Beckett Gaming

Hey! Has anyone heard about a new game coming out called Blue Dragon? This game was released in Japan for the Xbox 360 system and sold like crazy. It was the first big game to drive the sales up for XBOX 360 in Japan. Blue Dragon was created by two very big names in Japan: Final Fantasy creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and Dragon Ball Z creator Akira Toriyama! Can you say "Wholey Sushi?!?!" It could become a big hit in the U.S. too! There will be a preview of the game in the next issue of Beckett Cheat Codes magazine. Look for it on sale Feb.28.

Are you counting your pennies? You better be! I just heard that the U.S. Mint might soon be stopping the production of the U.S. pennies because the copper to produce them is now worth more than the penny itself. If this happens all of those pennies could be worth 5 times it's original value. WOW! You know the saying - A penny saved is a penny earned? It should be, A penny saved is... hey wait a minute, put these pennies in my Money Market Fund or my Stock Funds or... you know what I mean. It's crazy!

Anyone watch American Idol last night? It was in Memphis,Tenn. Hey there were some pretty damn good singers on there! One guy named Sundance Head... he sounds too good to be true. Simon said something like he'll give Taylor a run for his money. WOW! Could be a great year for Idol fans!!! Don't tell anyone this but, I've watched every season and almost every episode of American Idol since it first started. Oh yeah! 

-Doug Kale

Well, I've had a busy few days at home playing Burning Crusade and leveling up my Draenei. I also watched the Barrett-Jackson classic car auction on TV. Both are amazing! The scenery in the Draenei area is breathtaking and fun to explore. The new monsters that you encounter  like these man-eating flowers... whoa, watch out! I picked a Shaman class and I'm glad I did. I was considering picking a Priest because it's the only class I haven't tried yet. But I thought about it and I'll save the Priest for my next Blood Elf pick.

Okay, I mentioned Barrett-Jackson. Yes, it's about classic cars. Anything from muscle cars to sports cars to beautiful vintage autos this is "the" auction of all car auctions. Don't believe me? Check out their web site at www.barrett-jackson.com. If you watch just 10 minutes of this auction you'll be hooked. Why? Becuase the cars are exotic-looking, colorful, lots of wild shapes and lots of chrome. But what really stands out more than anything are the prices they sell for. People we're paying $100,000 to $500,000 for all types of cars like it was monopoly money. My eyes were bugging out! I knew that some popular muscle cars like the '67 Camaro or the '67 Corvettes go for big bucks, but when one '67 Camaro, owned by Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, sold for $800,000, that was incredible!!! Okay, are you ready for this... one car, a blue '66 Shelby Cobra 427 Supersnake owned by Carroll Shelby, sold for an astounding $5,000,000! Yes that is $5 MILLION DOLLARS people!!! The auction took in over $100 Million dollars over the past week.

The next Barrett-Jackson auction is set for March 2007 in  Palm Beach, Florida. It's just an amazing thing to watch.

Anyways, back to gaming... lol.  

- Doug Kale

It's been a crazy week... we're finishing up the next issue of Neopets The Official Magazine. But right behind it is Beckett Cheat Codes and Beckett Magic The Gathering. For those of you interested in Neopets and love to play those online Neopets games, you're going to really enjoy this next issue. It's our Special Gaming issue of the year. Plus, we've included an Exclusive Neopets Board Game in the middle of this issue. It comes complete with the board and cardboard pieces. Pretty awesome!!

The next issue of Beckett Cheat Codes is going to include lots of new games for the next-gen consoles (Wii, X360 and PS3). Speaking of Wii has anyone played Rayman Raving Rabbids??? The game is hilarious and addicting! I love the part when Rayman disco dances while you're lazer shooting all of those crazy Rabbids. Plus, the submarine-plunger shooting game is also a ton of fun! Can you tell I like this game? Okay, so for those of you who have a Nintendo DS and don't have Yoshi's Island DS, you need to get it. This game is becoming as popular as the New Super Mario Bros game. It's hard to stop playing it!

OKay, Magic The Gathering fans! What's cooking for Magic??? Well, Planar Chaos is about to be released and we have a ton of coverage on the new set. It's the second in the Time Spiral card block and it's looking like a real winner! This next issue of Beckett Magic The Gathering magazine is going to include an interview with a big name Pro player and a few additional surprises. You'll have to wait for the issue to come out!

That's it for now... getting back to work... see ya later...

 -Doug Kale 

What a year it's going to be! I recently chatted with a friend of mine who works at a local Target store. She told me that on January 16th, this particular Target store had a large WoW Burning Crusade display in their electronics department. The display contained 78 copies of Burning Crusade! By the end of the day there was nothing left but dust. Every copy of BC had SOLD!!! Can you believe it? WOW! Yes!  It looks like it could be the PC game of the year.

Okay, so I got home, proceeded to put my new BC DVD disk into my laptop. I have to tell you, if you have a lot of other miscellaneous games on your computer such as other online games, you better start deleting them. You'll need a lot more space for BC and all of the upcoming patches. So, for the Alliance, I took my mighty dagger and eliminated most of those subpar games and freed up some space. Ahhh, now I feel comfortable.

-Doug Kale

So, there I was standing in a Wal-Mart Monday night at 10:30pm waiting for the midnight hour to strike so I could get my copy of The Burning Crusade. I met up with several other WoW players who decided to wait it out as well. There was Jordan, a saxophonist, who has been playing WoW since it all began back in November 2004. He purchased the original World of Warcraft Collector's Edition and was hoping to score the new BC Collector's Edition as well. Then there was Jenn, a soccer mom with three kids who created her own Web site because of her addiction to WoW. We were the first three on line hoping to purchase the new Collector's Edition. We chatted about the game for an hour and a half . As it got closer to midnight one of the store employees came by and told us and three other people that the store received six copies of Burning Crusade CE. Since there was six of us waiting quitely and patiently that we would each be able to purchase the game at Checkout Counter 11. Within a nanosecond we all had smiles on our faces and were thanking the Wal-mart employee profusely. The employee had told us that our group was so nice, it was a pleasure to help us get the item we wanted. He told us about the craziness the store had experienced when the Nintendo Wii was released back in November and that this release was terrific! I have to agree. Everything went well. The line of people, shelf stockers and the cashiers. For this moment, I would give Wal-mart an A+ for a job well done! Plus, I would like to give a special thanks to Blizzard for shipping them some copies of the very limited BC Collector's Edition!

- Doug Kale

With only 20 hours to go before The Burning Crusade, I finally got my hands on a Grand Marshal's Dirk. It's still clean and new...I'm itching to make a Fel Orc its first target. -Rebecca Bundy

It’s about playing with material that no one has seen before. It’s about going through bug reports and doing your best to help a company make their game better for you and everyone else down the road. But in the end, as those last days of beta are ticking away, it’s all about catching the events that developers throw for their beta testers as a way of saying “thank you” and leaving them with a memory that’ll last them a long time.

Back during the original beta, I managed to catch much of the end of beta event, though I caught it more towards the end.

This time I also caught it towards the end (about 2 hours after it began), but like the last time, it was just as incredible even if I didn’t see everything it had to offer.

Like last time, every major city was hit by the Burning Legion, though this time that attack included places like the Gurubashi Arena (some of the website GMs picked avatars, made themselves monstrous in size, and PvPed, though I missed out on this) and Shattrath City. At the time, I was stationed in Outland so I flew over to Shattrath City to see what was going on. Pit Commanders, Doomwalkers, several dragons (Emeriss and Lethon) and Infernals were holding their guard at various locations across the city, making it hard to get anywhere (especially with the damn Doomwalker’s Aura of Death). Amid the field of bones I realized that, though efforts had been made to take down the various bosses, those attempts had been futile. Out of curiosity I flipped to my Draenei to see how Exodar was faring...and it wasn't promising. Hearing word of the attacks going on in other cities, I switched back to my main and jumped into the nearest portal.

Rumors about Illidan in Darnassus drove me towards my capital city, yet I didn’t see anything at all…not even the fire damage that Shattrath and, I’d soon learn, other cities had suffered. Lame. A boat ride later I was flying past Ironforge, since the chat was ablaze with talk about how Stormwind was the place to be. It’s a good thing I passed it up, as I later found out that everything had been nullified in IF by the time I flew by.

And then there was Stormwind. I’d heard that the event started out as usual with the Burning Legion storming the front gates. As I rode deeper into the city and finally into the keep, I learned that the Alliance weren’t the only ones who got a rather interesting surprise: the Horde had been ported from their safe, warm homes in their major cities and deposited into the middle of our event, complete with several super sized GMs summoning demons, conducting mass rezzes, and otherwise doing their best to add to the mass chaos. Just for shits and giggles, they brought both Thrall and Cairne into the keep as well!

