Em em oh, are pee gee.

Anyone here heard of the new MMORPG called Aion? For those of you that are illiterate, that's Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. There's a reason it's commonly shortened to MMORPG. Well, anyhow, I've got a month's free trial for it and some thoughts to share on my experience thus far. Not to mention my constant denial that this blog is dying and I'm not writing anymore.

To quote a wise man...well, to quote a kind of crazy guy...well, to quote a certain person, "All MMOs are trying to be WoW." Aion is a superb example of this. From the second I sat down with the game and booted it up, for a gamer who's spent far too much of her life on WoW, this game was almost like slipping on a glove that fits really, REALLY well. If you want an idea of how much I've played WoW, I've owned the game for about 6 years, playing on and off. I played pretty consistantly from the summer of '07 to about February of this year, when I decided the game was no longer worth the $15 bucks a month. Yeah. Blizzard's made quite a bit of money off of me, eh?

So back to Aion. It was developed by NCsoft, those same blokes that made City of Heroes/Villains and Guild Wars, both MMOs I've played before, along with Lineage and a bunch of other games nobody cares about. Guild Wars was pretty O.K., CoH/V was somewhere below O.K., and I've never played Lineage. That doesn't leave a very good legacy for Aion to begin off. But it's a product all its own, so it's worth looking at as its own product, not the product of a bunch of sub-par MMOs...right?

There is definately a few things that Aion does well. For example, the graphics are stunning. They look really really good. Here, I'll just log in and talk about it, because I don't really remember the graphics well enough to talk about them too much.

...So I logged out in Dalar--Pandaemonium, and man, it is laggy in here. Getting anywhere takes a while, though, if you're rich you can just teleport around. On the other hand, all of the trainers are nicely grouped up throughout the city, so hopefully you don't have to do too much running around. And of course, the place is really LAGGY. It takes a bit for it to load up (perhaps just my computer), but it is really nice to look at. The buildings are all nicely textured, with colorful flags above the entrances to buildings providing some contrast between the grey of the buildings. And there's the intelligent, calm, spam-less chat in trade -- BWAHAHA, oh man, that's funny. In the game, you can type little images, like smilies or whatnot. Man, people love to spam that shit. And NCsoft hasn't figured out how to get rid of gol--kinah spammers.

Trade chat's awesome.

Guilds in this game are called Legions. If you don't know what guilds are, they're just a conglomerate of people with a little title under their name. These people usually do stuff together. Right now I'm in a Legion (I joined based on whether there was an option to turn off the profanity filter, which there is) and there's a guild level system of some sort, I don't really get it because I haven't been playing long enough. Whatever. Doesn't matter.

So, all of that's kind of miscellaneous information. "What's the gameplay like?" and "Don't you get wings in this game?"; these are questions I can hear in your head, if you've read anything at all about this game. Yes, you do get wings in this game, in the handful of places you can use them. You don't get them until level 10 (although the quests in the beginning of the game foreshadow them a bit), and you can't fly everywhere. And while I'm only level 11, and I imagine that your flight time increases, or you can buy a flgiht time increase, it is pretty lame I can only fly for a minute. Nevermind the fact there's shit you have to kill in the air, god forbid one of NCsoft's pop-ups kick you out of the game while you're in the air, 'cause you're gonna die from not being able to get back in the goddamn game in time to land safely.

Having wings, I think, gives everyone some sort of combat boost. For me (I rolled a scout, then went Assassin; oh by the way you start as one of 4 classes then branch into one of two from there), I get a critical bonus when I fight something with my wings out. Whenever I do, though, mobs tend to run 'cause I'm just out of range (somehow, lawls at the fact I'm a melee class), and god forbid they run into some water, because you can't get remotely close to water with your wings out without jumping backwards like it's poisonous.

Also, go into water too deep and you just fucking die. You can fly, but damn, if you fall into some deep water, you're fucked.

Anyways. Combat's pretty good. There are some attacks that become chains, doing different abilities and such. I only have one so far, but I hear they can get somewhat complex and have different outcomes than "Do a lot of damage". Then again, I am an Assassin. The tracking system for combat - the system that decides where you are relevant to the mob you're killing - is a little tricky. I know this because my backstab doesn't always work properly. It does like 30 if you don't hit the back, and about 200 if you do. Pretty noticeable. Unfortunately, they didn't just make it so the damn thing doesn't work if you're not behind the mob, so if you're a little off, you get to wait 16 seconds to try again. And who has that sort of time on their hands?

That's my opinion so far. My aversion to others in MMOs has stopped me from doing very many gui--LEGION or group related things. I guess I have to keep playing if I want to give a more informed opinion.

So yeah, Aion is better than WoW, but that's not saying much because WoW is shit and mind-numbingly easy right now. Then again, at least Aion doesn't pretend it's not retardedly easy because it has a built-in quest helper, effectively eliminating any thought process required for the game.

I just wanted to give a shout out to all of my homies in...Canada, India, France, and Germany. Wow, that's really cool. Someone from fucking INDIA's been here. Then they probably realized this blog sucked and left to go warn all of their Indian friends. Damn. As for the one person from France, you should post a comment, so I can attempt to read it!

And for the three of you that care, I don't know how much I will be updating my blog through November as NaNoWriMo will be starting TOMORROW, and with it my own novel. Unfortunately, I can't write 2000 words a night of high enough quality for daily updates. But in December I'll make it better and then maybe even start up my own website so I can post up all of the different aspects of my life for the world to see. We're talking art projects, more henna (maybe, I've posted up all I have so far here), more than just writing on games, and maybe even some other projects I work on as time goes by. But that's a ways off, so don't get too excited, I seem to be bad at keeping my promises.

Want to tell this author what you think, but you don't want anyone else to see it? Think she's full of it and need to set her straight? Want to worship the ground she walks on? Well, good luck with that last one, but you can email Chrys at catharticgamer@yahoo.com and at least tell her what you think.

Henna

*sigh*

Hey everyone. Been a bit huh? I don't have much today, just a little showcase of my art that I like to pretend to be good at.

So I've been playing with some henna, which is a leaf. It gets ground up, then mixed with some lemon juice, put on some skin, then it stains. Not terribly complicated but very cool. So here's all of the patterns I've done up to this point:

This is the first pattern I did. It was an awful jouney to this pattern, because I ended up using two batches of henna before I could even get to this point. Of course I'm far too stubborn to just give up. So it looks okay, I didn't take any pictures of the stain because that comes out really lightly, but it was cool to have. And the one I currently have:

I really like this one. The bottom picture is the design I did on my hand; it looked spectacular. I added a bit of white paste in the design to accentuate it, and it just was amazing. I didnt have enough to do my upper arm (top 2 pics) but I did those about a day later anyways. The stain on my arm is very very faint, so I won't bother with a picture of it, but I can see the lines on my hand and they're pretty.

This is totally game related.

Want to tell this author what you think, but you don't want anyone else to see it? Think she's full of it and need to set her straight? Want to worship the ground she walks on? Well, good luck with that last one, but you can email Chrys at catharticgamer@yahoo.com and at least tell her what you think.

Ye Olde Game System

So, how many of you here know what a Playstation is?

No, I did not leave the 2 off there by accident. Before the Playstation 2 there was...The Playstation.

Yep, big surprise there.

Well, a while back I picked up a Playstation to play some old games of mine (due to various reasons, my PS2 will not play them. *cough cough*) So I finally got that all working after about an hour last night, and I popped in a game called "Brave Fencer Musashi". It's a game where a princess summons this kid, who is the legendary swordsman Musashi, to save her kingdom. Now, Musashi is a very nice person at heart. Here's how I know it: Musashi was ripped out of whatever relaxing place he was in to help this princess for no reward at all except to get sent back.

Pictured: Musashi's homeland

Now, if I were him, I'd be pissed about that. Some whiny bi- princess yanks me out of my relaxing eternal summer resort to save her damn kingdom? Of course, maybe this is standard operating procedure for Musashi. Maybe he's used to going out and saving princesses and kingdoms and it's all in a days work.

..Maybe his hometown isn't actually a beach resort with naked ladies serving martinis, because it doesn't seem like he minds it so much.

