Shoveling time for Godzilla

Well It has finally happened folks. I am back home for the christmas week and it's the first time that I get to flex my ultimate muscles and shovel snow. I have been longing to shovel snow for the longest time because while being on campus and not having to shovel snow is fine. I have been shoveling snow for a greater portion of my life and during this time of the year I start to feel a great desire to shovel snow and put it in it's place. I become very OCD about shoveling snow in fact. So much that I refuse to use a normal shovel and I won touch a snow blower. I like my shovel because it is aptly called "the snow plow" it has an extended blade that is wider then a normal shovel and is basic in design but very effective because of the range that it has. I can't help but pity those who dont use the shovel that I do. I am not saying that they are stupid but they are doing more work then needed.  Regardless I have to say that the amount of lifting that I do now is little to none. Mainly because I just push every thing around. 

      Godzilla.

first friend.

My First friend is one who is still there. looking back we met in class and from there we have become kind of close. I cant go into to much detail of our relationship nor can I give the sex of said friend. It is only the feelings that I can state and still keep the identity of said person is that this perticular friend is a very unique indivugal who knows what excite and compell them and what will annoy the hell out of them.It isnt a thing that should be said but one cant really describe ones friends in secret with out revealing who they really are. but so far I am doing good to keep it a secret. but regardless I can say no more with out the aid of a revlation or looking in a dictionary. I am just to lazy for that and well I can say much more. Any way next week I am thinking of just doing a random blog. anyway Donut Look over this blog and see if you can figure it out. The next time you see me let me know who you think it is. 

 Godzilla

I forgot what my blog posting was suppose to be about (FFS)

So I'm blogging about Secondlife since that was one of our main focuses this semester. Secondlife is a confusing world to me, honestly. I think its genius what Linden Labs did to create such a realistic environment. Not only that, They created a virtual market. A market in which Big time corporations are taking an advantage of. Not only does this help or economy, Linden Labs is making a fortune. Its amazing that people can take something into nothing in Secondlife and make a whole city with it.

Secondlife is something i probably wont use in my future often but i find it very interesting and will continue to look into it and study it. Through virtual worlds there is great possibilities in our future market.

nautilus

One of the coolest places in Nautilus for me is The Market, a place where LDPW(Linden Department of Public Works) placed a nice selection of quality freebies. These freebies helped the people of Nautilus to keep the theme of Nautilus going. The theme is some what like Atlantis. Nautilus has some what of a Mediterranean and fantasy style mixed together.

Nautilus is known for its structures and sculptures. They cover the mainland of Nautilus. Through the heart of the city, a huge trench full of water flows to the ocean. Massive doors cover parts of the trenches to created some kind of effect of stabilization in the environment.

There are many more things in Nautilus, so i recommend going there on your own to experience it at the full effect.

Something I've Learned

Something i learned... I've been introduced to the study of new worlds, virtual worlds. Such as Video games, the Internet, Second life and other virtual environments. I learned of the term virtual identity and what it means. Virtual identity is created by the human user that acts as an block between the actual person and virtual person that other users see on their computer screens. Through virtual identity people can change there appearance, there personality, there sex, anything you can think of can be changed through virtual identity. People do this because they want to be someone different and this kind of behavior is accepted in virtual worlds.

I also learned basic concepts to higher education. For instance, proper citation and formats.

Nautiulus.

This sim in second life was a very interesting place to visit. The area was full of things that look to be from a lost civilzation, possible from the oceans. This place was a very large place that randomly apeared one day on Second Life. The land is un editable, but has more then the normal allowed items on it. The area aprears to be an "island" circled by sand beachers. There are docks and a raised city in the area aswell. The area also had some old time harbor near the sea. The zone looked very nice and seems to be a fun place to explore due to its secretive nature.

What ive learned this semester?

This being my first semester of College, I have learned a great many things. I have learned in this class many things about the virtual world around me and how it relates to the real world. I have learned how many important buisnesses use this world for money makeing reasons and how they improve the lifestyle of employes via online worlds. I have learned how many online games are not just games, but rather foundations for players creativity. Many examples of this come from Second Life. I have also learned how many of the real world elements are still true in virtual worlds. I have learned that leardership can be a part of a online group of people just like in everyday life. Most importantly, I learned that online worlds can be a great source of friends and socialization.

Counter-Strike: FTW

If you ever heard of Counter-strike or at least half life then you know that counter-strike has the highest game play in the world. Counter-strike in my book is one of the best first person shooters ever created. Counter strike is known for its quality of game play.

There is counter-terrorist and terrorist. The objective of the game is to defeat the other team. By doing so, first of all, you need to choose a team. (Counter-terrorist or terrorist) Depending on which side you choose determines what your objective is. If you choose CT side then your objective is to defend the bombsite. Your only goal as CT is to take out the other team, but if the bomb gets planted then your objective changes. Your goal is to defuse the bomb. If you select Terrorist side your objectives are to eliminate the other team and/or plant the bomb.

The game is complex in it self. There is alot to know to become "pro" at the game. You need to have discipline and coordination skills. You have to have a skilled hand so you can aim accurately.
You have to know the maps. There is a wide selection of maps that get played alot. Players tend to memorized that map because it is important in a Counter-strike match.

N64 Mario Kart

A classic game that is much loved by all who play. Nintendo 64's Mario Kart was released June 17, 1996. A game targeted to all ages is still played today. When I walk through St. Cloud State dorm rooms i see at least 2 dorm rooms per floor that have it. Many college students play Mario Kart. When i first came to college i was suprized that so many people own Mario Kart. Because of the phanomeon i became to love the game again. The game offers 8 different mario charectors to choose from. The player can choose from 16 different maps. You can eaither chooes race or VS a race type.

For the games time the graphics are exceedinly impressive. The game play is addicting and brings a social environment when played with others.

The release of Diablo 3

There has been a lot of speculation and controversy over the release of Diablo 3. Over the last two years Diablo 3 forums have arisen all over the Internet. Now for the people that don't know what Diablo 3 is, im here to tell you. The Diablo series has been around the mid 90's. Blizzard released the first Diablo game on November 30, 1996. Diablo is a Massive-multi online role playing game. The point of the game is to complete quests, find and trade for good items, and reach the highest level, which is lvl 80. Since the first diablo game was released blizzard came out with second one to the series. Diablo 2 was released June 29, 2000. D2 had a massive change in the game. The graphics where insanely better and the game play was just generally better. After d2 was released in 2000 the release, Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction was released. The expansion added a whole new set of quests and better items. The expansion also added to races of characters.

There is still no official release date for diablo 3. You can be updated through duggaming.com

Xbox 360 users and the new interface

Just last month, Microsoft released a new interface for the Xbox 360. It has a smooth interface that grabs the users attention. All options are devided up into sections which are easy to use. There is a new option realesed that allows you to pick and customize Avatars. After the avatar update, statistics showed a one day 650% increase in sales.

Larry Hyrb, Director of Programming for Xbox live stated, "it's harder to parse the source for this, as the user interface has improved overall, but Hyrb also notes that the number of new friends added per member has risen by 33%."

Ive really like the new update to the Xbox and think it was a great idea to do.

Late post #1: Singapore Funds Kalypso for Virtual Worlds Research

Kalypso Agency is located in both Connecticut and Singapore. The company is a virtual worlds market research company. Just recently the Kalypso agency has recieved funds through Singapore's Interactive Digital Media Office and the i.JAM initiative. The funds are to promote breakthrough products in the IDM space. Kalypso, which focuses on Second Life, is shooting to combine behavioral data with marketing metrics to help businesses track virtual world efforts. Its said that the company is tied to a program called Co-Space, "a five-hundred million doller fund from IDM to promote mixed reality and mirror world applications in Singapore."

Its said "We are delighted to receive the support of the Singapore government for our market research initiatives in the virtual world," stated Kalypso Co-Founder Nicholas Cameron. "There are more than sixty virtual worlds now and there is a fundamental need for quality marketing research, as this medium continues to grow." [via MRWeb.com]

Something I've Learned...

What is something I learned? Well, I wouldn’t limit down to one thing. I would say I leaned to look around and appreciate the world around me as a player in a game, instead of letting it just past me by as I rush to accomplish a mission or quest, or in a more social virtual world, to meet someone. I’ve also added a lot of screenshots these past few months because of this new found curiosity. I’ll add them when an area interests me and makes me think ‘wow, the developer took some time here’. I also learned about Second Life, I had no knowledge of it before I came to the class and got to add a new virtual world to my list of things tried. The class made me want to go back to other virtual worlds I had long since abandoned, and take another look at them. I got to explore my interests a little bit more and then write a little bit about my findings. It was nice to be able to look at things from a different point of view then I usually take. Overall, I found the class to be rewarding, and I enjoyed taking it. So thanks Prof. Twombly. =)

Guild Wars Geography (Another Late Post...)

