BenV's notes

So with all the hype around google’s upcoming Chrome OS, I was getting curious what it was all about.
Linux based web stuff, open source… yeah, that’s all cute, but just words. So today the option arrived to see what we’re dealing with. These clowns have a download page where you can download a virtual machine image to check out a snapshot of Chrome OS. (continue reading…)

Lately I’ve heard some rumors about this new mmorhghhghg coming up called “Aion“.
Fileplanet (you know, the cancer popup site you sometimes get when you need to download a game patch and then need to click through 23894723897 registration things etc… which is barred from bugmenot…. *sigh*) handed out open beta keys. So I got one. And so did lotjuh.

Did I mention my machine doesn’t have windows? Makes it… interesting.
First we obviously tried wine. Well, it installs without much hassle, which is a good thing.
However, it doesn’t launch. Some piece of garbage called GameGuard doesn’t work on wine. And because it doesn’t, neither does Aion.
Great going Aion guys! Needless to say they couldn’t be arsed to write a linux binary for it, so they SUCK per default! They couldn’t even be arsed to write a Mac binary for it. Pffrt.

However, to make an interesting attempt to test out Virtualbox’s 3d acceleration support, I decided to install Aion in a virtualboxed windows xp that I “borrowed” from lotjuh.
Virtualbox is at version 3.0.6 these days, so first I installed the latest version.
The installation went fine:

Not only the installation, but also the updater ran fine:

Then the gameguard part came, it looked promising:

However, to all good things must come an end. So it dies because of hardware acceleration issues. No real surprise, but too bad for Virtualbox. Not there yet.

Maybe it’ll work one day when Virtualbox gets their direct3d working as well as wine has it working.

Anyway, from what I’ve seen of the game (it runs ‘fine’ on lotjuh’s PC with her “Seven” failure install), it’s a World of Warcraft wannabe.
Graphics are a lot better, they put in some cute stuff like when it rains and the character idles it’ll put a leave over their head. The movies are cute, the quests sometimes even show you stuff (like a little ingame movie of the target area) to go along with the text. But all in all it doesn’t look like a wow killer. No linux support (not even with wine), no mac support, and so far I haven’t seen a major reason for people to switch from wow to this game, except for the graphics. Then again, I’ve only looked at it for a short amount of time, maybe it’ll get better 😉
I’m sure they’ll get a decent amount of players though, it’s a good wow clone.
Story wise the game is fail, I could sum it up with “There were gods, and a planet, and now the planet is split in 2 half planets and the ‘people’ on those halves fight eachother”.

It asks for a stellar converter if you ask me. (master of orion 2 reference, can’t find a good image/video on google)