But anyways, you start off the game trying to get the sword Lumina. It aquaints you with the controls and the things you can do, and you end up getting the sword, then running down a tower as a giant stone head rolls behind you and threatens to squish you. During this time, Musashi is running towards the bottom of the screen, so you only see obstacles when its too late. There's one point where he says "Whoa, JUMP!" Now, if you jump right when he says to, you'll fall in the lake he's telling you to jump above. If you jump too late, he'll just run into the lake and die. It's annoying to try to get the timing right, especially since when you die, Musashi has one last important thought to say before he dies. And did I mention the voice acting is awful?

The voice acting is SO horrible in this game, I have no idea how I didn't think so when I was 10. Not to mention my sound is a bit weird and the voices are choppy, too. So I have choppy, awful voice acting. Did I mention I get to hear it every time I die?

...

So those're my thoughts on Ye Olde Gaming System. I'll probably mention Valkyrie Profile on here too, later on. And Shadow of the Collosus, I think. But that's for another time.

Want to tell this author what you think, but you don't want anyone else to see it? Think she's full of it and need to set her straight? Want to worship the ground she walks on? Well, good luck with that last one, but you can email Chrys at catharticgamer@yahoo.com and at least tell her what you think.

Chasing a good blog post

I have graphite, colored pencil, and a fading henna tattoo on my hands. The smell of turpentine still lingers in my nostrils, damn that stuff smells bad. A finished art project is on the table behind me. And still I question if I'm an artist.

...

So...

...

...So...been busy lately? Weather gettin' cold?

...

...So...we haven't talked in a long time. How're you doing? You know, I'm sorry I've been gone so long. It gets kinda tough around here. But I haven't forgotten you. I think, right after the culmination of my efforts (the Oregon Trail post), which, in my own world, was fantastic, I was burned out for a while. C'mon, that post took me two days to make.

But I'm back now. I didn't mean to leave so abruptly, but I might again anyhow.

~`~

So, like a meth addict that happens to work at your local Burger King (oh wait) I've returned to playing S4 League. I dropped it a few months back because I figured that I had done enough posts on it. But I'd been wanting to play it again, and there's a new mode out, soo...

So like a drug addict I've taken the game back into my arms like an old lover. It feels good too, like it did before I left it (although I'm a little rusty now). Seems I've become crappier at aiming, but my bat skills aren't as fail as they were. And I have to say, despite the bugs, I'm very happy with Chaser Mode.

For those of you that can't read Spanish (for some reason they have the Spanish version on the English site), Chaser mode is a type of match much like Touchdown and Deathmatch. You have, for example, 12 people in a Chaser match. One of them is uber and overpowered and really fast. This person has to kill everyone else. Everyone else has to not die and maybe kill the chaser if they're good.

So yeah it's really fun. I don't like being the chaser cause I suck at it, but I do like fighting the chaser because if they hit you once you're pretty much dead. So I obviously rush them with my bat, gettin' up in their face and smashing them into walls, it's really quite satisfying. Especially if you can knock them off the stage and they die, that's VERY funny.

Of course, like I said, it has its bugs. The main bug is called the camera bug. It's the only one I've run into. There are varying degrees of how much the camera bug sucks. The least...er, bad version is the one that just takes your targeting crosshair away. Makes movement and aiming awkward but possible. I dunno if that's the one that most people complain about, but I can still function with it, although I tend to try not to melee too much cause you only swing in one direction. So in you have the Chaser on your left, but you only swing to the right...

Anyways, there's a definate worse version of the bug, which is when the camera is locked into place. You can move, but you only see yourself moving, the camera doesn't stay behind you. I've only seen this happen in the Temple stage for Chaser, and I would guess that's why there's NO FUCKING TEMPLE MAP ROOMS. Makes sense eh? That bug almost completely debilitates you although I did end up kiting a Chaser for about 30 seconds with it, just jumping back and forth. I finally was killed because I was laughing too damn hard.

So yeah, instead of writing more about obscure games that most people don't know, I'm going to go play that game. I've got some drawings of S4 in my notebook, and maybe I'll scan them in right as soon as I scan in my avatar and a few other things. Riiiight.

Want to tell this author what you think, but you don't want anyone else to see it? Think she's full of it and need to set her straight? Want to worship the ground she walks on? Well, good luck with that last one, but you can email Chrys at catharticgamer@yahoo.com and at least tell her what you think.