(Screenshot: An example of being limited by the depth of the water, I can't go much further then that in the water, keeping me a distance from the wall)

So in Guild Wars there isn’t a measurement of geography per say, but there seems to be some sort of system. And the areas that a player explores depend on the expansion they own. In Factions the player will start out Ascalon City, and there’s a gate leading to Ascalon Academy, but that’s closed out until further in the game. A lot of the areas are gained by the player ‘walking’ around and exploring areas. As they do that, they can find outposts or cities that are unlocked on the full screen map. Besides, traveling by foot, the player can travel by clicking an outpost, point, or city/town, on the map and be ‘teleported’ there. Each city has its own surrounding explorable area. The cities act of safe places or rest areas as there isn’t combat there, it’s also where people can meet up and form parties for areas outside the outposts. That’s another thing; the areas outside the cities don’t have other players running around, unless they’ve joined the players’ party. The cliffs and hills are kind of like obstacles, unless the player can find some sort of path, up or through them, most of the paths lead the player around, causing them to explore more. Also the terrain changes as the player advances in the game, for example, Pre-Searing Ascalon kingdom, is different from Post-Searing Ascalon. In Post-Searing Ascalon everything is sort of charred and dead looking, and much of the water has a ‘tar’ effect on the player, making them slower in the water then on land. Water is also used to limit the player, the water usually is shallow enough so the player isn’t submerged, and the deeper parts are inaccessible. The ground is sometimes used to hide monsters/opponents, for example to scorpion like devourers, many of them are hidden in the ground and are triggered to come up and out when the player comes closer. I’m sure there is more to the geography, but this is a basic sum from the top of my head.

Nautilus (Another Late Post)

My first visit to Nautilus was with the class, we sort of just explored, and I listened to conversation to find which places to visit. Including that large crystal that had a life meter. But, it’s been awhile since then, so I decided to go on my own so I could make this posting. I decided to look around one of the areas of Nautilus called Elissa or something similar, I can’t really remember the name at this moment. Anyways, what first caught my eye was a rather large chess set. And oddly thought of ‘wizards’ chess’ from the Harry Potter series. This made laugh a little bit, because I’m a fan of Harry Potter and of course that’s what I would think of. =) Anyways after messing around with the chess board a little while, I continued to explore the sim. There were a lot homes there, and pieces of land for sale. There were also a few shops, and freebies too. It’s interesting to see what this place is becoming. There are even items under the water, and it seems a lot of the time this part of the sims is ignored. So here’s to watching for what Nautilus will develop into. I almost feel as if I should discover a lighthouse one of these times.

Article Response-Untapped Market (Late Post#3)

I believe the article makes a lot of good points when it comes to immersive workspaces in SL. It talks about only importing “PowerPoint presentations” or “existing content”, rather than taking advantage of the possibilities Second Life has to offer. Even though the article’s author is speaking against the immersive workplaces, they make sure to mention that they can’t fully make an opinion or at least it’s difficult to, without more information or a demo. I have to agree with that. Without being informed to an extent someone is comfortable with, it’s hard to come up with an opinion. I think the author did a good job of saying their views with the information provided and it seems to be a well-written article. Maybe I’m not making any sense, but this is my response to the article. They also mention that there are businesses that already use Second Life for the purpose of the workspaces, but many these businesses have employees that are already knowledgeable in Second Life and “past the learning curve”. This response may not make any sense, but it’s a collection of my reactions, and my mind sometimes works all over the place. And that’s basically it.

SL Politics (Late Topic Post #2)

I never realized how many political sims there were in Second Life, whether they be official or not. I visited both a McCain and an Obama one. They seemed a little plain, but both offered the same things. One could find information about the candidate, including links to speeches about their views. Many of the sims also offered Pro-canidate items for avatars in SL to show their views. Among the official sims were many unofficial sims. These sometimes included ones that had places for both candidates, but these were rare as most sims were biased. And though many of the unofficial sims were more decorative then the official, they many times offered less information. One sim in particular, though I can’t remember the location, had an object that linked to the Obama webpage and that was it. The rest of the location just contained Pro-Obama products for sale, many of which were not free. Now, I suppose that was good for the user who already knew about the candidates, or for someone who didn’t care to know, but it didn’t have much work put into it information wise. A user looking for information would be much better going to an official sim to seek the information they desired. All and all, I think Second Life is an effective way of presenting political information, as long as the sim focuses mainly on that. 

ok mabey that last one wasn't the last one.

*walks back into the room* 

   Before you say/think anything I am coming back because I figured that it will be a good place to write about random things that happen to me...besides I kind of like being free to write about what ever I want. Now freed from my previous restraints with only writing about virtual worlds. I suppose I can write about my friends and random things like that.....speaking of which I suppose I could talk about my friends for a while..........Lets see where to start.......

    Well let me start off by saying that my friends are always on my mind...It is a concept that I picked up when I was a kid by watching anime like Dragon ball Z and Gundam wing and in general cartoons like Angry Beavers and KAblam....ahh the good old days...any way I get most of my concepts and ideas on friendship. Like loyalty and honor and some how from watching hours and hours and hours of these cartoons I was able to learn how to read people to a certain degree and I can usually make pretty accurate assumpations about how they will recact towards somethings. There is an unfortunate down side to this as I have trouble reading myself and as such when I go over board and I wont know about it until they snap on me and then I get angry about that and then a fight starts. Its really unfortunate because I have never been any good at reading emotions. I can read peoples actions but not the emotions underlying that action until I have known them for at least a year or I have gone through a very hard time and bonded with them over something.  Any way I will tell you about them in more details as the need arisies but no names will be used....and Donut I dont know if you are going to follow this but if you do then be prepared to discover just how logicial I can be....

2Moons

So I haven't played 2Moons for quite a while cause of school and all, and last week I started playing again. At the time I started playing again I was level 84 and o% and now about a week later I'm currently at 86 and 42% which is kinda sad...this basically means I've been playing a LOT. This is bad because I should really be studying for finals, but anyway most of the time I'm playing its either farming vouchers to g to Dead Front or fighting in Dead Front. Vouchers are items that monsters drop and when you get 20 of one kind, you exchange them for a map which is manditory to get into Dead Front. Dead Front, itself, is kinda hard to explain. There are only 4 parties of 6 people allowed in at one time, which is why I normally only go later at night. There aren't nearly as many people there at night. All 4 parties are working together to get to a common goal, but there are LOADS of monsters you have to hack your way through to get to this final boss. I have only successfully finished Dead Front once, if the creators gave more time to get through it, I would have finished it multiple times, but no...they only give you 30min. So yeah theres my rant of 2Moons....enjoy! xD

Something I Learned...

I actually learned quite a few things in this class and most of it was about Second Life. First of all theres the basic stuff like creating my character's dimensions and getting good hair. Then I learned how to make different objects and upload images to the objects to make signs or advertisements. The next thing I learned was how to use my AO's without then constantly playing so that was pretty sweet. I don't know there was a ton of stuff we learned how to do, I'm constantly learning new things like how to use the different weapons you can get. I remember learning how to turn someone into a vampire, too. It's a heck of a lot more complicated than it seems, there's like..10 steps you have to go through in order to do it in the first place. That is why I have only done it once and honestly, I can't really even remember how to do it anymore. :D So yeah, I know there's more stuff I learned but I can't remember them all at the moment so yeah...that's all! :)

As the Curtain Falls...

       And now it all comes to an end, when everyone within the blog parts and says goodbye. As I sit and ponder, "What have I learned from these experiences?". After thinking back on the time our class started, I can't really think of something new I've learned, but I have learned to see deeper in a game or virtual world. 

    When I used to look at games, I would just examine the whole thing completed(like many others do). As the class started each day, the professor would challenge us to think beyond just a game and examine what it is individually. When I would put this to the test I would examine the coding of the game or virtual world. But as time slipped away and had ground my examination process to an almost art-form observation. So now I look at any and every game I play in a critical light, to see what the developers added to enhance the experience, and how it all comes together to complete the feeling of the game.

     Also, I've learned more about communities within virtual worlds through witnessing and becoming a part of the Second Life community (Which I add, is a nice and sociable "game"). I've learned why some people act like jerks, why many act so narcissist and why no one within an objective MMORPG( World of Warcraft and such) have nice and humble players to talk to.

     The biggest thing I've learned within the class is the fact that many real life non-game companies are using Second Life to hold meetings. School and colleges are also doing this, having virtual replicas of classrooms within the real world as humans listen to others through voice communication provided by Second Life or the chat boxes for ease in coping the assignment/lecture.

      All in all I've learned a lot in general about virtual worlds, from a sociable aspect, a coding/art-form aspect, and most importantly, a learning aspect. I enjoyed how the professor also made the experience while learning all this very fun,interactive, and of course worthwhile. Thank you all for enduring with me through the months and all of you have a great Holiday Break!

The Last One Forever

This time I come to you with a feeling of saddness because I have to now write to you about what I have learned..

