The Guildmasters

Yes the playstation store is finally back online so if you had any money in there you can finally check to see if it is still there. Mine is, not too much but it’s still money all the same, i’m glad to see it wasn’t missing.

There are a few error messages, in fact quite a few error messages, i’ve had to go back and try again probably more than a dozen times and that was just to get my free game. I chose Infamous and it was a mega download, over 7000 MB which actually took around 8hrs to download and after that I had to delete a bunch of stuff so I could install it.

Totally worth it for me as I rented the game but never got all the trophies so now I can, I was going to take Little Big Planet also but to be honest I don’t have the room on my old 80Gig so i’ll probably leave it.

Again I got errors when I tried to get the playstation plus 30 day free trial as I think that will be worth it but as yet it hasn’t let me get it.

So the store is back up but with many errors, unless of course it’s just my machine, which it could well be, let me know how you do.

Tony:)

Hi all,
Just found this article this morning, enjoy:

Sony’s PlayStation Network is finally (mostly) back up on its feet, and now that gamers have had a chance to hop on, change their passwords, and resume some much-need online gaming, the attention turns to Sony’s “Welcome Back” program — the company’s way of apologizing for the downtime. The program offers a decent selection of free games and services to get Sony back in the good graces of PlayStation 3 and PSP owners.

If you own a PlayStation 3 and were affected by the downtime, you’ll be able to choose 2 free games from a selection of five, including:

* Dead Nation
* Infamous
* LittleBigPlanet
* Super Stardust HD
* Wipeout HD

PSP owners can cherry-pick a pair of games from this list of 4:

* LittleBigPlanet PSP
* ModNation Racers
* Pursuit Force
* Killzone Liberation

In addition to the free games, PSN users will also be granted access to a selection of PlayStation Network movies over an upcoming weekend, the specific titles of which will be revealed later. Also, gamers not currently subscribed to PlayStation Plus — Sony’s premium PSN service that grants game discounts and other perks — will get a free month to try it out, while existing Plus subscribers will get 60 additional days for free. Sony’s PlayStation Home virtual world will offer users 100 free items as well, so if you’ve never given it a try this will be your best opportunity. All of these freebies will begin flowing once the PlayStation Store is back up and running, the timetable for which has not been revealed.

In addition to Sony’s program, streaming service Hulu is offering users who have their Hulu Plus premium accounts synced with a PlayStation 3 a 25-day credit for the inconvenience of not being able to stream due to the network outtage. Hulu Plus subscribers will begin getting emails shortly that contain a link to redeem the credit.

As you know on Dec 13/14th there will be extra download content for AC: Brotherhood. An extra map and an extra game mode “Advanced Alliance”.

For those that don’t know there is already one add-on at the playstation store which i’m downloading at the moment, takes about 20 minutes and is 330MB so a fair size add-on.

It’s called Copernicus Conspiracy Missions so if you haven’t checked the store out lately and you own this game there is nothing like a freebee.

Tony:)

I know The Guildmasters is pretty much surrounded by PS3 talk and games but occasionally something different springs up and I check it out.

My latest exploration found me investigating something i’d seen advertised on my frequent visits to gamefly, an online game called Evony.

I couldn’t be sure if it was any good just by reading some reviews so decided to pay Evony a visit, to my surprise it was more popular than I expected it to be, somewhere in the region of 10 million players give or take a few thousand either way, probably more now as I witnessed “newbies” arriving daily while I was there.

Anyway I signed up for a free account and yes actually it is free and always will be, that’s their guarantee as well as their slogan ‘free forever”, although you can deposit real money if you wish to advance quicker but I don’t really see the point unless your impatient, then this game probably isn’t for you anyway.

Ok so I know your all asking why on earth have I got involved in something completely away from my usual stuff, there is a good reason.

I played a game on my PS3 called civilization and obviously expected too much from it, my own personal view on that game was that it was rubbish, I played it for one day completed it once and sent it back the next day.

Evony is what I expected from civilization, it’s a brilliant game of strategy, alliance, independance (if that’s what you want), and creation.

You literally build a city, your city, from the ground up, you start with a plain piece of ground and start building, cottages for your people to live in and so your population can grow, upgrade the cottages to house more people, build barrracks to train your army, or concentrate on defenses only, you can build and upgrades walls around your city with archer’s towers.

Outside your city is your resource fields where you can build farms to feed your growing population, build quarries to acquire stone for building, build ironmines and sawmills for the timber. Each building requires a certain amount of timber, iron and stone so you have to manage everything so that it is well balanced.

If you don’t generate enough food your people will leave you, your actions determine how high your prestige gets, and how loyal your people are.

You can demand a “levy” if your short on a particular resource but if you use that option too much your people’s loyalty will drop and they will show grievance towards you, if you don’t correct this, again they will leave.

There is an unbelievable amount of things to do in Evony and it’s a wonderful adventure. I’ve been with them for around two weeks now and i’m addicted.

You have a world chat so you can talk to fellow Evonians or if you join an alliance you can chat in alliance chat so you can discuss strategies, an alliance is good for protection against other cities who may want to attack you for your resources.

To start out you get 7 full days of peacetime in which no-one can attack your city, this gives you time to build your city and make it secure and to start creating defensive or protective measures such as archers, archers towers, traps, foot soldiers or cavalry.

Also there are quests which you should follow to begin with as completion of the quests actually reward you with items that you can use to speed things up or apply to other quests.

This is not a hugely time consuming game either, i’m really hooked on Evony but I don’t have to spend more than an hour a day playing it, you can play all day if you like or just 15 minutes here and there.

As your city reaches higher levels the upgrades can take many hours so at the moment I usually log into my account, upgrade a couple of things, have a chat with my alliance, then upgrade one of my higher level buildings which may take up to 30hrs real time, then I can go and do other things.

Sometimes I leave Evony running in the browser while playing the PS3 so I can keep an eye on upgrades and even my alliance friends will keep an eye on my city when i’m offline, it’s really cool.

In all honesty i’ve never felt like playing anything online, but this game is really unique, you get a great sense of accomplishment out of completing quests and a great sense of achievement when you conquer your first city.

There isn’t much sense in reading this review without giving it a go, it really is absolutely free and i’m not trying to sell the game to you, I found it, I loved it, and now i’m posting it on my blog as it is a game that in my book deserves a mention.

Evony has been getting a bit of a bad rep recently due to a number of people heavily spamming in forums and so forth, if you’ve been seeing Evony ads in your face everywhere then it is a minority of idiots that are abusing the system, please don’t let that put you off trying this one out.

You all know by my reviews i’m an rpg fanatic and adventure games make the cut sometimes, although this is probably not a full on RPG it has elements of RPG, Adventure, Strategy as well as a certain amount of skill and organization.

If you do join and give it a go, you can look out for me, my username is masteroftheguild and i’ve even named my city morrowind, i’m on server 126
To visit Evony just go to www.evony.com

If you have any questions about Evony I can help you with you can email me at masteroftheguild@yahoo.com

Tony