The universe.

I'm absolutely fascinated by the universe.

Here we are, humans, every day learning more and more about this place. It's incredible that we can know that we exist on a planet that is circling around in a solar system. That other solar systems exist, even other galaxies. Science every day seems to be uncovering something magnificent about this place. Yet even more questions remain. Why are we here? Why does the universe exist? Does other life out there exist?

We are like children left to ourselves in a giant building. We could dedicate our entire existence to working together to uncover all there is to know. Instead we are fight amongst eachother and are being selfish, just like children. If we decided to all work as a team, team humanity, we could achieve so much. Instead we steal from eachother, kill eachother, and care only about self rather than the group. We come from animals, but we are no longer animals. We must fight what animalistic tendencies we still have, and embrace what makes us humans. Embrace what separates us from the animals we once were.

Altruism. Love.

Ghost and the Super Pals [Part ? Rough Draft]

Intro.

Something happened. No one knows what, but for some reason a small percentage of the human race gained super powers. Some say it was an act of god, others swear it was aliens. A few think it is mankind's next evolutionary step, but who the fuck would believe that? I mean seriously, evolution is to get a bigger brain, to walk on two legs. Never heard of any animal evolving to shoot lasers out of its eyes. Read a book people.

Anyways, my name is Ghost. People call me that because I can become ..phased out, like non-physical. Also, I can sort of float around. As such when people see me do this, they are prone to yell out "Ghost!" so I guess I took the name just so I can pretend everyone knows me. I also get called demon, the chupamecabre, peeping tom, etc but I'm not going to call myself that.

Anyways, the whole event happened and now a lot of people have some powers. Nothing like shooting lasers out of their eyes, that's just ridiculous. Still pretty strange stuff. No big flash, no crazy thing going on, just poof, people wake up with powers. Fairly anti climatic. Afterwards, humanity reacted to it as they would with anything else. It became a political issue to be debated on, and another us versus them mentality sprung about.

Still, this is the 21st century, so no pitchforks and torches were raised. There was a lot of debate if they were to mandate that we register our powers. Just like you need a licence to drive, fish, and get a gun, we would be required to get a licence to have powers. Most of us however were pretty opposed to it, and there was lots of support for us from the LTBG community. They were experienced with how it feels to be prosecuted and hated, so they really had our backs. We were the next BLTG.

Anyways, so an amount of people had super powers. What they did with them is about as unique as they are. Some joined the police force or armed forces to help serve their country the official way. However considering the popularity of super heroes in our culture, most went the vigilante route with varying degrees of success. Some didn't really appreciate the change, they wanted to just ignore their powers and just resume their normal life. This was harder for some than others.

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Phil Chapter 1

Phil was a thirty year old divorced accountant. He tried to live as normal and routine a life as possible. He enjoyed boring, he treasured monotonous. As such, it was to his disdain that he had been transformed into a giant furry monster. Phil woke up in the morning at 6:30 am as he had the day before, and the day before, and so on. Unlike all those other days however, this day his bed lay on the floor, his new weight having mercilessly ended the life of his bed frame.

Also unlike other days, his Star Wars pajamas were torn and stretched to their limits trying to fit a body they were never meant for. Yawning as he awoke, he briefly wondered about things. He wondered why his yawn sounded different, he wondered about the TPS reports today. He also wondered why his arms were large and...furry? That last thought snapped him out of his half-asleep like state and into a reality were his arms were indeed large and furry!

Jumping up out of bed he quickly stumbled to the bathroom, smacking his head right into the door frame and breaking a head-sized chunk of it off. He looked into the mirror. Where there would normally be a short, balding, overweight man, there was now a hulking seven foot tall monster covered in purple fur staring back at him. Terrified of his own sight, he shouted out a powerful monstrous howl where there once would have been a girlish scream.

Just as a truly amazing panic was forming, his coffee machine let out a long beeeep. The all-too familiar sound snapped him back to reality, as he realizes "I'm running behind schedule!". He grimaced as went to get his morning coffee, and turned on the news. Apparently some sort of thing had happened, and people had been experiencing changes. Change. That word triggered in him that regular feeling of dread.

Quickly finishing his coffee he goes to get ready for work. He dismisses the idea of trying to take a shower without a blow dryer, and instead heads off to his bedroom. Looking in his closet, he grimaced as he realized that none of his clothes would fit him. In the back Phil spots one of his wife's...rather ex-wife's..gowns. One she wore before she lost all that weight and realized she could do better. With no other alternative available, he hesitantly dons it.