    Let me start with the most basic thing possable because I know that almost everyone will say this with out even reading my blog..I learned that their is an online game called Second life. I also learned that it is really fun and entertaining if you have nothing else to do and or you are bored out of your mind. Another thing that I have learned from this class is that we have the WORST ADVISOR IN THE FREE WORLD...(let me take a minute to explain...not Twombly himself but our FYE advisor...if you already know about that experience then just skip down to the next caps locked letter. if not  then leave a comment and i will get back to you when possible.) 

   Now that I have gotten that out of the way the last thing that I learned was that blogging can be fun and informative especially when you need some ideas on what to write about for a paper. I cant say that this class has changed my view on MMORPGS/ MMOG and the such but I can say that if I had to take this class again I would do it with out a second thought cause it was fun and intresting playing in a class and actually getting away with it the whole time.  I dont know if you can tell from the blogs but I think that I have changed a little anyway... But that is a blog for another time...*walks out of the room laughing *

  GODZILLA

Trivial secrets

   Ever noticed when playing your games the amount (or lack there of) in detail of the area around the avatar? Most people, unless told to analyze it, will miss it completely and just focus on the garbage that nowadays are the "focus" of a game. Little to most of the gamer's knowledge, the subtle and beautiful designs are what make the player so drawn in by the experience.

   One such example is Diablo 2's walls and floor within a dungeon, I've witnessed many overlook how the walls are torn down and/or splattered with blood to help create the feel that the idea is dangerous and that death is around. It's simple to overlook because the players think of it as a dungeon crawler and that all to be had is just kill enemy after enemy to get new skill, rinse and repeat till bored( Which a lot of my comrades seem to think with games). The worst of it is the game developers must continue to create such sublime subtle details, knowing that gamers will completely overlook something like this.  As many would ponder from that statement, "why would game developers care then"? The answer is back in the topic, it creates the feel for the game and no matter the game, it's required to let the player enjoy the whole variety of the game better. 

   Indeed, this quality doesn't get it's own category for rating when a game is reviewed because it helps on all ends of the game. If the physics are great and the detail of pushing a box in a zero gravity instance,and it will react and hit a wall, AND return (Thus proving Newton's laws)! Then the player can thoroughly enjoy as the fine tuned detail makes the player giggle with glee and think it's all just physics. Or when a monster is killed instantly and instant of the body just dropping to the ground, the body sprays blood all over the person and sticks while the pavement has an in-print of when he was standing when the crimson shower occurred. While at monster slaying, when an enemy is felled within most games, they all die the same. Either a bladed weapon or a blunt eating utensil, the beast within most games will die EXACTLY the same. And the most common and probably easiest noted is the ambience sound. When sounds that are distantly heard join in tune with the music (if you don't listen to music in games, try it for once) to enhance the player's ordeal of the game.

    While most don't expect something to have such a dire effect on their gameplay. But with all that is truly affecting the player, the subtle and trivial effects add up to be something just as important to games as gameplay or graphics.

First 25man raid.

Our first 25man raid was completed this evening for my new guild. We killed the only boss in the current Obsidan Scantum with 18 people. We killed this boss after killing the four leaders of the alliance citys and each being awarded a war bear! The boss fight is very simple if you kill the three other dragons prior to the main boss. The less dragons killed, the harder the main boss will be. We killed all of the dragons to make it a simple and clean first kill. While we were very heal heavy and tank heavy, with only 5 or 6 dps, we managed to slowly burn 7.5 million heath in a quick and simple maner. I hope to see the fight again with increased difficulty in the weeks to come. More dragons means better loot, but im happy. Im looking at my new teir 7.5 gloves as I write this.

Opehlia's Introduction (Late Post #1)

A quick note about my method for completeing my late posts:
I'm probably going to do 2 or 3 a day until they're done. =)
Now, onto the blog....

Hey! I’m Ophelia Cooperstone. =) My name was taken from the Shakespearian play Hamlet. Anyways, I’m mainly based off my creator, with a little extra thrown in for fun. My personality and age are what we share. If you see me on Second Life I’m probably exploring some sim, I don’t talk to people on my own, but I do respond if they say something to me. I don’t share my creators’ appearance however. And my appearance is changed a lot! I usually am spotted with some sort of long hair, either in an updo, or down. And I wear a lot of dresses. In a way, I could be considered girly, but I don’t care. I hang out a lot in nature or fantasy sims, as I enjoy them, and sometimes I explore the ‘haunted’ sims, I enjoy those also. I tend go away from the highly social sims though, I’m not sure why, but I only like talking to people every so often, that doesn’t mean I won’t talk to someone though! I am open for that! =D I’m just an independent sort of person. My appearance usually takes on that of a human, but I have been spotted with wings. Why? Cause wings are cool…ha ha. =P Yeah, another thing I have in common with my creator, I’m quite random! It makes life more interesting. *shrugs* This has been a look into the mind of Ophelia Cooperstone, which isn’t very far off from Tangerine herself. =)

Precious Item

So I found this place that sells luxury houses on second life, and they're pretty cool. They basically go for around L$10,000 which it about $40.00. Honestly, I don't think I would ever pay that much money for one item on Second Life, but obviously there are some people who will so...yeah. Anyway, each house is different from one another but you can see similarities between them too. They're basically made of boxes, you know like, no rounded edges or anything. They have big windows and they kinda look like a house you would see in a rich area on the ocean, or up in hills. A lot of them also have windows in their roof and have swimming pools in the back. I’ve noticed that most of them also have decks/patios off the back and they’re all tan in color, like the walls are made of big slabs of stone. I remember when I visited my cousins in Arizona last time, I realized that their houses were made out of stone rather than wood or sheetrock or whatever. I guess that’s because the stone help to keep the temperature inside the house cooler than it is outside, so I guess that’s another reason why I think these houses look like they would be by the ocean, or something. It's kinda like someone’s dream house, I know I'd love to live in one in real life. :)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ScarletCreative/191/75/3/

Yay games! xD

So I lent Final Fantasy 8 and Final Fantasy 9 to one of my friends like...a year ago. She said she was gunna play them but I guess she got too busy and wasn't able to play them. She told me she most likely wasn't gunna be able to finish them any time soon and I wanted to play them, this was about 2 months ago mindyou ><. Every time I would ask for them back she was either busy, or didnt have them. Then I would forget about them for about a week. So I finally just called her one day and told her to get her butt over to my room and to bring my games, and now I have them back! WOOT!! Yeah, amazing story right? I try :) So anyway I've already finished FF8 and I'm about half way through FF9 'cause I love them that much. Yeah, that's about it for my rambling. :D

A Random Blurb About the Internet

If anything is true about the internet, it'd be that virtually every site out there is composed of text. In fact I have yet to discover a purely pictorial site, while I can't say the same about a textual site. As soon as someone starts to explore the internet they might realize how communicative it really is. Many of the forum sites I access regularly, are also accessed regularly by thousands of other members. With all this going on it's easy to get confused, and more so, learn something new. When I first started using the computer seriously myself, that was a long span of time, probably when I was in 4 or 5th grade, I didn't really think about it. It also seems the age group on the web is expanding in both directions. My longest active membership would have to be GaiaOnline. This site is pictorial and textual, and i find it to be enjoyable. It took me a few years to really get all I could do on the computer, and now it would be an understatement to say I've spent a large portion of my time posting whatever I want, as well as playing online games. It seems that only yesterday the computer was considered to be a once-in-a-while thing, and that if a person accessed the internet continuously some would say that person had no life. Now, with the development of social networking websites, that isn't necessarily true. So here’s to the internet, and its increasing growth!

Something Presicous this way comes.

Well as much as I don't want to I have no choice I have to write about something from a blog that

I thought was precious. The only Blog to actually catch my attention was the one about the dragons and how they are one big happy family. I beleive that they are special because it is family based and from what I have seen it really is a community. you guys can find it here. But I digress they are really a nice bunch of dragons who ( depending upon who you talk to ) are very friendly and will answer any and all questions to the best of their abilities. Their dragons are so cool and they also have a drawing for who gets the dragons and what not. I beleive that this is precisous because it shows that families can be connected through internet connections and the like. It also shows just how much people love dragons. By the way these dragons cost upwards of 3,000 lindens to buy. so they arn't cheap but once you buy one your in for life. 

any way that was it nice and short and sweet. Hope you enjoied it. 

  Godzilla.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/cathedral/125/20/97

Twombly this is the address

Politics in SL

Politics have a presence in secondlife, even if it is not a very large presence. Political parties may attempt to persuade undecided voters by doing a few different things. First, they may try to bring voters in by offering them free items, such as t-shirts or banners. Second, they may attempt to spam chat in many different zones. This has only happened to me once, and it was very annoying. Constant spamming of pro-mccain ads. Obama will raise taxes! And then kill your first born! All lies. Personally, i think that political campaigns in second life are fairly pointless, as people who go to the places that the political parties own most likely have already made up their mind on who to vote for. I didn't, however, mind getting a free tshirt and banner out of going to Obama'a campaign spot.

O' My pretty Precious!

