2.28.00

Still alive and kicking

Real life has been hectic as hell as of late, therefore you havent seen much of me. Also I reactivated one of my UO accounts and started playing again on Europa. I'm not sure if I am the only one who has noticed this, but there are some major differences between the Euro shards and the US shard, most notably the people who play there.

I would say about half the people are nicer. Good, friendly folk who are pleasant to be around. The other half have got to be in the bottom 10% of the Monumentally Fucking Stupid gene pool. I mean, the shard is a PKers dream. If I had 3 or 4 of my pals from GC back on Lake Superior over there, we could bring the shard to its knees. Dont get me wrong, there are some good PvPers there, but it just doesnt hold a candle to the PvP on the US shards. Unfortunately all this easy prey attacts the stupid PKs also. Some of these guys couldnt find their own ass with both hands and a roadmap. My character there is hardly cut out for combat, she is a fencer/bard better suited for hunting monsters than people, but I swear I manage at least 3 or 4 kills every day just defending myself from idiots there. I almost feel guilty its so easy.

Case in point, some tool named Levi the Noble is casing me out as I walk into the fire ele room in deceit. I start fighting a fire ele, and he then immediately starts plunking me with a heavy crossbow. I do a *chuckle* and provoke the fire ele along with a nearby liche onto him. This dolt then procedes to run directly into a corner, thereby getting boxed in by both monsters. I stroll over, poke him a couple times with my kryss then laugh my ass off when he goes down. Even better the genius not only had a full set of GM shadow and a nice bag of regs, but a heavy of vanquishing also. Thanks Levi, your a real pal.

If you think thats an isolated incident, think again. Every day I witness similar acts. And whats even funnier about this? Only a handfull of idiots like this are European. Most of these rejects are goons from the US shards with names like AsS RockAh that apparently couldnt cut it at home, and decided to prove what a moron they are on the international scene.

A few dipshits aside, I like the shard. Its got a slower more relaxed pace and I have ran across some genuinely cool people. If you have never been there and can figure out how to yell "I rox U sux" in German or Dutch, check it out. - Greybeard

2.23.00

AC Quest

I've been wanting to get a bit more involved in the current quest in AC. I know that I need mottes and what type of creatures to get them from - but does anyone know what type of that creature drops them more frequently? Also, to enhance the weapons you can get stones to give it elemental properties, but I'm clueless where these new dungeons are.

Anyone that has a hint on the above info, hit me with an email. Thanks.
- Nighthawk

2.22.00

The Current State of Shit

Shit actually doesn't suck, for a change.

And that's that.

AC has been owning entire truckloads of Jennifer Lopez ass lately. For the uninformed, many an ex Baja-friend and foe have joined Nighthawk and I on the AC front. My enemy of .6 years back in the Baja days, as well as perhaps the most powerful Baja guild (besides the Patryns of course) to ever play the shard, The Lords of Death [LoD] of Baja, have begun a large scale migration to the land of needless GM's to accompany us in our quest for newbie domination.

One Obidiah Khan, from KoJ/LoD days of UO past, as well as the ex-LoD Guildmaster fruitcake by name of Kaganos are ones of note that some of you old Baja-ites might remember. With LoD's coming arrival in the game, we have begun what Nighthawk has aptly named "Uniting Baja under Ron" in Asheron's Call. Thus, we have a guild of 100 up and coming, and growing fast. There is so much ownership just over the horizon, my panties are wet.

An ex-EQ Innoruuk compadre cheeseball by name of Bodkin has entered the game, as well as the patented GWAR 2000, and in even more shocking news that probably means nothing to you, the Real Life LAPD Pigs from UO glory days before my scads of Website bullshit, Balrog and Thanatos, the too-fucking-old school Baja PK's who helped yours truly begin his UO PKing career, are considering checking into the Darktide Motel. There are so many entrees of ownership about to hit our platter I am not sure if I can even compose myself.

I guess the only thing I can say is Heed the Call. Get in the game punchy, it's about to be more fun than you even know. Darktide is not ready for the wrath of Baja.

