The game itself looks very colourful and child friendly from the little I’ve so far seen of it, and it’s a side-scrolling platform style that old-school gamers will remember fondly. The full price is $19.95, and $15 (75%) goes straight to the charity. Another draw to this is the celebrity voice-over cast including Jamie Lee Curtis, William Shatner and Dave Thomas, amongst others.

I have to admit that I had never heard of the charity before, although I will assume that is because it’s based in the US. For those who haven’t heard about Starlight Starbright, it is a foundation for seriously ill children – the aim is to take their mind away from their illness with fun activities, as well as letting them and their families meet others going through the same situation. I can’t do the charity enough justice with my short description but I definitely think it’s a worthwhile cause, and I hope the game helps to raise awareness as well as money.

If you are still interested in finding out more about this game I’ve included a short introduction video.

Hopefully everyone will like this as much as I do! I apologize in advance for the length. Since I first wrote it, I have edited to update where appropriate.

I think a nice addition to the game would be the ability to buy your very own house. They’d start off small and bare of features and options, but the more money you spend the more you’ll be able to do. If you had the ability to upgrade then you could buy your first home, and just spend more on it as you can afford to (instead of having to sell / demolish and buying new).

All the different races would have their own type of house also (ideally based on the races main city buildings). For example:

• Humans – brick outside and wooden panelling on the inside as seen in the various shops and inns in the human towns
• Dwarfs – houses built of stone as that fits in with many of their buildings
• Night Elfs – carved out mystical looking tree trunks
• Gnomes – round metal buildings as seen near Gnomeregan
• Draenei – broken pieces of their space craft with glowing crystals
• Orcs – stone buildings with skinned roofing
• Undead – creepy looking stone tombs like the one you wake up in when you first start your character
• Taurens – totem built houses
• Trolls – wooden huts on stilts as seen in Senjin Village
• Blood elfs – marble spiralling buildings

Players that don’t have a character of a certain race but want that building style would still be able to get it the same way they would to get a mount based on level of reputation.

My idea is that houses could help with professions, resting and having a private area. Characters would pay for their house at a city or town to a special vendor and would have a full description and picture of all the different ones available to them (varying in size, content, shape, colour, etc.). Upgrades could include changing the outside or inside colour appearance or buying profession objects as well as increasing the size. There would need to be several upgrade options for this.

To get to your house you learn a portal spell to direct you there (each house would be its own instance to make it personal to the player). You could have the ability to invite players though while you’re in your home by adding an invite home command, which would work a lot like when inviting someone to a guild or party. As soon as you leave they do too so you have to be online to have visitors. The inviting players (perhaps the amount you can have in a party) would be a nice feature so guild members could meet up privately until something like guild halls are created (which would work in the same way), and even if guild halls were created this would be a suitable option until they could be afforded as a hall would cost a lot more.

Leaving the home could be done two ways. Using your hearthstone would take you to any town, but everyone (owner and visitors) could have a portal spell to transport them back to the exact place they were when they went to the house (so no one would have to manually run back to wherever they were).

Here’s a few ideas as to why anyone would want to spend the money on a house… Not sure how much would be basic and what would be more expensive but something to think about.

Basic things all houses could have would be seating areas, a bed, a stove or campfire (for cooking) and things that make it look and feel like a home. A good idea would also for all houses would be to have a small garden with a fishing pond.

There could be randomised mining and herbalism nodes (slow rate before it’s recreated) depending on your house choice and upgrades you buy. Pay more and you get a small area for fighting too.

In the small fighting area (fenced off so you’re not attacked while exploring your home and garden as they are safe areas) there could be random spawn humanoids and beasts. Because these are just for profession purposes you gain no experience but they drop meat, cloth, green weapons and armour, soul shards, and various other items needed for various professions and uses. None of this would have any sale price so can only be used to build profession skills (green items for enchanters), as it is worthless in value. This will stop players from just grinding in their home area because they will not receive any money or experience (any items made can only be used by them or visitors in their home area and disappear once you leave).

The more you pay for your home the higher you can build your profession up by. It could be one home would only have enemies dropping linen cloth, buy an upgrade and the enemies are dropping woolen cloth etc. and so on. The most expensive houses would have access to all professions (for you and your visitors to make use of while there) instead of a few.

