better control scheme then I'm sure the game will prove to be a commercial success. It sounds silly honestly saying that a control scheme will make or break this game for me. I mean, if it's a constant struggle to read quests and talk to npc's then that means there is a problem.

This is the year 2010 after all. Like many I am flabbergasted as to how squareenix chose to release the game into open beta like this. It is also looking like a hardware mouse will not be at launch, unless they chose to release it AT launch, which again, would make no sense to me.

Long story short, FFXIV is not for me and it doesn't look like I will be playing it! The game doesn't have pvp anyways.

Darkfall milestones: Herbing, Mining, AND Lumberjacking at 100!

Yup, not too much to say here, but I hit 100 Mining and 100 Herb Gathering (and lumberjacking, I just forgot to take the screen) in Darkfall! Go me! These are the first skills I have managed to get to 100 in Darkfall.

A Day In The Life of a Noob

I was out hunting goblins one day when... well, just watch the video.

Click here to check out my 30 second Darkfall PvP video titled "A Day In The Life of A Noob"!

Oh, and this is my first PvP vid, and my first vid ever! Grats to me hehe. Yeah this is a 30 second video, however I would totally love to make more videos. I'm not really a big video-watching type tho, so I wouldn't want to waste peoples time. But if it is a fun and exciting video, then heck yeah, I'll post it!

Cow Nose's Take on Darkfall, and A Farewell!

A yes, another MMO, come and gone in the life of Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat! So here is my farwell post, and my little review of the game.


DarkFall is a beautiful world. It's strange and interesting and I was pleasantly surprised by the varied landscapes. DarkFall stretches it's engine to the limit and the game ends up looking great. I found myself looking around with true wonder at the different cities I came across and the strange sights.

Of course, death is a common experience in DarkFall! However, as an experienced Ultima Onlinen gamer, it never bothered me too much. OK let me explain, see in DarkFall when your character dies she leaves everything on her corpse. Any other player can walk up to your corpse and take everything you own! (Actually it's a gravestone in DarkFall, in Ultima Online it was the same thing but you left a body behind, and when looted completely you were left naked, and not to compeltely sidetrack but in Ultima Online you could also cut up your enemies body and take whatever parts you wanted as trophies)

I've talked about this in past posts, probably my Ultima Online posts. See, this kind of gameplay system makes DarkFall a completely different class of MMOs. It's a style of MMO forgotten to the average WoW gamer, but it's one familiar to many vets.

Everything changes in a free-loot based game. Epic swords are still epic, but common swords do great damage even compared to said epic swords. This is because gear MUST be expendable! So decent or even great gear is cheap to come by.

However gear is used up much more quickly, therefor a game like DarkFall has a GREAT crafting element. There is a huge place for crafters in DarkFall. (Even if it is not nearly as fun as PvP)

Plenty of interesting dungeons to explore in DarkFall! :)

So what is there to do in DarkFall? Well, PvP of course! And the PvP IS a lot of fun. You need to like ganking, and you need to like conflict. And conflict and ganking go so well hand in hand together. DarkFall is the ultima PvP MMO I've played, hands down. It has many of the great PvP elements of Lineage 2 without the awful asian grind that really ruined the game imo. Castle sieges, random PvP out in the world, and many skirmishes between cities is the best fun the game has to offer.

And believe me, there is NOTHING as satisfying as running along side your mates on your mounts heading towards the enemy for battle. It's a very very rewarding experience that no PvE MMO could ever offer. Just takes some stones and a lust for battle!


This is DarkFall's version of Bone Armor. It's great for mages because it has good armor but doesn't have a big impact on your magic skills.


So why am I leaving DarkFall, for now at least, if my review of it is so positive? Well the reasons are two fold.

The reason I am leaving, is because I can not afford it at this moment. I recently switched jobs and I just needed to conserve that $15 for other things untill I get back on top of bills and such.

So then the second reason, is not why am I leaving, but why may I not return? Well, that is because DarkFall does not have the grab-and-go gameplay that I have kind of come to be used to and enjoy. It's the same thing that drove me from EvE. Yeah, it's fun and really exciting! But it can also be kind of empty and boring at the same time. Just you and your skills and your mates and your loot. Yeah, that really is all you need, that's why DarkFall is not a bad game by any stretch. But were are the quests? The story? I suppose perhaps I am maturing in my RL life and my MMO life. I no longer have the stamina (lie) to game for 8+ hr stretches. I prefer a MMO were I can be doing RL things and just jump in when I have an hour or two, have some fun, maybe even a PvP battle or two, and then go to bed or go to work.

That said... I am very much looking forward to Aion! So, stay tuned to Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures and you just may see some great Aion action. :D

In the meantime.. stay tuned for some free MMO updates! Runes of Magic, and Wizard 101, wohoo! Two MMOs LONG overdue for an appearance on this blog.

Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's to be re-amped soon!

Cow Nose the 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures will see a complete overhaul in the upcoming week. Please stay tuned for details! DarkFall is here!

The 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures Temporarily Delayed

Hi everyone! As you may have guessed, I have not been around recently. I recently have run into some real life troubles. I lost my job and thus have no internet, additionally I moved to a new apartment and haven't set up said internet there. Crummy, I lost my job just as I got a new place! Bad timing.

But, I will be back! You guys know that. So... people who have me in their feeds, please keep me there! People who just read the website manually... well check back in a couple months.

And people who have me on their blogrolls, you can take me off them if you wish. I will contact all bloggers when I return and ask you to add me again.

PS: And I'll be honest with you, there just isn't an MMO I'm terribly interested in at the moment. So when this blog comes back there might be some great new games to cover!

PPS: This is NOT goodbye or the end, I love The 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures and I will continue to post my adventures here as long as I am playing!

I made a Kamael!

Well, I just had to. It is the newest race in Lineage 2 and you just HAVE to give them a try. I have heard some iffy things about the Kamael, I think people don't really understand just how they work yet. But I really think NCSoft wouldn't make a character or a whole new race that didn't have its usefulness and unique skills.


Sometimes I like to take a picture of the character-select screen because they are all different in each MMO.


This is the room you first start in. That Crystal thing behind CowNoseTheKitty spins and turns.


On the wall in the back of this room stares an Evil Eye. Don't forget the Kamael are a dark and evil race!


Out into the big scary world.


I didn't notice at first, but look at what is inside this bird-man's mouth!


All bird-men must die.


Pretty cool waterfall, and I like these ruins.

Requiem: Bloodymare

Yes, it has a terrible name. I know. I think we all know. Still, I was pleasently surprised by this new free-to-play (maybe) MMO coming out from.. Asia? I want to say Korea, caus' that is where it seems like all the F2P games are coming from, but I don't know for sure... hey this ain't a reporting-type of blog!

Anyways, I really wasn't expecting to like Requiem very much but I really fell in love with it! I like the art style, and while the gore turned me off at first I quickly got used to it. The controls are smooth and easy, and the animations are good. I like the atmosphere too.

I have now heard (since it is out of beta, I played this in beta) that the game will be largely un-playable without using pay services, so I am not sure if I am going to play this one. I just don't know if I like micro-payment kind of things. Still, I had fun exploring the world of Requiem and I got some good screenshots, so let's get to it!


You start out looking at this, teleport-thing. For a free MMO Requiem has some pretty good graphics!


This is the entrance to the first city you come across. It's not a bad looking city by any means, but there is one strange thing, everything is outside! There are no in-doors places in Requiem as far as I can tell. Some inability on the developers part to produce the code for in-doors stuff? I suspect that is the case!


This is my character, Cow Nose something, (hehe, well what else could it be? I think she is named CowNoseKitty, I forget) It was when I saw this character that I really fell in love with the Requiem: Bloodymare design. For one, she is hot as hell. That is a plus. But there are a number of other things which set her apart from other MMORPGs. She has an asymmetrical design! One hand is way bigger then the other. There are a number of other things in Requiem that are asymmetrical, and I really like that. Also, her legs are made of metal! And they look really vicious, but practical, like they are really designed to make her the perfect killer.


Inside the city there is this very interesting building. I'm not sure exactly what it is for, but I suspect it has something to do with altering your genes.


And of course, I have to show you the bloody Reqiuem combat! Aren't the monsters disgusting in this game?


Smack! Crunch! Splurt!


See, the art in this game is dark gloomy and interesting! I like the style, I really do.


No game is complete without a giant mushroom!


And finally, me showing off some new armor. More next week, thank you for reading!

A Short Return to Ultima Online

Well, I was bored one day and I felt like playing a fantasy MMO. I am ashamed to say this, but I even wanted to give World of Warcraft a shot! I had a dream that I was an undead warlock and that I had joined a role-playing guild.

Well, thankfully, my friends intervened and stopped me from playing WoW. (They said, "No! Don't tarnish your record! I tend to agree, WoW would be a stain on my MMO career.)

Ah well, don't take what I say too seriously, WoW is just easy to hate if you come from my perspective of hardcore MMOness.

Well, UO is about as far from WoW as EvE is! UO is actually very much a sandbox like EvE. You make youw own adventures, and explore the world outside of the rail-road theme-park experience. In UO anyone can kill anywhere. You are never safe! And your always stronger in groups. In UO when you die, everything that was on your character is now on your corpse!

Here you can see me about to loot a monsters corpse, little did I know, that they have changed the rules in this server to prevent ninja-looting and so when I took some bone armor from this dead skeleton I turned into a criminal!
So of course, I died.
Oh well, thats about it for my brief venture back into UO! It's a tough game, and I really just don't have the guts for it anymore. But, UO will always have a place in my heart as my first MMO and one of the most unique and best MMOs ever made. There still has never been a true UO-like MMO (With the possible exception of the Asheron's Call Darktide server).

It's called EverQuest 2 and this is what it do!

I am sitting here listening to the Eurythmics on their album titled "1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother)" yes it is the soundtrack to the 1984 movie. It is actually a very rare CD! It has songs like "Sexcrime" and "Room 101".

Wow, I think that is the most real-life stuff I have talked about in a long time! Better post a screenshot fast!
The looming gates of West Freeport... uhm loom in the distance. Ooh... look, pretty wings!
I gained level 20 in Outfitting. That gave me access to the appearance tab, a feature which I really love. It lets you change what you look like to other people without changing the bonuses you get from armor. Here you see me wearing the regular (non-rare) level 10-20 armor.
I used to have some of this armor on a different character. I forgot how detailed it was... I noticed there is a subtle tree in the chest design. For low level armor it actually looks really good.
But this is an MMO! Nothing says you can't upgrade! I was going to harvest all the rares myself to craft this armor, but I got impatient and just bought the rares I needed to craft! (I figure I'll just harvest more and sell them to make my money back) This armor is Blackened Iron Vanguard. Good stuff, I love it! Behind me is the entrance to the Nektulos Forest.
The only part of my armor I don't like is this shield. I made the rare... and it looked exactly the same as the common version. What a letdown! This picture was taken inside the Nektulos Forest.Riding a griffon is fun... the first time. Ah, well I suppose it is better then walking!

NaNoWriMo is almost here!

National Writing Month is almost uppon us! :) NaNoWriMo is when thousands (well I hope its thousands, that's actually just a guess) of people write a 50,000 word book in a single month. Thats the goal anyway. I have played the game for the past three years, and have failed each time. But this year I'm going to try again and this time I am going to WIN!!!

So, I would encourage any of you guys out there that like to write to participate, it's a great literary exercise. (It's more about quantity, then quality, if you nitpick you are never gunna make it.) Another big challenge of the game is plot. It's actually not hard to write the recommended 7,500 words a day until about halfway through you realize you ran out of plot!

What I'm saying is next month you guys might not see any blogs at all. ^^ Or perhaps just a few small ones, we'll see. November is a month for me to step away from the TV the video games, and even the friends, and just get my writing cap on. I try to not write about RL in this blog but this isn't really RL is it?

In the meantime I do have two EVE pictures to share. Here you have my barge doing with it does best, mine. and there is some other fancy looking ship that just jacked my ore. XDMy second account finished training for the Itty V! Now I can haul with the best of them! Unless I get a freighter that is. :P

Captain Beefheart walks the land

Well things have been going well in the Nanaki server on SupremeL2. I have made a number of new characters.

