Flashback Special: MMO's and You- What you Need To Know About 2 Big Titles

So, I’m not much of an MMO guy, at least, I wasn’t when I had written my Animal Crossing blog last week. But, I was needed more material, so I though and thought. And thought. So, I went out, and looked for some new games, and almost bought a N64, but because of a lack of money, and one car crash, it didn’t end up happening.  So, on Saturday, I was talking to my friend and lo and behold, he was playing Runescape. That old game.  So I thought, well, maybe this could be fun. Bad idea, it brought me back in, not soon after, I came back to the other game that was the epitome of my childhood, but that’s for Friday. For now, I’m going to talk about Runescape, its history for me, and what it can do for you.

RS is the best free MMORPG ever. Seriously. Just about out of anything ever made.  It allows you to make a cute little character and train them in a medieval  setting. For there, it’s up to you for making money, training your combat, or completing quests. But, when you find life to be a bit too boring, you can throw $5.95* (per month) and do everything you could literally imagine. I have been playing Runescape for about 7 years now, on and off, and I have had my account hacked 3 times, been a member 4 times, and have committed genocide on trees by selling them for profit. I still enjoy every moment of it.

Let’s get into the finer things of RS: Money. Currently resting in my bank is 500k, full rune, and various other tools that I have acquired over time, like a snow globe that spawns infinite snowballs and a chicken suit.  Runescape, although not always serious, has many features that I have always loved. One is pest control, where you kill interestly themed monsters to fitting music, the point of which is to protect your shaman, who is keeping you in the fight. You win by destroying all of the portals that are letting the pests in.

So, believe me, Runescape is a fun game, and is one of the major parts of my own childhood. I put many, many hours into this game, but coming up, I’m going to talk about the most influential game to me of all time, and I’ll give you a few hints, it’s an MMO, and it’s not WoW.

TF2: Why Did I Sell My Buds?

Yeah, they're still alive. I was getting worried, no post from the TF2 team in almost a month? Preposterous. Even though Robin Walker (creator of the original Team Fortress) can sometimes go onto hat filled tangents for months at a time, even he comes out and gives us something new. Usually hats. No, they were saving up. They released a whopping universal update in honor of my all time favorite update, the Mannconomy update. A few days ago, trading turned 1 year old, and to celebrate: they added a few goodies that I’ve been wanting for awhile now.

First off, they added new hats! (I know, calm down!) But, they also improved the features of uploading hats as well. just follow THIS to see. (This covers the whole update, be warned there is a Baby Saxton Hale exploding out of a bear's chest.) But, that’s not the point; the point is a new miscellaneous slot. That’s right. If you thought wearing earbuds and glasses at the same time was impossible, YOU WERE WRONG! You can also add custom decals to your weapons, and try out weapons from the store, oh and give people high-fives (If you pay for the “taunt”). Re-plays now come with Slow-Mo, and of course, a few new maps. One is for testing your new hats, and one is for playing.

With this update comes what I feel is more attention to what the players have been wanting, even though I now have the chagrin of knowing that Earbuds have skyrocketed. But, I’m okay with that, even though my horrid computer still can’t play games with anymore graphics properties than Toontown (coming up in a future blog!) without crashing. Team Fortress 2 shows that not only the community can play, but can actually play, too! Over this year span, over $2 million have been payed in royalties to hat/ weapon creators, that’s pretty cool. But TF2 continues to do what I love most: be itself, which isn’t what it was in the beginning of it’s life so many years ago. TF2 is the only game where a human of unknown gender can go around with a monocle and hair taped to its face, listen to earbuds through its mask, and of course, wearing a quite nice fire brigade’s helmet while setting people on fire. Yeah, it’s a bit brutal, but it’s so, creative. I do know that they do sell out to Major game developers, but it does fit within the actual game, or it at least feels that way. So, until the day that Hat Fortress 2 doesn’t launch on my computer anymore, I will continue to play, perhaps not every week, but I do love the game, and of course, all of the features it brings with it.

Flashback: Why Am I Doing This?

It's the third post of the week, so you know what that means, ladies and gentlemen! It's time for another random game out of my "of old and forgotten pile of nostalgia." Today's feature is from the Gamecube. I probably played this game as much as I did MKDD or Smash Bros. Melee. I had the cheat codes for this game memorized before I knew my entire alphabet. If you guessed Animal Crossing, then you would be correct! Animal Crossing is like the version of Sims that everyone has played, but you are ashamed to admit. Playing Animal Crossing was like joining AA; you had to admit at one point that you had a problem. Animal Crossing was the epitome of me doing stupid things as a child, until I got onto the computer and started play Runescape and some other games of course, but that is a completely different story. Today, I dive into the past of my childhood, and decide on whether or not I could have actually done anything worthwhile with my time.

