WELL I WATCH A LOT OF ANIME AND I ALSO WATCH A LOT OF.... ANIME. YAOI IS MY FAVE. KAY BYE.

P.S. DBZ YAOI IS DA BEST

Robbery.

Easy. Unbuttered popcorn. Voila.

I guess they could make a machine that would like.. hook up to our mouths with tubes and such. That or we could just offer everyone forks, knifes and spoons rather than chimera dining ware that isn't worth anything.

That's my idea anyways.

What kind of shitty genie would that be? Seriously. Regardless, I gain no weight so I wouldn't change much... I'd be fucking worried about being tired all fucking day though.

I have never been to a party. :|

I want them to post the new Writer's Block because I enjoy messing with people.

Punch them in the throat.

Wow you've combined the two most overly hyped but ultimately boring, generic and awful things ever.

I forgot to add in my last post that the Internet, while mostly corporate, pornography, 4chan and video-games is one of my favorite things because of things like this:


http://marissasbunny.com/Marissas_Bunny/Marissas_Bunny_-_Infantile_Spasms_and_Epilepsy_Awareness/Marissas_Bunny_-_Infantile_Spasms_and_Epilepsy_Awareness.html


I won't go in to detail about the situation because I don't know much about it but I do know that this is one of those times where people you don't normally think to be the type to be charitable (no one in particular, honest) rise up in defiance of a particular alliment or injustice to do atleast something to help one or several people.

The internet can be a fine place.

To preface this, it was a common question on my birthday to ask if I felt any different now that I was 18. Obviously, not so much considering I had _just_ turned 18 the day of asking. But as i've sort of had a bit of time to get used to the waters, i'm starting to see things around me a lot differently.

Beauty is a subject that's been on my mind a lot lately for no reason in particular. I've come to realise it's something a bit more complex than just a pretty painting, a catchy song or good tasting food. I'm beginning to look under the skin of things and I can safetly say now that I can appreciate things in a different, better light.

Recently, one of my teenage year's celebirty's, Billy Mays Jr., died due to heart disease. Since i'd first seen his Oxi-Clean commercials I thought they were a little obnoxious but I got a chuckle out of his pitch method. It wasn't until I watched the show "Pitchmen" that I really understood what kind of person Billy Mays was and what exactly he was doing when he yelled at me to 'buy now'. With every product he pitched and sold, someone, somewhere, who had put their lives in to something that they believed in, he was a generous, kind man that wanted nothing more to help his fellow man. He never lived a life of drama or stupidity that you find most celebirties dabbling in these days and by all accounts was one of the best people anyone could've ever had the pleasure of meeting or working with. He was more than just a hairy man in a blue shirt, he was a geuinely beautiful person.

Today, I was playing World of Warcraft, i've only begun playing endgame with my level 80 paladin specced to tank which I assume everyone who reads this can understand. Anyways, I had agreed to tank a Heroic instance that was relatively easy and long story short things I know for sure weren't my fault happened and one of my group mates "hi-jacked" the group. I didn't challenge this because I would've rather had the group continue along without people being upset and I don't want to be known as the guy who throws bitchfits when he doesn't get his way. So he tanked the rest of the instance and had me DPS as Prot which was a slap in the face and it for sure shook up my confidence in my ability as a tank. On the final boss he asked me to tank so he could resume DPSing and I agreed to, just wanting to be done with the instance. The boss is relatively simple and one i've tanked several times and DPS'd countless more times but this guy took another stab at me by explaining the fight to me which I just had to nod and grin at to get through it and immediatly after my brain goes in to retard mode and I actually take his advice/strategy which was very wrong and ended up making a fool of myself. But we got through just fine and I left that group ASAP and sat in Orgrimmar. I got a tell asking if I could tank another heroic from a different DPS and explained, sans details, that I just wouldn't be confident enough to keep that group alive. They understood and offered words of comfort that fell flat on my depression and I logged off.

I logged on many, many hours later and immediatly got a tell from that DPS asking me to go and tank a heroic with their guildies. Reluctantly, I agreed and joined and was met with suprising praise from this DPS that i'd never met or grouped with to my knowledge. They believed in me and my ability and they didn't even know me... I think I might've thought this was retarded a year ago but now.. That person just wanted to give me that boost I needed to not give up on myself.

I didn't let anyone die during that instance.

Everyday i'm starting re-evaluate my life and notice those days that were better than I remembered. The times I went to IHOP with my friends and all the memorable stuff that happened there, especially the one time where I stayed up all night trying to get my Priest gold and geared while I was in a high-end guild and Zreb happened to have stayed up that night as well and all I wanted was food to counter all that stress and so we went to IHOP. How many times i've screwed over a person I could call one of my oldest and despite everything, one of my best friends and how everytime I was a complete jackass he still begrudgingly gave me more and more chances. He is a saint and certainly deserved a better childhood than I gave him.

I look at Amber and I wonder how she puts up with me and my weirdness and stupidity. I think that she just believes in me and knows that I am a good person in the end. Which I try my hardest to be.

To put this all simply. Beauty is what you believe in. Obviously I don't believe in everything, but my family, my friends, my love, good people I hardly know, and memories.

I might be taking it to my own website and dedicate this to purely personal stories and experience amongst the sea of bullshit and awful I so readily enjoy with my friends.

My website will focus more on me talking about different subjects and hopefully make it interesting and take it to a broader audience. It'll be less rambly, less updated at 4AM and updated on a regular basis. So be on the lookout for that if I choose to follow through with this idea. :o

It wasn't until recently I started having odd feelings towards life. I feel like my perspective is shifting and i'm taking in a lot more than I usually have.

For one, I find it really hard to believe that beyond my social circle and various people I see from time to time that there is a much larger population of people. Different people, similiar people, just people. I think in the past I only took things for face value. Sporting events I only ever saw the game, I never took notice to the vast sea of average people around me and I never considered myself one of them. Stranger is the feeling that these people have opinions and feelings towards things I might have or might not have feelings and opinions towards. I'm not exactly sure why I suddenly feel odd around people who show little care for me but also show care for things I might care about.

I think even harder to believe is that my social circle has opionions and feelings as well. I'd always grown up around people who I could hang out with and passively discuss my feelings towards things with little debate, the exception being Mightfox but it was only one person and despite it being a learning experience and more or less profound each debate it didn't really resonate as severely important, which sounds insensitive, but again it was only one person I ever had to defend my thoughts with so it didn't really bother me.

I'm not sure if it's the sense of helplessness or insignificance that bothers me. Or the sense that I just want to know and understand everyone simultaineously. Again, odd because certain people in this world I care little about but it's just something I feel I need to have some control over.

I'm beginning to finally see how large the scope of the internet is and its affect on people and society. I'm honestly too tired to go too great in to detail and i'll do my best to expand on this thought in a new post but in a nutshell: I wish people would acknowledge that the internet while not being "physically" real in the sense of a realm but that the feelings and content put in it is very much real. I wish people would take the time to understand the internet beyond just checking e-mail, looking up things on Wikipedia, Youtube or Myspace and be more tolerant of people's hobbies, habits and relationships.

My dreams have been far from their former incarnations but the feeling of dread still creeps in to my sub-conscious from time to time. I had a very House of Leaves dream recently which bothered me even when I was awake because it involved a friend and the negative effects of curiousity. The sense that at the end of a dark tunnel there might be a monster waiting for you.


...


So I took these feelings and decided to deal with them by thinking it out. In an abridged version i've come up with this.

We make up a perfect picture. It may not be beautiful in some places but we're all connected and the picture makes sense if you look at it from far away, too far away that we'll ever notice and sad that people don't even take the time out of their days to realise what they're even apart of.

...

Additionally. I'd been thinking about misanthropy a bit. Then I saw a man who was serving really good looking food in large portions for less than 5 dollars or just the exchange of stuff to decorate the restraunt. I saw people doing things to help out the planet a bit. Nothing too terribly crazy like buying a hybrid car (which apparently aren't all that good for the environment due to the production involved but cutting back on buying things that are harmful. I think if there's even a little bit of those people we'll be okay in the end. Maybe not today when we need it but someday.

