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.

Immersive Workshops

Having meetings(workshops) on second life is a very cool thing.  SL users are using 2D graphics in there presentations and sharing of information.  The idea of 3D capability in presentations is great.  But there is some conflict between SL and SL's customers.  There are companies in SL that are coming out with programs that perform 3D presentations but Linden Labs wants to do the same thing... Interesting. 

For the most part that's all i got out of this article.  Money is needed to be made within SL and there are a few ways it can be done.  This is one of them.  

Bioshock

I have always wanted to play the game Bioshock but i never had the chance since I don't own a 360. Now that I live in the dorms I can play 360 games because my roommate has one. The game starts off in the year 1960 and you are in a plane over the Atlantic ocean. All of a sudden your plane crashes and you somehow survive and swim to a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. You enter the lighthouse and enter an elevator. You then learn that you are entering an underwater city called Rapture. A man named Ryan created this city so scientists could get away from all the laws the constrain them. Scientists created a mutagin called Adam which allows genetic changes and lets them use Plasmids which could prevent hair loss or the ability to use telekenisis. You then meet a man named Atlas on a radio who offers to help you get out of Rapture as long as you help him save his wife and child. Throughout the game you have to get past bad guys called Splicers who are genetically modified humans sent by Ryan because he believes you are a CIA agent. You collect different Plasmids such as the ability to freeze people, set things on fire, and electrocute enemies. You also have different weapons such as a tommy gun, shotgun, and crossbows. This game is really fun and the different Plasmids are really fun to play around with. If you have the time, rent this game.

required post of doom

I think this article was an interesting read. It explanes how companies are starting to adopt virtual worlds into their works plans. I think that if a company can get past the learning curve, this could be benificial to a company. This could alow companies to work with their employees from the comfort of their own homes and would make the normal buisness meeting alot more fun to attend. The fact that Second Life is fully suportive of 3d could also add more features to a meeting. The presentations people give at them could be spiced up useing the create options of second life. The use of advatars would also allow for people to escape and racism or sexism if they can hide who they truly are.

Bored??? <:O

So i'm actually starting to get bored of my video games right now. Last time this happened it was because I had other things to take up my time. This time I think its becasuse every game I've played lately has been on that I've previously played. I guess I just need to take a break from them. If anyone has a game to recommend to me that would be amazing. Yeah...I guess I just don't really have much to say lately so once again, i'll stop here.

The Infection

As many of you know, the next expansion for World of Warcraft is comeing in two weeks. The event to celebrate the expansion is allready takeing place in game. What started by an infection turing players in to zombies from the town of Booty Bay has spread into pure chaos and is leaving major cities completly deserted and full of infected people and zombies. Also, one of the major forces of evil in Warcraft lore has started attacking zones around the game world. With each day, the plague of zombies grows worse and worse as more and more places become infected. This could possible be the largest world event ever to take place in wow history and is leaving the game world in ruins.

Reading

So I read the reading and it kinda went over my head. The only things that I really understood were the points about how businesses are beginning to use Second Life for meetings from long distances and how they are utilizing 2D and 3D in their presentations. I don't know, it just really wasn't that interesting to me. Then again, just because it wasn't interesting to me doesn't mean it wouldn't be interesting to someone else....somewhere. So yeah, since it didn't really make much sense to me, I don't really know what else to say about it soo....yeah...im just gunna stop now before I start rambling.

2D versus 3D

I believe that the posting that we had to review is right about the fact that 2D works well enough well display data and ideas and that Second Life isn't the bet idea to use for a 3D presentation. I also agree that Second Life does have a steep learning curve and that steep curve is a huge obstacle to get over to make Second Life as a viable alternative to a 2D presentation. I think that in the future when there are more people playing games that are similar to Second Life, but are an easier game to play, then a 3D presentation would be a good idea. So until a game that is similar but simpler then Second Life is created then a 2D system such as a power point, will still be used to convey data, statistics and many other things like them.

Required reading

I know, I know, I am coming up with this posting later then I normally do but hey I got it up and running didn't I. Now let me see here what was I going to say again? Ah I know...This article isn't that interesting to me as you might have though. Honestly I found my self lost after reading the first paragraph. The article is well written but other then that I can't find anything good to say about it. Because it went right over my head and just kept going and going. (sort of like the energizer bunny XD) I read that article three different times and still I think I barely got anything from it. IT was trying to inform the Masses about how business's are utilizing second life to try and make money off of it and I remember from class that twombly said that their were some companies that were making money off of SL.. But this article just isn't that interesting to me. Mainly because I enjoy playing second life but I don't really care about what it is used for. I like it because it is fun to play and  it allows me to be what ever I want to be. But when it comes to people actually utilizing this online world to make money and to take the business world by storm, I get bored. really,really, really quickly.

   anyway More coming soon from the one and only GODZILLA

I is looking fer work!

When I went to go to the link that I was was told, I wondered what it would be about. When I got done reading it, I can firmly agree that the old 2D stuff can get the job done easily. I think that Second Life at this point is a 3d version of multiple 2d items which a business probably wouldn't use. Second Life now seems like it wants to be able to work out as a program for Business and presentations.
But I digress, the topic's question, "Is there an untapped market for "Immersive Workspaces" in Second Life?". I would imagine it's not possible to find anything that someone or some business hasn't covered in Second life. Hippotech has so much software available for shops and such. There maybe a person can help learn how to make prims be some items that people would like. But otherwise I can't think of a job that would be open without any competetion, just as the author stated, even Linden Labs is having a hard time attempting to find something that someone else within their world has already taken.
All in all I would believe that Second Life missed the boat for being able to conquer it's work area and at least involve a feature or addon to make it more business friendly. By Business friendly, Something that doesn''t require alot of power to work, nor alot of special effects so that the business people would be distracted nor require a good pc to work.

So very Special...

