EoJ Addiction Relapse
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
On Tuesday the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) server was down for the launch of Mines of Moria Volume 2: Book 7 – Leaves of Lorien content patch.
Whenever our beloved MMO’s server is down for maintenance or patch, we have the penchant to call it Real Life DayTM. It is a day where we have no choice but to stay away from our virtual lives and do that something we’ve always been wanting to do.
Back when I was in uni, Real Life DayTM (technically night) was used to catchup on my uni work, i.e. tutorial prep work, readings and general study. As you all know, being a student gives us the divine right to procrastinate and do every thing other than anything relating to our studies. For me, it was playing another game, watching TV/Anime/Movie and grinding GF reputation.
This time, when the LOTRO server was down for the new content patch, I decided to give my PS3 some loving (after grinding GF rep). I’ve managed to finish Tom Clancy’s HAWX (IMHO a very good game for a genre that is as rare as a dodo despite its flaws) and played a few multiplayer deathmatches.
With my desire for being a top gun satisfied, I searched for another game. Scanning through my library of PS3 games (some still factory sealed…need…more…time…), The Eye of Judgment caught my eye. Slotting the disc into the Big Black Monolith that is the PS3, i felt a shot of crack up my arm. The addiction is back.
Back when I was 8, my cousin introduced to me a little card game called Magic the Gathering. Magic the Gathering is the first example of the modern collectible card game genre and still thrives today, with an estimated six million players in over seventy countries. It can be played by two or more players each using a deck of printed cards. Each game represents a battle between powerful wizards, known as “planeswalkers”, who use the magical spells, items, and fantastic creatures depicted on individual Magic cards to defeat their opponents.
He taught me the game. I played. I liked it. Played somemore. I loved it. Played even more that day. I was hooked. Broke my piggy bank and bought some cards of him and so I have Arabian Nights, Antiquities and Legends expansion sets to construct my deck with.
And so began many many years of being addicted to the crack that is Magic the Gathering. Constantly starving myself during recess to save money for more cards, and it didn’t help much when I’ve got a girl friend as well. In 2002 at the age of 18 I lost most of my collection through theft at school and is left with only a handful of cards. It was then I’ve finally quit Magic the Gathering due to unfathomable grief.
And why the history lessons? Well, the Eye of Judgment is a joint venture between Sony (Designer and Publisher) and Wizards of the Coast (Printing, shipping and distribution; although according to my supplier, WotC recently lost the rights to print EoJ cards and hence Set 3 is very limited in supply. There are many conspiracy theories about WotC being afraid of the success of EoJ so they’re sabotaging it to keep it from becoming as popular as their precious Magic). Wizards of the Coast is the creator of the Magic the Gathering drug that has guzzled down my savings when I was young, and know I’m hooked again with the Eye of Judgment!
The Eye of Judgment is a turn-based card battle video game for the PlayStation 3 platform, which utilizes the PlayStation Eye camera peripheral. Through use of an included “9 Fields” table mat featuring 3×3 rectangular grid, and special trading cards encoded with CyberCode matrix code; players conquer a playfield by employing various creatures and spells, taking turns playing cards of their choice strategically on the mat, and performing actions through gestures that are captured through the PlayStation Eye camera. The first player to occupy five spaces (more than half the field) wins the match.
The main attraction of the game is its augmented reality feature. You summon creatures my placing the creature on the playfield. The camera then reads the card and translate it into a full 3D display on your TV screen. You can see your creatures duke it out and your spells causing havoc in real time on your TV screen. It is still a long way off before holographic arenas and cards that would burst to life as soon as they touched the play space is possible but hey, its a start.
You can play Eye of Judgment with the computer (5 different difficulties), you can duel another person on the same board (with each having their own physical deck of 30 cards), or you can jump online (Yay! no more camping the school canteen for opponents!).
When playing online, you must scan every card you want to use beforehand with the Eye. Multiple copies of the same card must be scanned at once, so it registers all of them (i.e. no scanning of one Uber Card of DoomTM 3 times). Once your deck is registered, the computer (by computer I mean the PS3, but I will continue using the word ‘computer’ nevertheless) will randomly draw your cards for you during online play (i.e. you can’t secretly draw that I WinTM card from your deck to tip the battle in your favor). The computer keeps track of every card in your deck and hand, ensuring that duels are played fairly.
The computer keeps track of every statistic, including each creature’s independent health, attack strength and bonuses as well as your mana reserves. Being able to relegate control the many mechanics allows the players to focus on strategy and the enjoyment of the game which is a very big plus.
And so, I sit here in the office, constantly thinking of deck strategies and impatiently waiting to get somemore boosters instead of doing something productive, i.e. the stuff I’m being paid a monthly wages to do >.>
Note: This is an identical post to the one on Mabushii.
| Posted in Journal Entries | No Comments »
