User:Vanguard/BlogArchive2

December 20, 2009
Feh, another debate with a person again.

I make it no secret that I have a particularly overpowered character. When people are pissed about him being over 45,000 years old, they blow a gasket when I even imply that he's also a dragon underneath his human-like exterior.

Oh, and they'd be borderline homicidal if I ever told them about how he realm-hops. Apparently nobody has ever heard of Planeswalkers or Realm Wanderers. There's various names for essentially the same thing.

All that aside, it really DOESN'T come to any surprise that I get some flak from people for actually roleplaying him in-game. Anyone who can't die (in ANY sense) generally gets a lot of ire from the community. Despite it being well known that roleplayers have NO right to kill other roleplayers' characters, a lot of battles, fighting, and murder attempts happen anyway. My defense against this? Build tough characters. Really tough. Ford Tough.

Despite this tendency, I always, ALWAYS have a back-door. My Trilesta sub-race of shadow-assassins? Dismember them (beheading words best) and their 'soul' will get shoved into M's realm where they kind of have to wander around for up to a month (sometimes, the time it takes has several factors). Of course, that would kind of kill my RP for a given amount of time but that's the price I pay for having a demi-god character.

M is a god, but he's not without a backdoor. He's got a physical form. Damage it enough, he pretty much does the same thing as the Trilestas (Don't look that up, It's a word I made up). He's got a handful of other weaknesses I won't share here but, that's the big one. The other backdoor is, I try not to get him in combat much when roleplaying with other people. If conflict arises, I try to avoid it with dialog or just running the hell away, even though he could probably nuke the shit out of them, if he really wanted to. But I always think of mental loopholes to avoid that. One being, despite him being a warrior at heart, he understands politics, espionage, stealth and disguise. Hell, that's why he went by the alias "M" in his early life because he DOESN'T always fight through every damn thing he comes across.

If people just understood THAT, they could tolerate him so much more. Instead, I get shit.

M is a character I created when I was a child, as a defense against nightmares. He's certainly changed and evolved in the last 15 years, but he essentially began when I was like, five. Even with that in mind, I really shouldn't take so much offense to this. He IS overpowered. I know this.

Then there's the other debate of Level mattering in RP. Gods, this is not exclusive to the debate I just had with a fellow DDO roleplayer, either. This arguement is pretty much in every game and universe that RP takes place in. I might get into later. My general opinion is if some level 10 has a good history and a skilled sword-arm, I'd allow them to hold a candle to my level 71 if they roleplay properly. If not though, I'm with the majority and think I could curbstomp them.

Otherwise, in some games leveling takes a longass time and characters should not be gimped because of it.

December 19, 2009
My brother's birthday today. He's 27.

Been playing Mass Effect after I beat Assassin's Creed. I diverted from my level 59, because I don't want to even try to get the 120,000~ experience needed to get to level 60 and the achievement. I'd rather restart as a soldier, because I've seen how awesome Assault Rifles can be in higher levels.

But from levels 1-20 I've stuck with some Avenger 2 Rifle, and it sucks. I've died several times, in ways that my level 59 (who was a vanguard class. And that's just coincidence, by the way) never did in the lower levels. I keep getting my ass kicked by bad timing, positioning, getting hit really hard... Perhaps it's because I'm playing on Normal instead of Casual, which is what I usually do with new characters. But I figured I had enough mental experience to handle it. Several deaths later, I'm soldiering through (no pun intended) but my idiot self needs to save more often.

On Fallout 3, making a soldier-type character, ironically enough. But I'm trying a bit of roleplay with her, I don't want to look like an Enclave/Brotherhood clone and just wear power armor everywhere. I get hit hard. Oh well, I got hitpoints.

December 18, 2009
Not sure if it'll let outsiders see my forums, but check out my l33t ranks. Yes, the art is fucking bad but it's all I can do with my limited Paint.NET skill. After the massive effort that was the Arms Sigil, I kinda gave up and started using Clip-Art. Except the Culture Preservation one. That one is cool. But the Architecture one is fail (First link if you want to see the rest). And my brother informs me that outside my Divisions, normal militaries have 8-enlisted/8 officer ranks. I have 4. In Total. I'm not nearly creative enough to think of 12 more ranks. Besides, the Vanguard is more of a paramilitary so everything doesn't really need to be 'Standard Issue'.

Overall, I like GuildPortal. I just need to think of something better to put on that front page rather than a "go to the forums".

And a short mention on Guild Wars. Update happened, but why am I not seeing any towns decorated?

Also, fuck you Anet for wanting us to pay for those costumes. They should have been like Festival hats. I got two shiny new icons on my inventory AND NOW THEY'LL NEVER BE USED. Forever tormenting my poor-ass. My BMP and 9th character was a surprise-gift from my mother, I wasn't expecting it and probably would have dealt without them.

And back to my borrowed Xbox360. I got about ~9 days before my friend comes back to take it back. I weep. But I did have enough time to beat Assassin's Creed 2. It was glorious. Very good game. It was a bit nerfed for nubs like me (AC1 had several game-killers that I mentioned in my last post), but goddamn it was fun. I only regret that once I beat it... there is nothing else to do. I might start it again but it'd just be more of the same, not to mention going through the 1-hour tutorial mode and unskippable scenes that I don't care about.

It's got a good story but damnit, I wish I could have beaten the first one so I could actually comprehend WTF future-peeps are trying to do.

Anyway. Playing Fallout 3 again. Nothing new to mention. Use your CTRL+F feature to find my previous posts on Fallout.

December 13, 2009
So, my Xbox took a shit on itself several months ago. I mentioned it before that I wasn't too heartbroken. I got one of the 400$ ones, back when it's lifespan was one year old before the dreaded red ring popped up. Mine lasted DOUBLE that, two years. Not a bad run when it should have been half that.

Anyway, today my friend is lending me his because he's going upstate for a couple of weeks for the holidays. I've already forgotten why he let me borrow it, I guess he'll be kept occupied by his family or something.

Anyway, let me borrow a couple of games as well. Assassin's Creed 2 and ODST.

ODST? I've only played for a few minutes with my brother and it's... bland. Like all the others. Halo May have been innovative, but they really aren't even ATTEMPTING to push the envelope and improve on it. To be fair, they're using what works but DAMN, NOTHING has changed. It's boring. I like the storytelling aspect, but I'm so skillful in FPS's that those memory things switch so fast there's almost no point in it being mismatched around like that. I'll play it some more on Single Player later.

AC2 on the other hand, is another story. Much joy is being had with it. The first one, I sucked miserably with. Mostly three things; the Escape always turned me off. As in, I never fucking could. I'd be running entirely too long. The second kill-shot to Ac1 is the one Assassination (I think it was the second or third, I quit playing after the third) where I could not even catch the fucking guy. It turned into a massive unfun chase, took me ten minutes to catch the bastard as he ran in circles all over the city. I don't recall of guards were in pursuit, I assume I was running too fast for them to even get a swing at me. The other thing is how the guards wanted to stab me if I was going faster than WALKING speed. That was the stick that broke the camel's back for me. Never touched the game.

AC2 thankfully fixed most of my hate. The escapes are still a bit of an annoyance but, aren't they usually? The other two things I hated, were fixed. Still getting past the tutorial mode (sort of, With Uncle "Itsame" Mario), everything hasn't been unlocked for me yet. I'll get back to you with a full commentary.

December 7, 2009
The following few paragraphs, I did not write. But it explains perfectly why I do not like to roleplay over channels, and always prefer face-to-face. The post was much longer but these three paragraphs are the best sum-up.

''For me, it's a matter of continuity. If I am on a quest, and RPing in Guild Chat, imagine someone asks me how my day went ICly. I respond that it went fine, that I did a little hunting, and all went well. Then the party wipes several times fighting a Boss Wraith or something in the quest we're on... five minutes later, somebody new logs on, and asks me how my day has been, in Guild Chat. Now, my response is a suspenseful tale filled with danger and near-death experiences, and fear and hatred of wraiths. But the first person is still there, having just heard that everything went well. Continuity is broken.

''Now say we -keep- wiping on the wraith, and need help. Now, I can either go OOC and ask for help in Guild Chat, which isn't very satisfying to me... or I can pretend that in Guild Chat, it's earlier in the day, and try to recruit somebody for a job, but ICly I can't give them any idea about how hard the mission is, and how much trouble we're in. Again, continuity is broken.

''Or for example, one time a group of us were playing an IC game in party chat, physically present together in the Phoenix. Some other people logged on and started talking to us in Guild Chat. Well, we all pretended that we weren't playing the game in Guild Chat, that instead we were just hanging around the tavern. But then that person -also- physically came to the Phoenix, to find out that we were lying in Guild Chat and in fact, doing something quite different at the time. Once again, continuity is broken, this time between two RP scenes that were supposedly happening at the same time, but once we were all in the same place, that couldn't work anymore.

November 28, 2009
I had a mediocre thanksgiving. Good food, normal people. All that.

But I've been fiddling with another MMO for the past couple of days, "Dungeons and Dragons Online". Very few free MMO's can hold my attention as long as GW has, but this one is a worthy contender. Dragonica, which I did like, was just a big grind sandwhich. And there IS some grind in DDO, especially the fact you can repeat the same dungeon a few times to get your ranks and levels up, which is actually more helpful than it sounds. They've really kept to the tablestop style of dice rolling and leveling. Y'see, the level cap is 20. However, you don't "level" very quickly because you have to go through 5 ranks per level before you can bother leveling up. But ranking up has it's own perks. So one can only imagine how beefy a level 20 is in this type of game.

Overall, I like it. But make no mistake, I'm still paying attention to GW stuff. Most noteably. Easy Zaishen stuff, I've saving up gold coins for 10-slot Equipment packs for each of my characters. I'll lose a lot of money in the process (because Zkeys), but it'll be worth it on a looting standpoint, since I have multiple armors on many many characters these days.

I also have a 36k art commission for my ranger, which you might see eventually on her page.

So yea, I still have business with GW ^_^

November 26, 2009
Just a small followup from yesterday's entry. Beat factions on both of those characters, one of them with a semi-normal group. (3 heroes, 2 necro henches, 2 warrior henches. We raped face.) Their celestial skills must be good. I'm not too impressed with the necro one. I the ele's, though.

I may need to find the Shiro runner build for ele's, see how I do. I'm usually pretty decent at farming but this one seems overly difficult for some people, getting him down to 25% and then die miserably. We'll see, eventually.

Won't be on most of today, family gathering. Thanxgiving and all that.

November 25, 2009
So, mustered enough boredom to H/H through some quests, Gyala Hatchery, another quest, and even Unwaking Waters. On TWO characters. But Raisu Palace is a bit above my level (though, maybe runing up my heroes might help?), so two of my characters are sitting there. Online right now on M, getting into a group.

I hate this mission.

November 21, 2009
Nothing game related. Quite sadly, my online time is dictated by how tired my brother is. And we've, for once, seemed to have gotten parallel sleep schedules which has basically locked me out of the computer that has GW on it. Sadface.

So here's my newest movie review.

Obsessed (2009)
 *** This comment may contain spoilers *** '

Massive spoiler in this one, I pretty much give away the ending in this review. But frankly, there's not much to give away.

It was 'okay', I guess. In an acting standpoint it was pretty good, especially Idris Elba who played Dereck Charles. I would like to see him in future roles similar to the one he played here. He did very well.

It had decent cinematography, and... that's about where the quality ends.

Overall, it just seems like a movie that tried too hard. The soundtrack was ridden with "quiet quiet BOO" type music, and the creepiness loses it's sting after it does it four times in a row (Specifically, the attic scene. By the gods, by the time Ali Larter's character finally bothered to pop out I was bored to tears).

Most of the movie was slow and not very horror-like. It should have ditched the creepy atmosphere and it might as well have just been a normal movie about an affair.

It failed at trying to be a Horror. What makes horror, well, y'know, horrific, is the Mystery. There was no mystery here. From the very start of the trailers you knew who the Ax-Crazy woman was. But she wasn't dangerous. They could have done something like what "P2" did (Similar concept, excellent execution), but it was all very pointless. P2 had a parking garage worker locking the entire area up tight. However, this Tempgirl was, for the most part, normal. P2 had an excellent finale. All Obsessed gave us was a painfully long chickfight that could have ended if Beyonce had pushed the panic button on her Alarm system.

And yes, that's all they gave us at the end. A chick fight. Good girl prevails. Movie over. Thanks for wasting my time.

November 14, 2009
Got my Elementalist knee-deep in factions. Once again, I have two characters that need to do the rest of factions from the same spot.

Though, I did get Chamo all of the CM outposts and stuff. Got a PvP build, I essentially just stole from the recent Costume Brawl build for eles. Couldn't find anything I liked on PvX, and I don't have shit unlocked. It works pretty well, I guess. Melee can't touch me, but casters can kick my ass across the map. But they don't attack me as often. It was hilarious. I was playing luxon-side JQ just to get some luxon faction, and the same assassin kept trying to attack me. Up to 4 times. But kept Blinding him, then nuking him with around ~220 lightning damage in between 2 spells. So 2 or 3 rotations and they were dead. They didn't take a hint, and kept coming back for more. Idiot.

I'm only 21k from rank 4 luxon, might need to do luxon side a few more times just to top the title off.

November 13, 2009
Well, power went out for ~12 hours where I was. This Nor'Easter storm is kicking my areas ASS.

Got a shit load of writing done, though. Which I have already posted on my Fanfiction page. After Namuen's chapter, I talk about Ichihara. After that, a whole new chapter entirely where I brush up on what all the characters are doing in GW's "present day".

For those paying attention, I've omit 3 characters for having any big part in my story. Hasin, Chamo, and H. I did a blog post on their levels of importance already, and these three got the short end of the stick. H is pretty big, but only in RP. She has a very simple role and doesn't need much of an introduction. When M reels her in it'll be like "Hi. This is H. She gathers information". And it'll be done.

So, ele elites. Going to gun for Master of Magic next, then spend a few plat getting some spells that I like. Low on money though, and I got an art request for a chibi-M. I need moniez :(

November 12, 2009
Wishlist for my ele, on terms of elite skills;

(It looks fun) <BR> (PvP?) <BR> ,,  (They all kinda look the same to me) <BR> <BR> <BR> <BR> (For the lulz, mainly) <BR> (also for the lulz, unlocking it on account, and wondering what the HELL I could ever do with it) Cap'd, but still wondering what use it is. <BR> (Looks fun) <BR> (I might actually use this with some kind of hybrid water/air build)

November 10, 2009
My elementalist has made some good headway in factions. Trying to play her a bit so I don't have the urge to delete her yet again to make headway for a mesmer. I want to armor collect on a mesmer now :/

My warrior is still graphics-stuck in the CTC. Damnit.

And finally, dealing with some art drama on Guru. Though, drama on that website is as unexpected as the start button on my game controller.<BR> It's truly amazing, it's not like anything I've seen. There's this whole "Client versus Artist" war-type thing going on. Even on Gaia Online, people generally get along very well; even if they get 40 art requests in 2 minutes after thread creation.<BR> On Guru, at artist may get around 10 solid requests to worth with. They take months to do one, a few more months to do another, then they reject or even worse, ignore the rest. People who are well known get art without even asking, and paying customers aren't even spoken to.

Christ. Even I, no stranger to rejection, would at least be formally rejected rather than ignored. And that's all I'm getting from there.

This whole war seemed to spark up a little when I made a small off-comment on this. I was quickly pounced upon by art zealots defending how they act and how my actions are TEHBAD OMG. A few days into it a mod finally mass deletes all posts relating to it. And yet this thread survives. Though, I kind of like that thread.

It's insanity. 12 year old girls are more mature than these adults on Guru. The fuck.

November 7, 2009
Handwriting my new fanfic from part 1. Looks better, but you peeps won't know yet ^_~

And if you haven't seen already, broke up my Fanfiction page.

November 6, 2009
Found a new error. For some reason, my computer was able to load Gate of Pain, and Nightfallen Jahai, but for some reason it can't do the Domain of Fear.

I swear, some of this is so retardedly arbitrary, I wonder what kind of schizophrenic graphics cards A.net was using when they made Nightfall, and even more so for Eye of the North.

Well, at least this one doesn't have me permastuck in an outpost.

Added:

<<BR> Taken while defending Gunther. The charge was half way and they got to our green gate that quick. We won anyway.<BR> Noone replied to either of my comments. It's amazing on how little people talk during TEAM games.

So, two new things to talk about today.<BR> N/A Bombing for JQ and my new fanfiction.

Bombing is fun, but holds a lot of counters in it's hands. The most obvious one is Pinning down, which esentially damages you because of Contagion+Dark Aura. My ranger was a pro-bomber killer because fire/poison/pindown = Prematurely dead bomber.<BR> The next obvious one is Shatter Enchantment, which some shrine NPCs use. I'm not sure how people get around it. A cover enchant wouldn't always work since I sometimes get hit TWICE with it. And despite the mesmer NPC presence, I've seen people do completely flawless runs again and again. For me, I have a 2:1 win/fail rate with bombing, it seems. MOST of those fails are a result of the NPC's shattering my shit.