I've always been down the middle on looks, I'm the opposite of a graphics-whore, yet I do like having my character not look like a sideshow for a circus. Which is why I hate many virtual worlds I've played, like World of Warcraft and such. At first, the character doesn't look special, then looks goofy, and after looking like a clown, a set of gear that matches and is good is finally in your possession.
Normally, I will sacrifice my character looking good for being able to do his job, even if I look like a generic version of my class or like everyone else and try to make it up in other ways and wear unusual clothing when I can. For Instance, I will wear a Christmas suit(hat,boots, and all) when I used to tank the first four bosses in Karazhan and make corny Xmas puns. Back to the point, I always disliked the fact that I would start out as what looks like I crawled out of a sewer and decided that day I wanted to be a hero and then jump into a clown suit. So many games seem to like the fact to make characters go through the dress-up nightmare, not just MMOs anymore. Soul Calibur IV, another instance, let's you make your own character from a style of one of the original fighters and then get to select armor which will give you stats. The thing is, EVERYTHING looks wierd/stupid and doesn't match with any other piece of armor until more armor is unlocked to make other stupid looking gear make the created character stronger but ugly as hell... but I degrass...
Only three MMOs I have ever seen tried to cure this subtle yet horrible problem, Guild Wars, Warhammer, and Second Life. All three do different things to please the people who care what their characters look like, Second Life the most obviously since it's not a normal MMO. Guild Wars makes sure the whole game, you will always, ALWAYS! have a set of gear that matchs and doesn't look horrible and many different sets for stats and looks. Warhammer gear looks good from the beginning and new gear seems to good well with old gear, so clowns be gone!!
Now Second Life, since it has no gear, it will take a different step and make the player customize the clothes and use prims to make other items such as wings,belts,masks and other that the base clothing won't cover. I tried experienting with the latter a little, and now I got what I would think are some nice hand made wings and claws, nothing special.
Personally I think that MMOs should mimic Second Life more in the fact that the character can be unique and have it's own personality versus looking like a clown or another character of the same class.

FREE BLOG

OK....This week is going good. I mean I got to go home and visit my old high school. I am relaxing as I write this blog now and I am even going to go and play a video game in a minute. In fact let me tell you guys (and girls) about it. It is called Wild Arms 3 and it is about these four drifters who all end up meeting abord a train by accident. 

  It is really a good game and I think that the characters are really well done too. In the beginning you see a cut scene and it introduces you to a girl sitting in a train compartment. When sunddnly the train is rocked and she hears a noise out side in the hall way. She gets up and checks it out, when she sticks her head out of her compartment she sees two men running by. They work for the train and as you head down the pathway that they just came from you run into another guy. This man is no one important but you two go and investagate what is going on in the back of the train. When you enter the compartment you see a big box in the center and the train operater goes to it and opens it. Five seconds later three males burst in from different directions with guns pointing at each other. These three men are all known as drifters and they are all after what is inside of the crate. These are also your traveling companions for the whole game. This game is a good one considering that their is no voice acting and it is all a text based game. I mean sure there are animations and sound but other then that it is a really good game.

I haven't been able to beat it yet but I am getting closer to it. Besides that I am having a really good time playing all of my old video games. I will be sure to tell you all about them in later installments.

   Godzilla 

Game Review: Force Unleashed.

Force Unleashed is a RPG based game for a large variety of game systems. In this game, the player takes the role of Darth Vaders Secret Apprentice. As the apprentice, you are under the control of Vader and must exterminate the survivors of order 66. During these missions, a very indepth plot unravels. During these missions, you learn about the creation of the Rebel Alliance and how evil and corrupt the Empire is. The stoy alone makes this game great, but not everting is so perfect. The game play, while way over the top and crazy, is hard to control and can make one angery. The boss fights are near impossible on the harder difficultys and can easily anger the player. The game is also very short. This was my major complaint about this game. Lucasarts should have added more levels to add more play time to the game. The visuals are down right perfect though the level design is reused on several levels. If I could rank this game, I would give it a 8 of 10. I also would recomend renting or borrowing this game from a friend just to take in the great story line, one that will leave you feeling like you truly are in the Star Wars universe.

Second Life Politics

The use of political advertising in Second Life is a good way to draw attention to the up and comeing election. I think that it is a great idea to be advertiseing in an online world. This allows for many people to recieve the message about who is running and a little bit about what they stand for. The use of online political advertiseing can draw younger voters to the election aswell as drar attention to the underage voters to current events. The only problem I forsee with Second Life is the ability for anyone to edit the content. This could allow for attack adds to take place in Second Life and could create false rumors about a cantidate. In conclusion, I beleive that this form of campaigning is ok aslong as its fair and open for anyone to view the content.

F.E.A.R.

So I was at my cabin this weekend and one of my friends, who has a cabin close to mine, brought some of her friends up. They also brought up an Xbox 360 and some games. One of thoes games was F.E.A.R. I can't really remember what it stands for but whatever. I had played the game beofre and it kinda freaked me out so this time I watched someone else play. Normally, I hate watching people ply games and I normally wanna take over, but this time was different. There were 5 of us watching while Dalton, one of the guys up there, played it. We were able to get through the whole game in one weekend and it was pretty sweet! Now I really wanna play the second one but alas...I have no Xbox. *sigh*

Politics in Second Life

Okay so I think there can be good things about advertising politics in Second Life. One thing is it can give many people who may not watch the news that often some insight on the political candidates and maybe interest them more in politics, itself. It could also give many people in second life the chance to meet thousands of other people who side with the same candidate as themselves, and give them a place to chat about the debates or anything else going on in the world. Also, having areas set up in secondlife for the candidates can give people the chance to show their support for the candidate they support.

Playing obsession

I agree with what Donut has said in an earlier post that there are people who play a game toooo much. Such as his points of people playing while they are in class or or when they should be doing homework or sometimes when they should be outside and conversing with friends. I do not know why a person would want to come to a class that they are paying a fair amount of money to be in, would want to waste their time playing a game and not learning what they should be to receive and good grade and actually know how to the work for future, and possible harder, classes. I for one am a person who would rather be playing my game of World of Warcraft, but I know that there are times when I need to get off and actually do something. If I had the choice of being able to play WoW, and just WoW, with no repercussions, not having to pay bills, not having to go to work or school or not even needing to make my own food, I would probably take that option but later find that it was a poor choice because, I do get bored of playing WoW form time to time. Not very often but it does happen. And usually on those days I just want to either watch TV, or read a book (yes I read books). But usually the reason I get bored when I am playing WoW is because of the fact that there is nothing for me to do at the time, or nothing that I want to do. Anyways I guess I wont ever know why some people do the things that they do and whether that is a good thing or a bad thing to happen only you can decide.

