Sundries

I’m getting very close to getting my 50,000 words needed on my novel to complete the AugNoWriMo.  I’m now over 46,500 words so far but I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it to the end of my novel by the end of the contest.  I’m guessing it’s going to be about 70,000 words but it’s hard to tell.  I’m feeling very good about my progress so far and I’m really learning a lot about my writing, as well as learning what areas I need more practice in.  That’s really one of the benefits of doing this contest, it get you writing.  I’ve heard it time and time again – the way to improve your writing is to read a lot and write a lot.

Even with all my writing I’m still not avoiding WOW, in fact I’m playing it too much still.   At the moment I’m working on a number of reputation grinds, mostly to get some more mounts as well as some new gear.  I’m going to Outland every day to work on my Sha’tari Skyguard rep:

I’ve also been playing around more with getting some of the achievements.  I just got the “Chef” title the other day for completing a huge amount of cooking achievements and I noticed how close I was to getting my weapons skills up so I put a few hours into it and got them all maxed out to 400:

It wasn’t much fun raising “unarmed” to 400 as a mage.  I ended up going to the wetlands and smacking around murlocs for about an hour.  I’d get them down about to about 20% health and then polymorph them so they’d heal back up and then start smacking them again.  It starts out going fast and you feel really good about it but trust me, those last 3 points take a long time to tick.  I’d guess at least 10 minutes to go from 399 to 400.  Ugh.

I also managed to get another Mr. Pinchy when I did a little fishing in Outlands a few days ago:

I’ve caught him before and was lucky enough to get the non-combat pet (you can see him in the lower left of the image above).  So far I’ve received a stamina buff and then a package with some L70′ish potions.  I have one more ‘charge’ left on him to see if I get the full sized Benevolent Mr. Pinchy as seen below:

He can be summoned and can help you in a battle.  Not much use as a L80 I guess.  Anything I need help when I’m a L80 mage isn’t going to come from a L70 pet, but he’s huge ugly lobster monster so I’d love to have him.

I’ve also decided to load up my old Lord of the Rings Online account and give that another shot.  I played it a little over a year and a half ago and it was fun but it wasn’t as smooth a game as WOW.  They’ve cleaned up a lot of the rough edges on the game but it’s been so long since I’ve played I’m really just getting a grip on how to play again.  I’ve downloaded the ‘hi-rez’ version of the game and noticed that it supports DirectX 10, as does my system, so it’s looking damn nice.  The one thing they really do better than WOW is with the environment.  Below is a screenshot I did today, try to ignore the interface of the game and look at the water – it’s just amazing:

(CLICK TO MAKE IT FULL SIZE -  1920 X 1200)

This is a direct screenshot from the game, I haven’t dont’ anything in Photoshop to it at all.  It’s also a full resolution I play the game at – it’s a large image so make sure to click on it to see it in full glory….  so purdy.

**James.

I never did update the blog about this but a few weeks ago I did get the WOW Wrath of the Lich King collector’s edition in the mail:

I even took to vacation days off work (Thursday and Friday) to really have time to spend with the game.  The sad part is that I got burnt out and really stopped playing WOW after the Hallows Eve holiday.  I think all those hours of feeling obligated to do trick or treating to try to get my squashling pet did it.

I had pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition from Amazon as soon as it was available but about a week before it went live I lost interest in the game (again).  It’s been out for a few weeks now and I’ve loaded the game and played for a few hours but mostly just looking around.

Since I’m not really “into” the game right now, all the new areas are actually more of a pain then a plesure.  Not knowing where anything is or where it’s safe to travel.  I tried to force myself to get into it again and have done about 10 or 15 quests but it’s no use.  I’m ending a 4 day Thanksgiving weekend today and I’ve only logged on once for about 45 minutes.

I’m mostly spending my time on photography and learning the new CS4 Photoshop as well as Lightroom 2 program.  I did get a copy of the new Tomb Raider – Underworld game which is fun.  Unfortunately, most of my long weekend was spent being sick.  I’m starting to feel better now, just in time to work (YEA!!!!).

**James.

Years ago I used to play the video game Grand Theft Auto 3 for hours and hours. It’s a violent game where murder, drugs, prostitution, and car-jacking are a core element to the story.

I just found this video of a Coke commercial that was based on that game but they added a happy little twist to the story. Yes, I guess Coke does make everything better. LOL

**James.

Years ago, when the ability to connect to other players on the Internet to play games was just starting to become commonplace, I was highly adicted to the game Team Fortress Classic:

As you can see the graphics are a bit dated by todays standards but they really weren’t that bad. But the fact that you no longer were playing against the computer A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) but against real people from anywhere in the world it was just fascinating.

A few months ago Team Fortress 2 was released and I quickly purchased it and have put in many hours of play time. Especially as my favorite position, the Engineer.

click to enlarge image

As you can see, I’ve spent just under 60 hours playing the Engineer so far in the game. Most of the time it’s because I really enjoy that position but sometimes it’s due to nobody else on the team playing any real defense so I become the Engy and setup a sentry for some D.