A less obvious counter is; What if your team owns? What if you end up getting every shrine that matters, or ALL of them? You're basically left sitting on your hands. I just experienced this before this added section. I felt like I should have chosen a different class.

And my new fanfic brought up another seed of thought: That page is getting really freaking long. But I already feel bad about treating this place as some kind of sub-website and am stingy about creating even more subpages. But everytime I think about that, I always think that I've seen people do so much more. It would also be very healthy for organization, as well as the readers themselves.

I think this because my newest fanfic, I estimate it will be very long. If the individual parts won't be, the total outcome sure as hell will. It's a difficult thing to write. I have to introduce every important character of mine, and write like everyone HASN'T been to my individual character pages and read their histories (Which makes sense, because most really haven't. But sometimes I forget that when writing). After I do all the mass load of introductions, I have to then somehow weave their fates together.

And Nikki's introduction isn't very well written. It's like that because I didn't handwrite it first. I just clicked "edit section" and started writing. I'll handwrite it from now on, it's quality should improve a bit afterward.

I like the style of the actual intro-intro... but it needs a rewrite in itself. Seems to fragmented, confusing. Though I suppose it's supposed to be. Not sure yet.

We'll see how it goes.

October 31, 2009
So, this is how my day went. Woke up at ~5am, logged on GW. Plopped my Rit (this years halloween character, thanks to her armor. Last year it was my warrior with her primeval+dread mask). I go back to bed and wake up an hour and a half later and I already got the skeleton paint. It doesn't look bad on my rit, her hair covers the sides so you don't see the skin as much. I might use it for her roleplay, at least in the beginning of her resurrection.

The next couple of hours I PvP a bit. I get some amber, and I managed to muster up 32k, a zkey, 48 ToT bags and gave it all to someone who sold me a Chaos Axe. For most of the day afterward, I played my ranger with the axe build, wielding the axe. But could find very little to do.

My one guildie mentions the Menagerie, and it clicks. I'll go pet capping! So I get most of the Ascalon ones, minus the obvious pre-searing ones (some balthazar faction can get them, not a lot. May have to sacrfice a Zkey or two in the process though). I get most of the factions ones too. A few Nightfall pets, and then I go over to my friends house to watch a movie and play some ps3. No candy this year though, money problems. But that's where I'm typing this post right now. Shitty laptop by the way. Or isn't, it's just a bit worn. It's used a lot. My brother is playing LittleBigPlanet with him right now.

Future plans, finish pet capping. It's a little rough, had to retry a few of them because my Charm aggros, and instead of coming at me they charge straight for my FLAGGED Heroes/henchmen, for some reason. Happened with the Dune Lizard. The White Tiger took a couple of attempts too, but managed to get it, even the hard way. I skipped the normal tiger because it'll be pretty easy to get.<BR> I'm also skipping some of the VERY ordinary ones. After I have a Black/White Moa, I don't need a stinking strider or standard Moa Bird. Seriously.

I am however having trouble locating the Lions/Lioness. Right now Nikki is sitting in Jennur's Horde, she needs to get to Basalt Grotto, an outpost I seemed to have missed. The lions are not far outside there. The Mines area is completely unmapped, so another 6% and she might have 70% into Elonian Cartographer. I have a few 60%'s around my characters but those aren't bragworthy. Anything past that though, I might wear.

And now my brother/friend are begging me to watch them play some User made Ninja warrior maps on LBP. Later.

October 29, 2009
I wonder which one of my many armors would look good pink. I want to try.<BR> About 4 minutes after the above sentance, no dice. Red+White for some reason doesn't make a very good pink, even though it does with real paint (Done it before).

October 28, 2009
Anyone else notice how useless Warriors are for general gameplay? Sure, they take a lot of hits but nothing else. In PvP they can snare and knockdown... but even casters can take hits, snare, KD, and everything else if not a little bit better. Full caster groups can be more effective as a full warrior group (with monks backing them, of course). Their damage output would be shit.

I don't know, just an observation. I don't see a lot of warriors around anymore except for simple tasks that could be done better by something else.

So, beat the last 2 missions of prophecies with my elementalist, (with a warrior acquaintance of mine, no less), got my ranger the Deldrimor Flatbow. I might get the Maul next.<BR> My Necromancer is one quest away from Eternal Grove, and as such, not far away from beating Factions himself. But that quest is so fucking annoying to mess with. (Mostly because of the confusing areas, can't tell a path from a goddamn rock)<BR> And as per my last post, I -did- beat Factions with my assassin finally.

And if you haven't noticed, I got my ritualist elite canthan armor. Acquired all legit-like, too!<BR>

So that marks the end of my armor collection. Other than like, maybe, one more armor set for my assassin and/or ranger, (and obviously the Monument for my warrior, but I don't count that yet), I'm done with armors for any of my characters. Though, a Future mesmer might get a few more. (I'm a fan of elite canthan).<BR> Okay so that's a handful. BUT OTHER THAN THEM; I'm not sure what I'll spend my cash on. Might get some rare weapons directly. Maybe some minis that I actually like. Dunno.

October 25, 2009
Irony: I gave my old raptor farmer a mini raptor to hang out with.<BR>

I say "old" because I can't farm on this computer, Rata Sum crashes me. And the character gets permastuck there until I get a friend to get them out for me.

I tested Central Transfer Chamber with one of my lower-priority characters, my warrior, and now she's permastuck. Sigh.

Random thought: I really wish there was an easier way to farm Ebon Vanguard to rank 5 without books.

Random Note: Just beat Factions on my imbagon. With my assassin, I'm in unwaking waters. And it's completely barren of people.<BR> Due to my previously mentioned graphics issues, I'm pretty much isolated to Prophecies and Factions. And I hate prophecies.<BR> I can do most of Nightfall, but one of the missions plops me in Wehhan, and the permastuck ensues.

No wonder I've been so fucking bored recently. I can't do any of the campaigns I actually like.

October 24, 2009
My blog has been looking a little bland since my October 13 archive, only one image on the bottom of the page. So here's Shizuma with her newly attained Elite Canthan armor;



With that aside, I have a small idea for this blog post. I'm going to outline SOME my characters and their level of importance in both roleplay value and standard gaming.<BR> This idea comes from my new banner image on my front page, those three are debateably my most important. My rit, less so but she's got the potential to become a powerful woman.

Matthias is the most important in RP terms, as he's the Commander of the entire Vanguard. He functions as a questgiver, meaning anyone who roleplays with me will almost always have to go through him to get to anyone else. His level of importance is obvious.<BR> For general gaming, he's pretty fun. I talk about how awesome my self-built SS build is on his respective page, and I also have a few MM elites to work with. But death nova managing is annoying. But overall, MM's and Spiteful Spirit are both very useful builds.

Nikki seems ordinary at first, but she's gone through more than her history has presented. She's had to deal with friendly (and unfriendly) dragon broods, a cave labyrinth, her hilariously incomptant monk friend, and a bunch of other substories I roleplayed back on Starcraft RP maps. She's one of my oldest character concepts (I call her a "concept" because I've recycled her personality and history, even changed it), and sadly my most unused for her age.<BR> Got off on a tangent there. Why is she so important? Well, provided I can find someone to roleplay her questline, she has the potential to become a powerful link between M and the nation of Vabbi. And given her history, this wouldn't be a difficult feat for her to complete.<BR> In general gaming importance, just read this post.

To end this trio of importance (but by no means this blog post), There is Ichihara. I've had a VERY difficult time finding the proper wording for her history. I do know that I want her to be a powerful witch that lived in Shiro's Era, 200 years ago. But past that simple 1 line, I can't think of anything to flesh it out. I could go on all day about her personality but that would just be saying a lot of nothing. It's the history I need.<BR> But I do have a roleplay session planned, M will want her mummy 'awakened'. Despite her being Canthan, she was shipped off and buried in Elona (due to the harsh conditions and isolation, it was considered unlikely that she'd be released).<BR> For general gaming value, it's only medium-ranged. On one hand, I have a neat spirit spamming build that's rather powerful and vaguely boring to play. Still, I lol everytime I see the machinegun effect some spirits cause.

Caroline, EASILY has the potential to be a power-player. Not just with the Vanguard, but with Canthan politics as a whole. Hell, she might even contribute in helping Ichihara get her bearings back). And aside from Namuen, Caroline has one of the best histories in my recent writing history. Obviously, my older concepts like Nikki and M beat them by a mile but... Namuen and Caroline have brilliant backgrounds. I'd say she's very valueable in RP terms, but I can't realize almost any of this without another roleplayer.

Everyone else is too simple.

Chamo is a simple alchemist. In general gaming, she's a Zaishen Elite farmer.<BR> Hasin is still a student. General gaming, can't farm anymore but partakes in some PvE every now and then.<BR> H, despite being an inherant badass, also is a bit simple in her function. She's essentially a living robot. Interesting to roleplay, but rarely anything past simple conversation. In general gaming terms, I've practically abandoned her, as there's very little to do with her.<BR> Namuen, probably graduated from Shing Jea at this point, still has an entirely too simple of a function. In general gaming, she's an awesome Imbagon (Or spear chucker if need be), but she beat factions and EoTn. Nightfall gives me that graphics roadblock, and I hate prophecies. So she's a bit in the dust along with H.

Shizuma, regrettably, also has a very simple function.<BR> In roleplay terms, she's a recruiter. Barely anything more than M's secretary. She does have her own set of personality querks and will eventually descend into outright madness... and even then she's just a girl who introduces people to other people.<BR> For general gaming; Very little past armor collecting. She's already beaten everything, and I can't find any PvP builds that are far enough away from what I use in PvE to be of any interest to me.<BR> I love the character to death but I can't find anything to do with her anymore. Other than toss more armor at her.

October 23, 2009
Like the last update that added the Menagerie and Daily quests, here we go; Opinion time.

Before anyone starts claiming I'm bad, I'll have you know I've been doing very little BUT PvP for a while now, since everything else has dried up for me. I'm no professional at it, but I'm a few steps above the average scrub (and the same can be said for me on a lot of other games as well).<BR> Of course, that might not mean much. Many people mentally skip the disclaimers and are quick to just brand someone "TEH BAED". But blog-visitors are sparse so thankfully I may not get that much flak.

Now, for the most part I have the same complains as I do in RA. first and foremost, I can never get a team that can fucking win. The new title gives ONE point per 5 wins, and I can never win more than one at a time. I win one, I lose six games. That's usually the ratio. This happens a lot in RA too, unless I play a monk.<BR> But it's not so simple as just "be the monk" in Codex. Which leads us to a massive load of profession descrimination. If you can avoid those who want gladiator ranks, you still have to deal with those only wanting specific classes with specific builds. Despite it all being random, meta can form in minutes. I can't subscribe to that metagame, and it takes me 30 minutes to find a group. And when I finally do, the above problems arise.

I don't mind the random shuffle. I like fiddling with new skills that I don't often use. What I find infuriating, is people STILL expect specifics. Well we can't fucking do that in this new arena.

On the PvE side, I can't farm ToT bags and noone is buying charr carvings for some reason. Fuck.

Added:<BR> New project!<BR> After I get my warrior's elite canthan armor (can't get her monument for a long time, with how my graphics card doesn't like most of EoTn); <BR> I'm going to get as many res skills on my monk as I can. Join luxon side and watch the lulz ensue.

October 22, 2009
Halloween event tomorrow. Can't wait, got a stack of normal charr carvings I need to sell.

Anyway, just got the suicide bomber build, and got M past Tahnakai and through the next three missions, and finally... the Competative Missions.

And holy shit it's so fun. It's a bit different on terms of playstyle, as you're TRYING to die. But man, it's so fun. Every now and then something tanks, death nova gets stripped or I die before I get to the goal, whatever. That happens.

I did a JQ game where the yellow shrine was in more conflict than I've ever seen. The entire game was just green/purple capping because we were playing Tug O' War with Yellow. I'd bomb it, then on my way back some AotL (which is beefy in CM's) MM would zerg it. I'd bomb it again, etc. This went on up to ten times, I shit you not.

So I came up with this little one-line poem that I'll recite if something like that happens;

"Back and forth yellow doth go. Where it ends, nary a soul knows."

Teehee.

Added:<BR> I also plan on saving up my gold Zcoins. Instead of getting a Zkey every gold coin I attain, I'm going to get 5 for an equipment pack for my warrior. I have a new armor on her wishlist. Might get it during the Halloween festivities. But ToT bags and Carvings aren't worth as much as Zkeys, so it'll take a bit more work to get this one.

October 21, 2009
The recent issue of Gameinformer talks about a new horizon of Game-Movie and Movie-Game adaptations. From the way it looks, the relationship and segway between the two are improving. But it's hard to say. Most of them look good at first glance.

Lots of speculation surrounds why it never works, and the GI article didn't mention that both mediums do different things for people. Yes, one is interactive. But it's argueable that Movies seem to dedicate more energy into the storyline, and games tend to focus on the characters. Generally. Obviously, mileage may vary.

But according to GI, game companies and movie producers are going to be working closer together. Before, game people would just be excited that their game is paid attention to, to have a movie and they'd sell every piece of rights they could. And then the movie would tank because everyone involved is an idiot.

But I welcome the new change, if it really is a change. I think it's just that movies ran out of ideas, now that they've milked every popular comic possible. (Though I'm still waiting on the full-on Justice League gathering movie).

October 20, 2009
So, I've watched Ghost Whisperer. A few episodes. Enough to judge, anyway.

It interested me once I first saw previews for it, I was expecting it to be buffy-ish, with a side of House MD (Or any investigative show like CSI, NCIS). Two shows I love.<BR> But every episode starts the same. The middle is the same. The ending is always the same.

Each episode starts off, not with a person dieing but with the main character seeing a ghost. It does some creepy voices, yelling, or some speedy head twitching. Awesome. At first they seem even hostile. Like most lore paints ghosts, they go mad. All that.

But the very second they find out someone can see them, lo' behold the sanity. Suddenly they can speak clearly. Hell, one episode went as far as the character's burn wounds completely went away by the end of the episode.

So anyway, they find out how they died, their name, and their family. This happens a lot where the protagonist lives, but it only makes sense that ghosts would wander around where they actually lived. (And to be fair, we do see her travel out of town a bit.) So this particular point I cannot blame them too much for. It makes sense.

What doesn't however, is how they're able to find everything about the victim and family from a quick google search.<BR> I'm going to propose an experiment to myself. A year after anyone I know dies (Hell, just a month or two), I'm going to do an internet search on them and see if the media even bothered to give them an ENTIRE news article on it. My skepticism says no.<BR> Because, y'see... House is a doctor. He also has a team working for him. The CSI people, are part of the police force. Obviously they have connections to find out what they need. Buffy and her gang had tomes and old books, and they OFTEN showed us some kind of research montage to show us that it did indeed take them a while to identify whatever they were looking for.<BR> Ghost Whisperer has none of that. You see "Melinda" (I think I spelled it right) at her computer once and within 1 minute she's rattling off her findings to her husband/friend.<BR> I wouldn't mind this so much if they give a psuedo-sciency explanation. Might be fake but at least psuedo-science is still entertaining.

So she uses these findings to interview and interrogate the people being haunted or local loved ones. Obviously they are skeptical at first but a few correct words that Melinda relays from the ghost, and lo! We have a believer! Now, the logic IS sound but this just gets annoying when they do it every single fucking episode.<BR> Every episode ends with half a family tree gathered in some living room, giving us an extremely boring relay of ghost-to-Melinda-to-family dialog. People cry. People hug. Ghost goes into the light.

One more side note; It does make sense that Ghosts can only see or remember what they WANT to see or remember (Supernatural covered this, yet another show with a similar concept but does it a lot better), but I found it kind of odd after FOUR different occassions a ghost CONVENIENTLY and completely remembers a certain situation that would help Melinda either convince the family she can actually see ghosts, or help further her investigation in helping it.

It might be worth trying to watch a couple of times. The acting is decent, has several thousand good looking women in it... making this a borderline soap opra but they mix it up with the occasional old guy or fat girl. (And even THOSE are by no means ugly).

The show tries to mix things up by getting Melinda a husband, having one of her friends die, or having one of the haunted people be a possible murderer. But at the end of the day every episode is the same.

It's a neat concept but it's been done before, and better. Time better spent rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer or catching up with Supernatural.

October 16, 2009
Elementalists really get the short end of the stick when it comes to armor. Most of it looks exactly the same.

In other news, good morning to be a kurzick. Played several JQ games and only lost 1 so far. But the more hours pass, the more resiliant luxons are (They're logging on). May only handle a couple more games.<BR> Oddly enough, I've been doing JQ more for the balthazar. A few zkeys will spur my ele armor funding.

More to come today, maybe.

