Tuesday 15 January 2002

Pic of the day: What is wrong with this picture?
(Answer: The left part of the picture is also copied to the right part of the screen, rendering that part unreadable and the game unplayable.)

NeverQuest, continued

Believe it or not. You may wish to go back and read much of early December, which I spent bitching about not being able to play the online role-playing game EverQuest. Things that could go wrong, did go wrong, to the point where I was sent to the hospital and spent a very quiet day there under continuous observation. I was however not deterred in my quest until I got the competing (and better) game Dark Age of Camelot. I played this for a month, except for the Christmas holiday spent with the girl I love and who kind of tolerates me. After playing for 1 free month, I found that they did not accept my credit card (or indeed my VISA card).

I have since signed up for betatesting the European version of DaoC, and got my login ident. The problem is that I need a special client program, I cannot use the American version. This program was said to be in the January issue of PC Gamers. There was no such magazine, but I found the British magazine PC Gamer. It set me back approximately €15, but it was a fat magazine with 2 CD's so it could have been worse. Actually, it was worse. There was a notice near the end of the magazine that the DAoC client was in the DVD version of the magazine, but was also planned for next month's CD version. Next month, of course, the betatesting is over. If I want to play the game, I shall have to buy it all over again. One would hope that the French company GOA will be more flexible with foreign credit cards than the American company Mythic. After all, most credit cards are foreign to the French. But I already have this sinking feeling that it won't work like that. Comments on the beta-test forum converge on the opinion that GOA is quite clumsy. They surely have a way to go when writing English: The web site tastes of "Franglish". Perhaps they won't have such a sure grip of foreign affairs after all!

***

So I signed up for EverQuest eventually. One will remember that I originally bought this machine in December for the stated purpose of playing EQ, and threatened to return it if I couldn't play EQ out of the box. Well, you all see what is coming. After signing up, finally, and having ordered 1 month of play time with my credit card, I created my first character. Well, actually I didn't. The screen wrapped around, so that the left part of the picture repeated on the right side, overlapping and hiding the original text and graphics there. The net effect was that I couldn't finish creating my first character, as I could not see all the questions and buttons to push. Nor would the game have made much sense in shit state.

I eventually found out on Sony's support site for the game that this was an issue with one particular set of graphics cards: S3 ProSavage, the type that I have. So much for a specially ordered machine from the Shop of Angels. They specially gave me one of the few that won't work. How special is that?

Regular readers, if there are any of you now who still don't believe in the supernatural and a Higher Being taking interest in our daily lives, I can only admire your strength of faith. (Strength of disbelief, technically.) Actually, I can do more than that. I challenge you to send me your ideas of how to get to play EverQuest at all. Remember that I'm a working class man, so advice like "buy a third high-end computer in less than a year" doesn't count unless you also send the money.

Somehow I am now convinced that even if I bought a good video card, there would be some unsolvable conflict between it and the graphics chip set on the motherboard, and the whole system would crash. I may live to find out, but right now I'm giving up for this time.

Actually, it's not like I intend to play EQ. By now, it is more the scientific curiosity of exploring an undocumented feature of real life. Sometimes reality is stranger than roleplaying games ...