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
793No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2009/02/01/guild-wars-canthan-new-year/Guild+Wars%3A+Canthan+New+Year2009-02-01+16%3A50%3A50Teh+Bagder

For those that didn’t manage to complete the four quests in the Guild Wars Wintersday Festival that unlocked the Jingle Bear in Gwen’s garden, there’s a relatively simple hack that will allow you to get access to and tame the Jingle Bear.  Just make sure that you have someone in your party that has completed the quest, and the bear will appear in the garden. Send in the character you want to tame the bear, and you’re all set. The bear will persist with the character until you get rid of it with a Tamer. The only drawback is that you want more than one character to have it, you’ll need to go back into Eye of the North then out again with someone who has completed the quests.

I see a whole income stream appearing in-game…

Tags: Guild Wars, MMO, PC Games, Play by Teh Bagder
786No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2009/01/25/guild-wars-jingle-bear-jingle-bear-jingle-all-the-waaaaaay/Guild+Wars%3A+Jingle+Bear%2C+Jingle+Bear%2C+Jingle+All+The+Waaaaaay2009-01-25+04%3A25%3A54Teh+Bagder

One of the greatest things about Guild Wars is the various festivals that are held throughout the year. We recently just had the Wintersday Festival, but now it’s time for the Canthan New Year. With the Canthan New Year, this year being The Year of the Ox, comes the Great Feast, in which a number of chefs prepare dishes for the celestial creature of the year, and which players can get involved in by gathering the ingredients needed for each meal.

I’ve compiled a list of the ingredients and where to get them in one place, to make it easier for myself and others to know what to farm. The list below shows all five Imperial Chefs and what they are looking for, as well as where it may be found. Each entry is linked to the Guild Wars Wiki maintained at the original Guild Wars website so that you can drill down for specific information. Keep in mind that this information is based on what’s in the Wiki, and on last year’s requirements, and could be subject to change for this year.

[Read more →]

Tags: Guild Wars, MMO, PC Games, Play by Teh Bagder
7681 Comment »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2009/01/24/guild-wars-canthan-new-year-2009/Guild+Wars%3A+Canthan+New+Year+2009+Recipe+Ingredients2009-01-25+03%3A14%3A03Teh+Bagder

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

Yesterday I mentioned picking up the Guild Wars expansion Eye of the North for $9.95. I’m glad I didn’t put the order in yesterday as they dropped the price today to $4.95! Considering that Amazon got rid of their price change policy recently, I’m glad I did, because that’s saving $25 on the normal retail price.

If you’re a Guild Wars player, you can pick it up fro $4.95 at Amazon. Hurry though, as it might not last long at that price!

Tags: Deals, Guild Wars, MMO, PC Games by Teh Bagder
691No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/11/29/deals-guild-wars-eye-of-the-north-495/Deals%3A+Guild+Wars+Eye+of+the+North+%244.952008-11-29+18%3A24%3A37Teh+Bagder

Guybroosh is waiting to empty his own bilge, and will as soon as the restroom is free.

Yar! Bilge them boats and earn some coins! Puzzle Pirates is an unlikely cross between an MMO and lots of casual games like Tetris and Bejeweled that turns out to be a lot of fun. The object of the game is to eventually end up with your own ship and booty and take on lots of missions. The game starts off with a great tutorial and soon you’ll be playing games and earning coins. Yar!

Puzzle Pirates is a free to play pay-shop-supported great kid-friendly MMO game that runs either in your browser or as a downloaded executable. It uses Java, so it will download a Java virtual machine, but it runs great on older hardware. We’ve got it downloaded to an older 800 Mhz laptop that we’ve had hanging around as a backup computer, and it runs just fine and dandy on that. You can play the game to win coin for all your goodies such as outfits, houses and ships, or you can use the pay shop to quickly get you to where you want to be. Most games take about 5-10 minutes to play and get you around 15-30 coins, so saving up can take a bit of time. However if there are a group of you playing, you’ll soon be able to pool your coins to get what you ultimately want: a ship. Of course, you need to get a few other things too, such as a Captain’s Badge, a crew and some other items.

If you’re looking for a whimsical game that appeals to not only the casual player but to kids, this is something you should look into: the price is right, and the gameplay is fun.

Tags: Free Games, MMO, MMO Monday by Teh Bagder
683No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/10/20/mmo-monday-puzzle-pirates/MMO+Monday%3A+Puzzle+Pirates2008-10-20+12%3A46%3A00Teh+Bagder

Now, THIS game I’m looking forward to. I’ve been following the development of Battlefield Heroes for some time, particularly because it’s going to be free (ad and micro-transaction supported) and it’s been getting a lot of good press from the GFW guys. The fact that I get to put my guy in a kilt and descend upon the enemy totting automatic weapons is just pure icing on the cake. Finally, a game that takes the concept of clans seriously!

Tags: Free Games, MMO, PC Games by Teh Bagder
647No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/09/12/battlefield-heroes-death-by-kiltie/Battlefield+Heroes%3A+Death+By+Kiltie%212008-09-12+21%3A02%3A00Teh+Bagder

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