Which is evident by my decision to not renew my WoW subscription, but instead start over from scratch. Part of the reason I left WoW is because it became a different game after the content was nerfed and I will admit that I NEVER could let go of vanilla WoW. As a result, I could never get back into the game. Sure, I’d play for a spell but then I’d get bored and stop playing for several months to years. I decided that in order to really pull away from my WoW roots, I needed to start over with a new account and roll a completely different faction. Yes, that’s right this Ally girl is going Horde. It should be an interesting transition but I’m excited about it nonetheless.

On a even better note, WoW works on Jenn‘s computer and despite a few camera issues, she was able to play today without issue, which excites me. She’s starting out as all of us started out with our first MMORPG, frustrated, annoyed and wanting to quit. I’m trying to be supportive by telling her that it’ll get better and she just has to barrel through it, but as we all know cause we’ve been there, it’s always much easier to quit then keep pressing on. I don’t want to give up on her though and it is my mission to get her to a place where she is comfortable playing. For those who went through a similar issue, comment here and let her know that we’ve all been there and it does pass.

So on top of WoW, I’m still playing Aion which should be interesting. I’ve never really played two MMORPGs simultaneously, but I figure I can play Aion during the day/afternoon while Robby is working and then WoW at night when he’s here so I can get the extra experience for playing with him. It works and will keep me occupied and I think for the sake of needing a break, I’ll try and fit a bit of Sims in there as well¹. At the very least, I’ll have something else to do that doesn’t revolve around my refreshing Ecstasy and trying to find something to alleviate my boredom.

For those who are concerned, I am not an addict, nor have I ever gotten addicted. It’s just a means to pass the time with friends and to serve as a release we can afford– because as much as we’d love to fly out to Maui, our checking account says no way in hell. It’s sad, but true. I think I’ll go cry now.

1. Jennifer, this does not mean I will have less time for you, so don’t give me that pouty face or eyes. I love you and will talk to you every day as I have been.

It’s a good thing I stopped playing Sims when I did otherwise I would have missed today’s blog. I’m not sure why I decided I was done playing, but I just felt like I’d been sitting at the computer enough today and it was time for me to call it a night.

Speaking of which, I think I spent the past 3 or so hours playing Sims 3, which is the most I’ve played since I’d purchased the game. The reason it’s taken me so long to actually play the game is because I irritated that I couldn’t get custom content to work due to the new changes EA had made. Thankfully after a lot of googling, several unsuccessful tries, I finally (after what seemed liked forever) got it up and running.

It’s so interesting to see all of the changes made in comparison to the first and second Sims game. It’s also really crazy because it is sooo detailed now and before that wasn’t really the case. Also on another note, I do want to point out that I don’t think the game is really suitable for children. Even with the changes in the names for sex, etc I still think it’s a bit of a stretch for a lot of younger kids. No wonder why so many in the past few generations are getting pregnant so young! Okay, okay so I can’t really blame that on the Sims, but y’all get my drift.

In any event, it is definitely time for me to call it a night. I should have been in bed several hours ago but I got caught up playing the Sims. Finally, how that happens huh? And those who play Sims on a consistent basis know exactly what I’m talking about. G’nite!

I can’t say I’ll be very entertaining in this blog, merely because I’m writing this quickly before bed so I can ensure that I have made my daily blog. I’m actually pretty proud of myself for being able to blog each day this month without missing a day, even though there have been nights when I’ve crawled into bed and had to crawl back out, after remembering I had not blogged. It was irritating but I pushed myself nonetheless.

I have been playing lots of Aion lately and I feel bad because I feel as if I am neglecting Jenn which isn’t my intent AT all. I think in large part she believes that if we’re video chatting while I’m playing she’s distracting me which isn’t true AT all and to be honest that’s one of the features I love about my new desktop. Having the capability to play a pretty graphics intensive game and still video chat at the same time.