Note: So after a goodnight's sleep I remember why I left EQ in the first place. It was right around the time Gates of Discord dropped and they already announced that 3 months down the line another expansion would be released while this expansion was still being cleared and was still broken. The community was outraged and I was peer pressured in to scorning SOE as well (I still liked Verant better) and I quit on those grounds.

SO YEAH. Everquest 1 vs WoW. I feel stupid for even comparing the two but i'll go down the line.

Everquest was a game with no lore behind it, as in there were no EQ games prior and no novels it was based off of. Meaning that everyone sort of started on the same level of lore knowledge which is nice for a lot of reasons. The quests weren't presented to you in the way you see now a days. You had to actually "chat" with the NPC by saying the right things in the right order which you could only do if you read the dialogue to understand the context. Example:

Deliver some [berries] to me.

What berries?

The berries the [bats] eat.

Where are the bats?

They roam around the glade to the south of here, now go.

And of course there was obviously more important quests that told you a lot about the lore but that's just the simple explanation.

The game felt a lot more open but it felt right. I remember it taking a few hours (pre-Planes of Power) to get anywhere and I was strangely okay with it. You saw a lot more of the world that way and you had to sneak around giants and dragons way over your level.

The game had a wide array of classes, some were difficult to level up due to their abilities being limited to group support but it wasn't a huge problem. In a raid there was never a question of what classes we needed to bring because there was always one of every class and there was no limit to the people you could bring to a raid because raids weren't instanced. A scary thought but it wasn't actually that bad. Raiding on our server actually ran on a calender system and kind of a race system, what that means is that all the guilds who actually cared to follow the rules would sign up on the calender for the dates they wanted to raid an area and everyone would back off and we would just take turn. There was one guild on our server which was the Perdition equivalent just about that didn't follow the system and I remember there were guilds who actually banded together and would go in to the zone they were raiding and just run ahead of them to ensure they didn't progress without fucking everyone over. The race part was just random world bosses that popped and the first guild to tag the mob raided it.

I dunno. It's really hard to explain everything that was good about the game. Just the pacing and community that wasn't always out to get you, something new to see and the fact that you didn't have to be max level to be viable in a raid. That doesn't mean EQ is perfect, the graphics at this point i'm sure are eyesores in some areas and the way the UI is set up is just a sack of ass. If I was going to play again I wouldn't be able to manage a caster because you only get 10 spell slots and you have... a lot of spells. There are points where you feel like you won't see everything but you will see something new and there really isn't much in the way of 'speccing' aside from alternate advancement points which really only help you be more powerful.

I can safetly say I had more memories with Everquest, good and bad. That could be for a lot of reasons and I hope that it's not just because I was a little kid at the time and thought everything was super cool. I can't say that I didn't have memories with WoW because there's stuff like Mr. Dink's alter in Wailing Caverns and other various observations but that was really only after I met up with Zreb, Mightfox and Kavs on QD which is kind of sad, but yeah.

I'm going to try EQ1 again sometime in the future and i'll let everyone know how it goes, I really hope i'm not raising my expectations too high and this game can still be fun, but again. We'll have to see.

In the mean time I may continue posting various MMO memories and I wouldn't mind hearing everyone else's.

P.S. Sorry stik but I tried accepting the RAF to EQ2 but it said I couldn't accept it for some reason. If you do know how to fix this let me know and i'll still give it a try.

Ignore the title it's just what i've begun to refer to MMOs as for my own amusement.

I believe in June marks the.. 7th or 9th year i've played MMOs. To say they haven't shaped me and taught me a lot of things would be a lie and it would also be a lie to say that it's healthy for a person to enjoy playing these games this much.

However, I see MMOs as a hobby, which I enjoy greatly. As i've grown I understand limits and management over time and things like that have made the overall experience a lot more fun and worth it, but it's getting to a point where they just aren't fun anymore. Not because of anything i've done or anything else has done to me directly. More or less i've come from a time where MMOs were a lot different and I never grew out of the playstyle I guess.