October 15, 2009
New goal: Elite Stormforge armor for my elementalist. I think it'll fit her new earth build splendidly.<BR> How to get this money? Well, hoping to find a Mallyx group. I prefer Mallyx only but wouldn't mind doing a full run, get gem drops, and sell them. (Torments are 5k, that's beefy). Of course, still doing my Zkey thing.

After spending a few plat though, I got some Norn Tourney farmer builds (Pretty much the same 6 skills, on different characters) and was able to get both the Tourney and Glacial Griffon. The griffon, as usual, was a little rough. But it's spirits were too busy attacking my own. So I lived, almost never got hit.

And now I've got ~3 characters of the /Rt variety that can farm the tourney if I need to. (But the crown dyes.. oddly. It becomes blinding-neon).

Still, even with all this I'm still really BORED. After some of this is done, I'm doomed to constant PvP loss or standing around Blade Radio Dj's.

Still, really want to play my ranger more now.

October 14, 2009
<BR> I really like this screenshot. Looks like she's having a lot of fun. She's very cute in this.

I've blown through a lot of money to get that particular look, and not just because of the black dyes.

Ever since I saw her character, I've been trying to steal my friend's ranger's look. I was discouraged when I discovered that was the fuckmothering VABBIAN chestpiece.<BR> But I was finally able to afford it, and I already had the elite druid bottoms for my trapper set. So with those two pieces, half the battle was over.

The real problem came along with the boots and gloves. Well, I easily cannot (ever) afford the obsidian boots, or the elite studded leather. (Maybe the studded, but I didn't like the look and didn't want to bother).

So eventually my friend pointed me in the direction of the similar-but-reskinned monument armor. So I got them. 40k later I have two pieces of armor that DIDN'T HAVE THE SAME BLACK HUE as the vabbian/druid. Instead it was more like a navy blue and it was extremely noticeable. Fuck.

So I did a lot of research and a lot of wiki tabs, looking and comparing every ranger glove pieces and boots. Even went in-game to buy the nub 20gold pieces just to see what it would all look like. I finally succeeded with the Istani armor. It dyes really well and frankly, I think it's one of the best looking starter sets in the game, my mixing aside.

Thus further proving "I can't get above 10k without finding something to buy" mentality.

Other than that, I've run into another dead-end on GW. I have very little to do. I would do a lot more nightfall but the Whhan Terraces graphics glitch gives me a massive roadblock, despite all the rest of Vabbi actually working for me.

I've been poking at some PvP but after losing a few times in a row, its fun-factor wears off very easily. I've switched to luxon again, but mostly for a casual=chatting alliance. I'm still going to be kurzick, made easier since I don't do actual alliance battles anymore. I'm all about the FA/JQ.

To fill the time I've been SS/LB farming on my rit. Um. Nothing really to add onto that, except I got an elite necro tome which I sold to help fund Nikki's mix armor.

So I'm slightly stuck unless someone wants to help me get through Gyala Hatchery like, three times on different characters. Luckily Ichihara got past it and is now in Raisu Palace. But somehow that place has been consistantly barren.

October 13, 2009
The black dyes I wanted, got them. The coloration backfired. Was trying this armor mix and the two pieces I needed the dye for, now look like a dark navy blue. But it's bright enough to be noticeable. There's 20k I'll never see again.

And I've changed my previous white dye order, I think I only want to get one. I've used silver, and it's a neat substitute. But the leggings are darker, less-bright. So I just want 1 to put on the leggings and see how they look.<BR> And if it doesn't work out, I'll be less angry wasting 6k than 20-22k.

My wanted earth build is still in effect, but couldn't find anything on PvX. Not for PvE anyway. So I'll build my own (which I still have to do sometimes, don't judge my use of PvX).

October 12, 2009
Current goals:<BR> 2 Black Dye<BR> 5 White Dye<BR> A new earth-based build for my elementalist. Because I really need to do something different with her before I feel the urge to excercise my delete button.

October 10, 2009
Does someone want to tell me why Ritualists and Assassins get Nightfall Vabbian and Ancient armor, but not Primeval? That's a little... inconsistant.

In other news, got Primeval for my ranger and Ancient for my Rit, fucking finally.

Cleared extra chibis from my character pages, because it got redundant. I might even remove the main banner image. But fuck, it looks so good.

October 8, 2009
Time to be nice to my ritualist.

What she needs:<BR> A new kurzick headpiece, +channeling .<BR> ~6 skills of the splinter/ barrage variety. <BR> Some cap signets (buying 2 more should be safe) <BR> Spirit's Strength. May need to get a tome, the cap areas are a bit past my reach.

Taking away the tome, should run me around 10k, rough estimate.<BR> The tome itself can be 8-12k. So that hurts.

Couple days of zkey farming should be good.

Added:<BR> Also, get Ebon Battle Standard of Honor and "I Am The Strongest!" <BR> (Requires "Missing Vanguard" and "Curse of the Nornbear" )

These are mostly notes-to-self.

October 7, 2009
So, going to H/H Arborstone/Boreas/Sunjiang on my RIT now, too. Only problem is, missing Livia as the sabway healer. And Olias is 15.

It's gonna be rough.

Nowhere to be tomorrow so I'm dedicated the next couple of hours to this.

Added:<BR> Missions cleared, but the kurzicks are pissed that I have 3k more faction on the luxon side. So I gotta suck up and get some JQ rep. Bleh.

October 6, 2009
Ahh, Caroline, and she's only 2 months old too, with only 62 hours played on her. I think she's way up there with Shizuma on "most shit done in a tiny amount of playtime".<BR> Shizuma was a lot more understandable, I wanted fuckin' EVERYTHING.

Just got luxon armor for my monk, for no other reason than just having half the jade required and 4 zkeys lieing around. At the end, I still have 7k to my name. Though, that's without runes.<BR> But this has some RP potential too. I can definately see Caroline playing both sides for her benefit.

Also added a new lyric, "The Diary", and it has a special place in my heart. It's crude, but it means something to me.

Random:

Shizuma : 498 Hours, 12 months (Runner-up for Most Played) <BR> Huntress : 366 hours, 33 months (Oldest) <BR> Nikki : 530 hours, 23 months (Most played) <BR> Hasin : 266 hours, 23 months <BR> Namuen: 131 hours, 13 months (Much less than I'd like) <BR> Caroline : 62 hours, 2 months (Runner-up for Youngest) <BR> Chamo : 21 hours, 2 months (Youngest) <BR> M : 199 hours, 10 months (More than I thought) <BR> Ichihara : 27 hours, 3 months <BR>

Added:

Friend gave me the key for those Aion Wings, because they don't play GW that much. Jubilance.

October 3, 2009
My imbagon H/H'd through Arborstone/Boreas/sunjiang because they're easy as shit.

I also did Abaddon's Gate on my warrior because I needed a headpiece for my scythe build. I had one before, but it looked bad with all the primeval and primeval without a proper helmet looks... odd. So I blew some ~16k just for a strength headpiece. Oh well.

And now I'm getting kicked off the computer so. Bla.

October 2, 2009
Srs comic is srs

I'm doing the new "serious" arc for various reasons. If you think this information might ruin the novelty of it, I'll make this colored white so you can highlight it.
 * Bringing back an old stick figure mascot I used to have
 * I want a more text-heavy storyline
 * I want to make obsessive use of the "blood splatter" effect.
 * I want to improve my stick figure style, and putting them in a series of action sequences will certainly help me with that
 * Guns are cool

September 30, 2009
The wiki is being twitchy, keeps randomly logging me in and out, and every time I edit it gives me an error message... but it submits anyway. Really wierd.

Anyway, new bannerthing on my main page. Got chibis done for all my characters. In the future I might crop out their heads and use them as their page icons instead of my little cheap Paint ones.

That is all.

September 24, 2009
Heroes premiere a couple days ago. Watched it. Gonna watch Survivor tonight.<BR> The above mentioned, plus some Comedy Central. The only TV I watch anymore.

I'm not sure if Survivor was the first 'reality' show of its kind, but it did it so well and debateably better that I kind of give it credit anyway. And there was a convenient influx of "vote em off" type shows after Survivor got popular, especially by those idiots from MTV.

And Heroes is trying something different along the sea of unoriginal shite. Yea, it kinda fell on its face at Season 2, but 3-4 tried repairing it. And here on Volume 5, some stupidity is still showing its face but I still find myself rushing to the television and tackling the remote every Monday.

And Anime has become so very generic for me.

So, I hunt down some lesser-known anime on youtube just to get my lolz on. Though, I mostly like thoughtful ones like Death Note (of a darker and more intelligent theme). However, I like Lucky Star (for some reason I've yet to pinpoint), so I'm fine with cutesy/funny.<BR> Recently, this type of anime comes in the form of "Azumanga Daoih", which delves into utmost absurdity most of the time.<BR> And here comes the problem, I've discovered several trends;

So many character and scenario templates, I find it hard to find any actual original anime anymore.
 * Obligatory Culture Festival.
 * Obligatory 'at the beach' episode.
 * Obligatory 'athletic' event.

I'm all for mindless humor (And Puni Poemi was only 2 episodes), but this just becomes mindless by episode 10.

I need to find some other animes don't suffer from Generic Template Syndrom (GTS).

September 19, 2009
First, a followup and slightly more detailed/reworded version of my last entry;

''On the subject; Dragonica Online is a free MMO. Despite it's chibi-anime style, I mention in the comic that it has a lot of hardcore capability. Once you get over the cartoony look, it actually feels like a functional, and complex MMO. And it really is. It has several talent trees for each job advancement (every 20 levels, so far).

''All that said; it's rather unrefined for its age. It's in Open Beta, creeping up on a year old now. Less than a year you ask?! Vanguard, you impatient fuck! Cut them some slack! No. Because despite it being nearly a year old, very little is being changed. I know the future implimentations like player housing, pets, and the 100 level cap (It's 60 right now), There's still numerous balance issues, menu glitches, and very little customizeability overall. It also has a massive goldbot/scamspam problem (Which is the subject of today's comic), and the game needs an ignore feature (Which it lacks completely. You'd think that would be on the "TO DO" list for any Multiplayer game EVER.) But all THAT can be fixed at least, while we wait for the bigger things.

Taken from my newest post on my website, which had 58 hits yesterday! Most from me posting the link on Kongregate and Dragonadopters.

Secondly, some art for Shizuma! An artist I'm acquainted with might try chibis for all of my characters, so I might upload them and put them all on their respective pages. If they're small enough, I'll just do a super-compilation image and put it on my characters gateway page.

September 10, 2009
Still alive, just playing this new(ish) free MMO called Dragonica. Not a bad game. It looks all cartoony and cute but trust me when I say, it gets serious business very quickly.

It's still in open beta (Since Dec '08, I believe), so there's a lot of flaws. For one, quest rewards are a joke. You want to do the first few to get some starter items, and the red main quests are a must... but beyond that. The exp rewards aren't worth it and it doesn't give enough money to balance how fast you level up... Which will comprise of grinding instances anyway. So at the end, there is little reason to do the quests.

But it's amazing how serious business it can become. There's entire talent trees and builds. The trees split at 20 and 40 with 'job' changes, which go for specific types of roles in either PvE or PvP. It's well thought out, if you can forgive a lot of the mechanical flaws... Which can be fixed in time. Though, it's been almost a year.

More to come.

September 7, 2009
My commentary on PvX:

Most people find it cheap or dishonorable to use it as a source of builds. I never thought this, I supported its use even though I couldn't put into words why I did. Then yesterday, it dawned on me as my grandmother muddled through her cookbooks. She can already cook very well, so why use a book to help her out? As a reference, a reminder, and an aid. There's no shame in using a cookbook, just as there is no shame in using PvX as a build reference.<BR> If someone doesn't know a proper build, needs a reference, ping it to 'em. It helps.<BR>

Someone said somewhere on this wiki, that as long as you can understand the context and how to use the build, and why it's actually listed up there... you posess the necessary understanding to use PvX.

September 6, 2009
Ran my imbagon through some factions, she's essentially in the same area as my ritualist. And one mission past her already. Remember the last sentance in my Sept 4 entry? It's the same thing, only I'm adding two more characters to the list of "Shit I need to do twice".<BR> But I got through two of my least favorite missions, with little issue. It must be because an imbagon is retardedly easy to play. I just autoattack and pop 1-3 on recharge.

I never pinpointed what exactly got me 'back in the groove', in GW. I was in a funk like, a month or two ago. The funk I've mentioned before, when I leave GW for some amount of time and come back and am like, "k. wtf do I do". It helped that my friend hopped on my account not long ago to get my Rit and Ranger out of the towns they were in (graphics issue). Of course, making a rit relieved a good amount of boredom.

I read back in my blog as well, making my monk was a big part of this. They're a lot to handle. Very expensive characters to make, because you need several equipment sets for a numerous amounts of things. At the moment I have three different headpieces (for everything but Divine favor), and one staff. It's not a very good staff, but it gives me 15 energy and a 20% chance to recharge quicker. But no inscription or that other mod.<BR> Before her, though. I made a rit after the spirit buff. She's been a joy to play, but not very far into anything. It's annoying to play factions as a rit these days because every rit and their mother has a mass load of spirits.

Which reminds me. I guess I should start investing in a healer build for her, huh?

The introduction of Zcoins gave me a short frenzy. This only lasted a few days because they started introducing things I don't touch with a ten foot pole. (Most forms of PvP, and a lot of those bounties aren't worth it).

In the end, part of me just needs to remember how many missions I've yet to do across all my characters (Though this isn't an issue yet, I'm well past the aforementioned 'funk'). Past Tahnakai Temple, almost all missions until Gyala/Eternal are Hero/Henchable. Prophecies is simple, could H/H the first half of it if I had the energy for it. Nightfall is a bit more troublesome, since Wehnan Terraces locks GW up. A few of my characters do enough NF mission to Rihlohn Refuge, and one mission past that... but then I'm stuck.

On a final note, I still need Gyala on my assassin. Damnit.

September 5, 2009
Goals: Get some art for my GW characters.

September 4, 2009
After I give my contest prizes out, I'm saving for a goddamn VDS. Not having one is driving me -nuts-.

Added:<BR> Got my monk up to Raisu Palace, but as usual it's a pretty barren place. I dare not H/H it. It's also even more annoying since My assassin is like one mission behind her. For the past week I've had to do the same several quests and missions in factions three times on three characters.

September 3, 2009
I only got to play GW for a couple of hours today. As such, I didn't get much done. I did some JQ for both sides to get past 10k, which finished quests for a few of my characters. I still need to do "City Under Attack" on my assassin, which gets her closer to the quests that require the 10k faction. As such, I will not be spending my faction pool untill I get my assassin to the appropriate areas. I think it's sufficient to get the grind out of the way and do the missions later.

For any readers, I need help with Gyala Hatchery. TWO times, on two different characters. My warrior and monk. Joyous times. My warrior is 1 masters away (gyala) from getting Protector of Cantha.

So, new feedback icon/page/navbar link. Navbar kind of looks ugly with it, not sure how long I'll keep it around. I only have two suggestions. One of them is only half-serious (my avatar concept). My first one however, an auction house. It's appalling that GW, creeping on 4 years now, hasn't added one yet. Oh, the problems it could solve.

September 2, 2009
So. Did get Life Sheath for Caroline. This one hybrid build I'm running is really fun to use. But it misses out on Arcane Echo, so I can't duplicate RoJ :(

So, did some JQ today and got "Befriending the Luxons" on two characters. Shizuma will soon be getting Protector of Cantha after I get Zen Daijun and that last luxon mission. Caroline is edging closer to it as well, but she'll need to do the kurzick side later.<BR> Which reminds me, I've made the switch to luxon. I wasted about 2k going back and forth because yesterday, no matter what team I was on, we lost. And no, it's not just me. My builds are fine, I can just never fucking win. Hell, I lost 3 JQ games and won one today as a luxon.. But even JQ losses give more than AB losses.

I'm also trying to get my monk through Prophecies. I want to have a l33t monk like my friend, who pretty much has everything unlocked ever on that character. I want my monk in as many places as possible.

On a final note, I got an odd little sword build for my paragon, for PvP. I've yet to try it since I was promptly kicked off the computer with guild wars not long ago.

Added:<BR> For those who've paid some attention to my character pages, you would see on M's trivia, that he was designed as a defense against nightmares as a child. (Meaning the character concept is over a decade old). Of course, in order to do this he has to be one powerful summbitch. So now, I give you his skills. Most of those (Specifically Pulse, Enflame (Which is essentially Inferno from Fable 2), and Envelope Shadow) are skills he actually uses in my dreams to butcher any summbitch that gets in his way.<BR> And the questline I've designed around them? It's a translation of the previous concept I've had for a couple of years. It's pretty much the same, only instead of Jahai Bluffs, it happens in New York for more modern terms. It's hard to explain.<BR>

But I'm very proud of the skills. They're powerful, without being game-breaking or impossible. Of course, I'll take suggestions and they are by no means finalized. I'll balance and refine it in time. What really needs help are the actual descriptions. A few of them aren't that clear (specifically, "Enflame".)

I like them.

September 1, 2009
First o' the month, kiddies will be going back to school soon.

So, I've been working on my dervish, whom I still wish I could rename. I've mostly just been putting her through Eye of the North. The Cathedral of Flames doesn't work, even while doing Warband of Brothers. So that's a roadblock. Most asuran areas lock GW up too, so I'm pretty much exclusive to the Norn questline on this computer.<BR> So, that's what I've been doing. Might add on to this later.

In other news; I'm a bit torn on my new fanfiction "Frostmourne in Morrowind". On one hand, it's a real testament to my writing ability. It's a lot bloodier than I've ever written anything, and I've had a problem with writing 'action' in the past.<BR> On the other, the crossover is retarded and butchers the lore of the sword. To some degree. I also hate the first 'part', the three journal entries. I may have to rewrite that in the third person.<BR> On another good hand, I've written how Frostmourne works almost perfectly. Since I've played Warcraft 3, read the books, and have read most the lore at some point... I could write a real book on it. Haha.

TL;DR: I love the gore I've written, and love how accurate I got Frostmourne's "personality.<BR> I hate the first three journal entires, the title of the fanfic, and the fact I've done a very unlikely crossover.

Added:<BR> Fixed one of my concerns with my new fanfic. No more journal entry thing.

Next? I did some mass capping today on a couple characters.<BR> Got for Nikki.<BR> and for Caroline.<BR> I still plan on getting  and  as well.<BR> for Huntress, because I love exploiting OP stuff to death.

And I didn't tome -any- of these. Mostly because I can't afford it. 50k is reserved for the contest I'm hosting, so subtracting that I've been hovering around 4-8k as I've been purcashing cap sigs and several skills for my monk who DESPERATELY needs to increase her skill stockpile to be of any use past the basics I've gotten for her.

August 30, 2009
Back from my vacation. Despite it being a week long, not much happened. Watched some movies. Swam at the beach a bit (got my leg tore up in the process, it was rocky), did some Lazer tag. That was it, really.

My welcoming home present, from my brother, was an installed Morrowind. Jubilance. I'll be playing some of that.

I just got the mod that gives you Frostmourne+the Lich King's armor. I have/had The perfect character to roleplay it with. My old Paladin Randa, who had a problem with corruption in the Legion. Not her own, she was honest enough, but was often blackmailed and threatened to do some dirty deeds. So my future storyline is her going to Solstheim, discovering this cursed sword and armor set, (Yes, those screenshots are actually in-game-Morrowind), and then wreaks some revenge with her newfound power.<BR> Along with this, I will set Conjuration to 150+, give her a Summon Skeleton to use. Funfun.

And, as a self-reminder, I need to get all those imperial mods back.

Added:<BR> Adding a little short story. I'm also very tired so I'll refine this later. And this won't matter to anyone who hasn't played Bloodmoon (Morrowind). I'll migrate it to my fanfic page later.

20 Last Seed<BR> I am back from my injury a couple of years ago. I have returned to Morrowind, and I am amazed I still have a job. I s'pose soldiers are in a lot more demand here, than in Cyrodiil. For a few days, I worked in Gnisis. Small jobs. Understandable, I have to work myself back up and my name has faded in time. Suits me. After taking down a cult, I heared rumors about Fort Frostmoth. I always loved the area around Bruma, I figure I would enjoy the snow. So for now, I shall rest in Khuul for the night and head to Solstheim first thing tomorrow morning.

August 23, 2009
Tomorrow I should be off to North Carolina for some beach madness. Along with some of my abstract art (if you care enough, send me a message and I'll show you my deviantart because I'm too lazy to log into it right now), I'll also be working on my Roleplaying questlines.

I've got a whole full one based around my ranger. Starts with talking to Commander M, or another recruiter. Most of it is conversation, and they just want you to inform Nikki of the Vanguard. Later on though, M informs the roleplayer (I play a Dungeon Master role in this, mostly) that her real full name is Nisai Voran Oril, and has a right to some noble land. She's reluctant at first, but takes the player to scan Dejarin Estate, and it's a no-go. The next quest involves scouting somewhere in Vabbi. It's been so long, and noone ever roleplayed with me this far into the quest but I think I chose either Garden of Seborhin or Grand Court of Sebelkeh. But needs permission from the Vabbi Princes, and one quest involves her using the player as an escort (By this time Nikki is sporting some more armor) to speak to each of the princes. As of now it's an automatic yes but I might extend it by using /roll, and if it fails, the quest starts again but only for the failed princes.

It takes a lot longer than that single paragraph, but it's neat, and have yet to roleplay it completely. It takes 1-2 weeks to do, since some time needs to pass between each quest.

So far, that's all I got. I have one quest for Chamo Salaa, which involves finding some stolen goods from the corsairs, which include some of her explosive recipes.

And I've got 1 questline planned for Caroline, which is very much like Nikki's, only a hell of a lot more sinister. Caroline, if you read her history, is a very simple woman. At first. But her adventures corrupt her mind slightly and she fancies a smalltime rise to power. She doesn't look to be Emporess, or a Queen, but she seeks to claim a small piece of estate in Echovald Forest, (There's one in Drazach Thicket, and it's not accessable but that's fine) which may include assassinating it's current owner (Some random boss the roleplaying party can go stomp). So far, that's all I got.<BR> Added: In fact, it's the same building that's behind her in.

I'll try to expand both of these but in order to do so, I need to be playing. And I probably won't be able to think of much while I'm on vacation.

August 21, 2009
Got some decent work done today on my Assassin. Cap'd Assassin's Promise, not that I'd use it. Also attained Master of Whispers so my assassin can be set up for sabway and to a lesser extent, discordway.

I looked more into Discordway and it's not as self-sufficient as sabway. I hear it's better, but it requires specifics. For one, the player needs Assassin's Promise, and some other PvE skills that inflict conditions. Now, I love me some "You Move Like a Dwarf!" and "Finish Him!", as well as Assassin Support, but not when all of these things are the ONLY thing I can have. There's no freedom for the player whatsoever, and also requires a whole new recommended hero runeset that conflicts with sabway. And I can't afford this.

I also can't, for the life of me, beat this fucking Norn Tournament. I did it once, and forgot what it entails. On the surface, all the quest wants you to do is beat at least round 1, and yay reward. Even the wiki says that. But then, you need to go for 4 more rounds and beat Magni the motherfucking Bison. And he three-shots me, regardless of how many PvE only skills I launch at him (my assassin is rank 9 in Asuran so I'm setting on some beefy Asuran Scans and Pain Inverters. But it doesn't work.

In the end, Discordway looks REALLY good. It probably IS better, but the cons heavily outweigh the pros, and frankly I may not end up bothering unless I need to fill a niche for a two-person hard mode clear. Provided people accept the fact they're wearing incorrect runes.

Otherwise, I didn't do much else. Hopped on my ranger shortly to do a newly discovered daily quest I like to call "Zaishen Elite". Trapper Team = 6k faction a day = Free Zkey a day = 4 a day. Not bad.

August 20, 2009
I have a contest up.<BR> Unfortunately it's really bad timing on my part. People are into Halogod's "sex builds", and it's the month of an election. AND, In 3-4 days I'll be off on a week-long vacation to North Carolina. I might still have internet up there, but I don't know yet.

So, onto another note.

I keep forgetting how awesome my assassin is, and she goes on hiatus for months. So I've finally got something I need to do with her; Attain sabway. Or better yet, find out where Discord is, cap it, use the new discordway I keep seeing. I hear it's pretty good. So right now Hasin needs to get past Kodonur Crossroads (still on To Vabbi!, get master of whispers, then do All for One, etc... for Olias.<BR> I love these hero teams. They work so wonderfully well.

Added:<BR> I did get Discord on my ranger, since it was easier. Only cost 1k for the cap sig. I only had two other skills, and I had some handy balthazar faction available for that (Yay for trapper teams in zaishen elite). But I'm still not sure how it works, exactly. I think I might miss my sabway with it's SS and MM. But I'll try it.

August 18, 2009
Attained monk kurzick armor! *pops bottlecork*, or whatever people do in celebrations these days. I now do not every want to delete her, because getting through Nahpui and Vizunah is a BITCH.<BR> On wiki news, consolidated my mass load of archives I had for both my blog and my talk pages. My talk pages only had lie, 10 topis... I figured that was kind of a waste. And my blog archives didn't really need the consolidation, there was a lot there. But did anyway.

In slightly related news, I have a new TODO list. A rather small one and shouldn't be terribly difficult. I require some interesting photographs of these characters:<BR> Hasin<BR> Nikki<BR> Ichihara<BR> Shizuma (sort of)<BR> Caroline<BR>

I want some screenshots of them doing more than just standing there. Chamo has a pic like that, but it has some more action in it than just "Standing there". And Shizuma's main pic is rather interesting.

The rest, they're just STANDING there. I need to get them in the field, casting stuff, and whatnot. One of my ideas is tagging along for "The Time is Nigh", get one or two of my characters to point or cheer with that small army.

Just some ideas.

August 14, 2009
Beat Factions with Shizuma today... the accomplishment quickly dies when I realize I need to do so on like, 4 other characters. And I fucking hate most factions missions. It took 2 hours to find a group for Eternal Grove. Crazy.

My elementalist is doing some AB, and some Nightfall. Need 500 more SS points before I can continue in the storyline.

My monk? Eh, not sure wtf I should be doing with her. PvP? PvE? Right now, I got her plopped in Ascalon where I might progress through Prophecies.

Slightly other news; Comic #39 on my website is up.

August 12, 2009
Thanks to Dwarven Boxing, was able to get yet another level 20 added to my arsenal, even though she's kind of useless (hasn't even done Isle of the Dead yet, but working on it).

Bored out of my stinking mind.

August 3, 2009
Been suckered in some flash games, and not just from Casual Collective. Found a new webgame site called Kongregate, and I'll eventually mumble off to Armor Games, because they have some good ones as well.

I recommend checking out "Sonny" and "Sonny 2", a turn-based RPG complete with items, stats, and some well thought out talent trees akin to some MMO's that we know.

I beat Sonny 2 before the first one, so I'm playing the first one now to get caught up on the story. Thankfully, it's very similar but they work with smaller numbers in the first. In the second one, near endgame you and your party can have up to 7-9k health... but in Sonny, I'm happy to just have 600. The combat system is the same, but the stats, skills, and classes are rather different. Not sure they improved on it, I kind of like Sonny 1, though it's slightly harder. In Sonny 2 the "Biological" class, (Basically, "Warrior") You get this attack that pretty much can heal you for thousands whether you need it or not, for three rounds. It's crazy.

Anyway, I could go on but it's one of those "You have to play it" kind of things. And you should. They're short, fun, easy, free, and does require a download.

I'd have linked them but I'm lazy,

July 20, 2009
So I've been back and forth between a couple websites and guild wars. I missed Wintersday in July completely, logged on 2 hours after it ended. Damn. Not that it would have mattered, I do holidays for the hats these days.

Fell out of Casual Collective and fell back into Gaia. I know, I know. It doesn't have the best reputation but it CAN be good to get feedback on writing, art, and roleplay. So that's what I'm there for. <BR> And of course, the gay in me enjoys dressing and setting up a little avatar. I'm a sucker for fashion sometimes. My profile can be found here. Setting up my Vanguard RP there, since I can't get any on GW.

July 14, 2009
I wanted to try and fit a whole year in one blog page, but it was getting way too long. It wasn't loading slow, but the table of contents thing was starting to be a few scrolls to get to the actual posts. I might have considered pressing on if I could have gotten the contents to wrap with the text or something.<BR> So, my first entry to this sparkly new Blog page is to rape your scroll bars further and post FOUR movie reviews... I saw 4 movies in 2 days, so I got to them all. Raaar!

And they ALL have spoilers.

Push (2009)
I'm going to use a line from my favorite game reviewer, Yahtzee at "Zero Punctuation"; "It is not exactly BAD. What it is is average. Run of the mill" (Not an exact quote but it's the best I can do from memory) I went into this expecting, and knowing, that it would be very Heroes-esquire. A lot of it seemed to be inspired from it. It looked neat and stylized, but I knew from the trailers that it would be a sloppy rush job. And that's really what it felt like.

First, time traveling, future telling... always makes for an extremely flawed storyline. The new Star Trek (while a good movie) is going to ruin itself by splitting its canon with the original, Heroes ALMOST killed itself with it (but seeking to fix it from Volume 3 on up)... So how can writers still think its a good idea? It creates more contradictions and plot holes than any writing technique. And it did the same thing here in Push.

It was brought about a very interesting way, a 13 year old, a notebook, etc... But it didn't work.

I could go on the numerous inconsistencies, but if you really want to... go read some other reviews under the "Hated" category... you'll find them.

Secondly, the pointless love-interest side-story that really felt forced and unnecessary. I mentioned in my Pineapple Express review that she's cookie-cutter formulas that movies love to use and think it's going to guarantee a good movie, when it just comes out sub-par.

Thirdly, the screamer guys were heavily exaggerated. I know they probably did that on purpose, to show the fact that they really have to exert themselves to use the power, but even that's cut off at the knees when the healer was able to stop one of them from starting, easily.

The one redeeming quality is the two separate fights with Nick and the other telekinesis guy. It was a couple of unique fights that really refreshed the feel of the movie. They needed more of that type of action. But instead, they drowned it with storyline, dialog, and future telling bullcrap.

That's a lot of BAD for a 6/10 review. But as I said, it was "okay". Won't win any awards but it's worth one good watch.

Eagle Eye (2008)
I just watched 4 movies in 2 days so excuse me if my brain is a little fragmented. So I'll get right into this.

I liked the character development. Everyone from Shaw to the robot.

I'm not sure how absolutely everything is connected (minor complaint here, but minor. Minor) but I think it was clever and very Jason-Bourne-esquire (Movies of which I loved) how the AI was weaving Shaw around town. Using a crane to bash through a building? Rockin'. Forcing a train to go backwards and make everyone on the train get a call about HIM; Just to prove a point? Hells yes. I also loved how they were forced to rob an armored van on-the-fly without knowing beforehand? Awesome. But then, why are these two mentally strained people so quick to decide to ROB men with GUNS, even while trying to refuse before (and still try to later). It just seemed inconsistent.

(Big spoiler;) I think it was very brilliant how the AI organized the situation to have the mother wear the explosive and her own son have the trigger. That was deliciously violent and sick minded, and I loved it.

The problem? It was a bit obvious from, like, the first or second call, that the person calling was a robot. From the introduction that was calculating all possibilities and using every position to characterize their target (and still got it wrong, the idiots)... It was just easy to guess. The only thing I WASN'T able to predict in this movie, is what she was leading Shaw and the 'female' (forgot her name, but she was pretty much THAT unimportant) to wherever. So that was an interesting finale.

Worth a watch if you like conspiracy-chase movies akin to Jason Bourne (I know The Bournes may not be the first ones to do that, but they are so ridden with quality I usually use them as a basis of comparison anyway)... It's not perfect but it's enjoyable all the same.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
I just watched 4 movies in 2 days so excuse me if my brain is a little fragmented.

One of the main problems with the first movie is that there wasn't enough screen time of the robots in their own movie. People can say what they want, but they really fixed that in this movie.

It's got it's share of human side-stories but I believe some of that is somewhat necessary. And it doesn't waste TOO much time in the beginning with it. I never saw the original cartoon so I'm not sure if the protagonist human had a romantic other, but it does fine and fits (to an extent... I doubt normal teenage girls want to fly 3000 miles so they can wrap themselves up in a robot war... again. I think any sane woman would be filing for a break up at that point). It's also in the humans where we find a lot of the humor, which is FINE. The ex-Sector 7 guy is a wonderful actor and pretty much an instant comedy-relief character who always does well with the part he is given. Exaggerated? Sure. Overacted? Maybe. Awesome? You bet your ass. (Or his, actually. Haha.) So, one can go on all day about the effects... but chances are, even if you hate the movie you can already admit they're good. If not decent at best. And they are great.

So let's get to the nitpicking.

The 'twins'. Are you serious? I suppose it makes a little bit of sense, trying to wrap in the younger crowds (and absolutely nothing else), but really... Someone want to explain to me how perfect transformer robots have gold teeth and are accent-ridden? (The small blue decepticon, while cute, was DUMB). In my opinion most of them should probably sound the same, Megatron and Prime happen to have the only voices that make SENSE to their robotic nature.

I loved the 'old guy' decepticon. I also know how he's supposed to be old but can someone explain to me why a robot is COUGHING and has a random obligatory old-guy 'beard' and wheel-cane? Is that really necessary? Though, I loved the character and is probably my favorite in the entire movie... now if only I can find out his name.

