JUNE 17th 2001 - No Updates today |
There will be no update today. No I'm not slacking off... I haven't
even logged onto AO since I got home from work three hours ago. So far we've put the
finishing touches on the v2.0 page layout and I've been converting the old pages to the
new format. This is taking a few hours folks, and while I love this site, I don't
get paid for it, so the news is taking a back seat until Monday (so I can sleep and eat). But on Monday we should have a wonderful world of our crap for you people to explore!! It may take a day or so for all the new features to be implemented, but our Interviews will be ready, as will our newspost and many other things. If you want a sneak peek at our modest upgrade for the site, plus a snippet of our interview with Maggie the Jackcat, click here. Overall the new layout is cleaner, and isn't too much harder to work with. As a bonus I think it will enable us to regulate the traffic to the site to allow visitors to get a look at the whole page, not just the linked section they came in on. I'd like to use some java to brighten up the links a bit, but that's beyond my basic knowledge. If you have some nice links to java apps, you can email me here... it would be much appreciated. I'll see you all on Monday! |
JUNE 16th 2001 - Just not a whole helluva lot to say... | |
I don't think it needs saying but yes, we played AO today. This is
not news, so we'll leave it at that. Other than Tomb Raider opening today (which I
missed because of work), I'd have to say little happened today to raise my interest.
Well, let's see what we got... Anarchy
Updates -The Radar repair missions still do not work to the best of my knowledge, and now a few missions have become bugged to a point where you cannot even enter the mission "dungeon". -Funcom has a link to where you can download the beta client in parts now. Handy. Click here to see it. -The stress test is today at 10pm GMT. Happy lagging to all. -Funcom had this press release concerning their Beta website:
-Our Doublegold does AO site should be available with the site's v2.0 revamp on Monday or Tuesday. AC Updates... -New content (thanks to Maggie at theJackcat.com for getting this info so fast!... visit her site for the full details!) ....Quickly Told.... -New undies Plus loads of other things... like I said for the very best coverage of AC's Chains of Command event, visit Maggie's update page here. RANDOM NEWS... -Chainsaw got back to me on the interview just recently. Expect that to be posted sometime this weekend. Thanks Chainsaw! -Nic Lidstrom won the Norris Trophy! W00t! Eat THAT Chris Pronger, you mangled f-ck!! -I'm emailing Scott Kurtz regarding our Boobology yesterday. Stay tuned for that update! God that's it, this is a weak post. Damn upgrade is creeping up on me. I'm out. (fenris) |
JUNE 15th 2001 - AO and AC Patchday, PvP Boobwatch, the Best DG Pictures ever! | |||||
If you play AC
like I know a lot of our readers do,or if you're an Anarchy Online beta tester like me and Stryker,
there was much to be discussed. Lets get on it... PATCH
DAY: ANARCHY ONLINE Thanks to the somewhat flaky, but strengthening AO community though that eventually sent me in the right direction and on the road to fixing the patch errors. These two posts helped me out a great deal, thanks to Campbell on the official AO board: http---aoforums.funcom.com.-showthread.php-s=13034955a96c01187f0d300a1815b6a4&threadid=8461 http---aoforums.funcom.com.-showthread.php-s=13034955a96c01187f0d300a1815b6a4&threadid=11667 I'm not playing up the fact that you should run and get these downloads though, because as I type this, the server is down again with yet another patch upgrade. I assume this is to fix the rather obvious and aggravating errors 11.2 had, but also to perhaps to fix the mission generators which seem to be, in a word, f-cked. I tried several missions trying to repair the radar and none worked. I got some great l3wt on those runs, but my real target was the mission reward, a token that would allow Ghin to move up a title level. In AO, your skills start to cap out at certain levels until you change you're title, or rank... so as Ghin's martial arts skills have capped out, I really wanted to get that token and it only seemed to come as a reward to frickin fix-the-radar missions... which don't work... crapzorz. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. Anyway, here was the official Funcom message that came with the 11.2 patch:
No mention of f-xzoring the mission gens. I guess we'll see what the hot fix patch is for in a bit. In other AO news, Funcom also announced that the server would be going down on Friday to upgrade the servers, and Saturday would be their uber-stress test day. Here's the official word:
I'll be working at that time, but here's hoping for lots of lag folks! Good luck! Finally, two quick screenshots I got during my brief time on...
