Dragon Age: Origins Picture Diary

I have about 27 hours into Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins, and have explored about a third of the world. Having enlisted the aid of Arl Eoman, the Circle of Magi and the Dalish Elves to my cause, I am now exploring the depths of Ozrammar, hoping the dwarfs will honor their ancient treaty.
My party is in the vicinity of levels 13-15; it’s really nice that characters you don’t include in your party still level up along with the main character, always a level behind. My main character, Tipa the City Elf Rogue, has both of her subclasses now — bard and duellist. I haven’t trained any of the bard powers, but I am well down the track for duellist, a really excellent choice for how I play.
Morrigan has left behind her shapeshifter roots and taken on the role of the arcane warrior, a melee mage. She is responsible for crowd control and nukage. She was the healer before we acquired Wynne, and has so many things to do that in fights, normally I control Morrigan’s every move. Arcane Warrior is amazing; if I play through again, I’ll likely make it my main.
Having toyed with Alistair and DLC golem Shale as tanks, I’ve largely settled in with Sten. Leilana was a mainstay of the party until we got Wynne; we needed a dedicated healer more than another bard, and the party stats exposed her for the poor dps she was. Since I’m handling all the roguish duties, Zevran has never had a party slot, though he did finally teach me the assassin ways. Barkspawn helps out now and again.
After the jump, some pictures from my journeys. May (or may not) contain spoilers.

Read more

EVE Online: How to get shredded in W-Space

Since we started flying Wednesday Ops Nights with Holowan Industrials, the phrase “usually, it goes better than this” has become as legendary as “I have a bad feeling about this” and “at least it’s not raining”. (I was riding my bike home from work a couple of weeks ago and it was raining so heavily … Read more

EQ2: Nights of the OMG AAAAAGH Dead

EQ2’s “Nights of the Dead” Halloween event ended last night. I’ve been meaning for weeks, ever since I fixed my second computer, to get back into the game now that I could two-box again. I really wanted to try the new hedge maze adventure! This guy on the Nektulos docks was making all sorts of … Read more

World of Warcraft did NOT kill the MMO market

It’s probably too early to be calling Warhammer’s time of death, even though Electronic Arts has reportedly laid off 40% of the Mythic staff, including 90% of the development talent. Mythic is responsible for Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer, and has an advisory role with Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. The inset … Read more