While wandering the world of Second Life, I noticed a great variety of items. Among the things I like, I absolutely love dragons, all shape,sizes, and types. The area in which I find them is also well done, millions of prims are used to create an atmosphere that's beyond some damned area with a few billboards. The seller also shows off what the product looks like as well as what it will do and look like. The Sim is called Cathedral, in the Isle of the Wyrms.
As much as I love when people use their creativity to make something awesome/beautiful, it fails to surpass my love for Dragons. This group( I say group for the reason that I feel no one soul could create something so grand!) has more than just a single dragon object, they have an array of scaled beasts that range from the tiny and somewhat cute whelps, to the dragons which are available as a mount or statue. And with each, they have different purposes/responses to interaction and inactivity, such as the whelps will sit on the character's shoulder and unleash some puffs of smoke. The dragons, from what I read in the library( that is stationed just on the side of the area in which the Eggs to "rise" your own dragon is), can fly quickly through the skies with your AND another on it's back as it breaths flames. Pictures to show it's proof are within the books in the library, which brings me to another point about the area, instead of billboards clogging the skies and flashing, they cleverly make a library and signs pointing to it to tell the character where to go to learn about the dragons. And in the library are actual books that when clicked on will turn the page to allow someone to feel like they are reading about a beast within an old age Cathedral! Something that rose my curiosity is that in the big room were eggs of the dragons, when clicked opened a menu to learn about that specific type. Also the menu allowed the player to see if the Whelp,Dragon, or hybrid was available,price, and even what the product looked like in full scale in the center for all to see. I noted over 12 different eggs that sported this ability, and behind them, a giant book said everything about the selected dragon at the time.
Alas, from what I scanned from the glorious area, even the whelps, the smallest and cheapest of the bunch, are 600 Lindens just for the generic fire or ice ones. The price on ones such as Spirit and Shadow rose to anywhere between 700-900 Lindens. The dragons I only noted the Tiamat (from what I know, it's the Goddess Dragon) Dragon was over 1000 Lindens. I was unable to find any price on the hybrids, which interested me to see what they were like but I couldn't dream of being a half-breed monster.
As it seems, in Second Life many see these beautiful beasts as the most precious thing in all of SL and I would have to agree. It's due mostly to the fact that I couldn't stop drooling as soon as I entered the giant building so well done. The Dragons themselves bring a twinkle to my eye as I stand before all it's artisan crafted glory and an easy and fast interface before purchase only shows that these creations are so well defined and professionally made that every Linden is worth it in my opinion.

The Season Changing Trees at Kenroku

After visiting New World Notes and looking at the precious items post, I decided to look at the trees at the region Kenroku. These trees are nice looking, so I can see why they’d be popular, there were two comments on the blog about them in fact. I found the cherry blossom tree to especially alluring. There are several other trees there, including maples. There are even trees that have falling snow. The cherry blossoms had petals falling down from the branches. There is a shop where the trees can be purchased, where I found the cherry blossom tree, which offers a nice variety. Also, I believe the trees are positioned around the sim. I saw a lot of trees with falling leaves as well as a few Christmas trees. The sim looks like it would be an interesting place to visit too. When I didn’t notice the shop after first arriving, I noticed a path instead. This path led through threes, and I presume to more shops or a garden, or maybe even someone’s land, since the land is group owned. The trees themselves cost around one thousand Lindens. I didn’t explore very much of the land, because I have serious lack of Lindens, but someone else might find something they like and can afford there. The SLurl can be found below:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kenroku/60/26/51

Precious Things in SL.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dejavu/39/42/22/

The location that I visited during class was a place that sold a special item called the Tornado Hud. This item seemed to be something that the player could equip and wear on their bodies. The item had a very special feature. The item can summon a Tornado from the sky and allow the user to control it. Aside from the standard funnel of the storm, sound effects, rain and, lightning are present. The item even has scripted items that can be destructable buildings that can be spawned in the path of your Tornado. I believe this item to be the most precious item to me because of my love for the weather and the fact that it is most likely what I am majoring in. The item and a demo of it can be found at the link above, it sells for a price of 1700 Lindins.

the most precious thing in SL

There is a place not so far away that sells all things dragon and dragon related. This place is called the Isle of Wyrms.  This area has 25 sims devoted directly to it and other related areas. These sims are devoted completely to dragons. Here they sell dragon avatars, dragon pets, dragon eggs, and many magic items. Most of these items are very expensive, but very elaborate. Many would argue that these are very precious indeed, but some would say that they are just useless junk. The most popular of these items are the full body dragon avatars, which breath fire and are animated. The cost of these are 1200 lindens, or $4.69 in USD. I personally think that this is a fairly reasonable price for something as elaborate as this. the URL for this place is http://slurl.com/secondlife/cathedral/123/229/106/

My most precious item

SLurL Link to Item on SL

As i was reading the blog from New World Notes, I found a link that indicated a precious item called "Black Swan."   Through this link it took me to a place in Second life where i found items that where considered "Precious Items."  I browsed the area and found many "Precious Items."  One item really caught my eye.  Its a statue of an angel on its knees with his wings spread out and arms behind its back.  The item is called "Light Waves Angel without Base Medium."  The item cost L$29500 which is roughly one-hundred and six dollars ( $106 USD). 

I've concluded that the reason why this item cost so much is because it is quite a massive object.  But more importantly the detail of the Angel is very good.  You can see every muscle structure,  every feather of the wings, and every detail in the face.  It is a very good piece of work but obviously very expensive to own.  "Light Waves Angel," is currently owned by a user named "CounterFactual Fizzle."  Not sure where the name came from LOL.  

I find my self wondering why in the hell would anyone pay that much money for something they cant even use....  It is a beautiful piece of work and could be placed in multiple areas in Second Life. 

Gaming madness

This is the only time that I will be talking about the massively multi player game known as World of Warcraft. Now having never played it myself I can't say too much and be taken seriously by the rest of the gaming population. But from what  I have seen and heard of the world so far has promoted me to start this rant. 

The first thing that I want to say about this game is that it can destroy a persons life. A friend of mine told me that his friend actually stayed up for three days straight and played it only stopping to eat and go to the bathroom. That is a sad statement to say the least. 

  The next case I bring forward is that even though playing World of Warcraft in a way promotes social gathering's it does so in almost a negative way. By pulling people in and creating an addicting game that can destroy someones life if they haven't got any shred of will power in their body. Blizzard is almost as bad as 4Kids  in my opinion, but much more dangerous due to the fact that 4Kids doesn't have nearly the same amount of fans and followers as WoW does. 

Ok and then the final thing that I am going to say before I end this blog in a most dissappointing mannor. Because of WoW video gamers world wide have been branded as people who sit in their parents houses at the age of 34 and play WoW in the basement. But mostly I think that......well I dont know what I think any more...Its 8:41 in the morning and I have no Idea wheather or not I have just kicked up a hornets nest or if I am screwing with a hedge hog. Either I am about to die or I am safe... time will tell.....any way Talk to you all later Godzilla.

Your blood is my trophy...

This is old stomping ground for me, the first person shooters (FPS) games. I recalled playing counterstrike 1.6 and other Half-life based competitive shooters. The community that revolves around these games are the single reason I left the games. Most people that play an FPS that I would encounter either had a very short temper or had an attitude that rivaled a 13 year old (or were of that age).
But among the community, achievements and respect are earned not from being sociable or well-known, but for how many have been slain and how well the character can dodge a helping of lead. And if that's not enough, there are stats that involve the victories of the bloodbaths and stack them versus how much the player is a meat shield(their deaths), and make the Kill-to-death ratio percentage. That lone percentage is so crucial in these communities, it's almost as important as the number the government labels a person with, only thee percentage can change depending on how well someone can do, basically the measure of someone's skill within the game.
Normally, I would agree to something like the ratio, but when weapons of different powers and other factors don't affect the percentage, then it's not a true measure of the player's skill. As an example, Player1 (P1) plays with normal powered weapons and with most of the people doing same, no overpowered instant kill guns. While Player2 (P2) plays with the weapons that guarantee an instant kill with little drawbacks, and plays with people that P1 would play against. Obviously P2 would dominate the game and kill almost everyone while P1 would have a bit of trouble killing just one person. And before the comment of "It's skill that determines who's best" I've already called BS, and my proof is the AWP from Counterstrike (any version really). It's a Sniper true, but when someone shoots a toe to kill a people instantly, the Army needs to start researching how to make AWP's in real life.
Another ratio FPS fans like is the kill per minute. Again, I would normally accept the stat, but this is against the clock rather than the other players. Looking back to the first example, when P1 kills all his foes, he takes at least five shots before he can claim a kill unless he gets the head shot and then it's a quick kill. But since he is an average gamer, he can't pull off the head shots and takes about ten seconds for a kill. On the other hand, P2 can look at a player and they are dead, it's instant and takes only a second. His kills are going to be alot higher than P1's kills, therefore his kills per minute will be higher than P1's, just like the kill-to-death ratio, except it's a much bigger difference between the two players.
I guess this time, the rant wasn't targeting an audience of gamers (go figure...), rather their idea of ranking. As I speak of ranking, FPS ranks aren't alter by the guns as well. P2 will still have a higher rank than P1 for the sole fact P2 can spatter anyone with one hit and P1 needs to actually try and has a fair chance (dear *insert divine figure* no!) of death. And the icing on the cake is I found the only thing to prevent this is other players calling P1 a noob. Last I checked, muting and ignoring features prevented that and if he remembered that in grade school we were taught stick and stones proverb...