PATCH DAY:
ASHERON'S CALL
Recent estimates say the servers will be back up around noon (12 pm) Pacific time. For more details on this very complex and interesting patch, click here for the rollout article, and here for the buildnotes. Here is a look at June's Portal.dat icon files as well... make of it what you will. For great patch info, visit Maggie the Jackcat's page here! PvP Online... In
Depth Research
So what's the deal here? Did Jade get surgery? Just what the heck is going on? Kurtz cannot deny the conspiracy... Jade has bigger boobs. That's the bottomline. I will find you answers, loyal reader, even if I have to go to the man himself. I want straight facts and straight answers... Scott cannot deny the truth... science has proven everything! Ahem... with that aside, lets move on... DG's BEST PICTURES EVER!! RANDOM NOTES... -There's a new Friendly Fire up. Now while many of you will get the lag issues, the punchline will be lost on you. Needless to say, this person is the target of much frustration from internet users throughout our hometown, so while only a select few readers will get it, the rest of you can take joy in knowing that Edge [E&C] and Christian [E&C] would happily wipe out your ISP's customer service rep. -I've got some good ideas for new feature sections on the page when v2.0 goes up, including a Hot/Cold section and Top 5 lists for mine and Stryker's favourite games. Unfortunately as our workload increases, the likelihood that our flopping Movies section will get the axe is increasing. If anyone is interested in taking over / revamping the Movies section, email me here. -News posts from June 1st to June 14th have been archived. Click on the link at the bottom of this page to see our old news. -I may or may not throw in some other news as the day continues, mainly concerning the AO and AC patch updates and server downtimes. Stay tuned. Until then, ciao. (fenris) -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 14th 2001 - 9 out of 10 Beta testers prefer AO to Real life |
Another very short news update, so short in fact
that there's no headline news. I'm just gonna fire the tidbits at you and hope
you'll forgive me. Me is tired. RANDOM NEWS... -There are pretty much confirmed rumours that the new AC patch is going to nerf vendor buy rates so that no merchant will buy things over 90% cost. That means the great days of the 127% smiths in Fort Teth and Ayan are over as far as we know. While I myself see no problem with this, I always had more money than needed, some people are really pissed off, especially the folks doing the money run from the Mayoi mage tower to Ayan. -the Max Payne website has gone live. You can see that here. -Please stop entering the Great AC Giveaway... the contest ended Monday night as I thought we made plainly clear. Thanks for your interest though, and check back on DG when we run our next contest (in the next week or so). -Ghin and Drzaius had some good quality killing time this morning on Anarchy Online, Ghin is at lvl 11 now and just picked up a piece of tank armor. For those of you who don't know what this is, this awesome piece of metal is wearable over regular armor. Little Ghin is now a Kung Fu tank! -Work is going along nicely for Doublegold version 2.0. Upon release of that site, you can expect our feature interview, an AO preview plus a look at our AO page. -There's a new Friendly Fire up... it's rather bizarre, but hell it's funny. Sorry for not updating our Firearms page lately, but obviously we're taking our jobs as AO beta testers very seriously these days. We'll look into a few FA games when Funcom takes our toys away til retail. -My Nashville Predators started the 2003 playoffs tonight in NHL 2001, facing Vancouver. Man the Cnaucks have had my number all year, and the series was a hard fought 6 game affair that had me screaming at my computer, berating my players and finally having it all come together with a solid 2-0 win in Game 6 at GM Place in Vancouver. Next round sees us up against the overpowered Detroit Redwings. Yipes. Should be good. -Keep the votes coming in the Rumble!! -This page is getting way huge I know... I'll archive the S-O-B soon. Sorry for the rank news post today, I promise I PROMISE to spend a bit more time on it tomorrow. There's just not enough hours in a day. -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 13th 2001 - More Anarchy, DG v2.0, Asheron's Call patch pushed back, AC Giveaway | |
It was kind of a lean day news-wise... our ISP was down for the better
part of the day, which is frustrating, but things are working again. We have news to
get to, so let's get to it! Think of Another
Anarchy Header When it was all said in done, we were finally in Tir and man-o-man, the hunting is great around there! I made two levels, getting Ghin to level 10 in just over an hour. Needless to say we'll be hanging around there for awhile. Buh Bye Athen! Here are some more screenshots of our day in Rubi-Ka. DOUBLEGOLD v2.0 AC Patch moved to Thursday
Orion, a member of the Turbine team said the push back was because they were, "...just taking some extra precautions this month." Sounds fair to me. the Great AC Giveaway RANDOM NEWS... -No real updates to the page today except for the news post as we are devoting some attention to our updated version and putting thought into our AO page. -Speaking of AO, after running the nasty roads of Rubi-Ka, we came up with the idea of a clan Border Patrol group. You know, protecting the travelers, cutting off Omni bastards, making sure neutrals are clean and not up to any funny business. We hear you need 10 people to start a guild in the game, so if you're interested, email me for more info. -The Interview I promised is ready to go and will be presented as part of the kick off for the site facelift. I hope you'll check back for that, it is a great piece! -Those of you who miss the great news on the now defunct Crossroads of Dereth, you can find a refugee message board here. -Keep those votes coming in for the Rumble! I want Christina destroyed!! -Hmm, I think that's all for today! See y'all tomorrow. (fenris) |