A lot of people say all the 'action' is blurred and looked like those cartoon clouds that covered all the fights with big "POOF"s and "BAM"s... But I'm not an idiot, and actually PAID ATTENTION to the battles. I could actually make out what they were doing, unlike a lot of you idiots. The battles were great, and the giant robot that use several vehicles was awesome and immediately reminded me that the TOYS actually used to DO that. I'm glad they remembered to fit that in.

So there you have it. I liked what people hated... all the while still recognizing its flaws. But there are not many perfect movies out there... which is OKAY. Not all of them have to be mind blowing. And Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a worthy watch.

Shooter (2007)
I just watched 4 movies in 2 days so excuse me if my brain is a little fragmented.

It's really hard to give this movie a number, because it has rattled between 5-8 in my head. So let's go with a 7. Every time I think it's a 5 because it's rather odd ending and lack of violent fight scenes, I just think of how well it presented itself.

So we got Mr. Swagger, a retired sniper. He's retired because his command left him and his partner to die (and his partner does) after a mission. 3 years pass and he's an isolated mountain-man complete with a loyal dog and a ponytail. A bit stereotypical but whatever, we'll roll with it.

So Danny Glover comes on the scene with a cracking voice that kind of tells me he's about to die any second. That said, he's an awesome actor... I just call it like I see it. Anyway it's rather obvious from the get-go, that his moral compass is so F'd up, it's amazing he finds his way to his car. (That's a line actually used in the movie, and it's so brilliant I'll be using it in the future). Danny's character wants Mark's character to plan a presidential assassination so they can actually PREVENT one. But the movie did a good job in making me NOT expect he was a double crossing asshole, but I had some hints. I wasn't expecting it, but I wasn't surprised, if that makes sense.

So. He get's double crossed, shot twice out of a building, and is framed for the murder of some African prince (who was 2 feet away from the president). So here comes the action, warts and all.

First, it actually gets SLOWER after he is shot. He goes through the entire middle of the movie running around bleeding and repairing himself... and eventually meets up with his dead partner's wife because, for some reason, he needs a second person to sow him up. Not sure why, plenty of action heroes patch themselves up and he was doing fine himself. But whatever, we need that OBLIGATORY love side-story. Once again, movies find themselves going a specific formulaic story and hope it works. And it doesn't, because they even go so far as having the woman CAPTURED and tormented for a while. Yea, totally didn't see that coming the second she let Swagger in her house. Sigh.

So that's pretty much the whole movie right there. Him running away. To be fair, he eventually does get all better, recruits a new sniper spotter (a pointless FBI agent, because they needed swagger to have more than a female ally, I guess), and does wreck some shop. But there's only, like, two good fight scenes that actually involve Swagger, doing... something.

Now this sounds pretty harsh for my 7/10, so let me get the redeeming quality out of the way before I drive the last spike through this movie's heart (Being the completely retarded ending).

It was a FINE movie. A good mindless conspiracy-action akin to Jason Bourne (Gods, I must have referenced the Bourne movies in my last 4 reviews, but it's hard not to) that simply spends too much time on the conspiracy and not the action. Doesn't hurt it too much, as it's got good actors with a fine script and the dialog fits every character (even if the rookie FBI guy was pointless).

However, the movie reminds us several times that this "conglomorate" cannot be defeated, and Swagger is just shooting at specters. This was a fine idea, showing us that not every enemy can be defeated. One of the enemies is a US Senator and killing him would be an instant-death-penalty or Life in Prison, as the characters imply throughout the finale. It tells us that the villains are practically unkillable. So what the FFFFF... is with the ending? Swagger storms a cabin full of the movie's villains bragging about how they won, and kills them all. The Senator's last words are "Are you out of your mind? I am a U-S Senator!", to which Swagger replies "exactly", and head-shots him. WHY? Sure, he bombs the cabin but if it's not perfectly obvious who was behind it, the people in the world of "Shooter" are complete F'ing morons.

I wouldn't have hated that so much if they just cut off that ridiculous ending. A better ending would be Swagger walking down a street, or walking back up to his home, and someone giving a final monologue about how the good guys don't always win. But no, this is America. Guns solve everything. Apparently.

July. 11. 2009
Did some touchups on my character pages. I hated how I let this fly; saying something like "Kurzick Armor" under "Armor"... it was just so redundant. It's nitpicking sure, but I don't care.

One of these days I need to sit down and proofread my newest GTA fanfic. A friend of mine reviewed it said small errors were all over the place, but were insignificant enough for him to enjoy it anyway. While that's nice and all, I want it to look semi-professional.

So here's what he said: (and I'm posting this to give you all some insight on the bucket of awesome you're missing on my Fanfic page);

''First of all, your story progression is excellent. A lot of young writers have trouble working through plots and character development. You've got the emotional peaks and the suspenseful blackouts in there, and that is something that really keeps a story moving.

''Some of your grammar and timing needs a bit of work. There are also a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes in general, but those aren't as important in this sense.

''One portion that really bothered me was this sentence:

''"Frock became tired of watching Carl every second, and sleep became him."

''The repetition of the word became, to describe two different outcomes. You may have mean to use in a poetic prose, but it just does not work, and trips the sentence up.

''On another note in the same vein, you need to watch out for being too descriptive in a certain way. Some of the parts of the beginning and middle chapters were very stocky. What I mean by this, is that it seems as if you are having a normal conversation and describing something to a friend. This is a big pitfall in creative writing, as it takes away the illusion and grandeur of story telling.

''You got a whole lot better with this in the later chapters, though.

''I REALLY loved the prose and progression of the scene with Frock and Carl in the basement. Some of Frock's dialogue could have been written with the aforementioned stockiness in mind, but other than that, beautiful part.

''Excellent ending. A cliff hanger that makes absolutely no promise of continuance. Just perfect. Gives the eyes and mind something to picture, as well. And look at that. Only three sentences.

''Overall, I really did enjoy the story. Short, but well enough to its point and agenda. I may have lost out on some of the appreciation due to my lack of GTA experience (Could never get into the missions, though I did really like to blow things up and cause chaos, then commit suicide), but I can still appreciate it as a fellow writer and reader.

''Well done. I will have to go on to read more of your work."

My reply;

''"Thank you for the critism without sounding like a complete dick in the process. It's appreciated and it will be taken note of. (Provided you don't delete the forums, then I'll end up forgetting what the problems were :/)

''But oddly, I felt it was a bit backwards to your review. It was the final couple of chapters that I felt were a bit rushed (though Part 7 I am particularly proud of). And the heavy descriptiveness was to help those who HAVEN'T played GTA:SA and DON'T know who the characters are. And, descriptiveness was a problem I've had the in the past and I've recently been able to fix that.

''And you are correct with that sentance you pointed out, but that's more of a mistake in redundancy than trying to be poetic. I simply need to remove the first 'became', and we're gold.

''I like how you liked Frock's dialogue, but to me it felt rushes. I couldn't think of a lot for him to say... so I just kind of went to the fight a bit early. But it's also a blessing, because he didn't whip out a stupid monologue everyone hates so very, very much... It's a two way street, really. But I still wish I could drag that basement conversation out a bit more. You mentioned that, and I am confirming that I do belive that it is, in fact, too short for my liking.

''And yes, despite me kind of rushing it between parts 4 to 7, I was really proud of the ending and I'm glad you noticed the quality in it. This is probably due to the fact I had parts 1-4 already in my head, and had an ending in my mind already. That probably helped, and probably why parts 4-6 kind of fell flat for me.

July. 9. 2009
To quote my April 21st entry:

''Went ahead and gave my permapre a page. But instead of naming the page "Snowscale", multiple forms of hindsight told me to just name the page "permapre" in case this isn't my last one. I know better. I -hope- to take this one far, but once again, I know myself too well.<BR> But yea, that's all I've been doing.''

So. Due to lack of charr hunters and my terrible computer not wanting to be compatable with guild wars graphics (updated the driver, STILL can't load my Ritualist who's in Wehnan Terrace).

I also plan on giving my mesmer the axe. Yes, she's got asuran armor and all but mesmers are entirely too passive for me. Degeneration is slow, I fail at interrupts, and her energy surge build she's got right now isn't spike-y enough, and has a hell of a recharge.

I am not guilty. These are two of my most underdeveloped characters. I think my mesmer is only sitting on, like, 160k exp. Which pretty much means I stopped playing her as soon as I got to 20, minus the asuran leeching. And perma-preing loses its flare once it becomes a mindless grind to 16. Barely 1% of xp per boss run now. Pointless.

But instead of deleting the Permapre page, I'll probably just put it on retirement. I know myself too well. I'll make another some day. As for the mesmer; Probably not.

July. 8. 2009
Other reviews of mine.

"Pineapple Express (2008)"
Not sure if this has spoilers but, better safe than sorry.

I have never seen any of the Cheech+Chong films, but I know that this was to be up that alley. The previews had amused me, but not really being a whole fan of the "make weed legal" subculture, since drugs seem to shut down the mind of all rational thought (Hell, Seth's character Dale said it himself in the movie, saying "We don't think right when we're high!", or something along those lines). But, I actually did finally sit down and watch it.

And I was impressed. I was going in expecting some mindless comedy with two stoners going across the city dodging gangsters. What I got? A bonified action movie. I mean seriously, there is a fight every fifteen minutes. And not just stupid slap-fights, I'm talking actual in-home brawls and 20on20 gunfights.

This movie started slow but definitely picked up later. In the beginning, Dale Denton calls a talk show and spews pro-marijuana nonsense which I didn't care much for. He also meets with his high school girlfriend, Which I didn't like, but oddly? I have to admit they had some chemistry. I find myself silently rooting for their relationship. I make myself sick, haha. Anyway, the third stage of the introduction is meeting his drug dealer, Saul (James Franco).

James? Are you serious? The first movie I ever saw him in was Spiderman, and I didn't like him. He barely improved. But in this? Holy crap, he led a hilarious performance and thought he happily stole every scene he was in. It was great to see him in a role that required more than just starting at the screen with a fixated scowl.

Anyway, they talk some more drugspeak which, again, I didn't care much for, but being already slightly enthralled, still amused me. So finally, Dale goes to this one man's house who he's trying to report a subpoena to, and witnesses a murder. It snowballs from there into a big action-chase movie.

It doesn't let up. With anything. The humor, the brilliant violence.

If I have any complaints; it's this. The ridiculous falling-out section of the movie where the two leads get into an argument and temporarily part ways. Why do movies still do this? Does every director exchange an exact movie formula, that uses a cookie-cutter scenario in every separate genre? I mean seriously. Watching that segment was like trying to stomach a children's Disney movie. The argument, and the reunite with a bunch of "sorry"s and "I love you, man"s thrown around. It wasn't needed and it was annoying to watch, and it just. Wasn't. Funny. Bringing a dull spot within the movie.

They also seemed to have jumped the shark with Dale and his girlfriend. Halfway through the movie they exchange a final call and then they just forget about her. As I said before, they did a good job making it seem like they had a good relationship, which I wasn't expecting. And at the end,the whole ending seen just kind of dropped abruptly.

In conclusion, I didn't appreciate -anything- this movie stood for. Older men dating high school girls, pro-weed, all that nonsense... But I enjoyed this movie a great deal.

July. 7. 2009
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I was happily streamlining through Nightfall with my Ritualist, wanting to get to Bone Palace as quick as I can; and then I got the graphics error in Wehnan Terrace. FUCK. Same issue with some EoTn areas and dungeons. I thought this issue was exclusive to Eye of the North but DAMNIT. Now I've got two characters locked in a town that I can't play.

I really need to get my own computer working, but I lack a windows reinstall disk. This sucks. I was doing good, too.

July. 6. 2009
Holy shitcock it's done. I completed a very long fanfiction based on the GTA:SA universe. It's the longest Fanficton I've got to date, and effectively doubled the size of that page. I'm thinking about splitting each part into a header for easier reading. So you don't have to read it all in one sitting.<BR> I dunno yet.

July. 4. 2009
z0mgosh, I've actually been playing guild wars. Due to the recent ritualist buff, it seems that Spirit Spamming seems to be a bit more viable and less annoying to deal with in PvE, as they don't take a minute to cast anymore. I had to delete my PvP monk, which was no big loss except for the fact that I lost a valueable mule that held on to my warrior's sword and armor collection. <BR> I will edit my character-navbar accordingly once I draw up a new navigation image, and get the ritualist to 20 with some maximum armor. Right now she's level 12, or 13. Forgot.

Thanks to selling a pile of Zkeys I had and several hundred Victory tokens, my funding is up to 74k. Now that would have been REALLY cool if my ritualist was already in the high-end game... With 75k and some change I could have afforded a nice elite set. But alas, not such the case. Most of the funding will be going to her anyway. I plan on buying the Exotic set for her.<BR> I've also purchased an elite ritualist tome and got her Signet of Spirits, which is ROCKIN' in the lowbie island... I just hope that it stays badass in the max levels.

So GW is going fine, except for a couple things. One? Other than my ritualist, still bored. Can't find much else to do with any of my characters. I did the festival quests like five or six times, so that's done.<BR> Second, the computer I have it on is not my own. It's my brothers. This means I'm not as active as I could be, and his graphics card for some reason does not agree with Rata Sum. All graphics of EotN is kind of odd from what I'm used to with my computer, but it's not completely whacked up. Manageable. But for some reason, Rata Sum locks me in a permanent loading screen and just, will. Not. Load. And gives me a "graphics driver" error. Not sure why the rest of EotN works fine but Rata Sum, does not. Odd.<BR> Even worse, my best character.. My ranger, is the one stuck in there. The good news? She's the only one stuck in there. My other 8 characters are safe and sound. Provided, y'know, I don't go to Rata Sum with them.

So that's my recent issues. Toodles.

June. 28. 2009
Incoming long post.

Anyway, I found this website "Casual Collective" (Link in previous post) from the jackasses of TWboards.com, based off another webgame called Territory War Online, which is basically "Worms", only with stick figures.

Here, I will post my opinions on each of the games. Some are shorter than others. I'll start with whatever the main page shows me first, since it likes to shuffle (which is annoying).

Minions On Ice: Complete fail. Once again, Minions become immensily annoying by pinning various pros and no-lifers who refine the game to an art while they smite lowbies into non existance. Sure, I may be a level 15 in 4 days of membership but I don't play one game exclusively. A lot of the same can be said for Minions, but at least Minions has a "reliability bar", where poor players can join poor games and kill their own kind. MoI has none of that, it's just a "hop in and play die" system. I haven't played a whole lot of this, because it's just not fun.

Push: The newest one. It has potential, and wouldn't suffer it had improved graphics. It could get away with graphics akin to the simple Buggle games. But, I can tell by the little tiny player that you control, it seems to be designed for the simple pixellation. Skill-wise? I'm terrible at it. Was never a very jumpy-type of player (should have seen me on those old Aladdin games. Terrible), and I know a friend who hopped through levels 1-40 instantly while I couldn't get past #3.

Buggle Connect: Ah, a simple, fast, and fun game with a hint of strategy. A lot of people don't get that there's actual strategy involved. I've seen a few people ask what the point to the second dot was, and I always tell them, "That's the most important one!". I like it, and I'm pretty good at it.

Desktop TD Pro / FETD2: I'm bunching these two together because to me, they're the same thing. Except I suck at the Element one. See, I love me some tower defense. I suck at the Scenario past level 9, but I have so much fun with it all the same. Even in my failure, I actually enjoy it. Now, I am of course, talking about the Desktop TD. FETD2? It boggles my mind. It happily has just one entrance (as opposed to 2 or 4), but I just cannot strategize well enough to make a proper defense. I really need to read up on the game's forums for strategies and screenshots or something, because for some reason I'm not nearly as good as FETD as I am the Desktop TD. I'm not sure why.

And with Desktop, I just play to have fun. I often host games "Vanguard's EZmode For Fun" that use the small map, 500gold, and easy creeps or Spawn creeps. And watch the havoc begin.

Attack of the Buggles: Lol. El. Oh. El. That's almost all I can say. A stupidly simplistic yet addicting game. I think I've made something like 90 xp points off of it, trying so much to beat some records. Overall, I like it. But there's not a whole lot of room for criticism, it does exactly what it's supposed to. And it's not multiplayer with other players fucking you over. That's a plus.

Buggle Stars: I am bad at this. Hardly any opinion here. I like it, but as I mentioned, I'm not a big jumpy-jumpy player.

Desktop Armada: I cannot figure this game out. I am -extremely- bad at this game, debateably my worst on this website; and I haven't even attempted multiplayer! It's just, money comes too slow, the computer's ships come too fast, my ships cost too much, and I am quickly and constantly overwhelmed. I've only done up to level 2 (+tutorial) and I jut cannot do it. Sigh.

Farrogomate: Funny word. And I like this game, I just wish it gave site-exp. It -is- multiplayer, after all. It's a fun and simple game, but sometimes it just doesn't give me much to work with some of those sentance-starters. Oh well. I'd play it more if it gave any rewards other than some lulz and being a chat-room with a game attached, when it should be the other way around.