Virtual meetings

Having a meeting over the internet has several advantages to a meeting in person. For one, people don't have to be worried about how they present themselvs or how they look when useing a virtual avatar. This allows for people to work and get the job at hand completed without these issues. Also, use of internet for meetings allows for little to no racism to take place. People can choose to hide their identity if they choose and not show who they are in real life. This allows for people to act and do their work without fear of interference.

Naxxramas

Naxxramas is the first of the new set of raids released for the Wrath of The Lichking Expansion. This is the easiest of the new raid content and is a revamped version of the orignal 40man instance. This version is for 25 or 10 people and is on a weekly reset. Naxx is one of the best designed raids ever in wow history and alot of fun. Alot of the abilitys used in the Burning Crusade raid content come from this very instance. I believe that blizzard did a great job trying to allow for more people to experience this content. After clearing all but Kel'thuzud, I believe this to be sofar, my favorite raid instance. Hyjal can go to hell.

Alone for the holidays.

This thanksgiving I chose to stay on campus and I had a really good time. I didn't have to worry about anyone else and I could stay in my room all day and not worry about anything. I had some time to my self and thus I started playing a video game known as Grandia 2. This game has nothing to do with Grandia 1 or Grandia 3 in fact this game is all alone in the world of Grandia. But I digress in my gaming rants. Thus I must say two things about this game. It has a good plot line to it and the second thing is that it has this one boss that has been unanimously declared that this single boss is the TOUGHEST BOSS EVER TO BE CONCIVED OF IN ALL OF GAMING HISTORY........that has been proven....but anyway the story follows the character called Ryou. He is a mercenary who has been drafted to protect a priestess by the name of ......well I forget and dont want to look it up..... any way I was saying that as they progress along into the world of.....again I forget.....they end up fighting against a demon that I have also forgotten. look I dont really remember about this game ok all I remember is that there is this one boss about half way through the game that is impossable to defeat.......IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!!! it pissess me off more then any other game in the known world even more then the Bible Game!!!! and that is saying a lot....anyway I will come back when my memory is working better...

  Godzilla

THE FURIES OF A THOUSAND CAPSLOCKS!!!

Oh goody, another Donut rage about how people on the interweb suck, get ready folks!
Not really this time, it's more about how the virtual world uses special symbols and combinations to such emotions and feelings that normally the tone of voice would do. Such as many people see when my title is read, normally everything in capslock would mean that I'm furious or mad at someone/thing. For the most part it would make sense, but with the keyboard flaw ( the capslock by the a which is commonly hit) it can be misunderstood which will ruin a conversation very easy.
So when someone is yelling, something is in capitals, and when the person is talking normal, it's exactly what I'm typing. But then what is used when a whisper is intended? Most would used something to the effect *whisper* which if the virtual world doesn't have emotes then it is also used for emotes such as *sigh*, which is very common (check my his last blog's title if you don't believe him...). That's mostly for roleplaying unless it can enhance someone's statement, such as the sigh.
Since the subject of symbols and emotes, the one that took me the longest time to learn was the smiley. I would have never thought of making a face from a colon and other symbols to create a vast array of faces to express people. Faces aren't the only thing that can be made, for example, a < and a 3 can mean a heart, which shows the writer's love or coy within the sentence. The final thing that was developed for speed was acronyms such as brb,afk and most common lol. All have meanings that all Internet taught people know, and are used for quick understanding and laziness. Other uses can be w/, w/o, and j/k which all use the backslash and are very common. The letters are words that combined to make a phrase or word that makes sense, for example w/o is WithOut(the capitals are to show). It's morphed into other such and create ...1337 speak.
But it's unstoppable, everyone is infected by it and use it as a daily and accepted way. And for most of it, the symbols and emotes are fine since they invoke the emotion of the writer to replace facial/body gestures and voice volume. But the 1337 speak and other garbage is almost unacceptable, which only provokes laziness and removes the writer's emotion and diminishes their vocabulary.

Ningen Interaction?! *sigh*

Hello all once again, I hope you all had a great thanksgiving. While at the dinner table, my family and I were talking about random events and how some people acted according to it. Which prompted the thought to me, "What would force the whole Internet civil, and why does everyone act as they do?" Obviously, the real world and the online world both react differently and interact differently form the same person, but why exactly?
I've pondered this myself for years now, and more than three of my older posts can be linked to this for support. Whenever someone engages another in the real world, it's a nice conversation with introductions and polite and proper English (most of the time...),but when a human interacts with another human in the virtual world, the reaction more than 90% of the time is different. In the virtual world, the people will normally attack the most crucial area of the virtual world they are in and say something vulgar and then a flame war will start.
Most people want to interact with those who use the former method on the Internet , rather than the latter. The reason I think most people act as they do is that it's not the person who is using the words, it's their avatar. After the avatar's reputation is destroyed, the person may just discard it and create a new one and have a clean slate; while in the real world, a person must be cautious of their word choice since they cannot shed the labels that an avatar can. Therefore, the person must choose how people will see them and then must act accordingly.
Though most are filthily mouthed people, some can actually hold a decent conversation, which I found on Second Life. If you've read some older material from me, you'll know I look at the code and construction rather the completion. I was wondering the area one day and came across a place which didn't shelter the same attention grabbers that most places do. This land had many areas that used many effects and scripts which gathered my attention (Yeah I fell for a buried key jiggle...). As I was marveling over everything, a co-owner came to me and noted I liked what I saw, and we conversed for nearly 20 minutes about his sim and all the great figures that I drooled over. The matter of speech was astonishing, the man was easily pegged as a gentleman, his grammar and spelling perfect.
After a while I had to ask why he was so perfect in his spelling, and his responds startled me! He acted that way because that's not only how his avatar was built but that if he did like all other people, his avatar's reputation would be tainted. My only response I could muster was that if it was bad he just create anew and transfer most of his stuff, but without a beat he replied that was the cowards' way and that there should only be one true avatar. I was so awe stricken I couldn't ask him a single other question.
But in a whole, most people aren't to active to talk in an online game. Of course if it's a role playing, then the conversation will hit off but only to the game/quest/toilet monster each are interested in. If it's just for making conversation and having a royal good time, it will most likely " only be found within chat rooms and programs designed for that", as will most people tell you to go when you ask them, "Dum---!"...

Virtual Meetings

Ok this time for my blog I figure I will talk about something from class. Twombly talked to us about how we are able to talk to people in a virtual world easier then  we can in real life. For obvious reasons. The first one being that (from what Donut said) is that it takes out the person to person interaction because it is just a digital representation of ones self in a virttual world. So (like I said ) If you piss the other person off you dont have to worry about being hanged from your ankles off the side of a building.  I remember that I went back into second life after class and I explored second life and I remember that it was true because I would talk to almost anyone in a virtual world. Just to talk to them actually, that and the fact that my personality is very sociable. Aside from that I remember  that this is suppose to be about a virtual world so I figured that talking about this would count. But any way my conclusion is that meetings in a virtual world are easier because there isn't any actual face to face contact.

Wrath of The Lich King:Level 80!

Last week on Wednesday, I hit level 80. In, the level grind was very easy and alot better then that of Burning Crusade. The Quests at higher levels were VERY lore based, and this added alot to the game. The two end zones, Icecrown and Storm Peaks were well designed and very fun to play in. Icecrown was my favorite because of the amount of quests involving Arthas, past and present. I started running heroic's over the weekend and can say that most are much harder then the normal varients. For example, heroic Occulus is very hard and took hours before we finially killed the last boss. The concept of that instance is fun at first, but very annoying after wipeing many times. The way badges are handled this time around allow for people to get good pre-Naxx level gear and an offpiece of their Tier 7 set. There are two verisons of the badge tokens, one for Raids and one for Heroics. This allows for people who progess in raids to get better gear over people who just run five man instances. Comeing soon, I'll write a blog about my first venture into Naxxramus!