JUNE 12th 2001 - Great AC Giveaway Winners! AO Screenshots, GBA, Interviews, Kraft Dinner and Friendly Fire Updated | |
The title implies that this news post may be long, but I doubt it as I
have a lot of Anarchy Online to get to. But there's business to attend to,
and attend we shall! the Great AC
Giveaway
You can find more details on how they won and what they won by clicking here. Thank you to EVERYONE who took the time to come here and enter. We hope you keep coming back to check on us every now and then, and to look in to our new contests... I promised a new contest would start today, but I had to push it back to make sure we could actually get our prize. So I can't tell you exactly what the contest is, but here's a hint. Screenshots with a touch of Anarchy I tried to hang on and explore... I love to explore new games. I was doing rather well actually, as Ghin (a Opifex Martial Artist) is rather quick and stealthy. I thought I might make it all the way to Avalon when I encountered a bizarre lake of lava, surrounded by three volcanoes. There were bridges connecting a series of islands leading to a very strange and cool looking tree (see pics below). But to get to the first island, you had to swim through lava!! Well, being the explorer that I am (and this being beta), I decided to take the plunge and see if I could make the first island. So I quickly dove for it... 100dmg... 100dmg... me dead and on the express train back to Athen. Sigh... I did manage to find a skimpy swimsuit for Ghin though when I got back to town, plus I bought a plant for my dull apartment. All in all, it was a good day. You can expect our full Anarchy Online preview sometime next week I figure, and plans are in motion for our official AO page, so stay tuned. Game Boy Advance Released... Mario
sez "Just send me your $$$ b-tch!" Interviews! Yes, really! RANDOM NEWS... -Friendly Fire has been updated, with an obvious AO flavour. We're sorry to our regular FF readers who haven't seen a new strip in a few days... weekends are always busy around here. -The Kraft Dinner fiasco has come to an end. I have reimbursed Stryker his one (1) box of lifted Kraft Dinner. If you don't believe me, you can see the scanned evidence below!! -Don't forget to vote on the new Rumble for this week and help Megatron crush that b-tch Christina Aguilera!! -Wow. No bitching about Verant in today's post. It did seem a little short today. (fenris) -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 11th 2001 - It's Anarchy I tell you, Anarchy!! More Verant sux, New Rumble, the Great AC Giveaway! | |
I will apologize to the people that came here
yesterday and found NO updates whatsoever. Call it a day off...
works burns ya out, and I just wanted to kick back an enjoy some Anarchy Online. Lets get on with the news. ANARCHY! ANARCHY! ANARCHY! I've changed my characters, still monkeying around with the skill system and choosing races. My soldier is now Steampowered and I have an Opifex martial artist named Ghin... good lord martial artists are fun! I'm having a lot of fun running around with her, laying the smack down and generally talking trash to my computer. I hooked up a bit with Stryker last night. He's playing a Doctor named Drzaius (sp?). We're hoping to get some screenshots for you guys more sooner than later, when we can figure out what we're doing, where we're going and when the game will run properly. In related news, I found the new AO Manual link. We had the old one, but the address was changed for some reason. You can find it now at this link. For another handy AO game faq, check out Lord of Pixies site here. Finally, as reported at Gone Gold, AO has, well, gone gold and will more than likely meet its release date of June 27th. I hope everything will be working then and I guess we can expect an early patch. the Empire Strikes out... again Here is the official Verant press release/statement.
the DG Rumble the Great AC Giveaway... last day!! RANDOM NEWS... -Our favourite AC site, Crossroads of Dereth is toast. This is sad, but its a sign of the internet times. Apparently XRG just couldn't keep up with its server/traffic costs and had to shut the whole network down. I saw also that AO Basher is gone too. Pretty soon its just gonna be the Vault Network (shudder). J/K guys! But we will miss those great news sites that supported the games that they loved. -No new Friendly Fire today, I'll try and have one up tonight. I've already got the strip planned out, just need to spend the half hour doing it ;) -There will be a new contest starting tomorrow, so stay tuned!! -New DG Rumble |
JUNE 9th 2001 - Brief updates... you'll see why |
Today's news is brief.. why? Because I finally got my Anarchy Online Beta CD key! Woot! I
recently jumped into the game, knowing jack squat, shooting things, running around and
generally playing the part of a n00b. I have a few issues with the game so far...
the camera controls are difficult to operate and I tend to freeze up when zoning. I
hope I can figure out how to correct these things soon. I made two characters so
far, a male Solitus soldier name Dchette and a female Solitus martial artist named North.
Here are some shot I took in game, note how bad they look because I have to turn
the graphics down to play.