I first expressed interest in MMOs at the age of 8 or 9 when a family friend was discussing his times on Everquest, a game I had seen in Gamestop and never really bothered to pick up the box and give it more than a few glances before putting it down for the next platformer. The guy talked about the game somewhat and my child mind was a buzz with serious curiousity. (I wasn't an ADD child so I could focus on a something.) So, for the next few weeks my mind wandered about a frost dwarf war against giants, running in-between trees and over hills to defend their fortress and dragons. The fantasy genre was not something I had much exposure to beyond the occasional medieval/fantasy movie but it really didn't stick to me beyond "DRAGONS ARE COOL."

Sometimes I would find myself drawing the EQ logo in my school notebooks, wondering what adventures I could have if I had the game. The rest of the kids at my school were watching Toonami which was laden with old anime and drawing and all I could do was think about this game and write down scenarios I thought were cool. I wish I had saved that notebook because i'm sure the stories are more than amusing now but I sometimes wrote about a Wood Elf who had no real name to speak of, just a lone ranger who would fight orcs and save the "tree city". (The internet at the time was very limited due to the era of no search engines and the box art didn't really reveal much.)

Anyways. For getting all A's on my report card in the middle of the school year I recieved Everquest: The Trilogy which included the original EQ, Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious. Unforutnately, our computer at the time was a pile and wouldn't run or even install the game. I was heartbroke and I honestly thought I would never see the game again. I quickly dropped my fantasies of playing this game and moved on to subjects relevant to my peers at the time.

It wasn't until my birthday that year that I got my first taste of MMORPGs. We had gotten a new computer before school was out and I was still face first in to my Nintendo playing my saved of Banjo-Kazooie (far infront of my little brother which was excellent gloating material). I was exstatic when I opened that box, not America's Funnies Videos exstatic, but I was suuuuuper eager to play.

After the party was over and it was kind later in the evening, my grandma (who was and still is pretty young) watched as I installed this game on to the computer. The orchestra played and screenshots of poorly rendered dragons and environments appeared on my screen. At the time it was the best graphics ever so I was in awe to say the least. As the installation did its thing I reviewed the manually as any 9 year old would, I went straight for the pictures, lore and stuff that looked relevant to my interests.

I chose the server name that sounded the coolest and was luckily the one my step-dad and brother were on which was "The Rathe". Which is the name of the council of gods who control Earth and reign over the Plane of Earth.

Luckily, for the people reading, I did not actually decide the name of my first MMO character in the time I was waiting for all this to unfold and when the game finally loaded, I instantly went to Wood Elf Ranger who was without a name. After setting up his appearance which was limited to 4 choices of faces (hair included), I clicked through the random button several times until I came up on "Luldias". I'm not sure what the appeal of the name was except that it rolled off the tongue and I just liked it so that's what I went with.

I set up my stats, stacking dex and agi which strength probably would've done me some more good but I hadn't actually discovered any sites that were there how to cookie cut my character to be the best they could be. So I went with it and started up the game. The loading screen, which if you've never seen an EQ loading screen, was filled with the usual "Rendering Derp" and "Caching bullshit" and clever stuff like "Have you punted a gnome today?" which my 9 year old mind thought endlessly hilarious.

Finally when the world loaded up around me I was disappointed. Why? The entire screen was dark except for my UI. I could hear footsteps when I used the arrow keys but otherwise nothing was happening. I actually ran out in to an area of the map where aggressive mobs kicked my ass. It wasn't until I looked in the manual about brightness settings was I able to finally see the wooded forests of the Greater Faydark. I went to bed anxious to actually start my adventure the next day.

In the interest of getting to bed tonight i'll skip over more of the mundane nostolgiac shit and get to interesting things.

I leveled up Luldias as best as I could, my step-dad who had the game before I started playing was giving me tips on where and how to level up so for the most part I followed his advice. I have to say I had never enjoyed a game more than I did Everquest. I didn't understand the concept of endgame(there was a ton but it wasn't advertised) and grinding (I was a kid, I had time to waste) so I.. actually enjoyed running around the entire world seeing the different places that I could at the time. I met my first rival, I believe his name started with a G and he actually knew what he was doing as a ranger and I just wanted to upstage him whenever I could despite my playstyle. And I even had a crush who's character's name was Kiane, a bard (based solely on personality, pixels don't appeal to me) who ended up being a long-term party member along with one or two of her friends. I only remember the game getting difficult when I needed to make a lot of money because at the time hybrid classes didn't really cut the mustard with AoE spells or even quick kills and I wasn't really high enough level to handle the mobs that dropped the good stuff. I spent a lot of time in the Eastern Commons Tunnel (a popular trading area), opening up trades, browsing things people where selling from the bags in the trade window, socializing and dabbling in small pot gambling. When I got really bored I decided to enjoy the social aspect of the game and join my first guild which I wish I could remember the name.