Tomorrow I am going to look at power supplies with Robby to try and find one that is suitable for her to utilize the graphics card I intend on giving her. Once she gets her brother to install both the video card and power supply, we’ll be good to go and she can join us in the fun. It’s going to be soooo epic and I cannot wait! Speaking of which, I rolled another toon today, lol. I grouped with a Chanter today and saw all the fun spells he had so I decided I wanted one of my own. Least to say I think I have a problem because in one day I hit level 13.

Tomorrow, I am going to work on my Cleric some and then probably switch to my Chanter at night. This weekend I will probably work on leveling my Gladiator. Geeze, I don’t know how I manage to keep up! Haha. Okay, I think that’s enough game talk for tonight. Time to get some sleep so I can be up and alert tomorrow to walk the pups. G’nite!

I woke up today feeling better than I did last night. I got up around 7 (though I did try to sleep until 8 but my body hates me) and finished cleaning up the kitchen. For the most part I just relaxed today, did some laundry, and played Aion with Angie.

From this point forward G33K chat will ensue, so if you don’t care then it’s best that you stop reading now. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Currently I am leveling a Cleric whom I’m really enjoying. It’s such a different mechanic from WoW in which priests typically stand back and heal when partied and don’t worry too much about damage. This isn’t the case with Aion so it’s a bit more challenging and takes a bit to get used to. I’m still trying to get it down and minus two deaths of Angie’s toon, though if I’m honest, the second doesn’t really count because she was one shoted, I don’t think I’m doing too badly.

The only downside about choosing to play Aion over WoW is that not many people I know are playing Aion and as a result, I think I’m going to get bored when Angie decides to revert back to WoW. Though if I’m honest that’s actually one of the downsides of WoW– that most people I know play and as a result, not many are willing to start alts and re-level another toon. Even still I am enjoying it now and hopefully I’ll be able to find a Legion that I mesh with. /end G33K speak

Tonight’s True Blood was awesome. I won’t go into details because again I realize not everyone is as cool as me and can watch it the day of—but I love the character development that is going on with Eric. It’s so refreshing to see them delve into his pass.

And on that note, I’m going to go finishing re-reading the series.

After a lot of thought today, I realized that part of the reason I’ve been so blah about the internet is because I feel at some point that it became a job. And while I love the members on Ecstasy and I love the community as a whole, there’s quite a lot that needs to get done which coupled with home life and school is pretty overwhelming. Most days, when I browse the boards, I have to force myself to post and be active which isn’t how an owner should feel about her board AT all.

So I needed a release because the release that was my release from home life started to become yet another item added to the stress that seems to envelope me every day and so after a lot of thought, I decided to renew my subscription to Aion.

I had actually been contemplating it for a while, especially because one of the reasons we bought my computer to begin with was so I had a better computer to play Aion and WoW with and since I got it in January, I haven’t played either games¹. Part of the reason I waited so long to get back into it is because I hated playing alone and a lot of people who started playing with me went back to WoW, which is something I have attempted to do, but have done so unsuccessfully; so when Angie IMed me asking me what server I was on and told me she was going to start playing again, my interest piqued.

I originally wanted to wait until my classes were over to renew my subscription, but I realized that was kind of pointless, given that I was going straight into other classes right after so it didn’t matter if I did or didn’t. In addition, I realized that I needed the release now and not later because I’m at my wits end in stress and killing things² seems to help.

So for those of you who play or who want to play, let me know and I’ll send you an invite or add me in game. You can find me on the server Lumiel as Asmodian³ and my characters names are Castiel, Callisto, and Malifacent.

See you in game!