One thing that’s interesting about this game is you can spray an image on a surface in the game. Some people create interesting animated sprays to try to fool the other team into thinking there is someone sniping from a location:

This is an old trick but if you have 2 or more people hanging around that spray of a sniper squating down to shoot it can confuse you long enough to get your head blown off.

I’ve only created 2 sprays so far for the game for me to use. The first one was designed to antagonize the other team by entering their side of the map and spraying it in a location that many people would see:

I used this one for most of my time playing the game so far. The guy in the image is a pansy from the British TV show called Black Adder. This image is enlarged a little bit from what’s in the game but it’s pretty easy to read and I have a feeling it pissed a few players off personally. Ooppss!!! Sorry, I guess.

I recently changed to a new spray image that I’m sure is pissing a few others off as well. This one was just designed to be used in my own base. I should say I almost always play a map called “2 Fort” where there are 2 forts (duh!!!), one on each side of the map for each team. I took an image from a Doujinshi (Japanese fan-made comic book) of the character Hinata from the manga/anime called Naruto.

Click to see the full size original picture of Hinata.

As you can see, this could tick a few people off but they would have to be way too sensitive for that too happen and in that case I don’t really care too much. I’ve seen people use images from gay hard-core porn in the game so I think my image is pretty tame. It’s not even a real person, just a drawing of a fictional character.

**James.

My first introduction to the world of MMORPGs was when a friend at work introduced me to Lineage 2 a few months before they left beta and went live on April 27, 2004. Up till that time I had avoided these types of games. I mostly played First Person Shooters (FPS) and the idea of playing something like EverQuest was a little geeky. The idea of having to not only purchase the game but also pay monthly to continue playing it seemed very strange and a bit of a ripoff.

However, I was interested in the idea of a huge world to explore and not being limited to the small maps you have in FPS games. Around the start of 2004 a co-worker of mine was telling me about the game Lineage 2 that he was playing. As the game was still in beta it was free to play so it wouldn’t be any problem to at least just try it out. I downloaded the game and created my first character, a female Dark Elf called TianDora.

I think it’s rather obvious why I selected this character to start with. I immediately fell in love with the look of the game, not just this one character. LOL. The look and feel of the land, buildings, and characters was just beautiful. I also loved the idea of being able to travel and not reach the end of the “map” in a few minutes. This place was huge.

I soon realized that I didn’t care for the Dark Elf character that much and I decided to create one that I enjoyed for more then just the boobs. I then created the first character that had a special meaning for me. Trillon.

I just loved how cute and innocent she looked and I thought that would be fun to have her run around killing stuff all the time. I had some trouble coming up with her name and the first 5 or 6 things I was going for were already taken. Being a huge fan of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books and TV show I decided to go with “Trillion” and it was available. The funny thing is that the character I was naming her after is called Trillian not Trillion – so I had spelled it wrong. I decided I liked my spelling better and stayed with it.

Trillion is a female Dwarf (Scavenger) whose primary role was to collect items for people to craft with. I had a special skill that I used when fighting a “mob” that allowed me a chance to get another drop when they were killed. A “mob” is a name for a generic computer controlled monster/enemy in the game. I played Trillion as my main character but did start a number of other ones as well:

Trillion	Ain’t she cute?
G.E.L.F.	Best looking Elf, ever!
Morgaeriel	Fiery redhead mage.
TianDora	“Eyes up!!!”
TurdFergesun	He’s a big green Turd.

Lineage 2 is a tough game designed for the serious player how didn’t mind spending many many hours in leveling their character. Experience Points (XP) did not come very quickly and if you died you would loose some XP points. There were once or twice where I achieved a new level, soon died, and then were dropped down to the previous level again to do it over again.

I managed to get Trillion, my highest level character, only up to about L36 before the grind for XP and Adena (the in game currency) took away the fun I previously had in the game. After about a year of playing I canceled my account and went back to playing other games such as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Unreal Tournament 2003.

In mid October of 2005 I found the 10 day trial for World of Warcraft. I’ve heard that this is a great game and having taken a little break from MMORPGs I figured I should try this out. There was “no way” I was going to pay month to month for another game. (hehe)

The first character I created was a male Dwarf called Brandelwyn that I enjoyed but I was overwhelmed with the quality of the game play. The interface and the ability to control your character was so much smoother, responsive, and logical then Lineage 2. I remember at the end of my 10 day trial I was running around in the Elwyn Forest area when I got the message on my screen that the 10 day trial was going to end in a few minutes. It was a Saturday morning so I got on my shoes, drove down to a game store, and bought the WOW without thinking. I was hooked. I soon was up and running again and created my Human Mage who I decided to also call Trillion.

Even though I find WOW a much better game for me there are many things I do still love about Lineage 2. The look of the characters is much better in my opinion. No matter how much I like my Human Mage in WOW, I still would love to have the original Trillion in WOW. She was just so cute when she danced around. I found the following video clip on YouTube that shows some of their animations: