Pre Character Creation

On Thursday, the 26th of April 2012 at 00:00 CEST the pre-character creation (PCC) phase will begin for TERA. Only players who pre-ordered TERA and redeemed a valid key will have access to the upcoming stages. There will be no more server wipes beyond this point. The servers available for the PCC & head start is as follows:

• Server 1: Velik – Type: PvE – Language: EN/EU
• Server 2: Essenia – Type: PvP – Language: EN/EU
• Server 3: Kaia – Type: PvE – Language: DE
• Server 4: Arachnea – Type: PvP – Language: DE
• Server 5: Elinu – Type: PvE – Language: FR
• Server 6: Callida – Type: PvP – Language: FR

Details
You’ll be able to create your character and reserve your name starting on 26th of April at 00:00 CEST. The process will be available until the 26th of April 23:59 CEST. You’ll only be able to create 1 character for the timebeing. You can also delete a character to create a new one. Take note that you will not get access to play during this stage and only 1 character (1 name) per account.

Head start
The head start will begin on Friday, 27th at 3 pm / 15:00 CEST. The access to the head start will end on Tuesday, 1st of May at 23:59 CEST. The cap for the head start will be level 38.

After that Frogster will prepare the servers for the launch on the 3rd of May 2012.

Launch

The launch for all players will happen on the 3rd of May at 12:00 CEST. At this time the level cap of 38 will be removed and pre-order and normal players, who have redeemed a valid key, will have access to all available servers.

TERA Online is finally coming to Europe and it’s release is due 3rd of May. The game has already been out in South Korea for well over a year and it’s still a success over there. The european Open Beta has just finished though it wasn’t without it’s fair share of drama. The publisher in Europe, Frogster Interactive AG decided to do some sneaky moves behind the curtains without telling the playerbase about the sudden changes. Now first of all, the changes doesn’t really seem that big and bad, but the consequences of it in the future might be something we all don’t want. If you don’t know what these changes are, then here they are:

• They removed blood level slider from the OBT
• Removal of custom guild emblems
• Continuation of PEGI12 rating
• Censoring of chat

Now, after serious pressure and negative press from the playerbase and websites all over the world, Frogster decided (for the timebeing) to bring back the blood level slider. It’ll be back with a patch later in mid-may, so we’ll not have it for release. Now this doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. Because the community manager over at Frogster, Raven, wrote a very well written explanation which alot of the community seemed to accept. Don’t get me wrong, it was well written, but also dodged all the questions without giving a real answer. I have decided to play from headstart and onwards, but time will tell if I’ll continue beyond my initial gametime due to how Frogster have shown us how they’ll handle the game. Giving it a PEGI12 rating from the beginning was stupid, ignorant and clearly only tells us 2 things.

1. They think they’ll boost sales because of a lower age rating
2. They want to make it into Free to Play at some point

Now, point #1 is really rendered moot. Why you might ask ? Well I’ll tell you. How many parents and shopowners actually gives a crap about age rating for a game when a customer wants to buy it? VERY few. Parents nowadays doesn’t really give a shit about what their kids play, and if they do they certainly won’t let them engage in a MMORPG where it’s violence, sexual harassment and strong language 24/7. I know that if I had kids, I wouldn’t let my kids play without me knowing. Besides, the game also requires a subscription to play and how many 12 year olds have credit cards ? None. Because of the problems Frogster has created for themselves they’ve lost a lot of potential subscribers to the US simply because of poor management. I don’t have a number at the moment, but I’m sure it’ll be quite a high number.

Also what will happen in the future ? For all content which gets pushed out by Korea, it’ll have to be censored to fit the PEGI12 rating. I get a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about it and it’s sad that it had to come to this. I hope  that the community will continue to send emails to the PEGI board and demand a change. I’m not sure if it’ll happen at all, I doubt it, but we’re all allowed to hope for the best.

The game itself

Enough whining and lets talk a bit about the game. I’ve now taken part in two betas and so far I’m impressed by it! I thoroughly enjoyed it and I haven’t enjoyed a MMORPG in a long time. The questing system is quite recognizable from other games such as WoW and RIFT, but honestly… how varied can you make it ? It suits me perfectly fine. Now the diamond which TERA has, is the targeting system in combat. It’s not a static click-target and then hit hotkeys. You actually have to move around, dodge incoming attacks and pay attention while you’re fighting. It was very refreshing and enjoyable. I’ve seen some people complain that it got boring fast and mobs was to easy to predict. I can understand that if you only play through the initial levels, but later on it gets much harder. Thus, equally rewarding when you take down BAMs on your own.

Despite Frogsters failure I’ll hope for the best and play from the headstart and onwards. Hopefully we’re at rock-bottom now and things can only get better.

What are your impressions of TERA Online ? Did you participate in the betas ? Leave a comment and state your opinions!

Just wanted to inform you that I’ve created and started a wiki called Narupedia. It’ll mainly consist of information regarding video games, but who knows, it might grow to become something bigger! Feel free to contribute if you have anything you’d like to add.

You’ll find the link in the menu above (Narupedia – wiki) or by clicking this text.

It’s not to long until BF3 arrives and the beta is supposed to be open for everyone this coming thursday, so are you prepared? The specs for BF3 has already been published and here they are:

 Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) 32-bit
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz)
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics card (NVIDIA): DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 or 500 series with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance)
Sound card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Quad-core CPU
Memory: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics Card: DirectX 11 compatible with 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD Rom Drive

If you want to test if your PC can run the game, then I suggest you go over to NVIDIA and run their tester. Now this most likely won’t guarantee that you actually can run it, but it should give you an indicator.

NVIDIA BF3 tester

I came back from Reading Festival in the UK on Monday and boy we had a lot of fun there! It was me and 3 friends who went and it was awesome. I think it’s actually been a long time since Reading Festival has had such great weather. I heard that last year about all camping zones was flooded with water. But this year around i only heard that one of the camps was flooded. That’s because we talked to a person who camped at said zone, but had to check into the hotel we stayed at because of it. And yes, we “cheated” since we stayed at a hotel, but hey! We’re not on the festival to get muddy and all that crap, we went to drink and listen to music. Which we did!

The bands/artists we saw at Reading

• Bring Me The Horizon
• Rise Against
• Deftones
• The offspring
• Thirty Seconds To Mars
• Seasick Steve
• Madness (a few songs)
• Interpol (a few songs)
• Elbow (very good!)
• Muse (was totally awesome!)

I really wanted to see The Blackouts, but we were to late. Anyway I’ve listened alot to them since I got back home and they’re quite good. I know we missed many artists, such as MCR, Jimmy Eat World, Pulp, Strokes and whatnot but we were busy being elsewhere and having fun.

Anyway, I’ll leave some pictures from the festival below and if you go to YouTube and search for “Reading Festival 2011″, there are alot of the concerts shown on BBC available to watch.

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12►

I just ordered the new and updated version of my old cellphone, Samsung Galaxy SII. This one has pretty serious specifications and seems pretty awesome. Take a look below for more details:

• Dual Core 1.2GHz processor
• 4.3″ WVGA SUPER AMOLED Plus
• 8MP AF with LED Flash + 2MP Front
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n
  BT v3.0+HS
  USB v2.0
• 1650mAh battery
• Supports MPEG4, H.264, H.263, WMV, DivX, Xvid, VC-1
  Recording & Playback 1080@30fps
• SMS/MMS (OMA v1.2)
  Email (POP3/IMAP/SMTP, SSL/TLS)
  Exchange ActiveSync Email

That’s just to mention a few. I’m pretty happy with the old one, but always nice with a upgrade. It’s been well received since it’s release and I can’t find anything negative about it apart from it not having a HDMI connectivity option.

I’m on a roadtrip right now actually, to Bø in Telemark. I’m currently staying at Bø Hotel and I’m just staying here for the night before I head back home. You might think why I would do this, me of all people. I’m going back home tomorrow, unfortunately. I wish I could stay longer but it’s pretty busy at work these days and I need to be there.

Anyway, I actually went there to see a girlfriend of mine which I haven’t seen in about 6 months now. Since I don’t have an opportunity later (neither did she) I decided to just go and see her. Even if for just a couple of hours, I still think it was worth it. And besides, she’s a nice person too.