1. Yay, school?
2. Yes, I’m sadistic. What you’re surprised?
3. Asmos rock. Elyos sucks ass.

Well I almost completely blew Project: Blog because I got caught up in leveling in Aion. Thankfully Danika reminded me so I figured I would “pause” and get this blog in. The launch for Aion, well at least the Head Start launch, I felt was done well. Honestly, it could have been much worse and yes there were and still are queues, but honestly that’s to be expected. Would people honestly rather have the ability to log on with ever simultaneously causing the server to overload which prevents EVERYONE from playing? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I’ve had my fair share of waiting. Sure it wasn’t 3 hours of waiting, but honestly if that was what I was faced with, I’d have walked away, put on a movie, made some dinner, or gotten other stuff done in between. I get that people want to play however the queues will disappear as the servers balance out. It just takes a bit of time which people aren’t willing to understand.

In any event, the game is awesome, the people are awesome and it’s a nice change of place. Definitely looking forward to the raids and instances. It’s sure to be kick ass.

Just finished watching the season premiere of “Bones” and I have to commend them on it. That made up for the shitty finale last season. I’m really curious to see how they develop Booth and Bones relationship. On the one hand it’s cute that he’s finally realizing his true feelings for her, but on the other hand I don’t want to see it happen because I think it’s going to severely change the dynamic between the two and could possible ending up killing the show. They’ve skirted it this long so I’m curious to see how long they plan on carrying it out before they follow through with it. I’ll be frank in saying, I do not want it to happen.

Tomorrow is pre-selection for Aion and I’m uber excited. I cannot wait! Though I need to sit down and think of good names to use because right now I’m at a loss. I’m thinking that I will play on Lumiel for my Asmodian toons and then play on Triniel for Elyos. I just like the names of the servers as they struck me most. I can’t quite explain it though. I’m so excited to start playing and really leveling and getting geared for the instances and what not. I haven’t been this excited about a game in a long time. It’s going to be a blast and what’s best is I have some close friends of mine (Shawna, Danika, and Vala) playing with me. It’s going to be so kick ass! *squee*

The time off that I took from Ecstasy has helped severely. I’m less grumpy and I also got a lot done while I took that time off. Plus, I have something to look forward to next month! Robby and I have decided that we do want to take an extended trip to San Diego, so I’m currently working on getting the days off that I’ll need to make it happen. It’ll be so good to get out of this state and see family and friends. I’ve missed them! Plus, I’m actually in the mood to go dancing so it will be so fun to be able to do that as well. *nods*

Well, I’m off to do some more admin stuff on Ecstasy. If you haven’t joined yet, you should! The members there are famtabulous!

It would appear that my internet decided to fail hardcore on me– of all days and thus the lovely Danika has offered to post this blog for me so I’d still be on track with Project: Blog. In any event I hope they fix this shit soon because I’m seriously not happy about it– though I admit I’m not as frustrated as I normally would be since in the 4 months we’ve been here this is the first time we’ve had any issues. Take that Cox!

Last night I promised you all a review of Aion which is the MMORPG I have been beta testing which officially launches on September 22, 2009. Now, I have to forewarn you all that I am by no means a game guru, however I have played World of Warcraft so this review will mostly be in comparison to it. Remember these are just my thoughts upon playing the game– I wouldn’t take this too seriously.

Upon first entering the game, you’re tasked with choosing which faction you’d like to play (I choose Asmodians), what class you’d like to be (I went with Scout), and then finally you stumble upon the character creation screen. Now this little bad boy can have someone there for hours as you get to literally customize almost EVERY single detail of your character. From the size of the head, body height, chest size (yes, you can put some knockers on your character), to tattoos, and more– if you’re quite the detailed individual, expect to be on this screen for some time. I, personally, thoroughly enjoy this aspect because it gets tiring looking at the same old boring character five million times, no matter how much you changed the color of hair, skin tone, etc to try and make yours “unique”.

Alright, moving on.

Once I finished creating my character, I entered the game and thought “oo, pretty”. I do have to admit that NCSoft knocked themselves out with this one and compared to Blizzard– the graphics are absolutely breathtaking. The one thing you must be wary of however is when you first start to play is to make a point to chang your controls– otherwise you’ll start out pretty frustrated if you’re used to maneuvering with your mouse. When I first started I could run holding both the left and right mouse buttons, but I could only run forward as it wouldn’t let me move my character. After googling to figure out how to fix it (which is to go into the menu and disable left click to change camera angle), the game was much more enjoyable.