Politics and Second life

I think that when a politician puts up a "stand" in second life it is either in desperation or in a "why not" situation. And so far, of all the places that I have seen regarding a campaign, have so far been of a "why not" idea. Some of the "stands" where made by the candidate while a few others where made either by supporters or by the candidates party in the facade of a supporter. And, in general, give away some free items such as, hats, jackets, cloths, signs and other such items so that you can display your choice of candidate. As for competition between candidates, there is only the fact that people can choose to wear items for one candidate for others to see. I have not seen any stand of any two candidates in the same place. They have always been by themselves with no competition between another candidate. The stands do not really give very much information on a candidates viewpoints or the topics they argue against another candidate usually just a few pictures and flags and other such items. But anyways I do not think that putting up a stand in second life is reliable in any major way to get more votes. It might get you a couple hundred more in a state but more then likely not enough to swing the election.

I want your (virtual) vote!

With the election just around the corner, I decided to go out and look to see what Second Life is doing. I noticed there's no just what's the election at, so I decided to look and see what McCain and Obama were doing to try to snatch the social shut-ins and the normal people who play SL.
I noticed that the "official" areas for them are actually different from each other, Obama seems to try to get the person's attention with pretty and free stuff then some click here for more (info) here prims. McCain, on the other hand, has no free stuff which I could locate other than promotion items like lawn signs, but did have billboard prims with texture of info about his goals, history, plans, and strategy if elected. And he also had some other distractions to keep you there like a Washington Monument placed off in the distant.
Considering where it's placed in, I don't think McCain has the best idea for trying to get people but for supporters of him, it's a very good choice (but then again that's what the Republican party has been doing for the past 8 years it seems.) I can see this working with people who are not easily distracted and actually look at the facts, since that's what McCain's areas have going for him over Obama's. So, I think McCain has wasted some money and time with this little endeavour, since I feel only about maybe 15% of Sl will be affected by these and care in a positive way about it rather than just laugh at it or just trash it.
Now on to (N)Obama, I say that because of the tactics he is no doubt using with his. FREE, FREE, FREE were literally the first things that appeared on my screen when I went to one of them, free hat that spews Obama (literally) and lawn signs as well as Obama particle effects. I usually wouldn't care about an area doing this but an election is too much to give out candy and say "Vote for me!" I'm just glad it's not "You have some of my stuff and now your forced to vote". I personally care for neither candidate, but I absolutely hate when people take advantage of the public's want for goodies. I noticed that his area had one of two things, free stuff for SL and the other were links to sites for info on him. It's a very different strategy than McCain, and in Second Life, a very good one since everyone in Second Life is either after free crap or they have what they want and are going because they are supporters/haters. This method I honestly can say is the best use of time and money for something as such as Second Life, it's the jiggling of the keys for the infants to one: secure the vote or two: grab the voter and most likely tear him away from McCain.
All in all, You know who I think the victor is in Second Life, even if I hate how's it done. Obama definitely steals any part of Second Life concerned with the election other than the hardcore Republicans or those who aren't affected by the jiggiling keys method ( all 2 of us....)

Feeling glad

I have said it to my friends here in college. That is "thank god for work study".  Let me start by saying that this is going to be a good blog that may or may not involve a virtual world I haven't decided yet. So let me get back to my first sentence where I am saying thank god for work study, because today I am going to DJ for Blizzzardshack and I am getting PAID for it. Another perk of work study is during the presidential inauguration I got paid to listen to a bunch of "old" people tell the president that he was indeed the president and then give him a plaque and a medal and say that "you are the president". If I wasn't getting paid for it then I wouldn't have gone. Mainly because it didn't have a lot to do with me  as an individual.
Ok now that I have gotten that out of the way let me talk abut my virtual world. I have recentlly been playing a video game on the nintendo game boy. It is called Yugioh world championship 2003 and it is pretty fun if I do say so my self. I have mainly been playing it for Alyssa because she wont let me play anything else. But I am happy with it, besides it keeps me in dueling shape. I haven't played a yugioh game in years. So this was a good refresher, Not that I could ever forget how to play this game. But I digress. This game is based off of the real life trading card game called yugioh. It is played exactly like the card game is and further more it has a huge selection of yugioh cards to choose from. The game doesn't have a definate ending because pretty much all that you do is play yugioh. The opponets that you face in the beginning are easy enough and like all games they only get harder as you unlock them. If my memory is correct then I unlocked all of the duelists that you can fight even the scarced beasts. Now they are tough but I am too strong for them. :) I am a good duelist and the game only makes me a better stratagist because I am forced to come up with card combos in order to defeat the next set of duelists. What I noticed why back when I first played the game on the nintendo gameboy was that they rank your opponet by the number of stars that they have. Oh and let me mention that the opponets that you face in these games are monsters from the game itself. 

    
 When you first start the game you are put up against monsters between level 1 and 4 and after you beat them all a certian number of times then you will start to unlock level 4 and 5 monsters. After them its level 6 and 7 then 8 and 9 and then finally level 10. I have conquored all the levels. In fact Alyssa was surprised at how much money I had earned her with all of my victories. Well I mean when you go on a 15 winning streak you are bound to get a lot of dp ( duelist points). Any way enough of the past lets go forward shall we? 

    
More Coming Soon Godzilla

Politics in SL

I observed several of Obama and McCain's political properties where they advertised there campaign.  Basically I'm Fiscally Conservative and socially liberal.  So I'm having trouble making my decision for the 2008 vote.  When it came down to there strategies in advertisement its about the same.  The both offered free T-shirts and hats.  They both had tons of signs everywhere that wear for free too.  Also at certain places they had ad's you could watch promoting there campaign, while bringing down there opponent. 

This is a good way of attracting the online community.  Their are many people who spend most of there time using the Internet.  By advertising the election through SL allows more influence to choose who to vote for.  

I think it would be cool for Obama or McCain to come onto SL and talk with the community at a mass event.  It would be more affective and productive to do that.  

Joe's Avatar

JoeM Mills is my avatar.  I'm a casual dresser and don't mind my look.  I am enjoying a beautiful vacation in Mexico, with mixed drinks, chips and guacamole.  As you can see... I'm by my self.  Thats ok.  I've had many people I have met up with.  The bars are always busy and fine dining is always a done deal.  Tonight i have a comedy gig under the palapa roof to the left of you.  I will be discussing the differences between women and men at their best.  I am on an Island called Isla Mujaries which means, Island of Women.  Like its name... It has many women.   

I toured the Island yesterday.  There is a lot of other tourist attractions and cool activities to do.  I will see you around.

JoeM Mills

Politics in second life.

Ok so I was going through Second life in class on tuesday and I took a look at two lands. One was for Obama and the other was for John Mcain. Now me personally I have no personial opinon on how those two go about advertising there campains. They both had pretty much the same set up. A bunch of pictures of their faces and hen drop boxes  that will take you to their websites. These stragites are pretty effective but  they are lacking in two main areas. The fiest being that there wasn't anyone there to talk to. I mean if you are going to try and promote your self in a world like second life then it might be a good idea to keep someone in your land in order to have them talk to people.  but other then that it seems that they are attracting  enough people to make it worth while. It does a good service to people who dont have a television.  because they can learn about the two opposing politicians. all in all it seems to be working out for them but I cant really tell yet if these ideas will swing the votes in one direction or another. 

   More coming soon Godzilla.

True obsession?

   I know people have said something about this subject before but they were just defending themselves that they weren't obsessed even though it seems to be all they do all day.  Should we have a WoW version of AA for people who can't stop playing long enough to have a normal interaction? Should they just be left alone so that when they want to interact with someone in real life, they try to put their hand over someone and try to right click them? I can see playing the game for a few hours then go off and play a different game or at least take a break and be somewhat a living object. I've taken note of some people who choose to spend their class time not doing class work (no surprise) and just play WoW the whole time and act disappointed because they have to pack up and leave the game for about fifteen minutes before they can become lifeless again. I understand some of the feeling, I played WoW casually for three years and as an elite for one year, but I never got to the point that I didn't want to do anything but play it.

   But I can't give all the credit just to the WoW crack addicts. Some people bring Game boys, Nintendo DS, PSP and their laptops to play and not pay attention in class, just so that they can get the gaming fix. I may be totally wrong, but that seems to be for all the slackers I've noticed in my classes and I think that's the biggest reason, that or because they are so bored and care so little about classes,grades, and assignments that they would rather play a game and ignore the professor rather than putting the game away for an hour and try to get a good grade. Also I don't care if you select few notice enough and just to attack me, I won't be watching so you can cry if you want...

  

Spam and Jam

     Not the yummy meat that everyone knows and loves, but the Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages(S.P.A.M.). Normally this is just a normal Internet issue and wouldn't be considered part of a virtual world, but SPAM can be E-mail,game,or anything that can be online. In Second Life for example, people try to invite me to stupid groups or send cards that I should go to the landmark inside. Exactly what provokes this behavior? All it is is a cry for attention, or to attempt to inform by randomly choosing people.

   What exactly makes SPAM, SPAM?  The first sentence explains why it's called SPAM. It has to be a pointless message, which could make it stupid and in many cases, annoying to many people. In my opinion, it's just because people have nothing better to do, or that they want to have their opinion forced down your throat so you must listen or you can try to dodge it. 

    All pointless message within themselves are annoying since they are a paradox, a message is only a message since it has a point. I know that most of you will think " Oh, what a stupid topic, I just delete all SPAM and I don't need to care about it." But if you truly think about it rather than be the normal close-minded human, so messages may actually not be SPAM. 

Blog about blogs

Why? Why bother to type ones thoughts up on the interweb (lolz) for all the world to see? The answer is simple. And you must find that answer out for yourself. I myself have not gazed upon many blogs, but i have been on a few forums, which may be called the distant cousin of the blog. In this blog family you might also be able to call the grandpa of the blog a diary...a diary that is open to the full view of the public. Anyways...forums are pretty awesome...in a very odd sort of way. They open up many doors to do random things. Forums allow 10 year olds to rant about many things that only adults should be exposed to. One of these things is a game called Halo, you may have heard of it. To the parents who are buying their little son (or daughter) Halo, you are a dumbass. My biggest pet peeve is logging on to xbox live and hearing the squeaky voices of younglings claiming that they "pwned me, bitch". I absolutely abhore little kids being in places that they shouldn't, especially when they are there because a parent thinks that they are mature enough to handle it. Whenever i encounter one of these youngins i simply tell them to hit puberty, then come back. This was the most random branch off of a main idea that any of my blogs have ever seen, wow.

3.0.2

The patch of patches called by many. This is a patch to the retal version of Wow. This patch upgrades the game to the newest version and prepairs the game for the Wrath of the Litch King expansion. This patch fixes many of the broken skills and specs from the current patch of wow. This patch also realeases the new talents points that enhance player characters. This will be the final patch of the Burning Crusade and will be the first the brand new content of the new expansion. This patch will be deployed Tuesday of this week and is over half way downloaded on anyone who has the background downloader running.

PS1

So was playing Chrono Cross on my PS1 last night (quite you...it the only system I have up here >.<) and all of a sudden it decided to be like 'I hate you!" and it just restarted my game. At the time I was distracted by Daria on my friend Allie's computer but when I looked up I was like 'WTF?!' So I started playing again and it did the same damn thing. -_-" So I decided that maybe it was having issues from being on too long or something so I turned it off for the night. I got up this morning to see if it was better and at first it wasn't and believe me when I say I was pissed. After a few more times of trying to get it to work, it did! Well, the game keeps turning off my Analog so every once in a while, like after ever fight I get into or after the cutscenes I have to turn it back on, which can get extremely annoying, but whatever, I'm just glas the system is working again! :D

Second Life AV

My Seconld Life Avatar's name is Alyssa Turbo. She's a winged ninja who loves to cause trouble...when she feels like it. >:) Anyway, she loves the colors red and black, (if you hadn't noticed), and loves flying more than anything else. She spends most of her time wandering around Second Life checking out new styles and just hanging.
She may not look like much of a ninja, but hey? Who really knows what an actual ninja DOES look like? Her favorite time of the day is...well night actually, then it's even easier to blend into her surroundings. She used to have a permanent home, but she became bored with her non-eventful life and set out to explore the world. Now she wanders between sims looking for excitment of any kind to occupy her time.

Random blog

Well now I am hanging out with my two friends. Alyssa and Allie, Alyssa is playing a video game called Chrono cross, and Allie is reading a fan fiction about Naruto which she claims is the best one out there. now we are debating about characters from Inuyasha and it is interesting because now we are just sitting around in her ( Alyssa's) room.  Now she has no idea about what to do. It seems like I am not doing a blog but you said that we could talk about anything. so let me talk about a video game called Devil Kings..It is almost an exact copy of dynasty warriors but with different character names and different story lines. In the beginning you only have access to four of the main characters. In order to unlock the other four you need to defeat each of the main characters stories. there are different difficulty levels, They are easy normal and hard. Throughout each level you will be fighting thousands of enemy soliders that are all comming at you at once. I know that you guys have heard of dynasty warriors and I dont know if you like the series or not but I enjoy the series a lot. :) any way this is probably more then the standard 200 words.

 More comming soon.

  Godzilla

Myself

    Ever wonder who the person is behind the post that you all hate so much, what he looks like, how he may act? Do you ponder what I, Donut, look like? I change my look all the time, never content with what I have on but lately I found something that looks like it would suffice for me. I make all my clothes myself, my hair is the only thing that's not 100% my idea, I had a slight amount of help when doing it. And as you may or may not know, I am very picky about what is unique and is not, that's why I choose to have stuff that either only I have or have made. You may think that people could take a picture of me and then say I'm not unique anymore, but wouldn't that just be them copying me and I still hold the original "Donut" look?

   As I have said a million times I choose to do/wear unique things and for me to acquire or do these things, I need an idea or the item, which many would find hard to locate. That's another thing I like to do, I love to hunt for rare items or just look around places that would otherwise be impossible or hard to find, which would make normal joes give up quickly and go with the generic stuff. I also love to dance and go to social gatherings. As you can see in the picture above, you'll note I'm in the church of Techno with it's blaring music and weird but cool layout. People used to be crawling all over here but now that Burning Life is over, all the people are off doing their own thing again.

    My background is about as deep as my wallet(to those who don't know, I'm poor) I just grew up like a normal person, which to me was a bore, I lived as an only child and grew up like a normal person, which is why I choose to be so unique now, I have to make up all the years of the boring generic childhood I lived. I never keep in touch with my family, nor do I really care to, not because I think it is cool or unique, I just don't have the time or care enough to wonder about it, "It's my life, it's now or never!" that's how I see it. 

    All in all I guess I'm just a regular weirdo who likes to speak his mind since no one else will. I like living this way and I'll just keep on keeping on till I grow tired of it and decide to change. My only goal is to change the world and how people think and this blog is one way I'm doing it. So if you like my entries, stay tuned to more later on in the week, till then I'm Donut.

Zeb Breen (my avatar)

Hellow my name is Zeb Breen. I am twenty years young and second in command of the great Empire of Second Life. Officially, I command the military and Naval brances of the Imperial army and report directly to the emperor. I was born on the back water sim called Mos Eisly. I was found to be very strong in the second life force and became a jedi knight. I was even directly responsible for the fall of the pathetic Reprublic of Second Life. My favorite activite are enforcing the imperial law and serving the Emperor. I wear black armor that enhances my combat abilites and keeps me alive due to injuryes suffered back during the fall of the Republic. I can normally befound around the sim of Moonglade due to the free placement of items rule. I like to fly ships!!!

Mein Avatar

Hello, i am Edgar Karillion. I am eleventy billion years old. I've been around awhile. I am, of course, a vampire. How else could i possibly be eleventy billion years old? I have many activities i enjoy doing, but my favorite is flying around in random vehicles. I have had my current look for about 8 of those eleventy billion years...before that, i was the kool-aid man. I enjoy visiting the black swan island...a very peculiar place indeed. Basically, i am the coolest.

Blogging about me

     My avatar's name is Godzilla2000 Mavendorf and he is about 7 feet tall and he is a metal dragon. Surprisingly enough he is the complete opposite of me in every way. he is sane and very friendly and extremely sociable he has tons of friends and hangs out with a vampire and a slave more then any one else.  

   To describe my background I was once a normal human being who was walking home from school one day and the next thing he knows I am waking up in a black room chained to something. After about 5 minutes I  got knocked out again and then when I woke up I found my self in a suit of metal armor. After my eyes adjusted to the lack of light I  breathed fire from my mouth and I scared myself. All of a sudden I found myself falling down and after what felt like three hours I finally landed in water and started to sink. Meaningless to say I was panicking but wasn't drowning. After about an hour I woke up on solid ground and found him self inside of a class room Moon dust. When he looked around he saw a bunch of people surrounding him and then they told him that he was apart of there class. Still confused and dazed I decided to go along until I could become a human again. My likes and dislikes include dancing, flying,dying, and a multitude of other things. I like long flights through the sky staring up into space. hanging out with Black Rose or Jewelze vodkia or even aylssa Turbo. or chatting with Kristain lacava. when I can catch him. Other wise I am just exploring this world that I ended up in. My sense of fashion is pretty much null and void because I am in a suit of armor that makes me look like a dragon. My dislikes include but are not limited to ass holes. the dutch, the irish and people who try to look like me.  I am 18 years old and my race is metal dragon. My name is GODZILLA2000 Mavendorf.

Burning Life

Burning life is an event on Second Life that is dedicated to the Burning Man festival. So how does this show what Second Life is about? First off everything is user created, just like everything else on Second Life, but it is a little more restricted. Lidens restrict the type of content that can be shown to make it friendly to younger members. Generally though it gives someone an idea of what a part of Second Life is about. The creating part. When visiting Burning Life you can see the the ideas of it's users spread out across many sims, this is a large part of Second Life but isn't the only part. Second Life is highly social, and I guess Burning Life shows that too, many people come to check out the art of it's fellow users, but I'm unsure if it's as casual as one of the many clubs located around the land. So when it comes to showing what Second Life is about, Burning Life does it, to an extent.

Burning life man thing

I noticed in burning life that there was information about about the real burning man. Reading that it was largely a "hippie" music festival, i then realized that burning life was almost an exact emulation of just that. Burning life was filled with interesting looking people, amazing structures that most likely took hours to create, interactive environments, retailers and merchants, and much, much more. I was fun to walk around and interact with the different things that were going on. I ended up trying to ride a bike, and figured out that it is extremely difficult to ride a bike in second life. I ventured around, looked at different vendors and watched a few music acts that were pretty good. I really liked the atmosphere of the place. It was very relaxed and chill. The people were very nice and the sights were gorgeous...well, gorgeous for second life standards.

