Q & A with Jasmine Hruschak

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll see that I retweet a lot of posts from Gamebreaker TV, an awesome network of shows related to video gaming. Check out their site for news updates related to your MMOs and other games, including World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Guild Wars 2. It was through GBTV that I was introduced to the wonderful Jasmine Hruschak, who at the time was a regular on a show about the game Rift. Though I never played the game in depth, I admired her commentary greatly.

Jasmine, known to many as IRLJasmine, streams games on her Twitch.tv channel, and hosts Q & A sessions with fans, including TMI Tuesday in the magical land of Tumblr. She was born and raised in Humboldt County, California and now travels back and forth between there and Southern California. She attends events like Blizzcon and PAX East, where she reports on gaming news. Jasbro was awesome enough to sit down and answer a few questions for me about what it's like to be a professional gamer.

Is An Elder Scrolls MMO Announcement Coming In May?

You can find this and other articles by me at Word of the Nerd Online!

After the success of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, there has been a tremendous amount of speculation as to the likelihood of Bethesda Game Studios releasing an Elder Scrolls MMO. Take off the tinfoil hats, folks, because there may be an announcement sooner than you think. Kotaku, via Tom's Guide, has late-breaking news that the makers of Oblivion will be unveiling their plans to market a massively-multiplayer game based on their Elder Scrolls franchise. Now, there are few details at this point, but it looks as if Bethesda and ZeniMax Online Studios will be making their announcement in May.

Of the few details that have been leaked, where this game would fit on the Elder Scrolls timeline seems to be the most important. Sources are reporting that it would take place a full millennium before Skyrim, during the "Second Era", which basically places it several hundreds of years before any of the current Elder Scrolls games. As of now, there will be three factions. It's not clear where each of the playable races of the current Elder Scrolls will fit into each of these factions, or if all races will be able to choose their own faction.

One detail that seems not to have surfaced at this point is the subscription model. With so many games going free-to-play, one can't help but wonder if an Elder Scrolls MMO would hang with the likes of World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic. The trajectory of the industry seems to be placing more and more games into a free-to-play model, but time will tell when details of Elder Scrolls Online are fully revealed!


Check back for any news as it develops!

Second Day of Christmas: WoW vs SWTOR Holiday Singoff

Apologies, I am certainly behind in my 12 Days of Christmas postings. That just means we get Christmas cheer well past Christmas!

With World of Warcraft's patch 4.3 coming out just in time for the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, there has been some heavy debate (and friendly banter) and comparison of the two games. Some are calling SWTOR a WoW-killer while others say that TOR will crash and burn.

Mike B aka Fony of Gamebreaker.tv and ZAM.com's BFF Report has created 42 episodes of  the World of Warcraft machinima show Blizz Blues for Gamebreaker including this video "12 Days of Smack Talkin'." It features Darnell, the host of Blizz Blues, singing about his "rogue only legendary" that was released with patch 4.3. However, his holiday fun was interrupted by a visitor from a galaxy far, far away.

I think that Blizz Blues gets better with every episode. I've always been a huge fan of machinima and Mike's doing an awesome job!





Be sure to check out the other episodes of Blizz Blues!
Question: Are you a WoW player? Do you think that the game is on death's door? Leave a comment below!

Documentary Review: The Raid

When I heard that a feature-length documentary on World of Warcraft was being produced. I was very intrigued. Last summer, I watched a documentary called “The Dungeon Masters” which chronicled the lives of several Dungeons and Dragons players in a year following Gen Con, one of the largest gaming conventions in the world. In the documentary, we met the players and learned about their lives inside and out including how they started gaming and why, what obstacles they have overcome in their lives related to gaming, and so on. I was very impressed. So, when I set out to watch The Raid, I was expecting something comparable. I feel that while there many positive things about The Raid, there were several points which detracted from the film.

The documentary premiered on Gamebreaker.tv in conjunction with Typefrag and Curse Gaming. Over 19,000 viewers experienced the premiere along with Gary Gannon, Mike B aka Fony and the creator of the film Kevin Michael Johnson. The opening sequence features several people who are leaving their day-to-day lives to come home and get on their computers. From that, the documentary jumps right in to explanation of what World of Warcraft is and why many people participate in it. The viewer is introduced to three figures: Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games, Edward Castronova, Professor of Telecommunications, Indiana University, and Bonnie Nardi, Anthropologist and author of "My Life as a Night Elf Priest". Their comments provide context and enhance the discussion.

Gods & Heroes -- Beta Testing Initial Thoughts

I've been playing the in the Beta for Heatwave Interactive's new game Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising for a week or so now. As the title suggests, it is set in the world of Ancient Rome and incorporates not only historically accurate enemies such as Etruscans, but also enemies from legend such as Minotaurs and Gorgon. The game is classified currently as an MMORPG, but I have yet to see a system of naming conventions or the like for true Role Playing. I haven't seen many PCs in game, but the ones that I have seen have been very generic and akin to names that one would see in World of Warcraft today, e.g. Zombieassassin.

