Best. Beer. Commerial. Evar. Well, short of nudity, but I think that’s called “indecency” here in the states.

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John + DDR = injury

Nice going John, got any video footage of that?

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1. Thanks to Mikey, I have some new reading obsessions
2. Cartoon Network is running about 8 hours of Naruto Saturday. I’m all over that shiznit.
3. Some Hello World! humor for the hackers out there (who have probably already seen it).
4. Speaking of Hello! World, here’s how to write the infamous Hello! World program in hundreds of programming languages. Stuff that makes the world go ’round, yo.
5. Coincidentally, my work’s email filters block the subject line “Hello! World”.
6. Christmas Rawked! Band of Brothers, That 70’s Show (seasons one and two) and CSI: Season two are all secured on DVD and all is content in th world.
7. Silkroad Online has suspended new accounts to isolate network problems. You’ve made a decent online RPG available for free. What the hell do you think your problems is? Anyways, if you got in, sweet. If not, well, go play World of Warcraft or Guild Wars or something.
8. There is no 8.

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It’d be funny if it wasn’t true.

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Just upgraded to Wordpress 2.0. Shiny, eh?

Most of the cool new features are on the backend. Lots of AJAX use. You probably won’t see any of the changes on the front end of the site, though.

I’ll get around to updating Digital Diverge and Crystal’s site later. Digital Diverge might be a bit trickier since I use the K2 beta theme on it.

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You want the cute?

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE CUTE!

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Interesting winamp plugin for those who might want to ditch iTunes on their windows systems.

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Now that’s funny!

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It’s just chutes and ladders, my friend.

If you cut through the bitterness and the language, there’s actually some validity to what he’s saying, having seen the application of this theory in my own best friend’s life. Poor sap’s on a lot of girl’s ‘friend’s ladder’ and has been referred to as both a ‘big brother’ and ‘teddy bear’.

NOTE: 1. Have your ad-blockers ready when visiting that link and 2. If you’re thin-skinned and take offense to the content of that link, take it up with the author of that page, not me.

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So I’ve started playing another MMORPG. No, not Warcrack Warcraft, but a new one I read about called Silkroad.

It’s developed in Korea, I think, and plays a lot like Warcrack Warcraft but more crude, I suppose. To explain it more easily, I think I’m going to break it down a bit more.

Races
Human. That’s it, chief. No elves, dwarves, trolls, etc. Humans. And I hope you like the Chinese, because you’re gonna see a lot of that type of culture and design. No to mention the poorly translated dialogue, which I kind of like. Reminds me of my Ragnarok days.

Classes
None. It looks like there might be eventually, since there’s references to Merchant, Hunter and Thief, but I’m not far enough along to know for sure and I can’t find any reference to them in the limited documentation I could find.

Skills and Stats
Here’s where you make yourself different from everyone else. There are two Stats: Str (Strength) and Int (Intelligence). Str controls how much health you have and how much physical damage you deal. Int controls how much MP you have and adds to your spells.

Your skill tree is divided into two sections, Weapons and Spells and you use skill points to “buy” skills in each tree. If I’m assuming correctly, you get a grand total of 300 skill points. There are three types of weapons: Swords (sword and blade), Polearms (spear and glaive) and Bows. Each weapon has it’s own weapon mastery and skills that are dependant on your character level, the level of your “mastery” of that skill and investments in other skills. If you’ve played Warcrack Warcraft then you’re already familiar with how this works, it’s just a bit more crude and the layout is different.

In addition to the weapon skill tree, there’s also a “Force” tree (Help us Obi-wan) that divides up into four categories: Fire, Ice, Lightning and Healing. These are your “spells”. Sort of. They add elemental damage and abilities to your chosen weapon. Well, except for the Healing tree, but I think that one’s obvious. Like the weapon trees, each Force has it’s own mastery that you’ll need to invest skill points into before you can advance up the skill tree.

Weapons
Swords

• Sword: The sword deals less physical damage that the blade, but deals more Force damage from yuor skills. They also have higher crit rates than blades. You can use a shield with a sword.
• Blade: The blade deals more physical damage but less Force damage from your skills. Also has a lower crit rate than the sword. You can use a shield with a blade.

Polearms

• Spear: Same as sword, but higher physical damage(being a two-hander and all). No shield (being a two-hander and all).
• Glaive: Same as the blade, but higher physical damage and slower swings.

Bows
No sub categories for bows. They’re two-handed weapons, so no shield and you have to buy arrows, too. I found lots of arrows, so it may not be as much of a problem.

Armor
Armors come in varying levels of the following types, need repairing, are level dependant and come in both male and female styles. Males cannot wear female armor and females cannot wear male armor, and stuffing your chestpeice isn’t an option, fellas! If you want to wear femal armor, you have to (sick) make a femal character.

Armor: Higher physical resists, lower magic resists. Unlike most other MMORPGs, the spells start flying once you get to around level 7 or 8, so it’s useful in more than just PvP.

Protector: A balance between physical and magic resists. If you get the set, your MP usage is cut by 10%.

Garment: Cloth armor. Low physical resists, high magic resists.

Other equippables
You can also wear two rings, a set of earrings (counts as one item) and a necklace. Most of them just up your physical and magical resists, but they can have other abilities, too.

Notes about items: All weapons and armor have a durability, so get used to repairing. Also, there are magical versions of all of these items that do other things like boost stats and such and a +1 actually means something in this game.

The questing system in Silkroad is a bit rough around the edges. At certain levels, you’ll be given a notice that some guy wants you to do a quest. It’s up to you to find that person and get the specifics of that quest, which is then entered into your quest log. The quest log keeps track of how far a long in that quest you are and in which direction the quest-giver is in relation to your current position (on the mini-map when you select the quest). Most quests center aroung The Grind. I.E. go kill 40 or 50 of these things and come back for a reward. The bad translations in the dialogues sometimes makes things difficult, but it’s do-able if you’re paying attention and context read.

PvP is consentual and is activated by wearing a particular color cloak. Red, Blue and Yellow make you hostile to everyone but the color you’re wearing (blue is hostile to everyone but blue). Orange cloak wearers are hostile to everyone. I’m not much of a PvPer, so I probably won’t be doing that much.

The graphics are great! Not up to par with something like Warcrack Warcraft, but definitly up there. Very worth looking at and no nudes and scantily clad women.

All in all, it’s a hack and slash MMORPG with some hints of spellcasting thrown in. You will mess up your first character, so spend a few hours getting used to the system and restart once you have an idea about which paths you’re going to take. Personally, I re-started with a sword and protector armor and plan on going either fire or ice. I might throw in some Healing just to get a ressurection (level 11, I think) skill.

Oh, did I mention that Silkroad is free? Both to download and to play.

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