Unfortunately, that’s where my “problem” starts. I noticed just from the couple of hours I spent with her that I can, if I allow myself (more or less in my control), to fall in love with her. That’s all nice and dandy since I haven’t had that feeling in I don’t know how long. But on the other hand, what good would it do ? She lives 4,5 hours drive from me. That doesn’t bother me really, but ultimately it makes it more difficult for both parts if you’re talking about a relationship. Also, I don’t think she’s interested in me in that way unless I move closer. Understandable, totally.

14th June

Okay. I started writing this last night (today it’s Tuesday, 14th of June). We agreed last night before she went home that we’d talk the next day, just to hang out since I drove 4,5 hours and checked in at a hotel just to meet her. I don’t mind paying for that at all, since it was me after all who wanted to see her again.

Back home
I’m home now. What annoys me about driving for so long is the fact that my ass hurts. xD Just sitting there for hour in and hour out. Apart from that I like driving. I managed to take some pictures while driving as well. (that means I didn’t crash) So please feel free to take a look.

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A little late update, but here’s some pictures of my new chassis etc.

Click on the image to see the movie.

When I woke up monday morning I found out that my PC was turned off. This was shocking to say the least, because I never turn it off. You should only turn off your computer if you have to move it or something else which prevents you from leaving it turned on. Anyhow, I booted it and checked my screen for any errors. It showed the error message during POST operations, “CPU Fan error”. I thought about it for a while and headed to work.

When I came home again I decided to change the fan on my cooler, booted it up again but still the same error. That just leaves one explanation left and that is that the cooling-block has died.

So I decided to buy a new cooler. My choice landed on a H70 closed waterloop delivered by Corsair and while I was at it I bought a new chassis as well. Look at the image below for a quick peek at my current chassis. As you can see it’s pretty cramped up in there. It probably explains why the ambient temperature in my chassis is a little to high for my tastes. Hopefully this will get better with the new one, Cooler Master HAF X. (Full tower)

When I receive the chassis and the cooler I’ll take some pics when I install it, if I can bother to.

Cooler Master HAF X

If you’re a music lover like me, then you most likely have your favorite music player already. I used Winamp as a music player for several years and was happy with it, until I tried foobar for longer than 5 minutes before getting disencouraged  by all the options. Anyway one day I figured it was time to test it out and I’m happy I did. First of all, I now have a music player which looks good and also has a wide base of skins. (I love skins) It also shows me the information I’d like and expect to see.

Well, what I was supposed to write about was foobar and equalizer settings. Do you usually listen to your music with flat EQ settings ? I usually am content with that, but sometimes it’s nice with a little more “kick” to the music. Of course this depends on your personal preference and if you like to listen to your music with “flat” settings, don’t bother to read any more of this post.

I’ve gathered and added some presets for the equalizer in addition found a plugin which boosts high frequencies. Look below for the files and also what you need to do to install them.

Download the ZIP file

• 1. Copy both folders to your foobar2000 folder.
• 2. Once inside foobar2000 to enable the equalizer, choose View > Equalizer > Equalizer Enabled
• 3. Load presets or fiddle around with the EQ until you’re happy with the result.
• 4. To enable the DSP plugin, press CTRL + P > Playback > DSP Manager > Select “Noise Sharpening” and move it over to Active DSPs.
• 5. Once done, highlight the DSP and press Configure Selected.
• 6. Move the slider until you’re happy with it. Save settings by pressing ‘OK’ if you’re happy, or press ‘Cancel’ if you want to discard the changes.

If you found this helpful please leave a comment or link back to me.

It’s been a great while since I last posted anything here and I apologize for that. The reason is and I won’t deny it, simply pure lazyness on my part. Since last time I’ve been on a trip to Holland again. Was visiting a customer and doing a scripting job. Besides that I’ve been busy with playing RIFT Online. Quite fun game and it has kept my interest for some time now. Who would’ve thought ?

I’ve also started on creating some small video guides/tutorials for the game. So check ‘em out while you’re at it.

• Stonefield Puzzle – Spinning Plates
• Shimmersand Puzzle – A Classic Treasure

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVuuHyTtg9c

And in a couple of days I have an exam too, I should start reading, haha!