Some of the major differences that I found within the game:

• Food/Water: Unlike WoW, food and water does not give you HP or MP. Rather it gives you buffs, depending on the item.
• HP/MP Regen: To regen HP/MP, you simply have to rest (hit the “,” button on your keyboard) and after a few seconds you’ll be back to full HP/MP– however in the higher levels this can take some more time.
• Loss of XP: You do lose some experience when you die HOWEVER you’re able to buy back that XP by speaking with a Soul Healer.
• The ability to fly: You get wings in the game (which by the way kickass) and you have the ability to fight in air. Flying is limited to begin with at 1 minute, but you have the option to go aerial heavy and get additional buffs etc, to increase flight time or you can choose to monopolize the ground.
• Travel: No mounts in the game. Travel is done through flight masters and teleports.
• Professions: You aren’t tied down to 2 professions. Aion allows you to pick up as many professions as you want.
• Channels: For those of you who played BC when it was first released, you probably remember a HIGH server population in the starter areas for BEs and Draenei as well as the inability to complete collector/killing quests because there were just too many players collecting and killing what you needed to. Aion has seemed to solved this issue by introducing channels on realms in the first two zones (Lvls 1-20) which allows you to select a less populated channel, increasing your ability to complete collector/killing quests substantially.
• Minor Additions:
  -You can instantly locate the location for a quest item or individual by merely clicking on the item/person’s name and selecting locate. After which a map will pop up displaying the location you need to go.
  -The “N” button will cause the map to become transparent so you’re still able to navigate while having your map out.
  -No more errors about how you’re facing the wrong direction as the game auto corrects your stance which makes fighting much easier.

These are just some of the differences that I’ve noticed between World of Warcraft and Aion and I have to say I am completely happy with what Aion has to offer. Will I keep playing after open beta? Absolutely. Will I dump WoW for Aion? That’s yet to be determined.

Okay so after I blogged last night, about an hour after, Aion experienced a ton of lag which made the game pretty much unplayable. After trying forever to get it to work, Robby and I just ended up saying fuck it and logging out. I was really saddened by it because I wanted to get my wings last night, but obviously that wasn’t possible.

We logged on this afternoon and ran into the same exact issue. Obviously people were upset, but we kind of just barreled through it. I was reading the chat and noticed that some people were talking about how they had no lag whatsoever and come to found out that it really was a luck of the draw thing. If you were routed through the company’s routers in the U.S life was awesome. If you got stuck being routed to the company’s routers in Korea, well you wanted to chuck your computer out of the window. After reading that I decided to release and renew my IP to see if that would fix the problem. It did, but I’m not quite sure if that solved the problem because shortly after the lag disappeared.

After a couple of hours I finally got my wings and I have to say, I can’t be more thrilled! Wings are fucking awesome. In my next post I will go more into reviewing the game, but for the time being, check out my wings!

Oh and I fail at life and have yet to upload my 365 Days project pictures– I’m two days behind.

I pretty much almost failed at life and completely forgot to blog today because I’ve been too busy playing Aion! As of yet, I still need to upload yesterday’s 365 days and today’s since I forgot to do so yesterday but I didn’t forget to take the pictures! Yay! Lol. It’s the little things right?

Anyway, I am really enjoying Aion. It took a bit to get used to and after figuring out how to fix the controls, it’s much better and easier to navigate all around. Obviously there are lag issues and what not, since everyone and their mother is currently playing, but it seems to have gotten better as the night goes on. I started out as a scout which and then eventually I will try every class there is. I don’t want to get too attached to my characters since we won’t be able to keep them in the official release. Sad, I know. In any event, I highly recommend the game to any WoW lover. Definitely worth it!