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Archives for October 2005

Guild Wars Help

A lot of people arrive at buttonmashing.com searching for all things Guild Wars. Many get pointed to my Guild Wars review (due to the fact that the review includes all the topics they’re searching for) but are actually looking for help on a specific topic. Because we here at buttonmashing are all about serving the gaming community, I’ve rounded up some helpful links to help you get your Guild Wars on. Hopefully this helps.

A great place to start is the Guild Wars Wiki. You can pretty much find everything that you could possibly need — locations of skill traders, mission maps (along with bonuses), crafting. It’s a one-stop-shop for your Guild War needs. There are other sites that also have strategies, skill descriptions and other helpful hints. The Guild Hall and Guild Wars Guru are both sites I frequent. I lurk in the GW Guru forums, where a lot of good info for the Guild Wars player can be found. There are a lot more sites than the two I list here. A fairly complete list can be found at the Guild Wars website.

While Guild Wars doesn’t seem to have the breadth or depth of WoW or EQ but jumping back into GW this past week has reminded that it is still a fun game. Even though it may MMORPG-lite, it’s still good fun. It’s good to be back to slaying the bad guys.

I plan on updating this post as more GW searches come in. It will be broken down in terms of search topics. For now, most of the searches coming in are for crafting, so we’ll start with some helpful crafting links. More will follow.

Crafting
This is a good discussion about Salvage Kits
Of course, once you salvage all those goodies, you’ll need a place for Armor Crafting Recipes.
Handy Salvage Guide, so you’ll know what kind of crafting material you can salvage from what items.

Builds
This link is a good resource for different strategies for different builds.

And more…

(Last Update – 12/12/2005)

GR Article and Report, Updated

I noticed a lot of people are linking to this article at Game Revolution, which I linked to before and was glad people were taking a second look at this. Then I noticed it was recently updated.

So the murder rate hit a new 40 year low in 2004, good news indeed for those of us lucky enough to live in the United States during this era of peace. The best selling video game of 2004? Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Good news, indeed.

Update: Not so fast, my friend.

I want it all…

… and I want it now.

Man, the flow of new games right now is killing me! There are just too many of them. Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright are both calling me, I haven’t played a Castlevania game in years, so Dawn of Sorrow is looking good, and even though Trace Memory hasn’t been that well received, I still think I’d like it.

Battalion Wars and Fire Emblem for the Gamecube look like fun. I didn’t experience Ninja Gaiden when it first came out, so I’m tempted to get NG Black. Far Cry Instincts looks great as well. And that’s not even mentioning all the new sports games (Tiger Woods, The League). Oh! And Age of Empires III. Can’t forget that one. What’s a gamer to do?

That brings me to a question for all you readers. Who out there is using GameFly? I’ve been toying with the idea of giving their service a try but I’m not sure yet. I would probably go with their one-game-at-a-time deal since I have plenty of games to keep me busy as I await the next one in my queue. If you use them, what has been your experience? What plan would you recommend? If you don’t use GameFly, what about the other GameFly-like places are out there? Inquiring minds what to know! I’m tired of the weak selection of my local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video so I need a new source of game rentals.

With all the great games out there it’s impossible to play them all but I’d sure like to try.

Madden rules!

This auction is the best, ever (from Kotaku). “Hello stupid! Yes, I’m talking to you, the guy interested in buying this piece of garbage game from Electronic Arts for the 800th time so you can have updated rosters.”

Jack Thompson, you got served!

Ahh, even though I mentioned his autobiography the other day, I haven’t really been keeping up on our good friend Jack. Well, things have really come to a head lately with the King Kook himself, and he refuses to eat the huge platter of crow that he has been served. Even though someone has probably already said this, someone set him up the BOMB!

So I guess I could recap with a huge reblog. (I’m glad other’s are keeping up with this. My brain hurts everytime Thompson opens his mouth.) For those who don’t know, Jack “challenged” the gaming community to make a game, based on a morally reprehensible premise he proposed. He then promised a $10k donation to a charity of Paul Eibeler (the Chairman of Take-Two Interactive). More than a few people took up the challenge and some modders made a sweet GTA mod (apparently slashdotted, PA’ed or Dugg). In true BatJack form, he claimed he was “just kidding” and he isn’t gonna pay. Excellent. Of course, the ever-charitable guys at Penny-Arcade came through and delivered the goods. They donated $10k to the ESA Foundation which will certainly help keep JT off their proverbial back. The best part of this is that they had already zinged him on his “weak” donation amount. That go a rise out of him. Sweet!

What a wild week or two it’s been. And I’m just scratching the surface. This isn’t going to end on this.

The guys at Ctrl+Alt+Delete have had their run-ins with Jackie-boy as well and they have a few things to say, too.

On a seperate but equally awesome note is that America’s National Institute on Media and the Family basically told Thompson to stop invoking their name when he makes his asinine comments. You know you’re alone in the battle when a pro-family, right-wing conservative group condemns you. You’re supposed to be on their side and they’re basically asking you to leave. That’s pretty sad. Of course, Thompson can’t leave well enough alone. You can not make this stuff up.

Oh, and there’s this, too. (a little old, but who cares)

Have I had enough of Jack? Probably not. He’ll step up to the plate and say some more ridiculous things with spurrious proof and the media will still let him on their pulpit, but hopefully more and more people are starting to see him for what he is — a bat-crazy, spittle-flying, deranged crazy person.

For now, I’m gonna go play some Resident Evil 4 and blast some zombies into oblivion. Resident Evil 4 is an excellent self-defense-against-deranged-Spaniards Simulator.

Update: This just gets crazier by the minute.

More: I want to stop, but I can’t.

Buckeye Blogging, Week #7 (4-2)

Wow! What a Saturday to be a college football fan. The Luck of the Irish falls short as USC wins at South Bend, Meatchicken pulls off the improbable 1-second-left-in-the-game upset of Penn State, and of course the Buckeyes rolled to a 35-24 win over the Spartans of Michigan State.

I was at the Horsehoe again today and the first 40 minutes or so of the game were gut wrenching. It looked like OSU was going to give another game away with turnovers and bad plays. When Troy Smith fumbled the ball and MSU had a chance to go ahead big on us, I started getting really nervous. Sick-to-my-stomach nervous. But, oh, our Defense! Sure they gave up a lot of yards to the second best offense in the country but they clamped down when they were put in bad situations. After MSU missed their second field goal, things started looking better. And easier on my stomach.

Tedd Ginn and Santonio Holmes both had big games (finally!) and both did their best to drop everything that was kicked their way. Talk about heart-stopping moments. With 4 lost fumbles, we had a lot to worry about, but in the end, the good guys prevailed.

A cool thing happened while we were at the game. My wife was sitting next to an older gentleman who was wearing a 2002 National Championship ring. The thing was fricking huge. In passing, she mentioned what a nice ring he was wearing. Turns out, he was Michael Stafford’s (who was a senior OL, #50, who played on the 2002 OSU National Championship team) dad. It was pretty cool to see something like that up close. They don’t skimp on the jewelry for the winners. It was cool to see a piece of history like that.