With all the recent commotion over the Perfect Strangers flash game, I’ve been listening to the theme song for the show and as I was listening, thoughts about blogging came to mind.

After a few seconds, my mind just clicked, and it was like I learned more about my time blogging from listening to the Perfect Strangers theme song.

Sometimes the world looks perfect. There’s nothing to rearrange.

This is I felt when I started blogging and had my blog organized and my first post introducing myself to the public set up.

Sometimes you just get a feeling like you need some kind of change.

Eventually, I began to feel like something was missing. Writing about just one game (for me it was WoW at first) felt constricting, so I kept trying other games and writing about non MMO things. Everything felt like fair game to me to write.

No matter what the odds are this time, nothing’s going to stand in my way.

Originally, I thought about various minutiae and statistical information. I wanted to know if people were reading my writings. I felt determined to make it as a writer for a video game website, or to make a living through writing. This was a rather depressing point of view to take, because I write in a way that is very non-confrontational, and I kept getting disheartened by my situation.

This flame in my heart, and a long lost friend gives every dark street a light at the end.

I kept writing, and I stayed in touch with friends, and it was with the help of many twitter friends that I realized, I enjoyed it whether I was being paid or not. Strangely enough, it was also a twitter friends who helped me to take a risk on myself, and eventually I got a part time job writing professionally.

I realized, if I wanted to write as an outlet, it should not matter too much how many people were reading it if I could simply get my thoughts out in a way that felt right for me and showed it to people open to what I had to say. It was gratifying to realize that.

Standing tall, on the wings of my dream. Rise and fall, on the wings of my dream. 

You will have good days and bad days writing.

People may read you and like or hate what you say (as it happened throughout my nearly 10 years of personal, professional and leisurely blogging), but you have to be a good sport about it and stand above the muck they might want to throw at you and respond in a dignified manner to show that you aren’t going to stoop to their level.

The rain and thunder, the wind and haze, I’m bound for better days. 

You have to be optimistic about your writing. Even if you’re not optimistic about everything else, you have to look forward thinking that you support what you write and your words have value. This keeps you going on the bad days, and keeps you from taking a break from writing that becomes an abandonment of your hobby.

Just remember, if that rain, thunder, wind, and haze is a storm, do not use your computer.

It’s my life and my dream, and nothing’s going to stop me now.

That’s definitely what I tell myself these days, and it’s a great life-affirming statement to keep in mind.

GO LARRY AND BALKI! GO WRITERS GO!

I’m just going to leave this here to remind myself of how awesome M. Bison is when played with gravitas.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVzRcsFvZ7g]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvpj_p9MyHM]

Insert statement about game forums generally being a Star Wars Quote about scum and villainy and hives.

Counter written introduction in order to place emphasis on important point of post.

Post point about the coolest forum threads being meta, and how Rift now has its own meta-thread about negativity and doomsaying from players.

Post link to said thread.

Mention that the Dev Tracker subcategory has a lot of mentions from amused members of Trion staff.

Smile.

Post the written post hoping that people will find this very short, meaningless post interesting and worthy of comments and love.

Feel lonely about the fact that time is spent writing such a post which has no inherent value other than self-referential and self-deprecating humor.

Cry in bed.

Slee…. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..

I spent ten minutes earlier playing Angry Birds on the iPod Touch of a friend. The game is available for play on the iPhone or iPod Touch, provided that your device has the proper updates required to play the game.

Angry Birds is a game starring a bunch of differently colored birds who are angry… angry at pigs who apparently have done something wrong. I do not know what these pigs did (probably mass genocide of birds?), but the introductory cutscene-type deal seemed unappealing and cartoony so I skipped it.

Most of the ten minutes I spent playing Angry Birds was actually comprised of listening to my friends tell me about the controls. Apparently, these furious fowl are willing to jump on a slingshot and have someone finger them into position to be released all cannon-like in order to obliterate some pigs. This smacks of many MMORPG tropes, such as the suicide mission trope and the band of heroic fowl trope. By comparison, World of Warcraft and LOTRO both have chickens in them, and I assume they are also rather angry at the misrepresentation of their species as a fowl race.

Much like other MMORPG’s before it, Angry Birds is actually quite the intriguing multiplayer game, but for a different reason entirely. It involves a system of gaming known as “sharing,” which is commonly unheard of in many MMORPG’s as it requires people to relinquish control of the game in order to allow other people equal time in completing or failing objectives. That said, the addition of a sort of ranking system to determine who should best be set in the sharing roster may become an intriguing development for the game, should its developers decide to implement it, as it opens up an entirely new metagame that can enthrall its sizable fanbase into playing.