My new 70!

This weekend my newest wow character hit the level cap of 70. This time around I decided to level a hunter. I really enjoyed the trip to 70 and look foward to spending the few days before patch 3.0.2 gearing it up and makeing some money. Out of all the 70's that I have, I really enjoyed leveling the hunter. It was very easy compaired to my other characters and the aspect of having a pet made soloing group quests a breese. My main is my Paladin which I will be leveling to 80 come the expansion, but I think I may level my Hunter second because of the fun I had from 1-70. Being the anti pvper that I am, I wont be farming pvp trash, but instead try to get a basic set of Karazhan gear to help the future grind to 80. Hunters may be fun but, Retribution > all.

Burning Life

Burning Life is the Second life recreation of the art festival Burning Man. In this festival, people create strange and weird works of art. Burning Life is the same thing. Users can created art displayed it in a location that simulated the desert that Burning Man is located in. The major diffrence between the two events is that the Second Life version is much more limited and censored. Some of the art had to be censored to fit the Second Life terms of use and not to offend viewers. The real version of the festival, art can be anything and displayed. My only complaint about this in Second Life was the low FPS expereinced while in the zone. So many objects and people really took a toll on my computer, It felt like Hyjal Trash before I discovered high preformance mode on my laptop (wow joke).

my adventures at burning life.

My burning life adventures can be summed up by these two pictures. the first one is of me standing in the middle of that giant lotus and surveying my surroundings. All I saw was red for about ten feet around me and then green. well after that I went and saw a teardrop tree and decided to stand on it for a while. That was fun and then I went and hung out with Godzilla2000 for a while. But Yeah I had a really nice time there and it was interesting to see everything that burning life was that cool.

Burning Lifesauce

Burning life is the virtual recreation of the art festival, burning man. Personally, i think that burning man is much more creative than burning life. In burning man, people make very creative things and put them on display in the middle of the desert. In burning life, it is nearly the same thing. But burning man is in real life. Burning life is in second life. In real life, it would be way out of the ordinary to see some of the things that go on at burning man. But in burning life, you can go to burning life and see some of the exact same things that you would see on a regular basis. Although i did enjoy my stay in burning life, i would much rather spend time at the actual burning man festival.

Spyro the Dragon

OK now its time for a blast from the past with another really good game called Spyro the Dragon.
the story behind spyro is that you ( the player) play as a little purple dragon. in the first game that is rightly called Spyro the Dragon and it follows spyro as he goes on a quest to save all the dragons from Gnasty Gnorc. Gnasty has turned your fellow dragons into statues and due to mysteryous circumstances you are the only one who is left. And it falls on you to save every one with your dragonfly. In the second one you still play as spyro but you are in a different world facing a different enemy. this time you are up against someone called Ripto. and then in the third game you face off against a disgruntled sorceress and then it was a freckin sweet game.

Sporesauce

So i recently went back into the universe of spore, and find that it is much bigger than i originally imagined. As soon as got my creature evolved enough to fly around space i thought, "well that was fun, im gonna start a new creature." i thought i was done with the game. I was horribly mistaken. You see, when you get to the space stage, you have two circles on the map. A solid circle, which marks how many parsecs away you can travel from your current location, and a dotted circle, which i thought was the boundary to which you can travel totally. After continuing on my space creature, i soon realized that i could move out farther then the dashed circle, and that this circle was merely the boundary to which i can communicate with other planets. After doing a mission or two where i had to journey to near the center of the galaxy, i saw how large of a scale this game was on. There are, quite literally, over ten million stars in the milky way. Ninety percent of these stars have a form of life on that solar system, and fifty percent of the total stars have intelligent life on its solar system. This is the largest game i have ever seen.

God of War

So i was at my friends house today and I saw that she had God of War for the ps2. This game is so awesome and has really good graphics for a ps2. In the game your name is Kratos, a former general of the Spartan army who sets out to kill Ares the greek god of war. The goddess Athena is the one who asks you to kill Ares and in return she says she will get rid of the memories that haunt Kratos. God of War is in third-person and you use melee moves and magic to defeat your enemies. But the games isn't just going around and hacking all of your enemies, there are a lot of puzzles that you have to solve to get through. The cinematics in the game are incredible. It is hard to believe that you are playing a on a ps2 when you are looking at the cut scenes. If you have never played this game I encourage it, its just plain fun to play.

Burning Life

So I tried to go on Burning Life on my laptop but it was very laggy and I couldn't see much. But from what I saw there was a lot of cool art all around the place. I guess the main difference between Burning Man and Burning Life is that in Burning Man you can be way more creative. Burning Man you can do pretty much whatever you want and put up any art you want and its not censored. Burning Life probably has a lot less drugs but users cant just put there stuff anywhere but i guess that isn't that bad of an idea when you think of what happened when we all got to put whatever we wanted to on the professors land. If SL let anybody put what they wanted anywhere it would be event more laggy than it is now. But still Burning Life is pretty cool and there are a lot of cool things to look at.

War of the Guilds

No, the title doesn't mean I'm going to talk about Guild Wars, I'm talking about Guild fights between servers, verbal and non-verbal. It is impressive and scary to think that two groups, each may contain up to 200 members, just because one member from each guild ( or one member from just one of the guilds) starts talking big and bashes the other guild or tries to anger someone from the other guild.
After the first little scrap fight, everyone starts a flame war in the first channel that everyone can hear and normally the other guild will go on that channel and retaliate with some trash talk of their own. Then after about a week of the verbal war it will do two things, stop or get intense to the point where it involves the whole server. Most of the time it will do the latter, and people bring it out side the games and sometimes it becomes a big thing that lasts for a long time. But most in any MMO I've ever played is seeing one for about three weeks and then finally died down and they actually merged the guilds together and became a half decent guild.
But fighting like this is not limited to fighting between two guilds, it can be a limitless number of groups and even one guild with the guild being split down the middle. When a guild fights between itself then it's certain it will split, the only question is how? Either they will be big boys and agree to disagree and one half leaves with their half of the guild and the other half stays in the guild with whatever is left. This happens a lot and is unavoidable because people are unpredictable and different from each other. About 4/7 of the time, it's a fight between the bad side of the guild and the good side, or the elites versus the casual which in my mind makes no sense since it's two different groups of people but it happens.
When I wrote this I had in my mind some of my WoW experiences from over the years and I used them to try to give examples without actually talking about it, because this can happen in any MMO and in fourms, anything that would be considered sociable/interactive online. I've had everything I've written about happen to guilds I was in and I was in a guild that somehow started a war with 5 other guilds at the same time. All from one person openning their mouth thinking their the big cheese... Moral of my rant, whatever you think, your not the best, GTFO and go farm.