Amid massive spell storms and utter anarchy, the Horde fell and their bodies littered the throne room before we took their two leaders down so they could join them in the afterlife. As we gazed over the destruction, we all reflected on what had just happened. It was a battle that ended in countless deaths, and even more laughs, good times, and great memories. -Rebecca Bundy

Yes, Beckett MASSIVE ONLINE GAMER magazine has a MySpace Page too. So, if you have a Page and would like to link your page to ours, now you can do it!

 Here's the Link: http://www.myspace.com/massiveonlinegamer

Let me know if you have any questions!!!

Thanks!

- Doug Kale

Ahh yes, Planar Chaos. It's the second set in the Time Spiral block and it could be the most popular Magic set of 2007. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) definitely knows how to produce a great set of cards.  Last year, the Dual Lands were all the rage. This year it looks like the Time Spiral Timeshifted cards are the biggest buzz.

The new Planar Chaos set makes its first appearance on January 20, 2007 when WotC features a Planar Chaos Pre-Release event. One of the cards that's been receiving lots of attention is the sorcery card called Damnation. The card reads: Destroy all creatures. They can't be regenerated. It looks like it's going to be good one!

If you can't wait to see some of the hot new cards, check out the newest issue of Beckett Magic The Gathering magazine issue 10. On page 11 there's a sneak peek at three cards from the new set: Wistful Thinking, Benalish Commander and Jedit Ojanen of Efrava. Plus, there's also a peek at one of the new Theme Decks on page 86.

There's going to be a lot happening in 2007, including the new 10th Edition Magic. Issue 10 of Beckett Magic The Gathering also has a sneak peek at some of the cool new artwork for the 10th (p.11). Did you hear that some big favorites such as Troll Ascetic, Fountain of Youth and Lord of the Pit will be included?? Oh yeah! - Doug Kale

            Ah, the Grand Marshal’s Dirk. See how it glistens in the light as I sneak up behind an enemy and ruin that perfect shine with their blood. Listen to how neatly it slides into their back and through the tender muscles. How eagerly I, like a child in a candy store, gaze in admiring it from the other side of the glass as I slowly save up my quarters and dimes and daydream about what I could do with one of my own.

            But you see, those quarters and dimes are sitting in the pockets of mine enemies, the Horde. Really, I have nothing against them. Some are pretty downright evil, while others are nature-loving tree-huggers like my little Night Elf. There’s just one little problem with my idea of world peace: they’re standing between me and my new dagger.

            Back in the day, I loved fighting Horde between Tarren Mill and Southshore. There was nothing like hunting each other in the wilderness between the two, watching the waves crash back and forth as each side takes their turn to slam onto the other’s shore. That was then.

            Now I have to put up with scenes like this in WSG:

            (0: 00:00) The battle for Warsong Gulch has begun!

            (0:00:01) Cheater has taken the Alliance Flag!

            All PvP has been reduced to three instances, no variation in the way the dances are performed across the battlefield, and otherwise un-epic feeling battles between the two sides. Sure, there’s the odd match where both sides are equal in strength, skill, and tactics, but these jewels are few and far between cries of “Just let them 5-cap so we can get this over with” in AB or “Let them take the HS GY you nub!” in AV.

            Even battlegrounds didn’t start out this way. I remember one AV in particular that I joined several hours in, had to go to bed eight hours later, and then woke up to find out that the battle had ended shortly before I awoke after a 21 hour battle that resulted in one hell of a win for the Horde.

            Now?

            Now if I want my shiny little dagger, I’m out there farming away as much HK as I can. I’ve tried to have fun, to break away and enjoy the thrill of the slaughter (both theirs and my own), but too often do people freak out when you try to break away from the delicate routine that people have trapped themselves in as they rush, like me, to get their shiny pretty objects of doom before BC docks. In an obviously lost match of WSG, I thought it’d be fun to just run and see how far I could get with the Horde flag. The moment I picked it up, I had no less than five teammates yelling at me because I wasn’t out on the field letting the Horde slaughter me. I still died, mind you, but I had a heck of a lot more fun trying to run like mad than I ever would have with the rest of the lemmings.

            But PvPing isn’t about fun right now. It’s about getting the latest candy that will let us be more efficient when it comes to killing enemies. I mean really, who plays a game to have fun? –Rebecca Bundy