It’s Canthan New Year again, and we’re about to start giving the chefs the ingredients for the celestial meals. The wife, my daughter and I are all in District 29 in Shing Jea waiting for the arrival of the Celestial Ox.  Hopefully there’s plenty of other people in the district who have the remaining ingredients we don’t because we’ve only got about half of what we need. Some of the drop rates for the rarer items were really low and we didn’t get any of several. There’s still time to farm them today, so if things don’t go to plan in the next ten minutes, we can still recover.

Tags: Guild Wars, Kids, MMO, PC Games, Play by Teh Bagder
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As part of this years Wintersday festivities in Guild Wars, if you complete four quests, you get to unlock a special bonus, which turns out to be the Jingle Bear, a modified polar bear that has bells that jingle when it moves. I decided the best character to have this bear as a pet would be Gwen, seeing as the bear is lurking in her garden. I sold her eagle, and had her tame her own bear, which you can see from the screenshot below, taken in the little garden she has outside the Eye of the North citadel, and where she grows red iris flowers.

We’ll have to get the kids up to level 20 quickly so that they can complete the quests to unlock this pet before Wintersday ends, because I know my daughter would love to have a Jingle Bear for one of the new heroes she gets from the Nightfall campaign we bought her.

Tags: Guild Wars, Kids, MMO, PC Games by Teh Bagder
7542 Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/12/22/guild-wars-jingle-bear/Guild+Wars+Jingle+Bear2008-12-22+05%3A52%3A32Teh+Bagder

One of the things I love about Guild Wars is the special events they put on throughout the year. Wintersday is one of those, and this year there’s a bunch of extra bonuses, including a special reward for completing four Eye of the North quests. Wintersday celebrations start tomorrow and run until January 5th, with a special Wintersday even occurring every three hours on New Years Day.

This year will be different for us, because the kids have their own Guild Wars accounts now. Not only that, but we just bought them the Nightfall campaign, which completes the campaign set for them, and for Christmas, they’re going to be unwrapping the Eye of the North expansions which plug into all three campaigns. My daughter has a character at level 19, and my son has a character at level 8 or so. To allow them to do the quests, they need to be level 20, so there’s going to be a lot of Guild Wars-ing going on over the next couple of weeks. Now that they’ve got all the campaigns, we’ll be able to play together a lot more, although we only have three computers that can run the game, so only one adult will be able to play and help them level up and complete the quests. That will most likely be my wife, as I’m still working through the winter break, even although college is out of session for a couple of weeks.  Screenshots will be forthcoming.

Tags: Guild Wars, Kids, MMO, PC Games by Teh Bagder
7401 Comment »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/12/18/guild-wars-wintersday-2008/Guild+Wars%3A+Wintersday+20082008-12-18+15%3A20%3A17Teh+Bagder

Tonight, I picked up a two-player starter set for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. The kids have already got their own sets and have played them intermittently, but I’ve been wanting to play this game with them for a while. I’ve got a lot of other CCG/TCG games, but most of them are too complicated for the kids, and as the kids are Pokemon-mad, this will be something we can play multiple times throughout the winter break from school. At least, in between all the new video games, books and other games that will be arriving from Santa.

I managed to score a Pikachu card  in the extra booster set I got and my daughter’s been trying to cut lots of deals for me to trade it to her. My son’s after my Wobuffet. Looks like the challenge has already started…

Tags: CCGs/TCGs, Kids, Play, Tabletop by Teh Bagder
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Sony are currently in the process of developing FreeRealms, which they plan to release not only on the PS3, but on the PC too. Although there isn’t much information available, FreeRealms is planned to be a more kid-friendly MMO than any of the other offerings that Sony are working on. One of the neat twists on FreeRealms is that it looks like it’ll be a combination of Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, World of Warcraft and Wizardry 101. I’m looking forward to seeing more information on the game, but until Sony have released more information on the game, enjoy their rather groovy “under construction” page with the dancing Whateveritis.

Tags: Kids, MMO, MMO Monday by Teh Bagder
6421 Comment »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/08/25/mmo-monday-freerealms/MMO+Monday%3A+FreeRealms2008-08-25+19%3A29%3A00Teh+Bagder

As a “back to school” gift today, we handed over the 2 player starter deck for the Pokemon Diamond & Pearl Trading Card Game. The kids already had managed to collect a few cards from friends and have been desperate to get into the game, but we’d held back from allowing them to for a couple of different reasons. However, I’ve been wanting to play this myself and as I’ve changed jobs recently to give me more time to focus on family and school, I want to have one or two non-adult only CCGs to play with the kids. We’ve already got a large number of CCGs to play, but most of them aren’t terribly friendly towards kids who are under the age of 12 years old. My son turns 7 years old next week, and my daughter turns 10 years old next month, and both kids are huge Pokemon fans, so this was in some ways a no-brainer of a purchase. Of course, with this comes the inevitable deluge of requests to get more sets and more cards, but this can be leveraged as a good thing: if they do their chores and homework, they’ll get credit towards a new pack or module, and so it will be up to them to become better players and to grow their collection. Yes, it’s a form of bribery, but it’s a win-win for us all. As I’ll have this weekend off from work and school I’m going to sit down with the kids and play a few rounds with them to see how things go. If it goes well, then we’ll have regular weekend tourneys in the house and I’ll get my own deck to play with them and others.

Tags: Kids, Tabletop by Teh Bagder
588No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/08/20/creating-poke-maniacs/Creating+Poke-Maniacs2008-08-21+03%3A40%3A12Teh+Bagder