Of course that probably stems from the fact that all of our Baja friends are complete and utter newbies. But the day will come. Nighthawk has begun his extensive training program for our new and lost-in-Dereth friends, so expect to see the horde of us on the rampage in a Flash Theatre near you.

Rich and I are contemplating throwing up a site here for our little AC crew, and I would imagine you will be seeing as such. At the moment however, Rich (Crum'), The Real Crum (Patriot), and I (Ron, duh) have been too busy spraying the land with arrows to do so. We'll keep you informed.

Last but not least , if you're looking for other reading material of note, Azile's last update on the negative side of AC was one of the best reads I have had in the past few weeks. I suggest giving it a look see. And no, this isn't a shameless plug. Just a few notes (besides Portal Draining) that Turbine might take good note of.

All hail David Letterman, and my god the Melvins own you.

- Ron

2.20.00

My Final UO Related Post

I was sent this link where the webmaster still has his blinders on and thinks that UO is a great game. Oh yeah... anyone who talks bad about the game but doesn't play anymore has "Bitter Ex-UO Player Syndrome". Hmm... so, if I enjoyed parts of the game but spoke my mind while I was playing it, did I have Bitter Current-UO Player Syndrome? The game wasn't great only during the Dread/Great Lord days, but TO ME (since I'm the one typing, right?) that was the highpoint of the game.

I stayed through the rep patch and happily made a tank thief. They nerfed tank thieves so I happily made a pvp tank mage. I happily played him through patch after patch changing archery, bringing mediation (thank God), and eval int - all with a smile on my face just because I enjoyed the game still. I can't see how anyone could think the game is as good as it once was - especially if they play tank mages which seem to have been castrated recently with worse news on the horizon. I used to think the game was great, but my enjoyment of the game wore off mainly due to over patching, nerfing, and massive gameplay changes that are still ongoing. If it hasn't worn off for you, then more power to you.

If you enjoy UO and didn't want to hear UO bashing, then I have no idea why you come to this site except to maybe look at some of the achieves on the formerly updated sub-sites. I've been speaking my piece on UO for quite some time and my views haven't changed nearly as much as UO did. UO was the greatest game I ever played, but I have the constant opporunity to play on my gf's account and I don't. Why? Nothing to do with being banned, guys. It has to do with the fact that I've found a better game for my tastes.

For the love of god, don't email me your tastes if it's UO related because I couldn't care less. Enjoy the game while you can, because eventually you'll look back and say "wow, that was great for a while but I have no idea why I kept playing so long". Exactly...
- Nighthawk

2.17.00

Ron's Take on UO




Why would anyone want to play a game where an assclown such as he gets to wear an invulnerable tag? Stop kidding yourselves.

- Ron

My Take on UO

Quoting Voltron from the Forum:
I totally agree with him, but my WHOLE point is that he is a hypocrite.

He's correct in some aspects and incorrect in others. I did play the game for two years and I was hopelessly addicted. However, I also ran a website for about half of that time and I constantly ranted and raved about the things that were wrong about the game and how we customers were being treated.

Sure, I took it for a while, but in the end I was more than happy to go. I was banned, correct. Now, why was I banned? Was it because I stopped giving a fuck knowing that I was a target? You don't think after my tower was insta-decayed, the whole GM Darwin thing and already being banned/unbanned once didn't put a big-ole-bullseye on me? Please. I was talking about having my last run for a month or more before I got banned. The only reason I put that off was because Ron wanted to come back for my last run and Brules was making him a character (even though I didn't know why I was being asked to delay it at the time).

The long and short of it is, I stopped taking OSI's shit and started fighting back - with my website, with my actions in game, with my emails and posts on the Dev Board. I didn't take their shit lying down... ever. In the end, I wanted out because the game had turned to shit and that was before the bullshit they've pulled recently. I can't imagine even thinking about staying through what's going on now, thus my post yesterday.