I am such a loser leaving the post like this, but hey, works been rough, I'm gonna take a few hours to relax. You can expect full updates tomorrow plus some more looks at AO... tomorrow Stryker will probably have his Key as well so we can team up in game. Yes, tomorrow I have some more Verant bashing, the next round of the Rumble plus whatever else arrives on my doorstep. Check out today's Friendly Fire by Stryker! (fenris) -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 8th 2001 - The Lanys Conspiracy, B&W Review v2.0, Penny Arcade, AO Beta Patch, Diablo2 Expansion Previewed | |||
Lets get right to it shall we? Egg on Verant's face... Verant Bans
Eggs
Now you see why I refer to the entire event as a"conspiracy" and good lord, even from a completely neutral standpoint, Verant has buried themselves with this. Yes, Conquest was using cheese methods to kill the Warders, and yes they were using spells in a non standard way. So what? The BIG deal here was that the Sleeper script was incomplete and Verant was not going to stand by and let this guild expose that while not fighting in the Come-Kill-Me style of Verant preferred gaming. I mean Christ, Jeff Butler is the producer of the game... if this was just a simple exploit, leave it to the GMs and let them ban whoever necessary. No, this was, in essence, a public execution of Conquest to make an example out of them: You play Verant's way, or you don't play at all! In Brad McQuaid's post a few days back he stated that the Sleeper script worked and that the human figure depicted in the screenshots on Conquest's site...
This is utter tripe if you view this screenshot taken from the Conquest site depicting the placeholder model AND the sleeper model in the same picture. This clearly shows that Kerafym (the Sleeper) was awakened before the script triggered him... triggered by Verant to kill Conquest. They spawned their uber monster to kill Conquest, even though the GMs could have killed them at any time. And much to their embarrassment, they essentially flaunted the broken script by showing the Sleeper with no working model... thus the placeholder. Another interesting twist in this story is the copy of the chat log recorded by Conquest member Camdar which you can read here. I remind you these logs are easily doctored, but the length and overwhelming evidence against Verant would claim otherwise. I checked several EQ sites today in search of follow-ups to this story and generally found nothing. Much to Verant's bemusement, this is basically fading away. Perhaps their operation was a success. CQ has been put down, and put down hard. But that was two days ago and 300,000 EQ players go about their gaming without really paying attention to what happened on Lanys Monday night. But for 30 or so specific players from Conquest, the game will never be the same again. The guild is brushed aside and the great Verant machine rumbles on. MMORPG's lost their innocence a long time ago thanks to Verant. This time they lost their soul. (fenris) Black & White Patch and the
Sequel to our first Review If you like, you can also download the uninstaller from FilePlanet at this link. In light of the new patch, Stryker has revamped his original Black and White review which you can read here. Happy gaming people, I'm glad I wont have to hear about this patch anymore! Penny Arcade... Oh my God I touched
him! I doubt it. You can read Penny Arcade done by Tycho and Gabe, here. AO Beta Patch
Yeah, I was actually thinking reducing the cash cost of map icons would improve gameplay greatly. Or maybe I'm not actually playing Beta yet and am just talking out of my ass. You decide. Diablo2: Lord of Destruction Preview Random News... -We have another interview in the works right now, with a member of the Firearms team. You can expect that... when I get it. Sooner than later. Maybe. Don't you love how we reassure you here!? -I have a new Friendly Fire posted for today. You can read it by licking here... I mean clicking. Quit licking your screen. Unless you want to lick this.... Mmmm, Stephanie... -An update on the Kraft Dinner fiasco. No I didn't drink Strykers booze, though seeing the graveyard of Gibson's Whiskey in our cupboard makes me think that even if I wanted to, I don't think I could find any to drink. Further note... I will not compensate Stryker for the stolen Kraft Dinner unless he stops singing his godawful rendition of "Radar Love". -WW2Online still sucks... stay tuned... -Finally, entries into our Great AC Giveaway are trickling down, with a few days left before the deadline of Monday. If you have yet to enter, or have no idea what we're talking about, you still have time to click here. -Christina Aquilera is still beating Godzilla in the Rumble. What the f-ck? -I haven't had much time for games lately, though I do make time for NHL 2001. My Nashville Predators are 2 time defending Stanley Cup champions, have gone on an insane (for me) 23-0-2 tear and are heading into the playoffs red, red hot. My one problem though, is my penalty killing is dead freakin' last in the league. Why? Because I take so many penalties... I swear the ref is out to get me! I mean really, can you honestly consider this mild crosscheck on Georges Laraque by Jason Smith a penalty?!? No, of course not! Its obvious that the pansy Laraque is faking it to get me a penalty! What the hell!? Oh well, we'll see you guys in the playoffs! Mwuhahhaha!! -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 7th 2001 - Brad Strikes Back, WW2 Online Debuts, AO News, AC Teaser | |||||||
Well I got my cowboy hat on, that must mean its
time for the news update. And hoooo boy, this one is rife with evilllll (can I get
an "Indeed"?) So lets get at it... Verant: 8,365, Fans: 0
Ooo hoo hoo... goooood. Of course not paying attention to their official boards, Everquest's McQuaid responded to this post with:
Aha, note once again Verant changing their policies on the fly, or the infamous "invisible line" that none may cross. When I read this second post, I was a little pissed. Everyone knows my displeasure for EQ and Verant and here I had a chance to vent...
You can read my full post here. By far the best post on the thread came from Dornette's post.