The Space Game: Lawl. I had fun with this, especially the "wave" mode, when is about as close as one would get to a Sandbox without purchasing the year-long sandbox mode. I always liked RTS's, but this one is vaguely difficult in it's campaign mode. It took me a long time to figure out how the energy thing worked, and it confused me when my miners wouldn't mine because of the lack of it. But I figured it out, and I might eventually grow a pair and try mission #2. But as always, I just prefer to have fun.

Which brings us to...

Minions. Debateably the website's selling point. Sure, a lot of players specialize in others but this seems to be what brings the lunatics, assholes, and trolls together. A lot can be said about this. So let's start with the people.

Minions suffers from what I like to call "Halo-syndrom". It's a simple game that attracts hundreds of 12 year olds that have nothing better to do than to practice and perfect their methods of one exclusive game. Remember the days of Halo where jackasses would calculate and perfect the timing and throws of their grenades? People pretty much do the same thing here, only with their little tanks-with-faces rather than grenades. It's annoying and frankly; not fun. People often say one learns by being beaten, but I don't learn or enjoy getting my ass kicked. Now, it's gotten better since I figured out later to just join Poor to Good games, and fight people my own skill level. (I tend to own their faces, but at least not without some degree of difficulty). For a while I was pissed at this game, but I am long from retired from it. (Besides, got to make the best of this 4-week-left bonus pack).

So, the game itself? Quite obviously, it needs more maps. It would trump even the high levels, at least for a short time as they are forced to re-learn unfamiliar maps, right along with everyone else. I temporarily joined a long-dead group that was based off Minion Map Making. Apparently it never got off the ground, since it's just one map. All the time. They REALLY need to do something about that.

For something slightly different;

The Community. Not as bad as I expected, or wanted it to be so I could make fun of more people. Luckily for me, it has it's pile of twelve year olds who think their tough shit just because they killed me a couple times in Minions. And it's also a shame that everyone seems to think your lifes value is determined whether you have gotten laid or not. Moronic.

But it has it's good people. They just happen to be few and far between.

The Website: I like it's system, and it's style. Its got its share of glitches and problems, but what website doesn't? And it's clever, with the level-and-benefits system. It attracts the addictive personalities and achievement-whores that all probably have Xbox360's (I am guilty here). It's neat though, and it's fun. Like all other addictions to their addictees, of course.

Their Casual Credit deals need to work better though. I understand it doesn't want it's people to lie on all these survays and spyware-ridden sponsor websites, but for the ones that actually try, they're rewarded with nothing at all. Personally, I don't mind the cell phones ones because they can only spam me once, maybe twice. If more? Easy to delete messages. I actually had a successful cell-phone offer but never got my CC's. Gee, thanks.

Phew. That took a while to type.

June. 28. 2009
Hell of a night last night.<BR> Brother had a seizure, lost control of his limbs. He had been awake for 3 days straight because of a new medication, and his doctors prescribed too high a dosage. Went to the hospital. I stayed up to like 4:30am myself.<BR> If anyone gives a shit, he's fine. He'll be hopping back on WoW after I'm done installing Guild Wars, which I am doing by the way.

So, onto my recent addiction. Interesting gaming website like Xgenstudios, with a neat member-levleing system. My profile is here, my game history is here.

Minions is kinda fun, but it suffers from what I like to call "Halo-syndrom". It has amassed numerous high-level players that play NOTHING BUT and have honed their skill to the game to an artform. As a result, they team up with their high level proskillz buddies and proceed to stomp on all of us lowbies who are still trying to figure out what to do with these tanks with faces. Another result? It becomes unfun very quickly. It's not even a "hit or miss", It seems to be a literal 2:5 win-loss ratio. I win one, lose three, win another, lose a few more. It's just, not fun.

One good thing? My next comic will be related to Minions. Drawn up and all. Will update my website tomorrow with it.

But the Desktop tower Defense? Awesome. Reminds me of the days of Starcraft and those Tower Defense maps. Great stuff. Shame I kinda suck at these, though.

I'd go on and summerize my opinion of all the games, but there's like ten of them and I don't feel like it.

June. 23. 2009
Holy shit on a stick. My new short story is only halfway done and it's already longer than the other few things I've written. A good sign.

For a bit of behind the scenes look on it (and some of this may be mentioned in the trivia section once it's all done);

I titled the story as a reference to one of the famous school shooters, the guy had made a newgrounds video. It was short and not very detailed. I won't ever be able to figure out which shooter it was, because Newgrounds took the video down.

But that's where the reference ends, really. The actual story is a survival-horror based on specific cheat codes that I explained in my June 12th entry. Summary: There's a cheat on GTA:SA that makes every pedestrian go berserk and riot, And there's another one that gives them weapons, and another that makes them drive crazy. Those three combined, and you as the player are practically playing in a zombie-with-guns movie. The only NPC's that seem unaffected are cops, and the same thing happens in my story (ohnoes, spoilerz). Not a big spoiler though, that'll be noted at in my next couple of parts.

Anyway, it's a really fun story to right because for me, it's interactive. I play the game and actually write a bit on what happens. To a certain extent of course, I'm converting an older, flawed game into a descriptive story. So I have to filter Carl's many, many, many deaths as I shoot my way from safehouse to safehouse.

On a small note, how I've got Carl dressed in the story? Is how I got him in the game, too. I usally don't go for the 'fro, though. I generally give him Corn Rows. But the blond 'fro looks good.

On a very much different note, my brother has reformatted his Dell and it's now in working order. I'll be seeing about getting Guild Wars on there, but that'll be a few days. And it's Vista, and if I remember correctly, Vista doesn't like Eye of the North areas much. (crashed everytime I tried going to Rata Sum). But, we'll see.

For now, that's it. 'Till I think of something else, of course.

June. 18. 2009
Give me internets.

June. 15. 2009
Woo! My first movie review where IMDB's spellchecker didn't yell at me for anything. This was a perfect review in one run, and I had to piss all through writing it xD (I hate breaking my line of thought). Well, you can tell my synopsis is a little rushed but trust me when I say, I simply just wanted to make it concise. Since I reviewed it on IMDB, by the time they find my review they had either already seen it, or have read enough of the other reviews to know what happened anyway.

So Yea, I JUST saw this, so I was able to review it while it was still fresh in my mind. It didn't have a whole lot of comments so the movie never really lifted off the ground, despite it' semi-all-star cast.

Further Reading: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1027862/

But before we get to the review, I'll state that I have SEVERAL comics lined up in queue, where I'll be updating once a day for this week. I address them a bit more in my last post, but I'm just letting you know that I've got them all drawn up.

Anyway, review:

Swing Vote (2008)
*This comment may contain spoilers*

Gave this a nice 5/10 because half of it was good, half of it was not.

It started off pretty charismatic, introducing a young and devoted daughter in a broken home. I liked the movie already, given it's realism. A few "lazy guy" jokes later, it gets into the plot. The election is close. Not by distance, it's election DAY. But both candidates are very much at 50/50%.

The protagonist, Bud, doesn't want to vote. His daughter sneaks past a sleepy poll booth guy, and votes for him. A malfunction occurs when the power is cut. She sneaks out with the stub. She WALKS to the bar and DRIVES a TRUCK home. She's like, 11. But whatever, she's semi-intelligent. But the movie doesn't even try to explain how she manages it. The next day, the error is detected and some officials are sent to Bud and give him 10 days to vote again.

It's kind of hinted at, Bud tells this officials, "Why can't I just... whisper it to you...?" so he can get on with his life. No, that would be TOO simple, wouldn't it? So ten days it is.

Cue presidential managers, the driving force behind both platforms. The movie doesn't exactly fall flat from here, but it's a bit predictable that it soon will. It's them that really make the presidents look like jackasses.

On various occassions, the presidents appeal to Bud's simplistic good nature to get his vote. It's a humorous process, seeing a republican promising gay rights, and a democrat giving a pro-Life campaign.

Cue sad part. The daughter falls out with her father. She finds her boy/friend, same age, ALSO manages to drive a truck down a highway in what the movie made look like a rather long ride. No cops. No logic. It skips the explanation for a second time.

So far this sounds pretty harsh, and I DID like the movie, for the first half. But as soon as the "sad part" started, it didn't pick back up. The movie forgot it was a comedy and drifted into a drama. Introducing the drug-addict mother who shakes and jitters as she tries to explain to her daughter that she'll be famous any second now. Daughter learns truth, goes back with dad.

Bud, by the end of the movie sees the "error of his ways", or whatever, and hosts a special type of presidential debate.

Bud smiles at his daughter as he pulls the curtain over the voting booth, end movie. Angry at first, but then I understood why it didn't show us who he voted for. I appreciated that the movie stayed neutral.

But at the end, I didn't appreciate how the movie just dropped it's comedic value.

A 5/10 may be a bit harsh but I did not, by any means, hate the movie. I enjoyed it. But there are just as many holes of logic and explanation as there are in the political system.

June. 14. 2009
Okay, so it's really the 14th this time.

Anyway. Searching through my photobucket I found several of my old "Madness" comics. About 10 of them, that were based off of that Madness game on Newgrounds. It featured several characters from guys on a forum I used to frequent.<BR> So I'll be recycling about half of those and converting them into my stick figures. So my next several comics will not be game related (Hard to draw anything game related when I'm not playing any, everything being broke and all). They'll also be potentially just one or two panels, leading to a very xkcd style, almost. Exept my stick figures have eyes and stuff.

Kind of a cheap move? I'm actually giddy that I'm doing this. Doesn't mean I'm out of ideas, just means I'm migrating older jokes I've made.

Also, apparently Comic Sans is bad. (Will take some scrolling down).

Well, time to get to work. All Hail Paint Dot Net!

June. 12. 2009
Will probably be getting back into GTA: Vice City/San Andreas soonish. I'm not sure if I addressed that particular in-game hobbie of mine, but one of my favorite things to do in both of those earlierish GTA games include two specific cheats. First, I put in a cheat that gives all pedestrians weapons. Varies from knives to rocket launchers. Then, I make all drivers drive aggressively (San Andreas only for this one, I believe). Finally, I activate the actual riot. Civilians and everyone go immediately batshit insane and start shooting each other, and me.<BR> This of course raises a wanted level, but I actually observe more than fight. And when I have to, I keep the "Wanted Level Down" cheat handy.

I actually wrote a fanfic on this, based in San Andreas with CJ after becoming a cop (I play the game slightly differently, haha). And then everyone goes nuts due to an unknown virus where only cops are immune. It was an interesting survival story, I never explained the virus, or how numerous citizens got their hands on M16's (I titled the story "M16's for Everyone!", a zany and probably controversial reference to one of the famous school shootings, where the shooter had a flash video on Newgrounds titled that). Whether or not it's a TASTELESS reference, is up to you as the individual.

Either way, I should probably whip it out again and edit/fix it up.

But yea, good times.

Added:<BR> OH. EM. EFFING. GEE.

I got Paint.NET installed on this laptop so, my 'better art' (debateably) will be returning!

June. 2. 2009
My friend brought his ps3 over to my house three days ago with his new game, "Damnation". Now, I'm a sucker for steampunk styled adventures, as it makes games and movies into an entirely different type of everything including culture, architecture, and of course, warfare.

Now, neither of us played very far into this (Mainly because it was BAD) so sadly, I cannot comment on its story too much. As far as I can tell, I (we) play some type of Captain of something with a lost fiance (I think) who adventures around with this 45-year old woman (Yagekan or something, is her name) who is VERY proud of her... "chest". And some other guy who's some type of explosives expert or something.

Let me LIST the flaws.

1) It's addiction to acrobatics gameplay. If I wanted to play Mirrior's Edge - I WOULD GO PLAY MIRRIOR'S EDGE.<BR> 2) Holding down a button in order use your weapon. Someone was designing games with a drill in their head.<BR> 3) Entirely too brightly lit. The entire game has an unrefined feel to it, which brings us to the fourth point;<BR> 4) There was NO real-time damage. Which this giant-fucking cannon things fires onto a platform our 3 protagonists are standing, there is -NO- damage to the structure. Just some smoke and it's gone. Older games than this have had bombed buildings. (Take some lessons from the first Mercenaries, damnit!)<BR> 5) The Dialogue. Fake accents are scripted language that seemed a bit remnescent of Two Worlds - which was also very bad.<BR> 6) Lack of a reload button. Who ever thought this was a good idea. I just love to leave the reloading to the game, just to garauntee that I have to reload every third firefight right in front of my enemy, while they're steam-pumping me with bullets.

There was more but I was interrupted mid-post by my brother so my track of thought was lost a little.

They need to rename this game to "Abomination"

May. 19. 2009
Sorry for the art downgrade on today's comic. My own computer is trashed and is awaiting for a complete reformat once we can find the windows install CD. Still, one computer left in the house, and it's a laptop but suits my basic needs like drawing comics in paint and, blogging.

Which brings us to today's blog:

MOVIE REVIEWS.

Taken (2009)
Imdb reviews of mine

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Summary: Guilty as Charged

I use the phrase "Guilty as Charged" because this movie doesn't pretend to be something it's not. The trailers portrayed exactly what the movie became, and didn't make the mistake of falsely hyping it up. The entire movie is perfectly summed up in the trailers with Leam's character's cell phone call;

(Don't quote this by the way, typing this by memory) <BR> "I don't know who you are, and if you're looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have any money. But what I do have is a very specific set of skills that I have acquired over a very long career, a set of skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you return my daughter now, that will be the end of it. I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will hunt you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

And that's exactly what happens.

I was excited when I first saw these previews before most other people - in a theater watching another movie entirely. I made it a mission to find this movie, buy it, and watch it. And it was worth the new release price.

It's a basic premise. A divorced retired man who's had a vague and somewhat unexplained past job. A minor complaint right here. He calls himself a "preventer" and judging from his first job in the movie, I've come to assume he works as some type of security agent for the government. They should have clarified this better. Anyway, it's an interesting premise and reveals that he's not a remarkable super-hero. He's a man. With a broken family, but has a happy daughter regardless that loves him anyway. I liked this.

It doesn't take terribly long to get through the introductions, which is good because some of it seemed a bit forced. For example, when Bryan's (Leam) "war"-buddies come for a barbecue and start spouting their past adventures. Now, I don't know what government agents talk about casually but knowing how the job is, I don't see it very realistic to talk about things like that.

Now, I love me some character-development but the first ten minutes or so fell pretty flat. Fortunately, it gave you the bare-bones storyline and continues onward to the daughter being captured ("Taken", rather) and Bryan immediately gets to work with impressive and realistic (to me, anyway) resourcefulness. Including speed, as one of his friends inform him he has 92 hours before never seeing her again. Third complaint? The time limit mentioning seemed very unnecessary, and near the end it wasn't a fast-paced "race against time". It felt like he had plenty of it.

Everyone else was great. I'm a huge fan of the Bourne movies and this felt like that, to a lesser extent. Not a lot of evading was happening, but Bryan constantly blew a hole through this particular slavery organization.

Not much else to say. My first paragraph of this review really sums up all my thoughts.

Smokin' Aces (2006)
6.6 (The collective rating [on imdb] at the time of this writing) is pretty accurate.

I watched this on Netflix (via Xbox Live) a while ago and haven't mustered up enough words to give this a sound review. So this will be one of my shorter ones. Or at least one of my least detailed, on par with some of my much earlier reviews.

I remember a while ago, seeing the previews of this and knowing right off the bat that it was my type of movie. Mindless, violent, and awesome. NUMEROUS mercenaries and assassins are sent towards one guy for being a mob mole. A brilliant concept where they could have easily just made it a mindless slaughter-fest.

I went in expecting that, and that's exactly what I got.

What I DIDN'T expect is an entire back storyline detailing the history of facial disguises and how much of an important part it plays throughout the entire story - even though it's in the background and not revealed until the very end.

So it started as a mindless "ten versus one" assassination but ended as a near-intellectual thriller. I was, as my summary tagline thing states, "Thoroughly impressed".

I know I gave it a 7 but I honestly cannot think of any gripes, and the ones I do are way too minor and end up having a balancing factor.

For example, the movie doesn't seem to want us to be sympathetic with "Aces". The balancing act? It later reveals that you're really not supposed to be.

And that's pretty much the rest of the cast too. They act well, but you don't really give a damn about any of them; BUT THAT'S OKAY. Once again, you don't really HAVE to.

So, I suppose I gave it a 7 (as opposed to 8 or 9, I almost never give out 10's) because it's raunchy and mindless and it's not really any kind of instant classic.

Either way, it's worth seeing. Definitely. I'm glad I did.

May. 11. 2009
Judging by my past couple of comics, you can pretty much guess what I've been doing.

So here's a breakdown of all the recent Fallout 3 new content and 'expansions'.