Wrath...need i say more?

well...wrath of the lich king has been out for over a week...and boy, is it amazing. Only starting WoW after BC came out i cannot compare this release with the burning crusade release, but i can state that i have played through the burning crusade content and wrath pwns face compared to it. In the burnin crusade, all of the quests mainly followed two or three different plots. plot one: kill these things. plot two: collect these things. Every once in a while they mixed it up and told you to talk to this guy, who then tell you to kill these things. Wrath completely changes things up. The quests are actually in-depth and are fun to complete. An example of this is that earlier today i did a quest to free soldiers form coccoons. There were many of these coccoons stewn about, but not all of them contained soldiers. Some of them contained spiders. That kill you. When freed, these soldiers did not simply say "thanks" and despawn, they came out, gave you a paladin blessing, healed you, then said something like "hey, there are wounded soldiers that i should be helping, good luck." it was awesome. I'm very excited to hit 80. I want that t7 gear. lol. i just realized its only 330 AM. plenty of time to continue lvling. (lvl 77 atm)

Feeling like a gamer

Well now its finally happened......I have become a seasoned gamer who has little to no taste in any of the games that are coming out these days. I have long feared this day and I always wondered about what I would do if this day came......Now that I am in college I find myself at the pinnacle of my gaming career and thus I wonder if it is time for me to put down my gaming controller and just accept what has become of my life. But I have been able to find a game that makes me feel like I am not such an old gamer. It is called Katamari Damacy. A game that when I first got it I thought that it wasn't going to be as good as it was. Boy was I wrong I must say that this game is a good one and its very simple to play you just use the analog sticks. I really did like the music for the entire game. It is a very simple game and a simple plot line with a great music score. It is refreshing in this world of games that happenes to be kind of stale and boring. But it makes more sense then anything else.  I dont know I have nothing to really write about and I have been busy but really I can't imagine anything else to write about. 

ZOMGWTF Hype!

Why do I tempt the rage of fans? Like two of my colleagues on this blog have been talking about, the next installment of World of Warcraft is out and people are in hysteria. The Wrath of the Lich King is one of the "yearly installments" Blizzard has promised it's peons and for once, they actually delivered. No, I'm not going to talk about it ( remember, I'm not affected by keys jiggling), instead I want to talk about the online reaction to a virtual world.
For the people who actually read all of the blog, hype and fans are about, so to study them is not hard. In fact, it's almost an extra credit project waiting to happen! Back to the point, when a new game comes out that's been talked about and shown trailers for about a year, people lose all sense of Intellect. In the case of Wrath of the Lich King, I can agree from what I have noted, that the people are in the right for saying that it is well done. But if it's just another sequel that the developers used the copy paste button on for anything other than the story, it's just a killing frenzy when reality and sanity sparks into the fray of the game.
Everyone in the gaming community knows about the fanboy/girl, they are commonly seen in anime and magna conventions squealing at anything that they see cool. In that genre, it's acceptable, but in the gaming community it's a different story. If someone has been after a game for such a long time, and when it eventually comes out and turns out to fail( what's new Donut ¬_¬?), the fans will defend the game to the death, trying to hide the bad with excuses.
Such is only one example of hype, the other is more dangerous and yet even more annoying. This also involves fans defending/praising the garbage that sanity would look at and holler "Next!". Within the whole community and history, the best example is... Final Fantasy 7.(If your blood pressure just rose because I just named your favorite game, I've been talking about you...) This game has the biggest fan-base of any game, it's pronounced "the greatest game evar" but when asked why, only pauses come up and stares. Final Fantasy 7 is only one example of any of the hype, if the game can't stand on it's own and shine without a mouth calling it the best, it is not the best and the internet will give sanity no quarter in the battle.
On a final note, everyone has fallen victim to hype at one point or another, it's just what and how defiant they choose to be. And if you want to attack me on this post know this, it makes you a fan and only proves my point. Also, it will help with next week's post about nerd-rages, so feel free to prove me and sanity right.

Wrath of the Litchking: Weekend review.

The next expansion hit Thursday of last week. With just the weekend to experience the game, I allready greatly prefer this expansion over the last. The zones are much more beautiful and much more time was put into the quest layout. All of the quests are divided into specific quest hubs that are all linked by the flight path system and the quest description is worded alot better then Burning Crusade. The quests reward much more gold and items then the first expansion and are alot more fun to complete. The zones are huge compaired to others and have many things for players to do. The intances are short and to the point and not hour long hell's that plagued Buring Crusade. The capital city of Dalaran is smaller then Shatrath, but much better designed. All of the vendors actually have a purpose and the city feels "alive". More reviews to come when hit 80.

Northrend: Geography

The Geography of World Of Warcraft is very in-depth and beautiful. The land is divided into four servers each holding chunks of the world. The original game takes up two of the servers, and each of the expansion packs has its own server. The land it self is divided into zones each for a specific level. The original zones are kinda bland, but the expansion zones are beautiful. My favorite sofar is Howling Fjord. This place is a penisula that sits high on cliffs overlooking the ocean. It has a very Minnesota feel with snowy northern regions and temprate grasslands. The zones themselvs are used for questing as the players progesses and each has their own story line or is apart of the main story. The major diffrence in Wow and Second Life is that the zones can be be reached at any speed with very little frame rates issues. The only problem with the way Blizzard sets up how the land is divided, if a server crashes, those players are stuck untill it comes back online.

Soul Reaver

Alrighty, so I've been playing this game called Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver for the Playstation 1. It's actually a really good game. I haven't played it in a loooooong time because it used to confuse the CRAP out of me. It's one of the action/puzzle games that if you don't have a walkthrough handy, you'll have NO idea what the heck you're supposed to be doing next. There are times that - even with a walkthrough - I still get confused and it takes me hours to get to the next step, and then once again I get confused. Most of the time it's actually my fault I get confused casue I just skim through the walkthrough and I skip stuff and...now I'm getting off track-anyway! Yeah, so Legacy of Kain! Good game, but the other thing that bugs me about it is because since the settign of the game is in the 'underworld' everything is so freaking DARK! NAd no, not theoretically or whatever its called, I mean literally. The only way i see where the heck im going half the time is by turning off all the lights in my room and closing the blinds so there is no glare on the TV screen, and even then I sometimes have trouble seeing where I'm going! xP Ok, enough ranting from this one...I'm done! xD

Virtual Geography

One thing I've come to notice in 2Moons is that every different region you enter has a different sort of geographical layout. When you make a new character, you have a choice to start in one of two areas, either Braiken Castle, or Loa Castle. As you've probably figured out, they're both castles, (no crap right?). Each castle has a completely different layout, but the basic framework of the city is the same, which...now that I think about it...is kinda disappointing. Well, whatever, enough about the cities, on to the more...important stuff. In many of the areas in 2Moons, I've noticed that most of the large hills or cliffs that you can't walk over are used to either mark the edges of the region, or they're used as obstacles that force you to explore the region more. Some of the areas are shown as having a tropical climate with palm trees, green grass, and beaches, and the monsters seem to add to that effect. Other areas are shown as having a winter climate with snow and ice covering the entire region.
I don't know, thats basically how I've seen the geography used: to create boundaries and obstacles, or to differentiate between seperate regions...so yeah...that's all from me!!

virtual yearning.

Have you ever felt an urge one day to play a video game that you haven't played in years? I have gotten that feeling once before, well actually more then once. I have recently gotten the urge to play a turn based game from watching my friend Alyssa play her game Final Fantasy Taticts. But the Game I choose was called saiyuki journey west. ( see two blogs ago.) I remember  a couple of years ago that I was feeling a yearning for an old game with some memorable characters in it. So I picked up my old game called Grandia. This time I got farther then I did before and I made it to the last boss but couldn't surpass him...( Fail) so I put it down. 

    My Theory behind this is connected to the body. You know when you get a strong craving for some type of food that you haven't eaten in years? well I believe that the brain is looking for some sort of sustenance in the form of  video games.. No I don't mean that when you get a cravings for some food that you should play a video game . you should go out and get the food that you want. But when you start remembering your old video games that is your brain trying to help you to remember the good time from your past. This theory I believe can only be applied to serious gamers however. Because serious games will have a vast collection of games to choose from and some of the games will be liked and other games that they don't like as much. Casual gamers who have less then twenty games to choose from probably wont get that feeling unless they become strongly attached to their games.  I have done nothing with this theory and I don't really plan on doing anything but I figured that I would let you guys know about it. This blog in my opinion (Twombly this is for you) is two fold because it talks about virtual worlds and memories. If I wanted to I could talk about warriors orochi 2 so I guess I can to make you happy. 

  Warriors Orochi 2 is a sequel to warriors Orochi. now I am not a big dynasty warriors fan but I do like the theme that its you against hundreds of thousands of enemies. In warriors Orochi the serpent king Orochi was freed from his dimensional prison and then he uses his demonic powers to fuse together two time periods. The feudal era of japan and some war torn area of china and have the strongest warriors of those times fight him. In the beginning Orochi kicks everyone's ass and then the game picks up. In warriors Orochi 2 the game takes place after his death and you ( as one of the 4 story lines.) are either trying to prevent his resurrection or if you choose to play as Orochi which would be the fifth story line. You will be taken back to the first one where you play as Orochi and conquer all the lands. Personally I don't like the Orochi line because from playing the first mission I knew that it would not end well. 