What went wrong indeed? I expect this will not we the last we see of the whole Lanys fiasco. THIS JUST IN: "World War 2 Online
Sucks" I looked around to try and get some comments on the status of the game from the devs, but the best I could find was when I tried to access their page: PLAYNET.COM WILL BE DOWN DUE TO HIGH TRAFFIC LOAD Boy, they sure came out prepared didn't they? There's already a 60 meg patch needed to play the game, though nobody can actually play it yet it seems. Even after you get the patch and the game amazingly works, you still need the computer from hell to run it. People reporting with 1gig processors, 256 megs of ram and GeForce cards are saying that they are getting FPS counts at less than one per second. LESS THAN ONE PER SECOND!! What in Jesus' hairy ass is that all about?! The word on the street is 512 megs of RAM is about what you're looking at. Good lord. I'm going to agree with the people that predict this game being done in two months, unless they fix the game... fix it real good. Big Fat Anarchy Online News
Yeah I got yer stinkin' download... where's our Beta CD Keys?! Asherons Call June Teaser
Sounds interesting. You can read the teaser at the Zone here. In related AC news, the Great AC Giveaway Contest is still going on and you have until midnight of Monday, June the 11th to enter. Winner will be announced the following Tuesday. I liked it so much, I bought the
company... Random Notes -Expect our first interview up within the next few days. I have talked to the specific people recently and hope to have those responses on DG before the end of the week. -Stryker has a new Friendly Fire for today looking at the l33t skill of Bunny Hopping in Firearms. Go check it out. -What in the name of all that is holy?! At last check, Christina Aquilera was actually beating Godzilla in the DG Rumble. If you haven't voted yet, go do so now... and fix this most grievous of errors!! -I stole a box of Kraft Dinner from Stryker today. I feel kinda bad, but I'm so terrible at shopping for myself. I may or may not replace the stolen item, that all depends on if he notices or not. I guess that also depends on if he reads the news post too. -As always I will be mucking around on the site, updating here and there trying to make it shinier and somewhat cooler. My first target is cleaning up the Links section and making it more useful (and organized!). As I said yesterday, our goal is to build our following up enough so that we can apply to Recon Networks for hosting. That being said, we have a lot of work to do. (fenris) -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 6th 2001 - Target: RECON, Scattered News, Jedi Knight 2 Screens and why Verant sucks |
Recon Networks... our goal Anyone who is visiting this site from Firearmsmod.com knows what the Recon network is. For those of you that don't, its a network service dedicated to games and gaming affiliates. You know I've been looking long and hard for a potential host for DG when it would eventually outgrow Tripod (no time soon mind you), but little did I realize that a perfectly legitimate host was available every time I went to check the FA page. Recon looks to me like a perfect fit and is sorely in need of what we have... in spades!! I went over the Codex and Terms of Service rather carefully, and DG seems to fir all the criteria except for that in the department of traffic. This is where you come in folks. I'm not saying spam click the site... but its the word of mouth that builds sites. Tell people about our site! If you don't like our site, email me and tell us what we can do to fix it... we'll do our best. The page is young, yes, ugly and just on its beginning legs, but now we have a goal. When this site averages around 1000 hits per day, I think I will make the initial application to Recon. I thank all of you who support us, we want you to see this site grow so you can say, "Yeah, I was reading Doublegold when they were on Tripod." Everything has to start somewhere. (fenris) Jedi Knight 2 Screenshots If this doesn't impress you in any way, you need your eyes checked kids. I know my computer is crying because there is probably no way JK2 will look this good on my rig. One day I'll break the 500 MHz barrier... one day... (fenris) Verant sUx0rZ To their credit, the GM who "busted" Conquest later apologized and allowed the members to loot their corpses the next day. But Verant itself said nothing of the incident, even though the entire problem was started by one of their broken quests. What? Verant makes no mistakes and crushes all those who oppose them... why it sounds like... Yeah I'm going to jail for that one. But it was worth it :) (fenris) News and Rumours Scattered News... -Yes the Great AC Giveaway is still going. You can read more about it here. -BWGame.com has said that the beta version of the Black and White patch will be released at the end of the week. Frankly, I'm really tired about the patch news. I think this f-cking patch has more hype going for it than most games coming out these days, considering that the patch itself is nothing impressive. I loved the game mind you, but enough already... -I finally got around to updating the link to Chainsaw's FA map, ps_prop. The new download can be found here. Chainsaw himself said there are a few changes on the map, but it is still a beta version. -A new edition of Friendly Fire is up for today. This one pokes a bit of fun at all the weapon tweaks being made in the Firearms 