*Adapted from my original blog post, but posting here for your information*

This just in from the Dragon Age Twitter. They’ve announced the latest bit of DLC for Dragon Age: Origins, and it’s called Return to Ostagar. As the name states, this DLC lets you go back to Ostagar after visiting Lothering, and will allow you to find what appears to be a new set of special armor, as well as the possibility of another surviving member of the ill-fated battle at Ostagar. No word yet on who this survivor is, but I doubt it’d be the king or Duncan… though I SOOOOOO wish it was. :)

It’s coming this holiday season and will set you back 5 bucks. More info can be found at The Dragon Age Addon Website: http://dragonage.bioware.com/addon/

About to run off to school after checking my mail, and Atlus sends me word that they're releasing 3D Dot Game Heroes for the PS3 next year, May 11, 2010.

That's some pretty nifty news. Can anyone make me a sprite character for Cloud Strife? :D

EDIT:: LOL. I woke up an hour early. Adding picture for great justice.

As originally posted on my personal Games and Geekery blog. :(

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It recently came to my attention via twitter that Ascaron, the guys behind Sacred 2: Fallen Angel had filed for bankruptcy and had actually closed its doors a few days ago.

When I originally heard the news about Ascaron's bankruptcy some time ago, it didn't seem like a big deal at the time, mostly because they were still chugging along as if everything was okay, and that things would right themselves in time.

Except, they weren't okay, and some recent posts on their forums reflected this.

A pair of threads on the Sacred 2 Forums, entitled The Current Situation About Sacred 2 and Ascaron R.I.P. had one of the community managers announcing what would be happening to the game: that a different company responsible for the customer support for the game would be taking over, and that those folks originally responsible for making the game awesome were more or less gone as of a few days ago.

It's a sad thing to see a game die a slow death, but there's still one more addon left for the game: one last, great adventure to be had. Hopefully, that also means that Sacred 2 will be remembered by many as an awesome game worthy of praise and admiration for breathing life into the souls of dungeon-crawling, loot-seeking, kobold-slaying adventurers like myself.

I think the music video above explains more or less what I feel in a couple of ways. Obviously, "I want Nobody
but you" refers to my need to acquire a copy of LOTRO at the moment or a game key at least.

Furthermore, the uncontrollable desire I have for the game is much like the guy with loose bowel movements in
the video.To be utterly crass about it, I can't control my desire much like his bowel movements, and the
universe keeps conspiring to take away the means by which I can make everything right in my little gaming
world (reference to Toilet Paper).

Anyway, what's happened since the last post?

I did some more digging and found some information on the Free Trial Assistance Forums. Basically, Turbine
seems to have been having issues with the Trial Account system for a little bit now, and it hasn't been
publicized yet. I think that my inability to purchase the game digitally through their online store is also due to this
issue they're having.

It's annoying to have such bad timing on my part, but there's not much I can do there. What I CAN do, however,
is become even more desperate.

Which is why I was lucky enough to stumble upon MMeOw.net. The site's author may actually be having a
contest for game keys soon, and therefore, it seems like my final option at the moment. While informing people
of this fact hurts my chances somewhat, it seems like common courtesy to note that he's awesome for putting
out contests at least.

I just hope I can win a key

UPDATE FROM ORIGINAL POST WRITING:

As of 4:00 am, Philippine time, I've managed to do the unlikely. I found their twitter account, and shot off two
nice messages about the issues with both the online store and the trial account (in 280 characters, no less).
Their response: "We're actively working on the issue right now, sorry for the inconvenience - we'll get you in
the game ASAP!"

Thank Goodness.

NOTE: Used Google Chrome to type this as my Firefox browser doesn't allow converting of videos into embed
tags due to an issue with the NoScript addon. My apologies.

I decided to write this simply because I'm very frustrated right now and I needed to vent out my frustration a little bit.

Have you ever gotten this urge to play a game so badly that there was this utter longing for that specific game. I've felt it many times over the years, whether it was Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Fallout 3, but this is the first time I've ever felt the longing for a game so badly that not being able to play is actually depressing me.

So, a night or two ago, I decided to visit random blogs online in the hopes of finding something new to occupy my mind and I eventually found myself inextricably drawn to a Massively Awesome MMO Newssite (or MAMMON, for short. I decided to check out MAMMON's coverage of Lord of the Rings Online and my interest grew in the game. So much so that two days later, which is today, I decided to go out and pick up a copy of the full game and its expansion just to try it out.

Now, in my country, there's only one store chain that sells original PC games en masse, and it's called Data Blitz. I went there at 10 am, sleepless and hungry for LOTRO action, only to find out that the game was out of stock in the branch I went to. They mentioned a rumor to me that basically states that someone bought ALL the remaining copies of the game from all the stores.

"That's obvioiusly preposterous," I thought. A phone call later to a nearby neighboring branch revealed that it also had no copies in stock. Upon going home, I called up three of their other branches, and each one had nothing to offer me.

Fast forward to earlier this evening. The game was in my head, taunting me to go and find a way.

It was enough to drive me to do something drastic: I went online and applied for a free 10-day trial and the subsequent digital download.

Except, I couldn't.

When I tried to cre­ate the trial account through Fire­fox, it said that an error has occurred. When I tried to create the trial account through IE8, it redi­rected me back to Turbine’s Gen­eral Free Trial Area for LOTRO and DDO… it’s as if the sub­mit but­ton was the wrong link or some­thing.

Fazed, but undeterred, I resorted to the last possible option: buying a digital copy and enduring the horrendously slow download speeds of my connection.

Except, I couldn't, yet again.

I tried using Fire­fox and IE8 to buy the game from the link posted on the LOTRO ad page that comes up prior to load­ing the LOTRO site. Thing is, every time I tried, after submitting the payment infor­ma­tion, it said that it was unable to process the request, that I should ver­ify my infor­ma­tion, and then try again.

The proper term here now, is SIGH...

It's been six hours since I began my attempts to get an online version of the game to no avail. Perhaps the LOTRO site is borked, or maybe I'm just in the wrong region to download the game. I only wish I had an answer, not only to the question of why I can't get a digital copy of the game, but also to the strange, uncontrollable desire to play a game I barely know and whose source material I never fully read.

This isn't going to be a very long blog, mostly because I want to impress upon you folks the value of a really good idea executed with the utmost care.

The video above is a subtitled version of the second of a series of commercials starring LolaTechie, a Philippine grandmother who uses the internet to do things we young'uns normally do, such as SuperPoke people on Facebook or play videogames on the computer. In this case, she;'s playing a fictional videogame which has parallels to CounterStrike. :)

The ad agency behind this were subtle with the promotion for this one, as LolaTechie (or GrandmaTechie in English) has Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, including her own website.

While the concept isn't new per se, the idea that advertisers are slowly warming up to the idea of a world where the internet can connect everyoine, young and old, warms my heart. I just wish I could convince my grandmother to play Battlefield Heroes with me.