With that, it can be said that Angry Birds is one of the most innovative MMORPG’s I’ve had the experience of playing. Despite its lack of a crafting system and its rather lackluster quest implementation, Angry Birds serves as the immutable metaphor for the human spirit, as man, like an Angry Bird, must learn to overcome obstacles together in order to succeed in killing people who want to do other things which you disagree with.

EDIT: For the record, I do not take money from Rovio. They have not paid me to say anything. But I would like some money, so if you could send some my way, that’d be nice, Rovio.

This NDA is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to non-disclosure agreements, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Also, this was inspired by True Events. Truly.

Dear User,

Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in the beta testing process for Thrift: Prize of the Compliant.

In order to participate in the pre-release testing of Thrift: Prize of the Compliant, you must read, UNDERSTAND (we cannot stress this enough, dear user), and accept the following Terms of Use, License Information, and Non-Disclosure Agreement below. Don’t just skip to the end and press “Accept” (especially since we did not put an Accept button at the end of this thing). If you are already itching to scroll at the bottom, feel free to ignore this warning at the cost of your soul. By clicking the “Agree” button below, you agree to be legally bound by the terms of this agreement.

TERMS OF USE, LICENSING INFORMATION AND NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT FOR THE TESTING OF A PRE-RELEASE GAME

Three Ton Birds Corp. (henceforth known as “The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements”) has developed and designed the pre-release version of Thrift: Prize of the Compliant (henceforth known as “the game”) to allow a set number of people to test the feature set, capabilities, and performance of the game, as well as the ability of individuals to resist bringing up their sense of entitlement on beta forums. By clicking on the “Agree” button below,

1. You promise that you are at least 18 years of age, hopefully mature and sensible enough to understand the legal and long-term repercussions of your actions, are not a principal or employee of The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements, and are doing this on a voluntary basis, without expecting remuneration, compensation, or gratitude from the gaming public at large. If you are not, you should not have attempted to enter the beta to begin with.

2. You accept that The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements has the power to accept or revoke your access at any time for whatever reason they see fit, and y0u cannot throw a bitch fit on the forums or your personal blog as a result of such. If you are accepted, you also agree this agreement is a binding contract between you and The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements.

3. You acknowledge that your participation on the beta will require some access on the part of The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements to your computer specifications and DXDiag information, and will not throw a bitch fit at the fact that the pre-release program is a complex piece of technological work that cannot be tested by one single company on every computer specification setup known to man.

4. You acknowledge that The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements may, at its discretion, choose to charge a fee to acquire the beta software and/or gain access into the pre-release testing program. Again, you also agree to not throw a bitch fit if such a thing, rare as it is, happens in the future.

5. You accept that The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements may choose to move the pre-release testing dates to better facilitate the remedy of any issues that have come up as a result of internal and prior beta testing, and will not throw a bitch fit if such a thing does occur during the pre-release testing phase.

6. You will not throw a bitch fit if something doesn’t work because HELLO… It’s a freaking beta.

7. You agree to the terms of the agreement as indicated below.

AGREEMENT

Licensing Information.

You have a license to use this software, but The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements made it, so it’s The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements’ intellectual property. Don’t steal our stuff, and we won’t sue you.

You also agree to indemnify (not hold us responsible) for any losses you may incur as a result of losing this software. This includes sleep you may give up, family you may neglect, and money you may gamble on our future e-sport venture based on the game.

You hereby agree to test the shit out of this pre-release version. Break anything you can in-game, spot every spelling and grammar mistake available, and point out any other screwups The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements  has made, and make sure you note these either in-game through the bug report system or through the beta forums. Just please, for the love of everything good in this world, don’t simply complain about it. Make your beta issue report as detailed as possible in order for us to determine how to best replicate the bug and fix it on our end.

Confidentiality

Much like Fight Club, the only rule of our confidentiality agreement is that you don’t talk about beta, at all, except on our beta forums. Not on Twitter, Facebook, the game’s regular forums… NOWHERE ELSE EXCEPT THE BETA FORUMS or in a court of law as mandated by your respective governmental body. When we drop the NDA, then you can talk all you want, but not before.

Warranty (actually, the lack thereof)

You acknowledge that the game is a beta version, and will not throw a bitch fit if something doesn’t work. Yes, this is the second time this has been mentioned, because no one wants added stress from dealing with idiocy on a daily basis. If something doesn’t work, tell The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements through the proper channels mentioned above.

Miscellaneous

Break anything in the agreement above, and we will find you and make you pay… Oh, will we make you pay. Mwahahahaha!

[Agree] [Disagree]

Curry.

They say it’s delicious, but the Indian and Thai ones are just creepy as heck. One looks like poo, and the other looks like green poo.

BUT PEOPLE PAY TO EAT THEM!

WHY?

