After months playing and a few updates, the verdict is good for LoTRO. The higher level content is much more fun and combat has improved dramatically.

They still need more class differentiation. The classes play too much alike, with only minor name and cosmetic differences to the skills. I miss the infinite skill synergy of Guild Wars. Hopefully as LoTRO ages, it will evolve a more complex class model and deeper skill/build choices.

P.S. Phil, wtf aren't you paying this yet?

Although not as good as Guild Wars, LoTRO is growing on me. It's really an MMORPG in the most literal sense. Massively Multiplayer, Online, ROLE PLAYING GAME.

Most of the game is adventurement and exploring. Not so much with combat so far, except for the occasional quest assignment to kill beasts and collect their hides sort of thing.

The world is really pretty nice and I love Tolkien, so it's all good for now. Until GW2 comes out or TR gets their shit together.

Braid is an Xbox Arcade game made in the style of old school scrollers. I can't say enough about this game. It's beautifully made, fun to play and so simple in it's approach you won't believe how fun it is.

Good job!

http://braid-game.com/

TR is losing players and has resorted to adding crop tops and beach ball boobs to attract the kiddies. No donut for Mr. Garriot.

I'm going to go get my LoTRO nerd on for a while.

Seriously, this game is made for 12 year old boys with behavioral problems . Cartoon violence combined with cartoon porn, with a little bit of gaming thrown in so that they can call it an MMO. And the gameplay is deadly boring.

Games for knuckle dragging mouth breathers. Next!

The Xfire features are getting better and better and I especially like the beta game stats for FPS games.

This leads me to the obvious question of why other PC based games don't provide access to their stats. I think about this often when maintaining my guild website. I would like to be able to show off my accomplishments in Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Bioshock....whatever I'm playing basically.

The Xbox 360 does this with most of it's games via a gamer card, although the information isn't always that great. Why can't we all agree on some kind of standard interface for collecting stats from PC games? Nothing complex, just an XML file with some character specific info. Many other industries have this kind of thing to allow applications to interface with one another and exchange information.

As far as I know WoW is the only MMO to provide this feature through it's Armory. Looking around at the number of guild websites using it, I would say that it would be a very popular feature.

Vista now functions well for my bleeding edge friends and I can see all their statuses (statusees, statusii?).

In game message alerts and screenshot functions appear to be working for them as well, yay! Also the new look of the in game message windows are nice. Thanks Chris.

Oh and it now supports Sword of the New Hoochie Mama....thank god.

So, Sword of the New World. Looked it over and decided that I'm interested, but cannot for the life of me figure out why the female characters all look like 17th century prostitutes. My level of irritation with the portrayal of women in video games has been steadily increasing over the years as I see more and more games aimed at older players, (specifically MMO's as the player base tends to be older) that have male characters that are covered head to toe in groovy batwing armor or leather straps while the female character are running around in a war thong with their tits hanging out.

Now maybe it's just me, but if I needed to go out and kill someone with a big sword, I would put some clothes on first. You know, at least a sports bra.....to keep things from bouncing around. Also, I can't imagine how badly a steel thong would chafe.

Would it be too much to ask to be able to choose a female avatar with muscles, functional looking armor and tits smaller than her head? Pretty is ≠ pornstar, girls do play MMO's and most of us don't want to look like sluts doing it.

So there.

Apparently, I'm the last game nerd on the planet that hasn't tried City of Heros/Villains. So I downloaded the trial and spent a few days of wandering around like a dufus, trying to learn to play.

Observations:

1. Sparse intro storyline does not help with learning of the hot keys and teaching one how to move about efficiently

2. Wow, this sure is repetitive!

3. Character creation system pwns, all Anet games should be this way from now on. Why doesn't Guild Wars have that shit?

Hmmm.