   Let me explain something about the Orochi series first before I list off the reasons why I don't think that it will end well. The first thing that you should know about is that you are given three characters to play as where in Dynasty warriors or Samurai warriors you only play as one character. Each character is divided up into one of three classes. Power, Technique and Speed. Obviously Power characters can dish out the pain as well as become tanks if you level them correctly. The technique characters are able to utilize the masou gage to its fullest while also having the quickest recharge time and speed classes are the fastest ones and they can also do a double jump to cover more ground quickly. Like most games if you lose as one team mate then you fail the level. It makes sense because it forces you to use the other characters. Any way the range of fighting styles is HUGE. I mean from 90 plus playable characters you best have a wide variety of fighting styles. You have your spear users and your staff welders and your archers, gunmen, fist fighters, umbrella users, fan fighters. walking cane fighters, people who use a deck of cards, scythe fighters and scythcle fighters, hammer fighters, Axe weilders, A girl who fights with two giant marbles. The list goes on and on. 

  Anyway the reason that I say I dont like the Orochi story line is because Orochi has a scythe which you would think would be good for crowd fighting but its not...I dont like short range fighters but I am not opposed to using one if I absoultly must. My favorite character is Zhao Yun because he is so cool. That and he can wipe out a screen full of enemies really quickly. 

Any Way this Blog has been a little random but you know what I dont really care. There are only three people that I know of who read our classes blogs so its not like I have to impress anyone. So more coming soon from your friend.

  GODZILLA

Geography in virtual

OK  so I am going to talk about the landscape in a video game called "The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind". This world is a beautiful and emersive and very expansive. With a real similuated sky and the mountians are beautiful with an expansive canyons. It is very diverse land filled with monsters and humans. The names are vauge to me but if my memory is correct it is done according to the legends of the land. But I have not played the game in so long that I dont even know. :) I do remember that there was this one village that had mushroom houses. a back story to that would be that I was a thief in the game and a very very good one too. I had like two store houses at the time when I came across this village and well I decided to do a little "recon" of the area. I broke into a house while the owner was there and they were sleeping. By this point I was tired and needed a place to drop my loot off when I needed to...long story short I killed the owner of the house before he got to the door and the house is now mine. :) thats all there is to that story though. No more, no less. I must say however when I wasn't killing off random people for their houses and fighting against monsters I was traveling by foot exploring this huge land. I find that the similarities to the real world are so much alike that I would just sit and watch the sun rise on the land .

 Any way I will be back with more soon 

  GODZILLA

All hail the Land we....fall...through??

Whenever I play a game, I have to first test if the physics team got the character movement right. When someone mentions geographic land within a virtual world, I have to think back to how many (if any) times I either fell through the world or got stuck on a slight incline, or how bumpy the area is. Within the good ol' comparison (Because all of you can't get enough of it) of Second Life (SL) and World of Warcraft (WoW).

WoW in itself is a good game because it actually took it's time to brush it's teeth before it was slung out the into the real world. Therefore, the landscape is rich and smooth, very few world holes (area in which the avatar can fall through the world and die/float around forever. But when I say very few, I don't mean every now and then a character will instantly disappear on a nice golden brick road, it's when someone tries for an area that's not normally taken or shouldn't be used. I would personally know this from when I used to try to get to random places in order to have fun/ cure boredom/ show the blizzard team what's what!! But when it's broken down, the avatar is just tacked to the ground and walks around on an invisible trail and when they jump it just registers as move character box and sprite up a few and make it seem like they can jump.

Second Life on the other hand chooses to be goofy with the ability to detach the avatar from the ground and make the virtual sky it's home. The land for one is broken up into sims and sections that can easily make cracks and loopholes that people are just waiting to fall through. When creating something, the item can be placed within, in, or even under the land and if done right, can force the avatar under and through the whole ground to fall endlessly through. So, removing the creation variable from the equation, a normal virtual user would see that it's almost like the land of WoW, minus some weird areas. And yet, the biggest factor that is why I chose these two (yes, I choose my comparisons with care and thought...) is that the fact that at any time and point, the player may push the jump key and gone is land! Like stated above, WoW has characters tacked upon the land. Second Life, has the character as a free-moving object and can with enough force/determination/stupidity can fall straight through the ground.

All in all I think that games should check for anyway the player can break their barriers they set. Second Life nor WoW shouldn't place invisible walls, that's just lazy and tacky of a designer, but they should at least test to see if someone can fall through something and if so, how. It's not a bad thing, but it makes them seem more professional as well as gather respect from someone such as myself (who actually looks for ways to fall through and know a little about how they make the landscape).

Here comes Capt. Econ

When people think about economy, they would think Wall Street or the Stock Market. When I think Economy, I think trade and exchange rates, real world or virtual. Of course this is a shallow lead-in of what I'm talking about (no witty humor on Mondays sorry) is Virtual economies of many MMOs.
A lot are very similar in a sense so I'll stick to major markets of World of Warcraft (WoW) and Second Life. These two are different enough. Second Life conducts in shops and off-line trades, while WoW uses the auction house to trade between players in EBay style bidding. Although, both deal with a human player interacting with another human player for an item in exchange for game currency (or in some more illegal trades, real-life currency).
The only real difference between the two is that WoW's auction house trading is conducted within the virtual world and only the virtual world. While Second Life users can exchange through an Non-Player-Character(NPC) style shop which is created by another user to sell their mechanise within the game, quick and simple. The other way is by placing the item on "Xstreet" or more commonly known as SLExchange. With SLExchange, it's "offline" by not dealing within the game, but can just as quick and easy as the NPC shop method. SLExchange just mimics Amazon.com rather than EBay by not including bidding.
Another big difference is that in Second Life, when someone creates something, they "own" it and are able to copy and redistribute it as much as they wish within the game, to whoever. Therefore, When someone buys something from the shop, the item will not run out of stock because it contains endless copies within it, and same for SLExchange. WoW, on the otherhand, does not give ownership to anything the player "has". If a player finds a great item within the game and wants to sell it, they only have that one item and after it's sold, there are no more until another is found/bought. Which is why the EBay method is perfect for that economy, EBay in real life is used by human beings with (normally) only one item and bidding for it would make the price go higher and make the item worth more.
Out of both, I would think in a perfect society, the Second Life way of things would be so much better, but due to such a mess the economy is right now, the WoW style would somewhat mimic the economy and fall. At this time in the way of the market, I could only advise Second LIfe's gentle (and hippie) method.

Mother Shahraz

Mother Shahraz is the first boss in the 25man raid instance, Black Temple, That drops tier 6 loot. This boss is normaly a simple tank and spank with a few fun twists. First, the boss does alot of shadow damange. To be able to even last more then a few seconds during this fight, players need max shadow resistance. Any less then max will result in players being killed very quickly. The reason for this is that the boss will use an ability every few seconds that will randomly select a few people and teleport them to a random location in the room all on top of each other. The players will then take massive shadow damage based on their location to the other teleporties. The resistance allows for players to live through this. On thursday last week, our guild killed him with zero resistance. We lived due to pure luck. This resulted in one of the most intense and funny boss fights. People would randomly die or simply "fall over". We killed him by standing under her "skirt" in a giant pile so the chances were hight that a person would not be teleported into the group. We could have all instantly died, but luck dident go that way and we won. Best boss fight ever.

Game Review: Gears of War 2

Gears of War is a tatical third person shooter based in a world being overrun by the Locust Horde. Gears of War 2 is the sequal to the award winning first game. The game still uses the same design elements as the first, putting use of cover first over run and gun. The games single player mode has a great story line and goes much more indepth then the first game when it comes to back story. The story is the reverse of the first game, attacking the enemy rather then fighting for their lives on the surface of the world Serra. The game has a multiplayer mode with many options consisting of, Co-op, deathmatches, and objective games. The game also has a mode where the player fights wave after wave of locust in a fight for survival. In all, I would give the game a rateing of 9/10 for great gameplay and amazing visuals. Highly recomended if you can take the gore.

Devil May Cry

Alright, so, Devil May Cry 3 is probably one of my favorite games for the PS2. I'm pretty sure most of know what it is so I'm not gunna take the effore to explain it. I borrowed the special edition in which you get to play as Virgil, Dante's twin brother. If you complete the game by meeting special qualifications you can unlock different outfits for both characters, which is fricken amazing!! There's one outfit that allows you to stay in the character's devil form for and unlimited ammount of time, which, once again, is fricken amazing!! xD Out of the two characters, I'd still have to say that Dante is my favorite to control. He has more weapons to choose from and more combination attacks. So yeah...there's my ramble for this blog.

Take a chance, roll the dice!