Animal Crossing starts out on a cute little train, as you are moving to a new town; this is where various things happen, like meeting an annoying little cat who asks you your name, the town you’re moving to, and most importantly, where you’re going to live. Since you have no house, he hooks you up with Tom Nook, the insane shopkeeper who gives you the smallest, dirtiest house in the entire world. Oh yeah, you got to pay him for it too. And how do you receive money? You do random tasks for the villagers living with you; dig random holes to find money, catch flies, fish, find fossils, or cheat. When you pay him off, you can re-model your house. Like make it bigger, get a basement, or even an upstairs, all of which you must pay for. After 500 hours, and you may have paid him off, he erects a giant gold statue of your character in front of your house, and since he is now a multi-millionaire, he doesn’t charge you this time. From this point on, you can do what you’ve been doing, socializing with your virtual friends, buy things for your house, fish, etc… when you place objects in your house, your house rating goes up, if it is fashionable. From this point on the game is just a slurry of nothing but pointless gameplay hours. But, you could just start a new house. Each town has room for 4 people. And if you want to get adventurous, grab another memory card, start a new world, and bring your old guy over via the train you came to town on. Yeah, you can visit a friend’s town, or just build one yourself, whichever way you like to spend your hours.

            Animal Crossing is legitimately one of those games I would look at when I was trying to decide to play either Luigi’s Mansion, or Mario Sunshine, or Melee, and just to Animal Crossing. It was effortless, like the Sims before I got Sims III. But, why did I do it? I had more fun on every other game I played. Even Shark Tale for the GBA, which was a game I randomly found on the bus in 4^th grade. But, I think it was simply because I had nothing else to do. I mean, really, if they had put all the man-hours of Animal Crossing into something like curing AIDs, we would have found the cure years ago. Animal Crossing was the greatest waste of time since watching paint dry on a wall, and then realizing that you were staring at the wrong wall the entire time. But, you can try for yourself. When you find yourself waking up at age 32, playing AC on your Wii with your Wavebird’s batteries dead again, you have been warned. This game could teach WoW a thing or two on addictivity. Although I did have fun (and I still can’t remember how) I will admit, there are some games not worth playing, now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish the pool for my Sims on Sims 3.




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Why Nobody Cares What I Think About

So, I was on YouTube watching videos of hilarious cats in boxes when I came to a sudden realization. The internet is big. Very, very big. So big, I can't even describe it to you. But, I can give you a good representation. But, here's my point: the internet really is just about the last place where everything can, and probably has, happened. There are good parts of the internet, and bad. There are amusing things, disgusting things, and a mixture of both. There are piles of memes, spawning from all corners of the internet, from DeviantArt to YouTube. There are many things out there that I thought I would never like, and some more I thought I would. I myself have seen a good deal of what the internet has to offer, but most will throughout time, whether they use the internet for fun, or the lulz. Today I will focus more on the idea of Social Networking, and how the stupidest thing can lead to a multitude of smaller, stupider things.

Twitter, Facebook, these sites represent the idea of Social Networking in the Free World, China uses a site called QQ, which I personally know little about. But, I do know more about Facebook and Twitter, both of which have their uses. Unfortunately, some people don't seem to understand how these simple sites ought to be used. Between useless tweets like "OMG JUST GOT UP" and statuses like "GOT HOME, WHAT A LONG DAY!!1!" Now, I may just be cynical, but this is just a waste of everyone's time. If you have something to say, at least let it be a smidge interesting. I've given up on Twitter, I haven't used Twitter in over a year, it just seems pointless to me. What it would be useful for would be for it to be used for actual news, or important updates, like it should be. As for Facebook, I can't turn off everyone's posts, or maybe I could, it would certainly stop a huge amount of the Farmville spams I get.

To summarize my point, Twitter is a lost cause as far as I'm concerned. Its pretty much boring, and 90% of posts are either out of place, or are completely useless to me, but I still have hope for Facebook. I know this is a commonly known issue, but if I can change one mind while I am still on my soapbox, then I'll say it: think before you post. There is a good chance most people don't care about when you got up, and if they do, at least try to make it humorous. And for one last thought, if you have over 300 friends, do you actually know them? I only talk to about 30 or so people on Facebook, and that's what I narrowed my friend's list down to. If you don't talk to them, why add them? It's not a race, its just another way to say "HA LOOK AT ME!!! I HAVE 2,387,202,989.232 FRIENDS!" While everyone else is just confused.