2.6 update. -No [E&C] updates. Me and Stryker skipped FA today in favour of some wicked Serious Sam cooperative play as he had secured his own copy of the game today. It really was a blast, even though my computer had some problems with the network game. All in all, cooperative game modes rock the body that rock the party. -THIS JUST IN: Women drive me crazy. On to other news... -Okay, Flash movies are more of Stryker's thing, but if any of you have a sense of humour about Star Wars, click here. -God when I saw this, who the hell did you think I thought of first. I know dumbass Stryker is already grinning. This is the last panel of today's Penny Arcade... good lord, they're so thinking on Strykers wavelength it frightens me. FRIGHTENS me!! -Stryker made mention of Sega and Playstation teaming up to make games or hardware or whatever, he never really explained it to me, or I wasn't listening. No offense to you console gamers out there, but it's very well known that I am not a big supporter of them. Consoles are starting to hurt PC Gamers, and in turn, they piss me off. I may still buy an X-Box, but I would have preferred to play Halo on my computer. (fenris) -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 5th 2001 - Black and White Patch, RAW, the AC Contest, and How to improve DG?! |
I expected a lot more for a Monday than was actually turned out. Nothing from Gamespy, which I dread is turning into what Daily Radar was. IGN wasn't much more useful, and I'm hoping it was just a lean weekend or something... anyway it's given us more time to monkey around with the website. The Great AC Giveaway is going strong as we are one week away from the deadline. Adding the mattekar robe to the prize package has somewhat elevated the status of the contest I figure, which is good for us, is good for the people and is good for the matty robes who really just wanted a good home. My thanks to everyone who is participating in the contest, and I hope even just a small percentage of you will return to Doublegold from time to time to check on us, even after the contest is over. Speaking of contests, this will not be our last I reckon, yup. Cash and time considering, we'll probably be doing a game giveaway sometime down the road. Stay tuned for that. Finally some news on the Black and White patch for those of you who care (not sure if I do). BWGame.com posted info saying that the initial patch was complete and was being submitted to EA to be tested by Q&A for 2-3 weeks. In the meantime they would be releasing what would essentially be a beta patch in the next few days. Planet Black and White said that File(broken link)planet is preparing for the onslaught of people looking to download the patch when it is released. They have already setup up the download page, found here, and are waiting for the go ahead from Lionhead studios. Dollars to donuts says this makes not difference at all. Me and Stryker completed our weekly ritual of WWF RAW is WAR last night and all in all, it was a decent show with some high spots, a decent main event and a strong undercard. The WWF creative team really is in high swing right now with a lot of cool storylines, so this summer of wrestling may be worth paying attention to. In other wrestling news, Rajahwwf.com is holding open application for new staff columnists. This is a position I've neglected to try for for many years now and I think this may be the time. Wish me luck. There's a new edition of Friendly Fire up, this one done by Stryker. Its very funny so take the 10 seconds and check it out. Finally, as traffic has gone up a few notches here at DG, my attention has turned to "How can we keep people coming back here?" We try adding a lot of content, but we're never sure what people want to see. So I thought I'd make it simple... if YOU have a suggestion on how we can improve the page, take your idea, write it down and email it to me. Your support makes our jobs more earlier and rewarding. Also, as I've said before we are actively looking for new folks to join us here, so if you think you're brave enough to work on Doublegold with me and Stryker, click here for more information. We played some Firearms today, but nothing to write home about (or update the Firearms [E&C] page rather). I did have a nice game of NHL2001 though where my Preds whipped the Oilers 11-0. Of course, for some evil reason the game crashed just as I was exiting so this sweet sweet game was lost. Sad, but not broken I tried again later... and beat Edmonton by the very same score! Now nothing against the Oilers, I love em to death, but Nashville 0wnZ j00!! Well... in my simulated hockey world at least. The Oilers bad luck was capped off by Todd Marchant getting a brutal giveaway by my goalie Steve Passmore (living up to his name I guess), but totally dropped the ball when he missed the very very empty net. I replayed this highlight for Stryker over and over again thinking the shutout gods were really on my side this game. Huzzah! That's about it for now... this post is probably rife with typos... I'm pretty tired at the moment and I've still got some other site maintenance to do. Still no word on our AO CD keys... damn. Anyway, have a good day and we'll see you tomorrow. (fenris) -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 4th 2001 - Big Prize updates for the Great AC Giveaway, AO Updates and Friendly Fire |
Its Sunday, thus virtually no news in gameland... lets see what we have going on around here.
