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.