Does eating Indian Curry make you a connoisseur  of curry? Does Thai Curry make you a master of the spices? Of course not!

It is my opinion that Japanese  curry is the best curry out there, because it mixes sweetness with spiciness into all important flavors that go well with just about everything! I’ve eaten it with soup, I’ve put it on omelette rice, on hamburgers, on naked women… hell, ON NAKED MEN! ALWAYS FREAKING DELICIOUS.

Be a man, eat Japanese curry.

That is all.

Don’t dream it, be it.
Tim Curry, the second-best curry in the world

—-

Alright. Back to serious mode.

Please note: What brought this one was a short Twitter conversation about how incendiary topics have a tendency to get more attention than diplomatically worded write-ups. While this isn’t exactly a serious attempt at starting a flame war, it has generated more comments and seen more page views than both of the below MineCraft articles combined, which I find rather odd.

Syp of Bio Break recently posted a list of some of the MMO Topics that have been discussed so often, they’ve been beaten to death.

Of course, like Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, I took that as a challenge to incorporate each one of those elements into a blog post. Now, I could have done it simply enough with just a really kilometric post about all those topics in some sort of meandering fashion, but I was listening to Electric Light Orchestra’s Twilight and thought, “If Twilight was an MMO…”

So I decided to combine the fictional (OR IS IT!?) Twilight MMO with some other well-known or recently announced MMOs, and thus, we have Twilight: The MMO Song.

Feel free to sing along. Cheers!

Twilight: The MMO Song

(Please follow along to the tune of Electric Light Orchestra’s Twilight)
The visions dancing in my mind:

Playing a girl with nice behind

In my MMO of choice today

-

I paid for sex change RMT

for my Pally in WoW, you see

“A hot Blood Elf Pally Chick,” they would say!

-

With your head held high and your scarlet lies

You promised permadeath but to no surprise

You changed your mind, We’d resurrect;

If I was dev, I’d change that back!

-

Twilight: An MMO for Teenaged Girls!

Twilight: A game they play, but they should stay

Away from Me!

-

During the night, a raid was phased

A casual wanted a space:

“I’m such a noob, can someone port me there?!”

-

The hardcore, they just all complain,

“To casuals, it’s just a game.”

The discussion just will not go away.

-

*bridge*

-

It’s MMO or not at all, An MMO ain’t Firefall.

Twilight, Twilight: Open Beta Sucked, Now you’re just f*cked

We’ll PLAY FOR FREE!

-

Will Star Wars Galaxies Pre-NGE Come Back?

-

With your head held high and your scarlet lies

You promised a story, but you brought me GRIND

Eastern or Western MMO’s: you grind a lot, that’s how it goes.

-

Twilight: An MMO for teenaged girls!

Twilight: Your beta sucked, and now you’re F*cked

Twilight: I only meant to play a while!

Twilight: An MMO for Teenaged Boys!

Twilight, Twilight!

I was debating with myself whether to show my true colors, and then I thought, “What the hell. You only live once.” Today, I’m going to go out and show some racial pride!

You see, I think Sarnak rock. Hopefully, the explanation below will show you why I think Sarnak are awesome.

1. They’re dragons. None of that Iksar “Oh, I look like a lizard but am actually draconic” business. They look like straight up dragons. Who eat Aviaks for breakfast, with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti.

2. Sarnak have carpentry skills, and we all know Carpentry is the best tradeskill out there.

3. Sarnak have the best starting area out there. None of that overly icy stuff.

4. Hastened Gathering!

5.  They’re honorable warriors who don’t want to extinguish other races just to prove their superiority. They just want to beat your butt down and make sure you know who beat you.

6. Two Words: Peter Sarnak.

7. Sarnak is one letter away from the band Karnak, and we all know Karnak has one of the most awesome songs ever created, “Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6wwWJZyP2Y]

*to the tune of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – Yeah, google and Youtube that sucker*

Now this is a story all about how

My life got flipped, turned upside down

And I’d like to take a minute – just sit right there

And tell you how I became kidnapped and filled up with fear.

In the Northwest Steppes, I was killing some hawks

Near some damned gnolls, where I stole all their socks

Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool.

And all shooting some centaurs outside of school.

When a couple  of gnolls, who were up to no good,

Started making trouble in my neighborhood.

I got into one little fight

And my mom got scared

She said, “These gnolls are taking you to their damned Splitpaw Lair.”

I fought my way out and when it came near,

I took a couple of pictures for me to just share.

If anything I could say this terraporter was rare

But I said, “Nah, forget it, Take me the f*ck outta here”

I pulled up to a Bell about Seven or Eight

And yelled to my feet, “Yo Homes, Smell ya Later.”

Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there

To sit on my throne as the prince of the Lair.

——

Yes, this is a horrible rap. My muse, she is insane.