Well for those of you who have entered the Great AC Giveaway contest, we've got some cool, cool news for you. The GSA had been added to the Second place prize as my Matty Robe is now a part of the First prize package. I was originally planning to sell my robes on Ebay, but I thought our prizes looked kinda weak and I really didn't want to go through the Ebay process. Plus they're my robes and I'll do whatever the hell I want with them! So if you thought the prizes were not up to snuff before, take another look and enter while you still can. Click here for more information. I and Stryker have Anarchy Online downloaded and installed on our computers as we anxiously wait for our CD keys to be emailed to us. As Funcom said, the CD keys for Beta4 will be mailed in batches starting "sometime this week", but we're hoping for God's grace here... I want to play some AO before I have to go back to work! Stryker also noted this morning that AO has an html version of the game manual online for our perusal. The manual looks incomplete in places, but should answer a great deal of the questions people may have on the game, namely the skill system. In the land of comics, I see a scanner sitting here beside me so that means it will be only a few days before our first edition of Doublegold: the Comic is available for your reading displeasure. This will basically be comics about the Doublegold staff and our fictional adventures in games, comics related to games, comics related to movies... and on and on. We're thinking of rotating the comic between me and Stryker. Expect goofy, f-cked up sh-t from Stryker and expect busty anime chicks from me. Our other comic is up in full swing now with a big 3 strips out so far, and getting slowly better with each one. If you're a fan of Firearms, or team based FPS's in general, why not take a look at Friendly Fire? It doesn't hurt your brain... much. Finally you may have noticed a lot of graphical changes around here. This is just me dicking around with some ideas, and if you don't like some of the new changes, email me and tell me your opinion. One day I'd like to add Flash and a whole bunch of cool stuff, but I really am just an intermediate html guy, so improvements will come slowly. (fenris) Don't ask, just click. -New Friendly Fire |
JUNE 3rd 2001 - Reformatting the Site on a Lean News Day |
What up folks? As I've stated, its been a rather unremarkable day in terms of news so I and Stryker have focused on getting a lot of site content done. We're also working our way through the numerous contest entries we have been receiving, and a lot of them look good. The Great AC Giveaway is going along nicely, so keep it up people. The prizes are not mind blowing, but they're still cool and its so easy to enter. By the way, a special hello to all the people who are here for the contest. I hope you'll take the time to look around our site as well as I and Stryker have put a lot of work into it. And please... vote on the Rumble!! I saw on Gamespy that Nokia is trying their hand in the console market, in a way. The box code named "Media Terminal" is being dubbed "a digital TV appliance with gaming capabilities." The specs available right now are as follows: -Celeron 366 chip Also the Nokia box will use Linux as its OS. Now while I'm not big on the whole console, I find this new interesting. Nokia is a large company with lots of moolah behind them. Console gamers, there's one more for your bandwagon. Raj on Rajahwwf.com has posted his weekend edition of the News and Rumours where he talks about some WCW guys, Brian Christopher (aka Grand Master Sexay) and some WWF injuries, plus the awesome Smackdown! showing in his hometown of Edmonton (which I was also at!) Click here for the link. As you can see the site is slowly getting a "cooler" look as we've upgraded the Review format, added some new links, streamlined the news page and even started to organize our messy messy Contents side bar. Stryker is even expanding on his Black and White review from a few weeks back. Your truly is also compiling a Diablo II: Lord of Destruction review at the moment as well, so expect that in the next few days. We're still waiting for those interviews, but I have faith that they're coming... AH BELIEVE!! Gamespy has "revamped" FilePlanet supposedly. I suppose this means the deadlink count has dropped from 75% to 60%. Yee haw. As Stryker has moved his attention to another comic idea he is working on, I'll be taking over the Firearms comic. Expect 50% more farting jokes, cowboy hats and mushrooms. Maybe some Steve Yzerman as well. The comic is being called "Friendly Fire" and you can find MY first comic here. Yeah, it sucks but its a start. And finally, with the new content being added, here are some notes. I've added a link to Rei Space, my very first website dedicated to the anime character from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei Ayanami. Of course it's a humour site, so beware. It also contains one of the largest Rei galleries you will find online, numbering just over 120 images I believe. The site was last updated sometime in 1999 and will most likely never be updated again, but it's still worth a look I think. We've also added a humour section named "Funny, Funny Sh-t" where we will post whatever funny, funny sh-t we come across... anything from rant articles to amusing forum posts. The first item we present in the section is something from the Everquest game forums title "EQ Wars" poking a good shot at EQ in regards to Verant's upcoming Star Wars: Galaxies game. Also, secret plans are starting to roll for our Anarchy Online section as the game draws nearer and nearer to us. Stay tuned. Finally, we posted a page looking for people to join our team here at Doublegold. If you've ever wanted to write online with games, wrestling and movies in mind, click here for more info. Obviously we could use the help. Obviously. (fenris) -New Links |
JUNE 2nd 2001 - the Great AC Giveaway, Serious Sam, AO and the Movie Hype!! |
We've got a lot to get to, so lets get started. The Great AC Giveaway contest is underway with the deadline being set for June 11th (that's Monday last I checked). The contest is fairly simple, but does require you think for a bit. Needless to say I won't be winning. Nor will I be entering, but that's beside the point. If you seek info on the contest, click here. Thanks to all the AC news sites for posting the news on this contest on their pages and please forgive my inability to use email properly. Me am dumb sometimes. Well I fired up Serious Sam for a test drive and I was seriously impressed. This game does indeed live up to whatever hype it came out with, and surpassed all my expectations. The graphics are awesome as you can see here: Anyway, if you like that you can see more and read the full review here. We're revamping the graphics on the page a bit so I hope you like the look.http:// Some big news from Anarchy Online. As I reported a week or so back, the NDA has been lifted. Expect hordes of cool AO news to spread across the web. We'll endeavor to bring you what we can here. Also, links have already been posted for downloading the Beta4 program. The download weighs in at about 550 megs, so if you have a slodem HAHAHAHAHHA!! I mean... sorry. Here are the links as we have read them... some are not running consistently yet, so don't get all owly with me. Thanks to AO Stratics for the heads up here. ftp://217.199.34.242/cd/AOBeta4.zip ftp://funcom.online.no/pub/Funcom/AOBeta4.zip http://garnaaldemo.planetinternet.be/funcom/AOBeta4.zip http://mirror.pacific.net.au/ao/AOBeta4.zip Remember you'll still need your beta "cd-key" to use this software. If you applied for Beta, but didn't get accepted for Phase 3, you should be receiving the key via email this Monday. By then you should have the download done. As promised our Movie Hype page is up and running. Its a small start, but it should keep you going for the next few weeks. I hope to add more graphics and previews to the page as the weeks progress. Check back on the page from time to time. You can see the Summer Movie Hype page here. And come on people. Lets get the Rumble going! 3-1 is NOT going to cut it! Recently IGN debunked the rumour that it was closing down shop. I don't know where this rumour started, but I'm glad to see they're sticking around as I steal a lot of news from them. I mean borrow. I mean... yeah onto other things. And here's some info on the Black and White Patch:
Yep that about sums it up there. We'll give you the news when there IS news to be given. Finally, Stryker has been pricing out a new system which includes an ASUS Geforce 3 card. Now we all know ASUS is the enemy via their magic seethru wall cheat software they made available. I have personally said I will never buy an ASUS card, but it seems Stryker doesn't agree. He must see the light! Email Stryker and tell him why ASUS is bad... we do not tolerate their cheating ways! Huzzah! (fenris) -New Contest Information |
JUNE1st 2001 - Big Fat AC Giveaway and There's no place like home... |
Yes, I am back. First off, lets give a big hand to Stryker who
diligently updated the News for us while I was away. I told him he could update
every second day if he wanted, but he stayed true to the site and kept up the daily news.
Thanks again. This news update will be somewhat brief as I am quite out of
the loop for the moment. Ah, its good to be home. The trip was great, the shopping very religious, and the shows were awesome, but I have to say as day eight rolled around, I was glad to be back. I went through 1000 bucks far faster than I planned (hotels kill), but it was all worth it. I saw a whole sh-tload of movies including Shrek, Pearl Harbor, the Mummy Returns and A Knights Tale, and with that I'll be working on a big Movie overhaulin' update for this summers lineup of awesome blockbusters (Planet of the Apes ownz j00!!). Speaking of movies, as I and Stryker live in Sh-tsville, I am actively looking for someone who would like to review movies for the page. It's nothing too demanding, and if you'd like to try it, email me for details. There's no pay of course, and pretty much no glory. Just a chance to help build a page up from nothing into something very cool. In gameland I secured myself a copy of Serious Sam so we can see if Croteams first game is living up to the hype. The game has a coop mode, so that is worth some serious pointage right there. I'll take a good look at this very cool looking game when the time presents itself. I read over Gamespy's selections for their E3 Best of Show awards and I half agreed, half disagreed. I still don't see any depth in Planetside. I still think Ghost Recon is going to be awesome. I don't believe Republic is quite as innovative as people say it is. I think Warcraft III is going to suck ass. Say what you will, this is all my opinion. Gamespy didn't give enough credit to Neverwinter Nights for my liking, nor did they even mention Jedi Knight II. While I love Gamespy forever and totally respect them, I'm all grown up and and I guess I can tell my own self what I will like and dislike. And in turn I tell you. I'll be working on my Road Trip Journal in the next couple of days and that will be posted, hopefully with some pictures from the actually trip and some horror stories regarding why you should never drive to close to big rig trucks. Brr. We saw 7 trampolines. Stay tuned. Yes the Anarchy Online Beta watch... well, wait is now on. I'm looking forward to it, it's basically going to be our first chance to decide just if this game works or not. well let you know how our Beta success goes and will hopefully have some AO info as next week progresses. If you noticed, all of May's news is GONE! Yes, it's our first archive found at the bottom of this page. Give it a read if you're new to the page and check out our Best of E3 awards, booth ho pics and whatever else wrinkles your pickle. Interviews are coming. I recently received an email from Chainsaw giving me the newest version of his Firearms map, ps_prop. With that email he said his interview would be along shortly. No word yet from our other potential interview, but the person stated they would be somewhat slow with their response. Fair enough. Remember to check out the Doublegold Rumble people! This is quality entertainment here for you! Finally we have some BIG cool cool news. Well, kinda sad too. Me and Stryker recently went over our Asherons Call characters and stripped them of our finest gear. What we're going to do is hold a contest to give out these somewhat cool items. Amongst the booty we have a full set of GSA, Shadows Garb, a small shard, some rank VI armor and a sh-tload of SIKs. More details of the contest can be found here including just what the prizes are and what you have to do to enter. It's free stuff folks, so it's definitely worth a look. (fenris) -New Firearms [E&C] Update |