Operation Anchorage: It was a splendid break from the same wasteland you see for the entirity of the game. It gets dull. And I just loved how it almost feels like a different game completely... forcing you to manage your health and ammunition more than you would outside of the simulation.<BR> The Loot is great and it gives you power armor training without the Brotherhood of Steel. Could be a bit overpowered but by the time you leave the simulation you gain a few levels so you'll need it anyway to balance the fact you haven't gotten any ammunition (unless you use energy weapons). And if you don't like the T51b, some Outcast go nuts so you get a few of theirs as well.<BR> Overall, the rewards are worth the time it takes to go through it.

The Pitt: Not so much. First thing, you might only gain A level at most, depending on how long you are able to stay in the steelyard and search for ingots. (I think I was able to get a level and a half on one character, netting 2 level ups in the content). They added very little. You get an Autoaxe+ a +damage perk which is useful as that's about ALL you get besides some various guns from wandering raiders. It's a neat weapon but it has no viable use outside the Pitt. None of the rewards really do save for the Metal Blaster (Which is, admittadly, FUCKING NICE).<BR> The story is nice, but short. I was very displeased on how slaves remained slaves, regardless of which side you chose at the end. I have a strict "slavery is extremely evil" mindset (even on evil characters, I butcher Paradise Falls. I had to swallow my pride to do their one quest for 1 achievement) so... I did not like that at all.<BR> Overall, the only decent equipment you get is from trudging through trogs to find steel ingots which is a very troublesome experience. I have yet to be able to get Ashur's or the Tribal armor since his body keeps disappearing when I kill him and I'm not wasting 8 hours looking for the last 30 ingots.

Broken Steel: Enjoyable. That's the word I give but the rest will be rather bashing it. Make no mistake, I'm glad I have it BUT: First thing I want to gripe is the phase of the story that takes you to Adam's Air Base via the metro. It seperates you from the actual wasteland and has it's own zone, meaning you can't fast travel out for a break to regroup and resupply. This is extremely bad for non power-armor / non energy-weapon using characters. One of my first playthroughs, the Reilley's combat armor was completely broke (giving 8 DR) and every single convential weapon was about 1/3rd quality, limiting their usefulness against the new Hellfire power armored troops. I was forced to use the Tesla Cannon for normal infantry which was frustrating because it wasn't as effective in my small gun-using hands.<BR> The second, they only added TWO new quests. At 20, after the NEW missions are said and done, you might be around ~23-24 if you're lucky. The quests would hardly give you a level up. Other than FOUR new superpowered enemies (A couple being extremely bugged where your shots don't hit them), they give you VERY little to level up on.<BR> I had another complaint but I forgot.<BR> OVERALL; They did add enough to make it worthwhile. Some new, interesting weapons that are actually viable for normal wasteland use (unlike the autoaxe), and a neat new power armor whose helmet reminds me of those freaky changelings on Timesplitters. Awesome.

/flee

May. 2. 2009
Haven't blogged in a few days because GW has -actually- had me busy. Still scrambling to get those Zcoins so I can unlock the rainbow phoenix for my ranger. It's going to take a long time. And by that point, it might just lose it's novelty. I don't care, I've always wanted one.<BR> But a week plus into it and I only have 2 gold coins. Getting the cash for this is going to be rough.<BR> I've decided to somewhat ignore the equipment packs, as I feel I'm doing fine without them. Most of my next Zcoin sets will be going towards Zkeys, because I really want a /zrank spear. Rank 1 in that isn't a great show of superiority but I just want to be able to do -something-.

I'm liking my recent stretch of comics but ideas are dry once again. I'll figure something out as I always do.

Apr. 27. 2009
Inspiration has stricken.

Due to my new art program, I've been compelled to do more comics. For the first time since my Comic page's creation, I have TWO THREE comics on queue. There was only one other occasion where I had one extra but this time there's more. Now I just need to resist the urge of posting them back to back. It's been a couple days since the last one so I -might- post it today.

But I'm very proud of my art upgrade.

And the only issue I have with this program is when I'm editing and moving stuff around, under-the-white is the checkerboard transparency, which translates to a small blue hue depending on whatever computer or internet you're running on so I constantly have to go over the same spot a couple times to "erase" the transparency. It's annoying and adds unneeded effort to the drawing but, whatever.

* pride*

Apr. 25. 2009
I'll be having an art upgrade for my comic, effective in the next one (which currently doesn't exist, no ideas). I'm using Paint.NET program... which as far as my novice eyes can tell is a mix between MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop. Most of the functionality goes WAY the hell over my head, but it will be nice to have smoother looking stick figures.



As said, it won't be dramatic but it's an upgrade all the same. As I learn the program, nicer stuff will happen xD

Now, onto recent news;

April 23 update. Commentary on each new thingamajig;

Zaishen Challenge Quests World of Warcraft Dailies. I don't know if anyone here plays WoW as well, but here's a news flash; Most WoW players come to resent dailies. Yes, it's easy money for max levels but they get old quickly. They generally have a habit of forcing people into aspects of games they don't enjoy. Notice how these comments can be generalized for both GW -and- WoW? Yea.<BR> For Guild Wars, their only saving grace is they recycle daily. On World of Warcraft, they're the same ~20 dailies every day. And GW has a bit more than just 20 Challenges on each tier.<BR> The bad part? Major PvPers have to go into PvE, and primary-PvErs have to go into a aspect of the game they're not the best at, or they'd rather not bother with. Joy.<BR> But here I am, frantically doing every daily as far as my personal skill can hold up because I not only want, I also -need- some equipment packs. I am a statistic, yay.

Equipment Packs, Not a bad addition I s'pose but the only way to get them is the above. Or at least with any speed. Otherwise it could take months to attain one of these.

Extra Storage Pane. Thank you, NCsoft for fucking me over on your website. When I finally -did- get it working I tried creating an account to become eligible(sp?) for the 1 free pane, only to be kicked and said "Haha, your account is tied to another username"... and there was no way to figure out what that username WAS. The trouble one has to go through, you'd think it's just prefer people buying it all outr--- owait. :P

Zaishen Menagerie. Not big on pets, but I gave them my mountain eagle as I was fiddling through the dialogue (yes, I was reading). I didn't know they actually TOOK the fucking thing, and to my surprise when I went off to do those dailies, I had no pet. Therefore, wasting 3 skills on my bar. Not a terribly big issue if I'm able to get my pet back, I just haven't yet.

Nicholas the Traveler. I want that Vampiric Dragon Sword, but once again, it's almost too much trouble to farm the trophy items for the gifts that have a huge fucking list of what comes out of it.

Hall of Monuments, account wide? Never used the damn thing unless I was displaying my warrior's massive load of armor sets. I'm unclear on what it does for a future GW2 account but I doubt I'd be able to run a new game. And If I can, I still won't be able to get it on release so I don't give a damn about the HoM.

Character Customization? Fuck you.<BR> I've mentioned before about the retarded dervish name that I hoped I could rename eventually. But Lo'! 15 dollars for a name change. One. Name change. Just one. I'm playing Guild Wars because it's -free-.<BR> The Makeover thing is worse. It's not even giving a "first time is free" deal, which I would have found acceptable because I only want to change -one- character. I made my ranger too short a while ago and I -always- go max height on my characters. And no, it's not as simple as rerolling either as these characters are years old by now. I wasn't aware of my Ranger's height problem untill she was well into EotN with her norn armor and a few titles. I wasn't displeased with my dervishes name -at first-, either.<BR> But no, they want me to pay for such an innocent year+ old mistake with cold, hard, cash. Fuck. You.<BR>

But hey! At least they added a helmet to pre, amirite?<BR> A problem with that, too! Casual players aren't going to farm 50 flowers to have a helmet, only to leave pre and upgrade their armor semi-immediately.<BR> But my pre is a perma so, I s'pose I don't mind it as much.

QQing over. For now.

Apr. 21. 2009
Went ahead and gave my permapre a page. But instead of naming the page "Snowscale", multiple forms of hindsight told me to just name the page "permapre" in case this isn't my last one. I know better. I -hope- to take this one far, but once again, I know myself too well.<BR> But yea, that's all I've been doing.

Might add more to this entry once stuff happens.

Added:<BR> On today's comic: I haven't actually made >9000g on just the collector items/Gifts yet but I probably will tomorrow.<BR> Also, hurrah for reaccuring characters?

Apr. 18. 2009
Still debating if I want to bother giving my new permapre a character page of her own. It would be severely lacking in content and it's pretty much non-RP anyway so there's no history laid out for her. Though, I still would RP if the opportunity came up.<BR> Hell, I named her have my white argonian on Oblivion for fucks sake.

Still deciding. I may hold off on giving her a page untill she gets to the level 12-14 area.

So, obviously, been playing GW. Still waiting on Broken Steel for Fallout 3. Looks to be coming out in May-ish. Grumble grumble.

Apr. 10. 2009
So, as you can see, I created a whole new image set for my navigation bar. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while, because I didn't like having to steal images, have people click on them and end up being redirected to some random article on Fireworks or Tomes. Now I've got my own special images that each redirect to where they're supposed to.

Proud of a few of them. My brother helped do the "Fanfic" one with the arms. I personally don't think it looks "3-D" like he planned, might end up redoing that one myself eventually when I come up with a better idea. For now, it functions just fine.<BR>

I also have them all at 100x100 so people (and by people I mean, "probably just me") can fiddle with them as avatars. The second complaint relating to this is some of them look TOO small when reduced into the Navbar... so I may need to make the images smaller, so the stick figures become a little bigger. If that makes any sense. Does to me but I'm probably terrible at explaining things.

And I am so making fun of myself for the blog image.

Also, no current ideas for the next comic.

ANYWAY, onto some game news.

First, Fallout 3.<BR> My level 20 stealth-melee EZmode character is on hold untill Broken Steel comes out which raises the cap to 30 and introduces pretty much an entirely new game (Think along the lines of Shivering Isles. Fuck you, Knights of the Nine) that goes beyond the original endgame. Which means it might actually become open-ended FO' REELZ. Not sure why they didn't make it freeform to begin with.

So I've remade my goody-two-shoes character but instead of small guns, Energy weapons (because I know how l33t they can be from my evil character). But my stealth-melee has spoiled me. The game is a bit harder without sneak, and caps are harder to come by. Y'see, my stealth-melee only spent money on Stimpaks and repairs. But with anything else, the cash is spent in another direction: Ammo. And even duplicate guns to repair your own shit. That crap costs. So I'm sporting an OP winter'd power armor but with only 42 stimpaks to my name and only a handful of clips for my energy rifle/pistol. I'll get through.

Second, Guild Wars.<BR> Did hop on today to delete my 2 month old monk that I didn't even waste time to make a page for. She was level 11, figured it pointless. And I know them bitches cost, too. So I replaced them with yet another warrior (God I've had about 100 of them by this point) to attempt being permapre again. For the fourth+ time, let's hope my sanity holds. Hope to do a post-to-pre goldtrade eventually so I can get this one to the former glory of my past permapre. My record is level 14.

And that, as they say, is that.

Apr. 5. 2009
Well, finally got semi-bored of Fallout 3. Got every achievement where my sanity holds up. The only ones I did get were the 50 speech checks and hacked terminals. Also the "Find all 100 Steel Ingots" from the Pitt. Fuck that.

So I logged on WoW and was bored.

So I hopped on GW and found a little fun fact: I created my Vanguard thing in October. It's lasted a few solid months without me giving up. Nice. Of course, the whole "other games" thing helped. Still, no plans of deleting it. I just gotta watch that 3 month warning on it's wiki page.

Oh! Some extra birthday stuffs. Was a few days ago but not everyone (in real life, that is) gave their respects by showering me with free shit. My friend('s mother) got both of us an Airsoft assault rifle. Good shit. Had some fun with them. Shot each other up and all that.<BR> Also got the movie "Bolt" which, actually, wasn't bad.<BR> Got some MORE MS points for XboxLive and got a few movies including the Midnight Meat Train that I mentioned before. Very unique horror, very much my style. More action than "quiet... quiet... BOO" type horror. It's Clive Barker so you'd know that it would be, at the very least, somewhat decent. (Even if 'Jericho' was mediocre at best).

So anyway, I'll be mumbling around on Guild Wars today. Recruiting for my RP guild most likely, maybe get back into the groove somehow. Not sure how though, I have no goals currently.

Mar. 30. 2009
Birthday today. I got some MS points for Xbox so I got the Pitt DLC for Fallout 3. So far that's been it. Well, my mother also got my an armied-up Build-A-Bear but I'm too manly to tell you all that. Oshit.

Anyway, this is the first time that I got TWO comics ready. Loaded one up now but I will milk my fanbase for all it's glory before putting the REAL most recent one up. But it's on the game "Wanted", even though I haven't played the full game. It's funny on it's own anyway.

Toodles. (Toodles? Well my manhood is threatened already might as well go the extra mile).

Added:<BR> I've been reading on this one movie called the "Mightnight Meat Train" (no, not a porn, gay or otherwise). To me it looks to be a very unique horror experience. I wants to see it. If spoilers don't ruin if for you, I suggest reading up on it's wiki Synopsis. Since some friends o' mine owe me some birthday stuffs, they'll be getting me a couple movies for me. I wants it, Pressshhhuuuussss....

Mar. 20. 2009
Birthday in 10 days. The only joyous thing I'm looking forward to that is some MS points for Xbox Live so I can get some DLC.

Also, today's comic isn't an actual experience, and it's more of a joke about ammo than shooting at the brotherhood of steel. My first couple characters I was terrible with ammunition untill I discovered a few key things. I think they were mentioned in my last entry like discovering how to repair and such.

No news today, other than some WoW guild drama. And frankly, too exhausted to explain that situation right now so whatever.

Mar. 18. 2009
Motherfuck, I had this 5 paragraph post and counting on Fallout 3 untill for some reason, IE decided to jump it back two pages ago and cleared the entire thing. I'll do my best to replicate it. And I'll be Copy+pasting like, every sentance.

Anyway, two days into Fallout 3 and, well, I won't say I mastered it but I am immensily successful. So here's my half-assed "review" of my experiences so far.

So far, I think it's better than Oblivion in the sense that it's just more my style. Not just because of the guns, either. But it's futuristic and maybe a little realistic. And this is coming from a big TES Morrowind-Oblivion Fan. Though, I'm tired of Bethsda's hardon for dungeons and caves (Subways and Vaults) because I can't navigate those fuckers for shit.

So anyway, here's what I've found to be immensily successful. I specialized in a main Agility/Luck - Strength/Endurance - Perception -Intelligence combo. Sounds like a lot, maybe, but not with 4 ranks in Intense Training, I've hopped agility, strength, perception, and intelligence by one. I can get you exact numbers later. But it's something like Luck and Agility at 9, Strength at 9, Intelligence at 7, Perception at 6 and something else.

Anyway, I've found that Repair and Sneak are veeerrryyy important. (Before that, another compliment/complaint on how pretty much any kind of character can sneak efficiently. Right now my character's is only at 31 and doing -fine- But the whole thing is kind of lame, being able to sneak in Power Armor..) So I maxed Repair already, Next will be Small guns... Then I will be splitting the rest into Sneak, Medicine, and Barter. Might toss a few extra points into Speech here and there. But I'm level 11 with like, half the side quests done so that doesn't matter as much anymore.

The best thing I've found to do is NOT start the main quest right off. The first time I played, (last entry) I found out what my problem was. I was too ambitious and eager, which is bad because this game is a little more focused. I did too much research right off the bat and wanted too many things too quickly.<BR> HOWEVER, I remedied this in my third character (the one whose stats I explained above) so instead of talking to the guy in Megaton, first thing I did was do every side quest in sight. And thanks to Wasteland Survival Guide, I gained a good few landmarks and explored places for some quick and easy travel once I DO hit the main quest.<BR> (Helpful side note: Muddling around between the White House, Memorials, and Museums will help a LOT later down the road.)

One thing I want to do as a next character concept is melee, major concentration to some Endurance/Strength though, and I fear it because An Agility/Luck/Perception combo is REALLY powerful. One-shot kills everywher. I also fear it because so manyy enemies use ranged and my navigation isn't up to par to move around and GET to them. Perhaps some sneaking will be involved with this build. (I've had to sneak around seemingly unaccessable mutants before, even on my hulking gunman).

So that's about where I was before my internet wanted to use the "Back" function twice, randomly. So, doing pretty well. Haven't touched the other 3 games I bought the other day. I will eventually.

Go me.

Mar. 16. 2009
Just got Fallout 3. And as expected, I ssuuuuuuuuuuuuccckkkk. But also as expected, I'll probably do two or three different characters before I settle on a final one with enough experience to start out with the optimal stats. Not much else to say right now since I've only played a total of 2 hours and did very little.

I did attain some Power Armor though and I want to wear it so bad >_<

Along with that, I got Afro Samurai, Mercenaries 2 and Rainbow 6: Vegas (That last one for sentimental value, had a lot of fun with my friends on that game). Didn't play Afro yet but I got to watch my brother and it's pretty damn sweet. Looks just like ths show, more or less. Just as much blood, nudity, and cursing too.

