I was enjoying myself more than I had in many, many MMOs for a long time. I wasnt killing truly hideous amounts of stuff. I wasnt killing stuff for silly rare quest drops. I wasnt even getting pwned very much.

My Necromancer was fun to play with, and had some awesome effects. So I thought I'd do a Barbarian (Cimmerian naturally) I was slamming, smashing and goring people. I even figured out a mostly sucessful way to finish people 80% of the time.

Then my immersion got ripped out from under me at the same time as a kick in the nuts.

Now the archytype for my Barbarian is rogue. Which kinda makes sense because a barbarians all damage and dodging shit really, just no stealth right?. Wrong.

My first "awakening of a Barbarian mission" was to sneak past some guards and evesdrop...

A barbarian sneaking...

Thats like Hulk being asked to infiltrate a base...

Necro's been awesome. Gonna try a Tempest of Set soon before they nerf the level 30 uber lightning.

SWG.... sigh.

It could have been so much better. I was enthralled when the original news came out that it was being developed. The screenshots and details looked good, it sounded good.

Beta came out and I kept watching it (got into beta 3). I didnt play it silly amounts during beta, but I did play a bit, mostly exploring planets rather than grinding. Seemed really good.

Then SOE being utter cocks delayed the european launch six months. You simply couldnt frigging get SWG over here. So in protest I forgot about for 6 months ish.

I got SWG, installed it and after alot of fun grinded my first character. The old character system was fun in some ways. You could make your own profession out of the trees. Looking back the player cities, modified jedi grind and vehicles made it more fun. BUT

Thats where the game started going wrong. Sure jedi had been there from the start, but now the way to do it was clear. So almost everyone started it. I personally didnt bother and though I did get village access I didnt do much quest wise bar helping some friends. I did do (I think) 5 of the 6 unlocks just before the system got owned.

But everyone 90% of the time was jedi grinding..

No one around for events, pvp or content. Just pure grinding. And because almost everyone was doing jedi the devs focused on that. Eventually we did get the Combat Upgrade (which WAS needed and did make it better) but still it was jedi focused.

They should have focused it on the Galactic Civil War using the many battlefields they put in the game. Those pretty much never worked and were never touched again.

So now we're stuck with the NGE. When SOE destroyed the old system and made jedi a starting profession. So sure now theres not much problem with players grinding. There ARE more quests and content than before but frankly the shite SOE community team, lack of focus and jedi focus has lead to an awful lot of hate against jedi.

And worse alot less players. I'll admit new SOE stuff has made it alot better. But I cant bring myself to play it because there were times you wished Star Wars didnt exist because of how crap the game was.

If The Force Unleashed sucks that'll be it for SW Gaming.

Intending to buy a PS3 today.

I've been thinking about it for some time, wondering if getting a 360 was better. I dont game much online anymore and frankly I despise windows live and Microsoft in general after years of working with shite O/S and PCs.

I know there have been cuts on 360s, but I cant warrant the money for an elite when I can get a PS3 with Blu Ray for £230 ish (we have 20% staff discount over easter for hitting sales targets 2 months early).

Looking at Blu Ray players the dam things cost about £150 ish for a basic one, unless you want a pc mounted one.

OK there are a few games I'd love to play (Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey) that are only on 360 but the reliabilty of 360s is an issue as I have friends who's have died.

I have a nice Sony Bravia 26" HD TV so thats not an issue, and good reliable , wireless net access.

Anyone got any thoughts?

No thats not when you eat a shit load of insanely powerful curry, drunk a litre of cheap lager, jump up and down for 5 minutes then do the mother of vomiting spasms whilst crapping your pants.

Anyway its Dawn of Wars new expansion, Soulstorm adding the very nice dark eldar (sadistic, moral destroying eldar). And strangly sexy bitches in power armour, the Sisters of Battle.

Currently fighting the campaign as Chaos on normal difficulty. Already cut off Dark Eldar supply lines and hammered them back to 2 territorys, one of which is their base.

Looking forward to taking the other 2 planets. Well aside from Imperial Guard one, as that apparently has a uber basilisk...

Also somewhat like my lords wargear. Flaming hands? oh yes please...

Still fighting the good fight against the Welsh, whats left of th irish and now England...

MTW2 Kingdoms gets harder. I knew the English would send a substantial force up to teach me a lesson. They did and it worried me as it looked like 2000 men.

During the battle I realised that half that force was entirely catapults (and a few battered units)
The city they were trying to capture was a top level, massive walled city.

It was Newcastle and it had cannon towers and a fair garrison. I actualy sent some pikemen out to attack the catapult army (which had attacked a section of wall but been ruthlessly mauled by cannon fire from the towers). The catapult army never even got the wall down, they were hammered and there was an awful lot of firewood left on the battle field. The pikemen took a beating but survived.

The other flank did have some siege towers, and some actual cannon but even they got slammed by cannon fire. That side of the city handled itself as the cannons decimated the enemy army.

As that battle was taking place I sneakily attacked the English capital via sea and took it in an almost bloodless battle...

Annoyingly I ran out of time for some of the Victory Conditions.....

The Irish were defeated, hammered back after an epic pair of battles around dublin.

They had 1 city left which I decided not to attack on the grounds it couldnt afford a decent sized army to fight me. The Welsh, who had previously been my allies attacked dublin a year or so after its capture.

Dublin had been reinforced with Cannon Towers...

It had a sizeable force in it but it was outnumbered by about 300 men. Welsh had mostly Spearmen and Archers plus 2 general units.

It was split into 2 forces, main force behind the city with no siege equipment. secondary force with 1 battering ram to the front. The battering ram had alot of Infantry and a general behind it. It was a massacre. The column was a sitting duck for the cannon towers and archers on the walls. Oh sure they broke the gate down but when you break a gate down and get boiling oil in the face, arrows from murder holes and then run into a forest of pikeman, you question the wisdom of doing it.

That army was quickly killed and it was a 15 minute wait for the second , larger force to walk round the city, being cannoned part of the way. It charged the gate the odd unit at a time and was brutally punished for it. Even as the battered, scatted remnants of the Welsh Army tried to run the cannons were brutally slaying them as they ran.

Not one survived the battle.