Random Shots: Cool, New Stuff

• A couple of cool things for you, my wonderful readers.


• I asked my beautiful wife if she needed to stop at the bookstore on the way home from dinner last night. Although she did not, she reminded me last night that I did. Because she's much smarter than me, I then asked if she knew what book I was looking for. She tried Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft before coming to Guild Wars. Had I not been driving, I would have slapped myself in the forehead. I'm now the proud owner of Ghosts of Ascalon. Only a few pages in, but so far the writing isn't awful. That's all I expect from a media tie-in novel, so I'm happy. An actual review may follow.


• The most recent post about Guild Wars 2 details leveling in the game. Evidently there will be eighty levels, but that the leveling curve is actually flat. So it take the same experience to go from level one to two as it does from level seventy-nine to eighty. Hunter from Hunters Insight has an unusually brief analysis of the news because the news itself was so inconsequential. Ravious from Kill Ten Rats asks the apropos question "What's the point?" (This may be the most divisive post from ArenaNet solely based on the lack of detail.) After giving it very little thought, I'm wondering if leveling will follow the (Dwayna help us all) Call of Duty model of leveling to access perks and other bonuses. I have nothing to base it on, but I think it would be funny.


• Much like the WoW forums, the best news for the Champions Online superfan can be found on the CO forums. So instance, this recent post from Balseraph about the upcoming pet power review. I've read about how much fun Masterminds are in CoX, but I never tried something like that in CO. Reading about this power review makes me want to try it. The entire thread is full of dev posts, so anyone really interested (and I'm willing to admit that I may be the only one) would be rewarded by reading through it.


• That enough for one day. Now I'm going to play Dragon Quest IX. Unless my supervisor catches me, in which case I will work.