WoW again

This week in WoW I finally got my shaman to level 70. And now I need to grind out honor to get better gear for PvP. Now that my shaman is 70 that bring my total to four which is no great feat in itself by a milestone for myself. I have decided that he will be my PvP character because I always have fun decimating my opponents with his fast attacks. Being of poor gear at the moment I usually am the one being decimated by the people who have been PvPing longer. I will probably change him, in the future, to a PvE role but not any time soon. I also must grind out dailys and other quests on him to build up the money I had to spend on him when he did reach 70 for his flying mount, which I imagine wont take more then a few days. I figure that I will begin leveling either my hunter or warlock when I grow tired of PvPing and need to take a short break from it, but as of yet I am undecided. I love to play on my lock because he is just fun to play on. His damage over time and fear spells just make killing mobs or players fun and easy. On the other hand, i do not really like to play on my hunter because less skill is needed to master the class or even to quest along and level. I might try changing her spec around to see if one is better in my opinion and hope to make her more fun to play. If anyone has any ideas on hunter specs in WoW that are a blast to play feel free tell me and change my mind on how hunters are boring.

Burning Life

A tribute to the ideas of Burning Man for the free expression of art that is based around a central theme. Both the Burning Life and Burning Man events cover a vast area be it land or server and a maze of activity and ordered chaos. While I have never been to Burning Man, and am unlikely ever to, I have been to Burning Life. I did not spend a lot of time exploring Burning Life, but I still managed to see a wide assortment of things to see, and it is a confusing mass of places to go and things to see. There are so many places and people crammed into a small area that it is a laggy place to be. I have seen places that depicted ideas such as dominatrices and legalize marijuana. Or cannons that will shoot you across the burning life event and statues of what could be Burning Men or Women. As well as several, dozen other odd ball objects in random places that would take too long to mention. Over all, it was an experience, I would not say exciting, but more of how creative people can be and how open second life can be to ideas without being overly restricted.

700 Billion Dollar Bailout

As you may know we have a crises on our hands.  Big businesses and banks are in huge financial debts and will fail if the government doesn't bail them out.  Is that fair to the average person?  First of all the government is taking our tax dollars to bail out these big banks and corporations.  Second, when banks didn't give a shit about who they lent money too and did it under adjustable rate mortgages without educating the loaners that the rates could jump to unaffordable costs.  This caused a domino effect across country, where home owners couldn't afford when the adjustable rates jumped up to 6 and 7 percent, which caused for closers to sweep millions of middle class Americans.  

The deal is that it does not affect us as college students right now, BUT it WILL.  There is a great chance that millions of Americans will lose there jobs.  The economy is far from stable and people of lost billions in the stock market. 

SO PLEASE get educated on this topic, and study both sides of the political spectrum before you vote.  I promise you... this is one of the BIGGEST and most IMPORTANT elections of our lives.  

The Burn of Life

   The end of September never seems to have anything special in the real life, but in Second Life, it's the week of Burning Life( Second Life's tribute to Burning Man). Users everywhere come to see all the unique creations of other users. When I went to go check out the area, the computer kept locking up so I couldn't observe most of the creations and lands, but I was able to go to the area of mutant vehicles. It had stuff from random giant bikes to a rubber duck car and some things were actually able to be copied. I also noticed some more "creative" ideas such as the monster potty, yet not everything that I was able to look at was so different. Some areas had buildings that resembled tents, tarps , and umbrellas to give it a flea market-like theme but none of the items were purchasable.   After I was able to finally get to look around, there is a lot more to see then what I had originally said. All of the users take ideas or icons from movies,shows, and what not and put it in a form that we can view in Second Life. The wireframe sculptures are very well made and can almost simulate real wireframe artwork in the real life, although in Second Life, they choose to actually make it have an image projector as well or sparkles or something to make it pretty come out. Along with sculptures, the area had what looked like a fantasy carnival and buildings with scenes and props from movies, one such was the Back to the future set, with anything and everything that went through the time stream. But, the greatest of all was the "Church of Techno", which someone said it resembled a colorful Water Cube. It had the history of techno, some free items and a dance area with a dance ball for dances and music to listen to which created a great feeling of a rave. Most of the event I couldn't fully see given the short amount of time and the grand size of the event. The image below was only one of many I took when exploring the areas.

   The Burning Life received it's idea from the real Life event of the Burning Man, which is held in a desert each year to show the creativity of others. There is no buying or selling there, other than required items such as water and coffee and the like, but it's a place to bring your bike and view the unique creations of others. Burning Life does almost the exact thing as the event, even having a giant wooden man to be burnt at night just like in the real event. 

burning life

Ok burning life was intresting. I cant really say I experienced it that much because I havent been on second life like I  useally am. From what I did experience though it seemed like it was a a fun event. Taking from what was going on I think that I was enjoying my self because of the fact that no one stopped what they were doing and yelled out GODZILLAAAA. which is kind of annoying sometimes. but enough of that let me tell you about what I did at this event. First I ended up in a monster porta-potty and then I ended up in babbal and finally I ended my day at the church of technoo. Dancing all my cares away with my classmates and the professor. Then after that I went and wandered around and talked to some people before I jumpped on a hot air balloon and rode that for a while. Then I jumpped off and that was about it for my burning life adventures. any way I will come back with more about other intresting stories and pictures.

newest poses

Ok now its time for you to see how I died....I died in the first one from an axe in my back and then I died from being hanged. the last one isnt showing death I am just lounging about by the pool in second life while I worked on my tan.  lol....( full metal dragons cant tan.) but any way 

i am working on more intresting pictures and I have more to show so hold on while I post them up with theis one ok...now the one of me as a ( male) elf ( I say male because one of my classmates thought I was a girl but I AM NOT ) sitting in a tree. then after that one I found this avatar and I have been sticking with this one for two main reasons. The first one is because my name is godzilla and the second one is because it is so cool. ^^ yeah and I also like the fire that I can breathe.  oh and the girl that I am with is one of my friends. she goes by then name of black rose. She is a pretty cool friend of mine.  Any way its time to get to class so I will talk to you guys and girls later. 