So much within a virtual world and my stupidity chooses this...
Within most virtual worlds, the player must obtain any and everything they get through hard work or luck(unless you are a Chinese gold farmer or have an elite friend, then you get booted up to everything with the status of a noob still.) But this is aside from all the stupid loopholes that would give a noob a helping hand past everything and still be stupid( like I explained last sentence). But when a player grinds out enough rat skulls or whatever stupid errand they go on, normally a good item, or something that can give enough money to make ends meet.
Enough with beating a bush, when the player works their butt off, and is given an item that they could have used when they started off is now worthless when obtained. Why, you ask? Simple, most likely the Random number generator(RNG) gods were kind(/asses?) and gave the player a weapon that shames whatever would have been the goal, making the quest useless other than some cash for the "good" item. This is only an example of how random events can ruin a game, and such a minor way. What if the quest was a mid level quest that gave items anyone would go for, then (only one example:WoW) an epic weapon drops off of the 3rd to last up to last guy, and after the player stopped spazzing out about what they got, equipped it and ravaged the last few guys, got the item and lived happily ever after. That weapon would last a very long time and make quests that reward with other weapons pointless, and make everything in the area fall like a fat kid with his shoes tied together. Even since I used World of Warcraft for an example, that does not mean other MMOs don't do it.
In fact, some games survive off of the RNG system, most common RPGs. Fire emblem( for those who know it) is just an interactive RNG with pretty pictures( for lack of a better similar/metaphor). Everything is determined by an unseen code picking a number at random and if the right one is picked, it's pretty much the lottery.
So, Given it's in almost every game and seems to make some games, is the RNG system really good for the games it's in? Are random godly weapons awesome to get at no specific time(of course!), if it were to "ruin" the experience of playing the game when it turns into click and kill? Some games (Fire emblem, Final Fantasy tactics) are based solely on the RNG and therefore make a good game (when the generator stops using the player's men for chew toys). I, personally, would think it should be removed from some games for how stupid lucky people can get (and that I'm as lucky as a Black cat living under a ladder with shattered mirriors everywhere) and that some things shuldn't be controlled by Random elements.

Saiyuki Journey West.

Greetings and salutations. 

   It is me Godzilla again. This time we visit the 90's again but this time we are going to India. well actually we are going from china to India...Or japan to India. I haven't played the game in years so I don't remember the plot to well....I just know that It is a turn based game that plays out like final fantasy tactics. The story revolves around a young priest named Sanzo. The cool thing about this game is that at the beginning you can choose to be either a guy or a girl. that doesn't affect the name of the character at all though. but I digress again. 

  So your a priest who receives a visions from lady Kannon who presents you with the Mercy Staff and tells you that the world is in trouble and you need to go to India to help the gods resolve the problem. so you start off on your adventure with two body guards and right after you leave the temple your party is attacked and the body guards are killed. Luckily for Sanzo their is  a giant rock that calls out to the player. The rock tells you that if you can remove the sealing scroll from the rock that he will save you from the enemies. After  the battle ensues and you get to the rock and remove the seal you unleash Son Goku and he proceeds to eliminate the enemies. then he turns on you but Lady Kannon appears and places a head band on Gokus head ( Sort of like in Inuyasha with the prayer beads.) the only difference is that when Sanzo says the trigger word it causes Goku to get a terrible headache that is sure to stop his actions due to the pain that it causes.  Lady Kannon forces Goku to travel with Sanzo to india as a body guard. He does it grudingly. Along the way you encounter allies that like goku end up traveling with Sanzo on the journey. 

    Another special trait that Goku has is that he is what the game calls a Were. A were is a demon that has a human form and they can turn into there demon form at will and unleash terrible powers.  Goku can turn in to a giant monkey and then the other members go as follows. you get a Boar, a giant merman, a dragon and many others. these are the weres. The humans that can become the were I dont remember there names.  I have yet to beat the game because I keep getting distracted and then I come back to it when I feel an urge to play a game that brings up good memories... That is another Blog entirely......

NEXT TIME THAT BLOG IS GOING TO COVER THAT ISSUE

 Godzilla 

The Guild

This wednesday will be the last day my main character in World of Warcraft will be in the guild . After two years of being very slow on raid progression, the 10 or 15 of us that make up the core group of raiders in this casual guild are forming our own. While we will not be severing all contact as we only plan on moveing our raid characters over, this will be a big change. We have our own web sight (http://onemoreboss.myguildhost.com/index.php). We also have our own vent server. Our plan is to have this guild be one of the top raid guilds on our server. If you visit the site, you can see the amout of work put into this project and understand why I am very excited for the comeing expansion.

The Longest Week

In nine days, the expansion to the mmorpg World of Warcraft will be releashed to wreck havock among the population. This expansion will allow for players to level up to the extended level cap of 80 and start the fight against the Lich King. Many new quests, zones and skills have been included with this expansion to allow for a long life span of play. The End Game has also been reworked to be much more attractive to more casual players instead of exclusive hard core players. Players have begun to prepair themselves for the release of the expansion in many ways. Me, for example, has began to collect gold incase it is needed in large quantites at level 80. This expansion is looking to be very promising and the week ahead is looking to be a long one.

PS: I lost

The lost area... in SL!

One day, I learned about an area in Second Life where an area is different compared to the rest of Second Life in which nothing is sold on the area(other than buildings) and is more of a role playing area for just relaxing.
The area is filled with buildings and mysterious crystals, the buildings seem to have a setting of ancient Roman/Aztec. The buildings are completely empty and all the buildings are similar yet not a single one is the same. The area will sell buildings for people for around 48,000L but I haven't tried looking to in depth to it.
Crystals are mostly small and red, placed all over and have no purpose while two areas have giant pinkish/purple crystals ....which have no purpose as well... The best thing I noticed about the area is no flying billboards saying "go here", or "buy this!!" with flashing colors to attract the kiddies...
All in all it didn't truly catch my interest since it seemed to require a house to be bought before anything could be done or that what I noted...

OLD VIDEO GAMES

All right this time I am going to write about a very old video game that I think is a very good one. It is called Grandia and it follows the story of a young man named Justin and his journey as an adventurer. It seems that it is very sterotypical but I have never really noticed this because I really love this game. I mean this game is so good in my eyes that no matter what anyone else says (Alyssa and Allie.) it is not a lame game. But I must say this old quote before I go on any farther..." to each his/her own". Now that I have gotten that out of the way let me explain the story behind this original Grandia game. ( I  say original because there are a total of 3 Grandia that I know of.  If there are more then please LET ME KNOW!!!!!!).  Now it follows the story of a young man named Justin. Justin is first followed by his younger friend known as Sue. Sue is a little girl that has grown up with Justin and she lives with her aunt. oh and she has a little animal that sits on her head and it can apperantly fly and she calls it Puff because thats all it can say. but i digress...this game has a really good battle system for a PS1 game and the story (for its time was very original.) I am going to end this by saying that some times the old games are the very best ones out there...

P.S I am not feeling better emotionally but alas thats ok because I am ues to it...

Godzilla

Grouping guys and gals

Every now and then I come across someone online and I can truly interact with them how I would interact with a normal human being (or something smarter than a rock...). This is a rare event, given that all of the people who access the Internet grow an enormous ego and start acting like they are best at anything and everyone else is insignificant.

Most people online I ignore for the what group they belong to, and normally I don't stereotype in the real world but in the case of the Internet, everything is bass ackwards and stereotypes and ignore lists are the only thing I have to defend myself from fools, spammers, and leetspeaking trash talkers. The number one group I steer clear of is most likely the most abundant of them out there, the e-peen people. Thinking they are the best in the whole game/forum/taco stand, trying to get someone in a fight or match versus them and their "knowledge/skills".They think they will whoop whoever they challenge and when the foot goes in their mouth, they have the gull to attempt to reclaim some shattered dignity by calling their opponent a cheater/hacker/noob(what have you). Then, the e-peen person will try everything in their power to make them seem cheated out of victory and plug their ears in hope of the other person walking off from the annoying gibberish coming out of the e-peen's cake hole. So no matter what someone tries to do against them, they can't beat a rock in a stupid contest. And the situation worsens when the other person who challenged them is another e-peen person, almost the same effect as the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. Many think, "well then why not just avoid them?" and I reply " Try ignoring the blinding sunlight in your eyes with them taped open", the only remedy is an ignore list.

The other big group I steer clear of are the under a rock people. I know it's not an official title but I call that group since it's the only thing I can think of when anyone from that group comes to mind. These people think that they are gamers, hardcode people, or better ice cream eater, whatever. But it's annoying when someone who played for three months think they have the game under wraps and are perfect at it, then just act like they have no idea what happens when beaten. But it's more than just that, people who think they know games then look at some genre they have no clue about talk like they know what's happening.

All in all it's the biggest reason why I choose to be anti-social on the web, most of the people I ever meet are within this group or something to the effect of it.

Free Blogging

OK....This time I am writing about the new world that we have been too today. Nautalis is a role playing game that is suppose to take place in the roman time and it is suppose to be fun but  I have no idea about anything from this time...it isnt like me to write about things that I have no Idea about...but since this is for class I suppose that it is rightly so...well lets make this quick and painless. This roleplaying arena is unique because you can't modify ANYTHING in this land area. If your too slow to know what that means please do your self a favor and STOP READING THIS BLOG!!!! But I will be nice and tell you if you are still reading. It basically means that you can't rezz anything in there and you cant move anything that is already on the ground. This isn't a bad thing because it makes this world almost scaraced mainly because no one can defile this land and the role players  can feel safe knowing that they wont have to worry about some idiot coming through and screwing up the whole land for every one else. ( we all know that someone out there would do it too.) any way I was mean in this blog...I dont really know why either....but mabey by the next one I will be feeling better then I am right now. :) 

Godzilla.