And as someone else pointed out, I've kept on the common theme that OSI is fucking you UO players. Well, yeah I have - with good reason. THEY ARE. If you still enjoy UO after all that's happened, then you have in some miraculous way not been adversely affected by the multitude of asinine changes or you just don't mind. But, in either case, you have to acknowledge that massive, game altering changes have occurred that has destroyed what used to be a large portion of the player base. I guess if you don't like pvp, have a tank mage, have a thief, have a pk, but DO have a fisherman - the changes over the past two years have been peachy.

I personally don't think that AC is for everyone, but if you're a pvp'er and want to play an online game, I think it's Darktide server is a very viable alternative. If it's not for you, fine - do something else. I won't pay for a video game run by a company like OSI ever again and my whole point is that I'm surprised that anyone would.
- Nighthawk

2.16.00

Still play UO?

I'll try to contain myself from laughing at people who still play UO after all the fucking they've gotten. Instead, I will just point out how OSI has further destroyed the most popular character type in UO - the Tank Mage.

Someone posted a link to OSIs Update page where their proposed "Player vs. Player Combat Enhancements" is posted. Low dex? Damage done at end of swing - hope you didn't like that hally combo. Casting spells? Have to arm your spellbook. Don't have parrying? Too bad, it's getting buffed.

Removing pre-casting and making high dex increase healing were pretty obscene. Obviously, if you like pvp, you can toss that 7x GM Tank Mage that you spent 300k getting GM Magery and GM resist on. At least you can ev Lich Lords for a neato title! High level monsters will be the only reason to have a mage - yay! Nearly three years after the game was first publicly seen, and they have decided to change everything. If you liked anything about UO back in the beginning, it's gone now. Hope you like that customer service.

I understand playing a game when you enjoy it and are addicted to it, but how many times can you people be fucked before saying, "Yanno what? My ass is a little sore. I think I'll stop playing your game."
- Nighthawk

2.15.00

AC Guild Folx

Just a quick message for anyone in under Patryn in the Red Devil's guild... all of you need to get ahold of me. Anyone that's not 20th lvl and under me, you should be. My new character is 12 hours old and is 17th level so most should be farther along since most of my vassals started way after me.

Two things to note is that there are loyalty requirements for the fast-track and there is a long run involved. So, get ahold of me IN GAME (not email, icq, or whatever) as either Crum', Patryn or Crimson Tears and I'll get you on track.
- Nighthawk

2.14.00

Gonna be a shitty day

I've been a reader of Charles Schulz since I was a kid. Obviously, I've gotten away from comics since I've gotten a bit older, but they still hold a certain bit of nostalga for me and I hit The Peanuts Archieve every once in a while. His last cartoon was yesterday because he was getting too ill from cancer to continue and then he dies from a heartattack while sleeping not a day after it was released. The legendary coach of my favorite football team also died - Tom Landry. Sad...

With that cheery news on the radio this morning plus the fact that it's Monday after a brief vacation... geez, today is gonna suck.

On the upside, Ron and I completely and utterly owned people in AC last night. From getting sweet revenge on the "we're never apart" duo of Ballpark Billy and Colnel Coward to killing... well, everyone in Baishi and nearby fort/dungeons (again) it was a sweet night of AC. Ok, so the upside wasn't as great as the downside was bad. What can ya do.

Oh yeah, whatever high school kiddie is saying that he's me is lying, so stop emailing me to say "hi" to your classmate. I'm 29 and have been out of school for a long time now. Back to work...
- Nighthawk

2.9.00

I think I was misunderstood.

On the past post anyway.

The moral of that link was not to stress "this story is an absolutely true story." I think when i said "it's sad, but true" that threw you off. My apologies.

Never looked into whether it was true or not....just thought it was pretty fucked up and that I might as well share to you my WTF feelings with a quick link to the glory of spawning mud shrimp.

So stop telling me "hate to break it to you, but it's not true."

I didn't write it. Just passed it along to those interested in repulsive stories.