Character Creation

When you sit down to make your own hero, as is the case in many games, you first have to pick your class. There are four options available on the Beta: Mystic, Priest, Gladiator, and Soldier. It looks like two classes will be available when the game hits shelves, Nomad and Scout. Upon picking your class, you are then presented with two options, which will serve as factions in G&H. You are to decide which god or goddess from Roman mythology you will serve. For example, Gladiators serve either Fortuna or Jupiter. The choice of god or goddess helps to determine what some of your abilities will be. Mars grants a "purifying flame" and the ability to summon a fiery bird of some sort (assuming it's a Phoenix type creature.) I've only experienced Jupiter's "Wrath" ability so far. It's pretty cool.

[caption id="attachment_127" align="aligncenter" width="395" caption="My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius..."][/caption]

The third part of the character creation process is appearance customization. Your options here are fairly broad. There are several base faces per gender that you can choose from. Within that, you're able to completely customize each face. You can create any human race of your choosing. My first Beta character was a female gladiator named Katryona. I'm a big stickler for hairstyles but didn't see many that I actually liked. For Kat, I ended up with a low bun. It didn't really scream "gladiator," but it worked. What impressed me most was the facial features. The faces were pretty realistic, even if the hair left a bit to be desired.

Game Play

As previously stated, the game centers around the comings and goings of wartime Rome. You begin on the shore and you find out that your villa (Latin for village house) has been attacked by the enemy. Through a quest chain, you bring some of these foes to justice and find out about those who can aid you to face them. One part of this game that I find really interesting is the Minion system. The minion can function almost as a combat pet, essentially. There are apparently up to one hundred minions you can use to help defend yourself, as well as go on the offensive. It's definitely a unique system and you can earn minions through loot or quest rewards.



It's beta, so things were kind of slow, but I was fairly impressed with the quests that I've done so far. There was a great story and what drew me in was my love for Roman history. To see elements of Roman life in this game was pretty awesome. I'm not going to reveal any spoilers about the game, but I have been giving favorable reviews for the quests I've been completing based on the story aspect. Aside from the standard "Go see this person." "Go kill X number of bad guys." "Okay, now go collect X number of things." quests, it's been steady and has flowed well. Throughout the early questline, you make your way from one side of the island to the other.

Parting thoughts

I assume that this game will have a subscription upon release. Granted, I haven't played the entire game, but if I were right now to compare it to World of Warcraft, I would say that I would not pay for a subscription versus the fifteen dollars monthly for WoW. This game has its nice qualities, but it is not at this time, anywhere near comparable to games such as WoW, Rift or even Everquest. I would love to play it again on a free trial when the game is completed. I'm sure things will run more smoothly and there will be even more awesome things added in.  Please let me know your thoughts on the game!

Gods and Heroes Beta Testing This Week

I am going to participate in the closed beta for the new Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising, a new MMO being developed by Heatwave Interactive. I created my first character last night and was kind of impressed with the character creation process. It was very detailed oriented and you could customize facial features really well. I will keep everyone updated on the beta testing and give other thoughts about questing and gameplay. I need to see if it's okay to post screen shots of the game, so as soon as I find out I will post the screen shot of my character.

I'm entering month two without World of Warcraft, but it's nice to pick up a new MMO and help the developers come up with a great game. Will Gods and Heroes be another "WoW killer?" No, I don't think so. The concept, however, is neat for me because I absolutely love Roman mythology and have studied classics for several years now.

I will say one thing though. The UI is very familiar. Even the keybindings. I was able to instantly get acclimated to that aspect of the game.

I'll play a bit more tonight and write an update!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

I started playing world of warcraft in late 2007. Back then I was a dirty alliance scum. Last September, they opened up faction transfers so I made my main character, a night elf warrior, into an undead warrior. Gave her a new rp story that she'd fallen in battle at the priest Azazoth, my friend's character, was able to resurrect her.

I had started to feel the burnout with wow last summer when I was trying to hold my alliance guild together after having been made guild leader. I had been trying to raid and was getting no where and just got pretty fed up. So, I took about a month break. Then, when I came back I started focusing on other characters. I started to level a blood elf paladin with my bff and her boyfriend and had a lot of fun.

Fast forward to March of this year. Our horde guild had been started to raid and was doing well. Very casual and my bff and I were doing some higher end stuff on the side, but I was proud of the way everyone was coming along. Well, various things happen and the raid group falls apart. Then, the ultimate happens: my computer goes kapoot.

I thought it'd be a fairly easy fix, and it would have been had I taken it to a different company. I went with a local computer repair shop because it's just down from my apartment and I'm trying to support local business. But they've had it since early March and I miss my computer a lot. I miss using Vista (not sure I'd ever utter those words) and I miss the freedom of my HP. More than that, though, I miss World of Warcraft.

I went through a withdrawl period. Then I went through the acceptance that I wouldn't be able to pull it up whenever I wanted and jump on a random character. Now, I just miss it. I play whenever I'm over at my bff Lila's house, but it's not the same. Those instances are few and far between. I wanted to do some heavy character work before the expansion came out.

Several of my friends are taking pre-expansion breaks. And I mean, I'm mostly glad I broke my habit if at least for a few months. I just hope the computer store has my poor sweet laptop back soon. For now, though, I'll just live vicariously through those who blog about wow and wait for my time to come again.