Suprisingly, it was a guild which was full of younger people so I felt super comfortable being such a noob and we had a lot of good times, running things on occasion and just travelling Norrath and Luclin together. One girl actually took a shine to me and I didn't notice it. Unfortunately, due to some guild drama that I wasn't around for split the guild and I was left flat on my ass. Kiane reccommended I join one of the more popular guilds on the server which was more of a casual guild while she got serious and joined one of the more endgame guilds on the server. My second guild's name was the Norrath Adventuring Company, allied with the Norrath Travel Beauru and Dallow Abligo (mostly for lower level raids).

My EQ adventures continued, shaping my personality and my current internet alias whenever Luclin dropped (bonus points to the person who can guess where I got the idea for my name). Leveling became priority after I had been invited to a few raids and my wanting to do better. It was slow because I was easily distracted until one day I just decided to knock all those levels out of the park. And finally I was some what viable. Planes of Power dropped and thats when things took a turn for the worse.

NACo was doing really well for a while and I even became an officer when I hit level 36. PoP kind of forced me to want to be apart of the raiding scene which really broke out for me. The Planes of Time was this goal which seemed so achieveable back then even though it'd been a year since I started playing just about and I was only level 36. Around that time a quest became available for me to complete which would get me a _very_ nice back or shield piece which required you to camp a named turtle which had a very low spawn rate and pay 1k in Platnium (highest level of coin in the game). Well I did with the help of guild friends and we did the same for a fellow ranger who came to help but the rogue that tagged along also wanted the piece seemingly to use (he was level 50 and it was really was that good of a piece), he ended up selling the shield which caused a lot of unrest in the guild.

I really campaigned against him being in the guild and a lot of people agreed and others just wouldn't have it. I left and joined Dallow Abligo and watched the other guild burn from afar. Officers came to Dallow and things sort of calmed down and I developed a crush on one of the druids (again for personality) but it was weird because I was 10 or 11 and she was in college? Anyways. Eventually the game got more and more boring and drama was everywhere and I felt like I just needed out so I quit at level 46 after 2 years or so of playing that one character. Sad, I know.

It was awhile before I got back in to MMOs and I won't detail all of my experiences because some are trivial bullshit other than "Don't play this one."

Played CoH beta, single-player games when they were good (right around the time Gamecube, XBOX and PS2 came out). WoW was announced and I got excited at the promise of easier, more fun, faster MMO play. Unfortunately, I had to wait because my grade weren't up to snuff for my mom (As, Bs and Cs)so a week after launch I got to play but it didn't last long. One 60 undead priest who saw some old world raids and a level 46 dwarf priest and I quit.

I played CoH/V and still wasn't impressed, grind and no friends to hang with wasn't enough to keep me there. EQ2 dropped and it just didn't hook me like I thought it would. It wasn't until BC dropped until I decided to give WoW another shot because my brother and his friends would always talk about it and never shut up so I gave in and got BC and continued my dwarf priest because my brother and his friend were Alliance. Transfered him to Gurubashi at 69 and got to 70. I healed my way through level 70 dungeons and all of Kara and then I met Zreb and Kavs who were Alliance at the time and transfered over to Zul'Jin to escape the BR. Healed my way through 70 dungeons (I was too scared to try heroics for the longest time) and even lead the raids for Kavs and her friend's guilds until I got stupid and decided to be a drama queen which kind of screwed everyone over which I feel bad about.

I joined Blood Red Moon as a social member and did nothing. Quit for awhile and came back determined to change my luck. In a very bold move I applied to on Antonidas, a very hardcore raiding guild. I busted my ass, raising all of the required reputations and making enough gold to do shit I needed to do they hesitantly accepted me and I transfered over. My first weekend there I was attuned to Hyjal and BT and I had cleared all the way up to Archimonde. The first week was hell on me. I had never farmed in excess or done dailys and since most of their priests, warlocks and shamans were geared I was showered in gear that all needed gems and enchants as well as the need for a shadow resist set because they were on Illidan at that point. However, by the grace of god I managed to pull together the funds and overcame the odds.