And on a cleaner note, Brules, another Twister Shadowbane expert, sent me a pretty good Flash movie link.

Perhaps you have seen it before, perhaps not. Either way, if you are big time into Monty Python, you'll get quite a kick out of it. At least I did. - Ron

Achieving that "WTF" feeling.

I was just sent this by everyone's favorite columnist, J. (The Yellow). I have to say this is without a doubt the most twisted thing I have ever read. It's pretty goddamn sad, but true. Read it while you can. It won't be on their page long if it doesn't get approved by the powers that be.

You might not ever ask yourself "What the Fuck?" with as much enthusiasm as you would after reading such a horror. - Ron

2.8.00

The Ron/Crum AC Kills Page

Has now been tossed up for your pleasure. If you get pleasure from such things. After eliminating many duplicate kills, we have 174 unique since Friday. Not too terribly bad I don't suppose.

Anyway, you can check out many a dead newb if you wish, beginning either here or under Features.

Hopefully this will be something Rich and I can keep up to date. Only time will tell.

Also, due to your undying love for the right click annoyance script - I removed it. Truth be told, even I was getting annoyed with it. You win. May all of your New-Window-Link Dreams come true.

Last but not least, anyone know what the fuck is wrong with the Extreme Tracking site? For the past few days th ones on all sites I have visited seem to just ping pong you from one URL to another URL in a neverending auto-forward loop. What gives. - Ron

Banner Mania

I have always been a sucker for cool or unique banners. I happened across these two for PlanetQuake that I thought were worth a good chuckle.

pq_banner4_dec99.gif (13136 bytes)

PQ_Relaunch_Dec99_banner3.gif (15406 bytes)

The Matrix has j00

If you have never used IRC odds are you might not get all the jokes, but I personally laughed my ass off at this exceptional parody. Check out "cr0wbar bastardizes the Matrix"

02.jpg (22513 bytes)

- Greybeard

2.7.00

Death to the Newbies

Nighthawk and I began our 3-week Death to the Newbies World Tour this weekend, accumulating at least 200 "perforated" corpses throughout 4 of Dereth's busiest newbie towns.

We're real men. With big pee pees, and flame-laden arrows.

Somewhere along the line we got the brilliant idea of beginning a Ron/Crum death count, so Friday we began taking pictures of every newbies' corpse we produce (that we have time to get pictures of in the middle of a fight) That's right, soon we'll have a kill's page gleaming with mug shots of Dereth's most notorious newbies. And to save your eyes the time, we're even going to elimate all duplicate corpses. Can Crum and Ron kill every non-friend player on the server? Time will tell. I know I have captured 82 unique corpses thus far. When Rich sends me his pics, we'll be tossing up some HTML for that.

We set such high goals for ourselves in these crazy games.

In other news, I (32), dueled a big-name monarch of the shard, by name of Lost Cause (39), and won. Aren't I a hardass.

In even further news, I got my ass handed to me at least 4 times this fine weekend in many a suicidal Baishi/Sawato raid by Rich and myself.

And in shittier news, I lost my a damned nice bow and Hoary Mattekar Robe in a freeze-lag death to a level 18 fellowed with a Mosswart Feeder. Yeah, It was pretty fucked up. These 2 guys were fighting me, I turn around and kill one, and as I let out a "haha" I freeze up long enough for shithead to hit me for 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, up to 140 damage total.....and I finally come to with 10 life, haul ass away from him thankful to still be alive, only to get gunned by some level 7 piece of shit NPC to supply this little newbie melee fucknugget with my good shit. Why is it that when any of us die to situations out of our control, these fucking games always make us cough up the mother of all fucking loot on our deaths, to some putz that will most likely lose it 10 minutes later and never even wear or use the shit we are jipped of in the first place.

Oh well, I got over it thanks to Nighthawk's gentle and soothing words "Hey fuckhead, so what, let's go kill more people."

And with that, we did, just that. Killed many more people. Mostly newbies though. because we are newbie killers extraordinaire, much like Og, only much much better. Oh yeah, we killed him too.