Mar. 14. 2009
I originally wanted to create the mascot for my Vanguard stick figure with my symbol as its face but as you can see from my recent comic, I seemed to have abandond it. I just wanted to say in this blog post that I can't sufficiently portray emotions with just that. Now, this won't be the LAST time I use that mascot, surely, but I'm giving myself some leniency.

It's a little different to have an emotionless stick figure than to try it on a live action Rorscharch (I probably butchered that spelling) on Watchmen. Which I haven't seen yet but might soon.

Mar. 12. 2009
Got Mirror's Edge recently because the demo enthralled my soul. Played the demo like 8 times. I quickly learned that mastering the demo does not equal mastering the game. In the very next level into the full game it introduced new-everything. But was able to get through most of it. Still only on chapter 4, or 5 or something but, it's neat. Hard, or can be. I love how the jump button when on an obstacle becomes NOT a jump but a "let go and fall to my death". One particular section where I did, or TRIED doing a pipe-jump, and literally had to restart a dozen times. Anyone who has played probably knows the exact spot, too.

So it's glitchy as fuck but fun as hell. The second complaint I have is giving the combat a bit more viability. Most of the time it tells you to run, when in some cases you could take them out. And sometimes It requires you to take everyone out when in fact you could probably just jump over everyone and keep going safely. Seriously Mirror's Edge, PICK ONE.

And I know getting shot 3 times and dieing is a bit realistic but come on, it's not much of a realistic game to begin with. Again, give the combat some viability.

Might add more when I beat it. Might not. Oh well. Playing WoW when I can. Hurrah for Roleplayin'.

Feb. 23. 2009
Tis a dark day for Guild Wars. According to Xfire, The global count shows that SILK ROAD has more hours played that Guild Wars. Damn. But then, I'm not really helping...

Also signed up on the Heroes Wiki, began listing my opinions on each of the characters. Got a quaint stat box there, too. My favorite being the "Least favorite character". lulz, irony.

I'll still draw comics, if anyone has a topic for me to poke at. GW related.

Anyway, not dead. Just playing WoW.

Feb. 9. 2009
New comic up. I think I might quit with that particular face style as a mascot. It's really difficult to make it look in different directions, looks all backasswards from what the symbol is supposed to be. Though, very proud of my art. Things don't have to be all fancy to be funny. With that said, I wish I'd have gone for something other than a cheap monkey joke. I hate monkeys. Monkies? Whatever, I don't like them.

Feb. 7. 2009
I'd like to direct everyone to two comics;<BR> http://wttf.org <BR> http://www.xkcd.com<BR> Two very brilliant and intellectual comics that people should certainly check out from comic #1 in the archives.

Look at me, not peddling my own comic. INORITE? It's in plain sight though, on my Navbar. Like I need to advertise it here.

I will say this, if you'd like some kind of stick figure mascot, let me know. Specifics would be nice, otherwise I'll default to drawing your sig-pic on a stick figures face, like mine.

Added:<BR> Sad thing. Coming from a person who claims he doesn't doest PvP with a ten foot pole, I have managed to acquire enough twelve foot poles to somehow muster up to both rank 2 luxon and rank 4 kurzick. Granted, the title is easier to come by now. I've found Fort Aspenwood is a nice, easy income of rank. For both sides. You win some, you lose some.

I've also attained the first Charmed title track, adding another to my account-wide. I love those account-wide ones. Still 3337/5000 from the first Hapless. Gotta wait another year.

Still in a lull. Trying to find something to do on GW instead of sitting in my GH and twiddling my thumbs.

Jan. 31. 2009
Happy AFK weekend. Got a comic on it, so instead of posting it here you can check out the spiffy new link I've got on my Navbar.

Earned the first rank in Lucky... Now going for Hapless, which I'm ~2000 losses away from. Which is another few hours worth of AFK. After I run dry on tickets, I've got no more source of income other than getting lunar fortunes from quests on 6 other characters. But that's really tiring.<BR> In my AFKness, I've been role/playing WoW on Moon Guard with a new Death Knight. I'm not going to say she's based off Allein, but Kiur's personality is kind of an early form of Allein's, a couple years ago when I made her. Rude, mean, etc. Allein's nicer now and there's a chance Kiur will lighten up in the days to come. Everything else is fairly opposite. Allein got killed by the Scourge, Kiur discovered a runeblade. Shit like that.

If you're new to the blog. Yes. I play BOTH GW and WoW. I enjoy them both, and play them both for different things. I get a massive amount of RP on WoW, but on GW I have to resort with friends, and it's usually just one at a time. On WoW, I run into dozens of people and sometimes lead to hilarious encounters.

There probably won't be any other blog post for this weekend. I'll just be sitting on a damn ring.

Jan. 27. 2009


True story. I remember earning up to 70k from those Bottle of Grogs that started dropping not long after I made a permasin. After that, I kind of halted and waited for Halloween. I proceeded to make ~200k from the ToT bags that dropped. All that funded quite a few armor sets for various characters.

But now I'm shooting for around 80k, to pay a friend back 20k and to get another armor set and it's really slow. This was the original reason I borrowed that 20k to begin with. But I'm sure as hell am not going to borrow 60k unless it's a straight out donation. Which ain't gonna happen so here I am, farming my poor ass off for very little at a time. ZZzzz.

But some trivia on the comic: I originally took a screenshot of my permasin and was planning to crop the assassin and everything but the mass circle of raptors out (Like I did with the kurzick guy), but this one was quicker and actually, a little bit more funny. Take my word for it.

Added:<BR> Wiki related; re-uploading shit. Was told it takes a few minutes for the new version to actually "activate" but I've gone for a half n' hour and two of my images never updated: My second comic, to which I nudged the second panel to me more centered, and the stick guy in my Navbar. I'm trying to get it smaller and smaller so the word "Comic" doesn't isn't all, dislined, or whatever word you want for "all fucked up lookin'."

Annoying.

Jan. 26. 2009
On my side of the world it's 12:18am, which means it's basically the 26th even though it's still the same day for me. The 26th officially starts when I go sleep and get back up.

I did see Rise of the Lycans earlier, "today"... And honestly? There's not much to review. It was really good and functioned perfectly as a sequel. The acting was fine because the SAME actors were in this (Not like "I'm preggers lol" and isn't in there. Fuck you, Mummy Returns). Other than that, it's just another piece of the Underworld movie history/lore. Didn't really need it, it was explained well enough in the first two movies. Either way, a neat addition to the series. But that's really ALL I've got to say about it so I guess I won't be reviewing it on IMDB.

Back to GW news. Built a trapper for Fort Aspenwood (and probably other forms of PvP)... It's really difficult to tell if I'm doing well or not. I basically lay a trap down and run so I'm not sure if they ever get activated or not. And I still don't know if I place one trap, and when it recharged and place that same one somewhere else, does the first one disappear? Is it one at a time? Or can you make as many of the same one as the 90 second window allows? I still don't understand it. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it because I can't tell if I'm doing -anything-, but then again I've only played it once. And it's a good build to have for future PvP anyway. Overall, glad I got it all. Still need to cap Spike Trap though.

Added:<BR> Went to sleep, still the 26th.

I added a final armor set to Shizuma, one I've been pining over for a long time anyway. The Elite Gladiators. And if the price of Primeval is any indication (cheap rare materials, but Glads has no rare mats) it won't be as expensive as I think, and even at 60k because I'm omitting that retarded helmet.<BR> Besides, if you knew Shizuma's personality she's in need of a skimpy armor set.<BR>

I'll be farming for it today, along with the 20k I owe Ven the Axeslayer for helping me get Vabbian faster. Unless he doesn't log on, in which case I'll just start buying the materials.

Jan. 25. 2009
Will be going to watch "Rise of the Lycans" here in an hour+. I was thinking about the comic I drew, if I am able to think of a couple more, I might add another tab on my Navbar for it. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see my January 24 entry, got a comic up.

And a sysop poked at me for posting my Welcome comic to new people but he never direct said "stop", so I still will post it whenever I see red discussion pages ^_^ Got a birthday one I need to get into circulation as well, bwahaa.

Oh yea, I was able to get Shizuma through the first two Ring of Fire missions, but what the hell happened to the activity in Hell's Precipice? A couple months ago getting a group there was EASY. (On both my ranger and dervish, I got it on both NM and HM I believe, with different groups). Now, I got nothing.

Jan. 24. 2009
Warrior Vabbian is within my rreeeaaaaaaaccchhhh... I've got 7 sapphires right now and after I farm up some golds, I should be able to get 4 more, and that's not calculating the extra money I get from the normal drops or elite tomes, lockpicks, and scrolls I get.<BR> I'm going to attempt to get it TODAY. I won't have much time tomorrow, going to see Rise of the Lycans, to which I will most likely review here and IMDB. (Or rather, IMDB and just post my review here).

Added:<BR>

Finally got the shit. What you see in that image is the very thing I've been whining about for the last week worth of blog posts.

I abandoned farming and wanted to go PvP, and the original plan there was to gather enough balthazar factions, get Z-keys, and sell those at a decent 4.5-5k a pop. But it took too long and eventually just got a loan from a friend. So now I'm earning money to pay someone back...

...

...BUT I GOT THE ARMOR. I'M FUCKING DONE, SON.

Also, got a rank up on the kurzick track, giving my Imbagon an extra second on "Save Yourselves!". Joy.<BR> Speaking of my imbagon, I got that build and stopped playing the paragon. I really need to find something to do on her.

Added:<BR> On another note;



Jan. 23. 2009
Gave up doing CoF runs to get the rubies and sapphires. Did a few, didn't get any of them from the hidden treasures and didn't really make a lot of money as quick as I expected. So I'm back to raptor farming. I think it's quicker.

I made my own little chart on Shizuma's page, marking how much of the materials I have/need for vabbian. In a day, I already got 10 rubies. Once I get a load of golds sold, I'll have all 14 needed, and then I'll concentrate on sapphires.

Jan. 22. 2009
I spoke of my troubles coming back to GW (or any MMO) after a long absence, in a previous post. I get in this dull moment, not really sure what I need or want to do.

Well, I got a goal again that's gotten me back into the groove. I really want vabbian armor for my warrior. And I come to this shameless begging for blog-readers, any donations of sapphires and rubies, even if it's JUST ONE of them, it will sorely help. Because right now, with their current prices, it'll take me ~64k to get 14 of just one set. So upwards of 120k just to get the gems alone. And really, that's all I need help from. The iron, the linen, and the base 20k (I'm omitting the helmet) I can get relatively easily. It's just the gems that have been tripping me up for months.

So, that's what I'll be working towards.

Added:<BR> Getting back into CoF runs with my ranger. Once in a blue moon one of the treasures drop a ruby or sapphire. Could save some money. Not only that, I get cash and deldrimor rank during it all. Nikki has an admiral rank but I could get it to 9 easily.

Added:<BR> A good little bonus post from yours truly. This is something I've thought about writing up for a long time now, I just now got off my lazy ass to crop the pictures and upload them for my insulting pleasure.<BR> Coincidentally, I found all 4 of these in Doomlore, and since I hid the HUD they're anonymous by default. I don't KNOW any of them, so don't ask me who one of them is.

<BR> Terrible. NOTHING in this matches besides their chest and leggings. Their boots, some kind of EoTn armor I think. Ice gloves and a bandana. It would help if everything was dyed in a similar fashion but Noooo. It wouldn't hurt to darken the color of the headpiece and ditch those ice gloves entirely. Seriously. Goddamn.

<BR> Okay, I had to point this one out because they're doing it very RIGHT. Everything seems to be based off the ice gloves color and it's done well. They have a very ice-elemental look going and everything compliments itself. The gloves are a different hue but you can tell he actually tried.

<BR> Not really his fault but the male elementalist dance with that particular face; very bad. Otherwise, this guy would almost have a decent thing going if he matched anything. He already shelled out a shitload for those gloves, buy a couple of extra dyes, goddamn.

<BR> Sigh. Similar problem with #3. If everything was dyed similar-like, this wouldn't look so bad. And the dragon gloves only look good with the most bulky of armors, definately not a piece for every class.

More of these to come in future blog posts, possibly.

Jan. 21. 2009
Changing gears for a moment. No games, just a little philosophy.

Stop saying "I'm sorry." Because you're not, and if you really were you wouldn't do/have done the thing you're apologizing for. Because you see the common "Actions speak louder than words" phrase has some place here. If you really want to prove you're sorry, you'd show it and not say it. And if you proved that, there's no reason to apologize in the first place.

An apology means nothing anymore. It's just something someone says to get temporary forgiveness. I can't imagine a normal american who'd forgive someone a few seconds after the thing that warranted the apology. Clearly, they are creatures of myth. It's not the same as holding a grudge, it's just remembering how you've been wronged. Okay, maybe it is a grudge. Fine, I'm a begrudging bastard who'd be the first asshole to get killed off in those Grudge movies but I just don't feel like apologies mean anything anymore. There's no more sincerity behind them.

No, nothing happened that recently to warrant this blog post. Just something I've thought about.

That is all.

Jan. 20. 2009
Damn.

Spent ~30k on a ranger equipment set for raptor farming... Already had the armor, essentially using one of my unruned RP outfits. But so far, it doesn't work. With Mist Form up I don't take hits but nothing is damaging the raptors back like Sliver Armor is supposed to do. This build is rated to be great so I'm missing something. I pop every skill I got in that little "how to" walkthrough it gives but, I end up dieing everytime.

Trying to switch from farming on my assassin because the timing is a bit intense now. I die prematurely pretty often now. Amazing just what a couple seconds could do for me. But overall, it still works. It's just a bit hair-raising.<BR> But my ranger isn't even damaging them. I'm missing something.

So far, buying and questing up the skills required for this farm build is all I've done today on GW. I really need to find something to do. Well, tried PuGing a couple of missions on my other characters but as usual, people are idiots. I should have saved that one template I saw from this R/Me. His attributes were spread out all over the damn place, like he was expecting the level cap to be 50 or something. Trying to be a Master of all skills but not knowing he was shitty at all. I didn't even attempt with that group.

So for blog-visitors, my warrior needs halp on Tahnakai Temple and the first Ring of Fire mission. Preferably the Temple because I need to get her kurzick armor.

Jan. 17. 2009
Games dried up. GTA4 has me stumped on a couple of chase missions that are impossible with my skill. One of them requires "something big, aweful, and intimidating" (Actual in-game words from the character), which means a slowass truck or SUV is needed to chase a guy down. Can't do it. Too slow, and I often run into shit. The OTHER chase mission I might be able to do eventually but after five attempts (no joke) I keep getting the short end of the stick. Nothing goes right.

For my birthday in March, my mother plans on getting my some Xbox Live microsoft points so I can buy the Fable 2 Expansion pack, Knothole Glade plus all those Oblivion mods up there. Untill then, I'm pretty much done with fable 2. Just recently got the gargoyles and silver key achievements. Opened everything up. Finished every possible quest, and did the Crucible about 12 times. (Current record, 461 seconds. Beat that, bitches.)

But that's not the sole reasoning I'm up here on my computer. Some household peeps are becoming more and more volatile because my brother and I don't have jobs so I'm going into hiding: My room. And in my room is Guild Wars.

So, back to Guild Wars, perhaps. Going to begin re-recruiting for Vanguard Eu Sou. My promising member left but I don't begrudge them at all. I was gone for a full month, from christmas to... now. I was 100% sure they'd be gone when I left, even after I promoted them to Officer for recruiting purposes. I wasn't afraid, how can you fuck a guild up when the other other member is the leader. Haha.

Toodles.

Added:<BR> Checked the ages of all my characters, hoping for presents. They're all so young D: But my Dervish did get her second year, a mini juggernaut.

Jan. 9. 2009
Not dead. Just playing Xbox 360 stuff.

Got Bioshock. Beat it within 24 hours. (Technically, not in one day. Played it untill 2am, slept, beat it when I woke up.)

Jan. 2. 2009
My mind is in a thousand different directions right now so I will apologize if this blog entry reflects that. Kind of typing this up while roleplaying (or looking for it, rather) on WoW. Taking a break from my recent games.

I did eventually get Fable 2, yes, along with the manual as usual. I think I beat it too quickly. Beat it 2 days after christmas. Beat it again a day after that. On my third go for the "sacrifice" achievement. Taking a break from the third because he owns some property right now early-ish in the game so I'm just letting the cash build up.

One of my christmas presents was also a 30$ gift card, and I was able to nab a used Grand Theft Auto 4 with that. I'll probably have a bigger entry on that later once I get deeper into the game.

With some Wal-Mart giftcards, I go Unreal Tournament 3.

My mother and a friend has an "I owe you" so EVENTUALLY, my friend will be getting Gears of War 2 + an Xbox live card so I can play it online. Earlier than that, my mother will probably take me to get another game. Not sure what. Originally she was going to get me GTA4 but, as mentioned, got that already. Might try GRAW 2, Bioshock, or something else. Not sure what I want yet.

Either way, this year will be good to me I hope.

I need a job.