I was 2nd on healing for most raids and then Sunwell came around. I did Kalecgos and then it just got ugly and waaaay too stressful for me to continue so I transfered to QD where Zreb and Kavs had gone and faded in to the wallpaper under a new name. Before Wrath dropped, they decided to re-roll but I didn't have the stamina for it at the time so I just did BGs and had a little bit of fun and I powerleveled my ruga's warrior (which I still feel bad for abandoning after she just hit 70 in favor of Horde). Played Age of Conan for a bit in-between all this and it ended up being kind of fun but too fast and broken to enjoy.

Wrath came out and everyone who knows me understands what happend. It's not something I like to discuss because of a bunch of technicalities I lost all that work.

However, my brother who had quit, gave me his account and I accepted and made a new Deathknight which I leveled just as quickly to 80 as I would have the other one but it was kind of too late for me. I wasn't able to beat the rush to 80 obviously and that meant I had no viable place in any guild so I just kind of stood there and did heroics from time to time until Fire and Blood accepted me as a social member and I was able to attend the Alt/Social Member 10mans which it was nice to see Naxx but still it wasn't enough and isn't enough. At this point i've fallen kind of far behind with WoW because of the breaks to the point where when someone starts talking about different classes it just goes in one ear and out the other (I am polite and will listen but it doesn't stick at all), PvP which has been an option doesn't really appeal to me because I wasn't raised on PvP and the mechanics of it all just.. doesn't sit well with me and i'll explain why in a bit.

So i'm going to let my WoW account run out and the next time I go to Wal*Mart i'll consider renewing my subscription but it's one of those things i'll have to really think about.


tl;dr

I'm bored with MMORPGs. Do I want to quit them entirely? Not really. The only MMO I only ever thought was fun is now so old and clunky I regret not being able to appreciate it and i'm scared that if I commit to it now and get back in to the swing of it again it won't feel the same and i'll miss having the friends. I don't like PvP on the grounds that.. i've always enjoyed working together against an enemy that's been hyped up to be something that really needs to be taken care of and I can't really be bother to compete against another player.

WoW at the moment doesn't give me the PvE experience I need. The mechanics of fights are fun but there's no build up at all. Where as when I played EQ it would take months for a final boss of the expansion to be killed and it was exciting news.

Other MMOs i've looked in to just suck. No two ways about it. The ones that play like FPSs just fail and yeah.. we'll see how I feel tomorrow, i'm fading super fast.

EDIT: Tomorrow, mostly for my own benefit, i'll explain why going back to EQ1 feels like a good move for me.

So let me put this in context for you. For the better half of the last year or two i've begun writing the first draft of a book I would eventually like to edit, revise and pass around for my friends to enjoy and eventually have it published. However, this hasn't been the easiest process because the story deals with a character who has a lot of morality shifts through out the story. One in particular impedes me from progressing much further than the first few chapters and really sets the tone for the rest of the book. I've weeded through my own ideas and found out that I can only come up with somewhat generic or unreasonable reasons why this character would make the sudden change.

tl;dr

I need help with a section of my book and am looking to LJ people for help. If you were presented with a very, very important and terrible secret but would go against your morales to keep, what would it take for someone to ensure you kept that secret? (You don't have to be incredibly descriptive, threats, money, etc. will work just fine.)

Stop rubbing it my face that i'm not that extravagent LiveJournal.

Suprisingly I was thinking about this yesterday.

Liberty Prime.

..Do people even fucking get in pinches these days?

Going to follow the trend of my friends and post a review of the year 2008.

Honestly?

Probably going to be one of the years i'm going to remember forever as a really, really good year.


Amber + Me = Just.. yes. :D

Sort of coming out of my shell like.. a lot.

Listening to lots of good music.

Scrambles up until he was destroyed. :<

Eventful, but not full of events.


I don't doubt that 2009 is going to be even better.