Here is my second character (after CowNoseTheCat) he is called CaptainBeefheart. CaptainBeefheart is the name of my favorite musician. His band was called CaptainBeefheart and His Magic Band! He is a very... underground? Weirdo? I'm not sure how to describe his music, but whatever it is it is awesome. Anyways so I thought about what kind of class would Captain Beefheart be and so I made my character a wizard. He has a beard kind of like Beefheart and is just as stylish. The picture above is my friend Jak and I sitting down for a break, behind us you can see the Ruins of Despair south of Gludio.

Not long after I made the Captain I got my first PvP point. This guy just came out and attacked me! Oh well, his loss hehe! I think I am really liking this server much better then DeviantRealms. The players names are absolutely horrible, and seems like everyone is an idiot, but the pvp is everywhere! This is definitely a PvP server.

After playing Beefheart to level 25 or so and getting some of his Wizard spells I have decided that I think I'm not going to play him. I'll not delete him just so I can keep the name in case I want to use the name again but mages are just not my thing. It's not even a Lineage 2 thing. Every MMO I play I always try out the mage class and I never get into them. Oh well, was worth a try! So you likely will not see CaptainBeefheart again.

PS: If you have not listened to Captain Beefheart go out and listen! And if you don't like it at first (because it is really weird) listen again, and then listen a few more times after that, you will start to see his genius and it really grows on you.

Mining a bit and skillin up!

Well EVE is kind of a slower paced game... it's not like a traditional MMO where I can just go and explore some new area and get some screenshots from that to show you guys. So I wasn't really sure if I had enough content to make a blog, but thinking about it, yeah I do! :P

First off I would like to show you this shot of my drone killing this rat (slang for the NPC pirates).
You can see me mining to the left of the drone. Man those explosions sure are satisfying. I can't wait till I blow up some people! :) I'm not really interested in going on missions to kill NPCs but oh man I would love to kill some other players. >:) I'm sure I'll get my chance someday!

OK I got podded. ><
:P This is a picture of me!


Here I am flying in to buy 9 million ISK worth of skill books! These two books where 4.5m ISK each, and are some advanced learning books. I like how this Gallente shuttle looks... really sleek and stylish!

One word.... EVE!

Yes that's right, I have switched MMO's yet again! This one is big.... this one is REALLY BIG. Of all the MMOs I have played EvE will take this blog in a completely different and new direction. Well, what I meen by "completely new and different direction" I am talking about the essence of EVE. It's just such a different kind of MMO compared to Lineage 2, EverQuest 2, or Vanguard.

See in a traditional fantasy MMO you have these rails to go on. You might adventure here or there or go quest at this spot or that spot but you are limited to a steady regular progression of your character that is the same as everyone else. A better way to describe this is, "In [insert generic fantasy MMO here] your character gets strong as you level up, but the monsters get stronger aswell, so really the only thing that changes around you is the enviroment. And you just go through the same enviroment and quests that everyone else does."

In EVE its completely different. There are no quests. No places to go and farm, no castles to explore no dungeons to raid. Rather the game is the players. Every journey and every characters experience in EVE is completely unique because there are no "rails" to go on in order to get to the top or to get to some max level to do good in PvP. In EVE everything just IS. It's hard to explain.... I hope you get the point I am trying to make. ;)

Ok the first screenshot I would like to show you is this nice little picture of my mining ship the Navitas.
Beautiful isn't it? Here you can see me mining an asteroid. Behind me floats a jetcan which I place my ore into. Later I will come back with my hauler to haul the ore back to a nearby station.
I quickly made some friends in EVE. ^^ Here I am in the middle of a big mining operation!Here is a picture of a minmatar shuttle. Shuttles are a fast and cheap way to get around the universe.
The universe in EVE is huge! As many as 35,000 people can play at one single time on the same server. That is one of the craziest and best things about EVE the fact that there is just one server. This is so exciting! I can't wait to see what will happen in my stay here in EVE. ^^