 Godzilla

Chaos Theory

So I was really bored today and decided to play a game I haven't played in a while... Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory. This game is so ahead of its time, it was released in 2005 but it is still one of the best looking games I have played. If you don't know what Splinter Cell is ill bring you up to speed: You are a spy for the U.S. government in a secret branch called Third Echelon. The game starts off with an American ship sunk by a North Korean missile and its up to you (San Fisher) to find out who ordered the missile launch. The gameplay is incredibly fun, all the missions are at night or in a building and its your goal to sneak through the shadows and past guards to get to your objective. You have a bunch of really cool gadgets that actually exist in real life and you have to use them to get through without being seen. The main gadget is night vision, if you didnt have this the levels would be really hard to see. You also have two different guns, i silenced pistol, and a special gun that shoots out rubber bullets, sticky shockers to knock out enemies and sticky camera to look around corners. This game is just plain awesome and even if you start playing it today it wont seem like an outdated game. 

The Legend Of Dragoon

Well currently I am playing a great game called the legend of dragoon. this awsome game was made in 2000 and has really good graphics for the time. It follows the story of a young man by the name of dart and his adventures throughout the world Endiness. The game is four discs long and if your dedicated and play until 2:00 in the morning you can beat this game in about three days. any way this game is really good because of the unique story line, the plot devices and most importantly the four discs for the playstation one consol. That was never done before on the playstation consol and I guess never will be because the playstation has evolved since then. lol.........I Godzilla is playing the game right now in my room with me...our friend Allison is watching him play and he is on the forth disc and almost at the end of the game so now I am going to watch him.

Weekly Blogg: Spore

Spore is a game that I just purchased and is made by the creators of the Sims. It takes what was the original aspect of the game and advances it way beyond that. In this game, the player is allowed to create a creature and evolve it through Five time periods. The periods start with the Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilized, then lastly Space. The First two stages allow for the player to evolve his or her creation and the last three are about creating alliances with others or creating the ultimate empire. The player has nearly endless options for costomizing the creation the player makes. Once the player enters the more advanced stages, Creation of buildings, cars, planes, boats, and even space ships is allowed. The last stage even allows for the player to explore the Milky Way and colonize planets and even destroy them. There are endless ways to play this game and I see it lasting for a long time into the future.

Second Life video

The movie that we watched in class was kinda dull in my point of view. But, Will try hard to not focus on the negative in this post but rather what was good. I think the way the game designers set up the game was very creative and unique. The ability for game players to do what they want with the land they have is very interesting. This allows for player to be creative and do what they want with their creations. This is what I believe to be the key aspect of Second Life. With out this feature, Second Life would be another online game that attempts to mimic real life Socialization.

Reaction to video

I was really surprised by the space that Second Life would take up on an actual CD/DVD. The fact that it would take up multiple terabytes amazes me. The reason that I am so amazed by this is because most of those multiple terabytes of information are all user created objects, buildings, and land. It is mind blowing that the game started out very simply and grew exponentially in terms of byte usage, all because of the users that play Second Life. Adding to the mind blowing-ness, all of the objects that are created, can be extremely detailed, and the process that one has to go through to create such objects, I find, is extremely difficult and time consuming. The fact that an online game like Second Life could grow to the size that it is now in such a short time is almost too much to comprehend. This is what I found most interesting about the video.

the video from class

the video wasn't very intresting but I did find the part about how they turned the atoms into prims. That was pretty sweet but I am not really in to all of that technical talk. I also liked the part about how they left second life totally in the hands of the players and didnt create all of the buildings for the players. I also liked how they talked about making the world's sky move continuously. Which makes the world feel more realistic then worlds like WoW.

Internet = A new creative outlet?

In middle school I discovered something: I could express myself creatively through the internet. No longer was I limited to email and IM, it was then that I discovered forums. Through this I was able to learn how to post pictures of my own creation. And now I've had a lot of practice with creating graphics directly through the computer. The internet allows us to express ourselves in a variety of ways, whether it be through music or art. There are tons of art and music sites that focus on the everyday person, rather then a celebrity or someone who is famous. For example, one of my friends has a guild on GaiaOnline that is entirely dedicated to art. All aspects of art! From drawing to music, and design to writing. Along with this new talent is discovered, a long with a realization that some of us lack talent. -_- But instead of looking down at this I believe we should use it to improve ourselves. I think that posting our creations on the internet allows use to get instant feedback from people who otherwise might be biased because of their like or dislike of us. These people, who don't know us, are able to look at our art from a less biased viewpoint. Unfortunately with posting your works on the internet comes a major risk: stolen art. I always find someway to mark my art but hows that supposed to stop a person from claiming it as their own? If you can accept this risk then posting your creative work on the internet will have and does have a lot of benefit.

The picture is something I created on a whim one day in a program called Gimp. The gif animation is something I created for said friend's art guild.

Always Growing...

One of the concepts of the video that I found the most interesting was the idea of Second Life always growing. In the video he mentioned Second Life started out looking like a ‘shanty town’, this I find hard to see. There are so many different sims, and I haven’t stumbled across one that looks the same. Along with these areas there are items created by the users and put together by them too to create a believable environment for your avatar to explore. The possibilities when it comes to creating are almost endless as you manipulate prims to your liking. I enjoy making something entirely abstract from what started out as a simple geometric shape. However, there is some limitations. Many of the areas having building disallowed to prevent griefers from littering up their sim and causing them to put a lot of work in keeping it tidy. If you want to build I suggest looking for a place that offers building like a sandbox or group land. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as you build: First, respect the land and the people in it. If you don’t then you might just get booted from it and second, clean up when your finished unless you have permission to leave your creation in the land or you own the land yourself. This helps the sim look clean and tidy for other users, and frees up prim space.

The pictures are from land owned by Trilegy Corporation, that allows its members to build in it's provided free land.