I watched all 3 conferences and watched the Live Show.. (which im still currently watching).

Currently i have been given two emblems:

I like the look of them, now just play the waiting game to get the other two.

The Sony conference was my favourite of all three conferences. The announcements and upcoming games appeal to me far more than the ones on the other consoles. Little Big Planet, Resistance 2, Far Cry 2, STALKER: Clear Skies (for PC obviously), MAG and several others which i can't remember off the top of my head because it was 10 hours ago when the Nintendo conference was on.. 10 hours later im still watching.

The event has been good, even though GS had numerous technical problems throughout all the conferences, between losing the video feed, then getting the picture back and losing sound, to have those bright colored stripes down the screen several times, GS going down 5 minutes before the first conference and coming back online 15 minutes into the conference.. lots of technical problems, but other than that it has been a great E3.

When Homer went through the hall giving a quick over view of all the games currently being displayed, i was a big dissapointed at how small it seemed this year. E3 really isn't what it used to be interms of big booths, lots of advertisements and people everywhere. All the "booths" were the same, no advertisements and just didn't look like E3.

Oh, the Live Show is just about to show some Little Big Planet so im going back to watch it. Hope you've all been enjoying what has been shown like i have. The games have been great, we are very lucky as gamers.. we have a lot to look forward to!

Wow that was messed up. A group of us were on the GSAU forums, in our time the conference started at 3:30am.. so we were waiting up. 5 minutes before the conference was due to start GS went down. 10 minutes later and GS still not back up i went to IGN (turns out thats where everyone else went too). 15 minutes into the show GS came back online so i closed IGN and came back here (i want my emblem). Oh but of course, it wasn't all well and good.

I started the conference and i was amazed and just how bad the quality was. It was REALLY bad! Tried watching in full screen but the video feed kept skipping and pausing so i had to watch in the small box. I then clicked on the link to make it a "big version" which just opened the video in another window. Tried opening that in full screen and it wouldn't even load in full screen. It just kept it in the same small window.. and the same crappy quality. I put up with it, and watched the conference in the small window with REALLY bad quality.. and with that bright white moving advertisement right next to it.. arrgh.

Seriously GS.. whats going on? I've watched previously E3 and other live footage from here and it went fine. What happened this time? Sure, the site goes down. It shouldn't have happened, but it did.. but having such bad quality footage.. there is no excuse. Now i wonder if any of us even receive our emblems, since they have declared that you can't use screenshots or anything to prove you watched it.. and considering i've had several of my emblems that i received for certain events dissapear magically (and when i reported it i was told its been sent in to be looked into.. and of course a year later i hear nothing).. GS needs to fix its act and realise that without us the site is nothing. Yes, i don't pay subscription, and while GS offers such bad service and customer support why would i?

Heres hoping tonights conference will be better. Otherwise IGN might find itself a lot of new members. Im sure a lot of others are annoyed and IGN seemed to be where everyone went to when GS went down.

Level 34 - Paramecium

Now on to more important news.. what games have i been playing?

I downloaded and played the demo for Civ: Revolutions.. i'd heard the game was dumbed down a little bit compared to the Civ games on PC so i wasn't sure what to expect.. after playing the demo.. this is awesome. The controls fit perfectly, the animations are fantastic.. it does have a lot of the fiddly bits that with the PC Civ games you have to do manually, in this it does it for you.. which i actually prefer. It means i can concentrate on building large armies and destroying my enemies rather than making sure a worker is doing something specific. Definitely a lot of fun and i recommend everyone at least tries the demo.

Battlefield: Bad Company is another demo i downloaded and can't get enough of. I've found myself playing this demo online often and having a blast. Definatly will be picking up the full game as soon as possible. The action is awesome and very instense.. charging through a battlefield with bullets whizzing overhead, explosions all around.. and now buildings blowing apart. It really adds a lot to the game. Get trapped in a building with the enemy right outside the only exit? Just blow a hole through the wall to escape. Same goes when clearing a building.. why risk running in blindly when you can simply take a wall down with a tank revealing anyone inside. The single player also looks great with a lot of good humour used which looks like it'll be a laugh. However being addicted to playing the demo online (which only offers one map), i dont know when i'll get time to play the single player).

And on PC i've been playing Morrowind.. just like i said i would, i reinstalled the GOTY edition which comes with both expansions. I've done a few quests, been breaking into peoples houses and stealing everything they have and then i head down to the local pawn shop to sell it.. and while im there i check out if they have any goodies for me to "borrow". While one shopkeeper had their back to me i cleaned out an entire chest full of weapons.. although there were just to many to carry.. so i had to make a second trip. Fantastic game and while some say the visuals aren't all that great, i dont think they hold up to badly. The worst is the character models (which there are mods to update everything visually as well as add anything you can think of). The sky still looks incredible. So far i've done a few missions, had a few of those assasins come to kill me in my sleep, of which i've cut down, taken their armour and weapons and sold. Everytime i play i seem to build up my collection of armour, weapons, books etc and they end up being stored in Balmorra. This time i've said im not going to kill the pawn shop owner.. everytime i've played i always end up taking it over as my little home and keeping everything i've come across in there, including weapons, books, gems, Dwemer artifacts, and everything else i find. Still such an awesome game!

My subsciption of Australias PC Powerplay magazine arrived today and on the double sided DVD was WOW and all the patches.. so i thought.. why not. I unzipped and installed the almost 4 gig file and then patched the game. (so glad i didn't try downloading the trial and using all my bandwidth)... anyway, so i then went to the wow website and registered a username for the 10 day trial.

I started the game, created a character (Orc Warrior) and then played the game for 3-4 hours. Initial impressions are good.. Doing several quests, exploring and finding the Spririt Rock (or whatever its called) through the hidden valley was pretty good.. except it doesn't do anything.. it would have been nice if finding secrets like this actually did something to benefit searching around. I've met a few people, been in a couple different raiding parties and participated in duels (some won, others lost), learnt some of the basics (dancing, waving.. the necessities) and even had help with someone who had a lvl 70 player with them to get a quest done. I saw them battling it out and joined in.. then they invited me into their party and we shared the loot that we took from all these higher level enemies (i was only lvl 5 at that point). I stopped playing once i reached lvl 8. Apparently i can only play up to level 20 with the free trial so im thinking of starting a new character just to try them out.

The game is a lot of fun.. kinda makes me think of it like Morrowind (only dumbed down - without all the skills) only your playing online with other people doing quests at the same time. Obviously its different.. but some of the early quests are similar (go fetch this and bring it back, go kill 10 of this creature) etc. While i find the game is fun, i can also see how people would get sick of it. I've always been against paying a monthly fee once you purchase a game for full price and even though i've enjoyed the short time playing so far, i still wouldn't pay a monthly fee to keep playing.

WOW does seem like fun, just a shame they make you pay a monthly fee because id probably keep playing it after the 10 days runs out.. oh well.. 9 days to go for the trial.. then i'll probably reinstall Morrowind GOTY.

Mount & Blade 0.955 has been released. It's a nice good update with quite a few changes. New items, changes to various animations and sounce, towns seem to be redone, the map has been changed etc etc. Nice update so far which im enjoying. One of the awesome things i've found is that you can do quests for a King, helping them on sieges, doing scout missions etc.

If you havn't played Mount & Blade then go over to the official site and download the game, you can play to level 6 for free and then you need to pay (a tiny cost) to be able to play the full game with no character level limit. It's the only game i've bought online and i havn't regretted it once. Fantastic game.. so at least go try the demo. There are a lot of awesome mods for the game too.

I saw this and thought it was pretty funny, so thought id share it.