Sad, then Very Very Happy!

I finally had a few days off, so I got a chance to try out Black Prophecy, the free-to-play Space Sim MMO.  I may give it a try again later, but I was disappointed to see how empty the ONE US server was.  Also while you can use a first person cockpit view it does not seem to have up/down right/left views like a plane does.  Plus, there are no restrictions in changing from a HUD view to a No-HUD view.

So I checked on my World of Warcraft account since there was little else to do, and low and behold I had received a Diablo 3 Beta account.  Sweet.

Even in it's Beta form Diablo 3 reminded me of what I like so much about Blizzard games.  Lots of polish and solid game play.  From what I've seen this will be a "must buy" for me.

What next?

Once again I feel like World of Warcraft is a little stale for me.  I may be easily amused, but I'm always looking for something new.

Two MMO's have been on my radar for a bit.  Now may be the perfect time to try them out while waiting for Guild Wars 2.

Black Prophecy is a space sim MMO.  Stunning visuals, support for joysticks, and claims of a great back story make it a very tempting offering. 

Another new interesting MMO is World of Planes, now renamed War Thunder: World of Planes.  I've mentioned this title before.  Planes, rich graphics, and an MMO.  It sounds right up my alley.  According to the official FAQ the plan is to start the closed beta test in Q1 2012.

Guild Wars 2 Beta Expanding

ArenaNet announced today that their recent small closed beta of Guild Wars 2 has finished.  Per a news post from Mike O'Brient, ArenaNet Founder and President:

"We recently finished our first closed beta test, and we’re now ready to hold progressively larger events. In February we’ll invite select press to participate in beta testing, and in March and April we’ll aggressively ramp up the size of our beta test events so that many of you will have a chance to participate. And of course, this all leads to the release of Guild Wars 2 later this year." - ArenaNet

What "later this year means is anyone's guess.  Still, great news for MMO Fantasy fans.

Radeon HD 7970

The new Radeon HD 7970 video cards have finally made it to retail.  There is a gaggle of them at Newegg for around $550-$600.

Performance is pretty good, but not good enough to make me ditch my Geforce GTX 580 quite yet.  There are also rumors of a new Nvidia card based on the GK104 Graphics Processing Unit. The target price might be around $399.  Not cheap, but a good bang for the buck card.

There is also a high end Nvidia GPU scheduled for release some time this year.  Details about when they will be available and what kind of performance we can expect have not been confirmed.

Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores

Last but not least a heads up on a new Nvidia video card.  The Nvidia GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores is expected to be released on November 29.  If you are in the market for a $250'ish video card to play the latest games this is the one for you.  While I'm sure HardOCP and other will have the scoop on them after the NDA is lifted, you can read about it a little more at Tweaktown and Softpedia.

Overclocking i7 920

So with all these new games I decided that I'd see if I could overclock my old i7 920 to get a little more oomph from it.  I am a big fan of stability, and I didn't see a reason to overclock until now.  Sure, I had used the ASUS utility for simple overclocking, but it just made my system unstable.

After looking around I found a guide at Overclock.net called "Guide to Overclocking the Core I7 920 or 930 to 4.0ghz.  It is a nice run down with good info on what each setting does.

I actually settled for a nice and simple overclock to 3.6, which has been stable so far.  That's a pretty basic standard overclock for the i7 920, and you will still see HardOCP articles that include that setup in their testing.

Of course I used CPU-Z to verify my overclock, a very handy and free program.

The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim

Another fun game is the latest saga in The Elder Scrolls series - Skyrim.  It's a great game to show off what makes a PC so great - customization and modding.  Already there is a huge collection of mods and texture packs for Skyrim.  

A couple of good places to get mods and textures packs are Skyrim Nexus and Fileplanet.  You will need a small program to extract the compressed .lz format files.  I can recommend 7-Zip, an open source software program that does a great job.

Battlefield 3

Several of the "must play" games have finally made it out this month.  Leading the pack was Battlefield 3 for the PC.  While not perfect, it has been a lot of fun to play.  Big 64 player maps, lots of vehicles, and a robust stat tracking and upgrade goodies have kept me playing for now.  The new partially destructable buildings are also a lot of fun.

The smallish maps for planes, the tactical "flashlight" that blinds people, mortar spam on some maps, and weapon imbalances are problems that they need to fix.  Not to mention stability problems, game crashes for some, and poor server customization at the moment.  It's still a game in need of some polish, but when it works, it can be a lot of fun.

But do expect some challenges.  I had a heck of a time setting up my CH Fighterstick/Throttle/Rudder Pedals. Yep, I got it to work, after realized that some keys are hard bound in the game.  I also had to get back up to speed with the CH programming software to customize the buttons.  Battlefield 3 does not want to recognize more then one game controller, so you also have to map the different controllers as one device in the CH software.  My CH profile: Battlefield 1.0.map and Battlefield 1.0.cms.

My current headache with the game is that you can no longer start a server with less then 4 people - even if it is "unranked."  That's a big problem for those like me who rented a server for the sole purpose of practicing.  Hopefully this will get fixed after being broken in the latest patch.

Thanksgiving Goodies

Ah, Thankgiving, one of my favorite times of the year.  Family, friends, good food, and perfect weather.  it's also the time of the year that new games come out, and whispers of new hardware starts to filter out.  Life is very good, at least for most of us.

Good Old Games

Nine11 sent me a link to Shogo, over at Good Old Games.  Man, does that bring back memories.  Shogo was the First Person Shooter that started it all for me.  Sure, I had played others before Shogo, but Shogo was the the first FPS that just felt "right."  Old graphics and all, it still rocks.

GOG has  been around for a bit, and is still going strong.  If you have any interest in classic PC games it's certainly worth a look.