All houses would have experience points bonus if you log out while in your home just like if you were at an inn.

There could be your own private mailbox usable by all. Content viewable by all but not usable could be a stable area, deposit box connected to the bank and cupboards separate for additional items as well as a wardrobe with a second set of armour / weapons.

These are just my ideas so far. I’m sure there are many players out there who can build on this.

Thoughts are welcome!

As before, I welcome comments. I hope it gets a better response on my personal blog than it ever managed to on the forums!

Thanks for reading!

I previously thought about making it all about “World of Warcraft” as that is my favourite game at the moment, but there’s so many other games I’ve played and loved in the past and at the present (and I’m sure in the future) that it wouldn’t be fair to do that. Because I play WoW a lot I’m sure I will focus on it quite a bit – in fact I have many WoW posts in mind – but I do hope that I will talk also about The Sims series, Animal Crossing, Guild Wars and many others besides.

Hope you will enjoy what I have to say!

Edit as of 15th, January 2007 – I recently went looking through old blog posts and actually found some related to games so I moved them here (hence why there are some before this post).

Anyway… On with my post!

A while back I posted about World of Warcraft and how great it is. Well it still is great, but I want to mention another game that I think deserves some attention. It’s called Guild Wars and is played completely online with other players – unlike WoW though, GW has NO monthly fees! Just pay for the intital game and that’s it.

Don’t get me wrong, WoW has a lot of features that GW doesn’t, but the same can be said the opposite way too.

Obviously the main selling point to Guild Wars is the exclusion of a monthly fee, but there is more besides that. I like that you choose not one but two seperate classes for each character (known as professions in GW) so you could choose to (for example) be a healing warrior, or an elementalist who can raise the dead! I also like that you meet up with other players in the main towns to form parties, make friends and join guilds, but once you enter the fight areas only you and those in your party will be in your instance. Some may not like this idea but this way I think players can get the best of both worlds – player interaction when needed, but no kill stealing or any of the other problems many online games face.

I think what really made me want this game though is that you can play in an International District so you can play with anyone in the world. World of Warcraft has the limitation of only letting you play on certain servers so it meant I couldn’t play with my North America friends, but Guild Wars lets me. This is a huge advantage where I’m concerned.

It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of WoW, but then you’re only paying the once for this game and I think overall it’s worth the money. Anyone who is interested should take a look at the Guild Wars website to find out more.

My friend Nat had been bugging me about this game for quite some time. Before there was no point considering getting it because my graphics card couldn’t take it, but I ended up saving up money for a new card and the game. My initial reaction was disappointment when I found out Blizzard had changed their mind about letting people from North America and Europe play together (I am from the UK and my friend is from Canada). It took me a while to even want to play it then.

I finally got around to installing my new graphics card, and I got to the point where I thought what the hell. I paid for WoW, maybe I’d even enjoy it. Would give me a chance to decide if I was will to pay the monthly fee after my free time is up, as well as try out my new graphics.

So I started it up. Flippin’ amazing! Not seen anything like it before… I’ve never played a MMORPG before so the whole experience is very refreshing. You can see my characters so far here (as well as other pictures I’ve taken in the game). Ignore the clothes and levels because they’ve altered since I took the pictures.

I like being able to decide on the look of each character, down to facial features, hair style and hair colour. I like how the races and classes are very different from one another. I thought the reason I wouldn’t like it is because I don’t always like mingling with strangers and I wouldn’t know anyone on it… however, Craig and a friend of ours have it so I sometimes play with them. I’ve met a few odd people which does make me somewhat wary, but I’ve also met some really nice people too.

There is always something to do in this game too. Quests are being added all the time, but if you want you can just go around exploring, helping others, attacking monsters, etc. I like that freedom. So far my favourite classes have to be Hunter (as you can tame beasts to work for you) and Druids (you get to transform into animals such as a bear and a wild cat).

I guess what will put many people off is the monthly fee. It’s not something I exactly am excited about, but I remind myself of how much it costs to keep servers constantly running for millions of players across the world, and how much new content they keep adding regularly.

Anyway, I just wanted to post about it to recommend it to one and all. It’s so good!