Hopefully we'll have that kills page up for you this week. We didn't want to begin it with only a few pictures, but our problem now is that we have killed so many people the past 3 days we might be too lazy to ever crop and JPEG all these goddamn *.bmps. I did mine already, but Rich's ability to develop film has been questionable, as he has yet to develop the film from WTF Fest 9000 here in Columbus last year. Which we need to couple with the ones J. sent me, for a complete recap.

I'm tired. Bye. - Ron

2.6.00

New Commando Movie

The good new is that the quite popular Dex Monkey movie has a follow up movie. The bad news is that Matt got banned partway through making it. Still it is pretty damn good. You can view it here or on the menu to the left.
- Nighthawk

2.5.00

What an Odd Search

I'm at work today unfortunately, so I was bored enough to look at our Hit Tracker's page on who reffers hit to us when I came across this AOL Search that lead someone to our page.

As funny as that is, I have two questions here. 1> Why would anyone EVER search for "Fuck me up the ass"? 2> Why oh why does WTFMan score a 67% hit on such a sick search? Ok, I know the answer to #2 is because search engines are somewhat dumb as far as question to content score, but still...
- Nighthawk

2.2.00

Last Night's Town Raid

Azile sent me a /tell yesterday to plan on a small raiding party around 9pm EST. Being the bloodthirsty type of guy I am, I was all for it. As it got close to 9pm, I passed the time by watching Ron absoultely own a mage of the same level (31) in a duel in Zaikhal. It was definitely a sign of things to come for the evening.

Ron and I headed to the meeting point and hooked up with Azile, Art, Shayla, Chasity, Parthor, Rayea, and one or two others. Nyar came along briefly on his new 12th lvl guy, but since he was too low level to fellowship him, Ron killed him accidently since he wasn't green to us. Oh well, he'll be back for more raids later, I'm sure.

Anyhow, the first raid was to where one of the mages was tied - the golem burial grounds. I felt bad for the people trying to level up there, but maybe it's payback for the poor golems getting cheesed through walls. Either way, it was a very brief and decisive slaughter of 8-10 people with many hitting the portal to get the hell out of Dodge.

So, after the appetizer was done, it was time for the goal - Baishi. A quick 7 degrees away, we met outside to buff up for the raid. I've noticed that being mid-level (26) and not a mage, I don't really need to buff much. A couple of Item buffs on the bow and armor/piercing Life buffs and I'm done. Seeings how the mages are basically naked, they have to buff for a few minutes. Then again, their buffs last for days comparatively. Anyhow, after we're ready, in we go.

Obviously, the first couple of people we drop are clueless that we're raiding, so are caught very off guard. After about 3 or 4 people dropped (relatively instantly), people started coming in to defend the town. I killed about 6 or 7 myself and I see the others tearing up a ton of other people. All is good.

*ting* Huk huk assrapes you for 78 points of lightning damage. Umm... ow. I don't know if I was picked out at random or what, but I was suddenly the target of 5 or so defenders with Huk Huk opening up with some good damage. I'm hit again for slightly less damage and I'm running for my life at 1 hp. Parthor healed me for 20 or so with his last bit of mana, but since I didn't want to recall or leave town, my visit to the Purple Bunghole of Love (tm) was inevitable. Huk was nice enough to send me a /tell asking me if I wanted my stuff back, but I told him that he earned it and to keep it (but thanked him for asking - what a guy).

I got a ride back to the action from Art. We killed a few more on our way back to town, but it was obvious that the town was ours as the rest of the group was casually standing around in the town square with no activity except for small intrusions which were quickly handled.

I don't know how many people we killed, but I think we lost a total of 4, all of which re-joined the fight quickly to finally hold the town. That's one of the coolest things about AC on Darktide... town raiding is possible. The big battles last week in Stonehold and then the 7-on-many we had last night is the most fun I've had in an oline game since my first 6 months of UO. If you don't play AC or if you play AC on a carebear server, you're missing out...
- Nighthawk