Grabbing his stuff he walked out of the house and hurriedly closed the door, pulling the door knob right out of the door. He gave an impressed look at his grasp on the door knob, only to have the moment ruined by the creaking of his door as it careens to the ground. Walking to his car he could hear the screams from his neighbors. He tried to smile and wave at them, but from their point of view the monster was bearing its fangs and brandishing its claws threateningly. Realizing it was just making them more frightened, he went on his way.

Phil tried to phone in to his boss to let them know he would be late. Trying to carefully push the right buttons, he ended up jamming them deep into the device. Frustrated, he accidentally splintered the cell phone into bits, and got to his car. It was nothing fancy, just a dinky gas efficient car to get from point A to point B. He wasn't too sure how he would get to point B though, considering how small inside it was.

Moving the seat all the way back, he ducked down and tried to enter the car. Trying fit in he grimaced at the loud tearing sound. Poking his head through his new sun roof, he crammed the rest of himself in the vehicle. The car creaked and moaned as if it was in its death throes, and the bottom almost touched the ground. He was in though, and determined to get to work.

Starting her up, he drove to work, causing quite a stir amongst the traffic. Having some time to think to himself, he wondered just how long this..thing..would last. "I'll stop by work, ask for a sick day, then head to a doctor. Surely this isn't the weirdest thing they've dealt with. I'm sure they can fix this." he thought, trying to delude himself. He grimaced as he rolled into the parking lot, imagining how terse his boss would be with him.

Story time.

There are by the looks of it tons of official places to put your writing, but I have this space here that I rarely use and figured it might be a good way for this to get some more use.

I have a tendancy to imagine stuff in my mind. Something will get me going and before I know it, I have an entire story in my mind. I usually try to write it down, and then later refine it, but often it gets left as a rough draft. What I intend to do is put my writings down here rather than on some random site, or at least here first. With that, I give you some of my writings. Beware, I'm no professional in any means. :)

The most fun I've ever had in LoL.

Quite a long time ago I used to play League of Legends pretty seriously. I tried hard to win, and would get angry if I died or lost a game. I eventually decided to quit playing because I was tired of raging, as well as was tired of the general hostility I experienced from other players in the game. I realized I wasn't having all that much fun. So I started a new philosophy, only play a game if you are having fun doing so.

Eventually over time I started to miss LoL, and would play a game here and there. However I kept with my philosophy and didn't play seriously. I picked whichever champion I felt like playing, ignored any meta and just played for fun. This often caused issues with teammates who were playing to win. I often ran into people that were rude, bossy, trolling, etc. It was still a bit stressful, and I lost often as I was never that great at LoL.

More recently though I've still had a desire to play LoL, just to enjoy playing around with a champion for fun. I didn't want to deal with the usual hassle that comes with a pvp match, so I decided to play against bots in the beginner setting. The games were easy and stress free, I was able to relax and just enjoy the game. I was able to try out all sorts of various champions I was inexperienced with, and discovered which ones I liked.

As for my fellow teammates, they were usually a pretty friendly sort. It was all very casual and no one cared if I screwed up. I got to meet a lot of newer players, they were often surprised they were teamed with a level thirty. I became friends with one of the newbies and we now team up often. I was telling them the other day that "This is the most fun in LoL I've had in..." and I realized that this is the most fun I've ever had in LoL.

A story I found.

I found this story on reddit, written by HobbitFoot. With his permission I am posting it here for others to read. You can find the original article here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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A lot of modern games have terribly written rules, even games that are made for children. They usually rely on someone who knows how to play the game and a set of rules provided to clarify small issues.
Case in point, when I went to high school, I saw a group of developmentally challenged kids huddled around a pair of twins trying to play a game of Pokemon: The Card Game one morning. I say trying because what they were playing obviously wasn’t how to play the game. I knew how to play the game, and I had time to kill so I started to teach them. They seemed to pick up some of the basics of it.

My group of friends, all in AP classes, were getting into Pokemon as a small break from Magic: the Gathering. So, one day, those kids saw us playing and started hanging around. They would watch us play, get help from us to play each other, and even played us. We all knew that they were taking classes to go work at the local supermarket and would say some odd things, but they weren’t crazy and it wasn’t like we were winning any popularity awards ourselves.

Eventually, we switched back to Magic; Pokemon was too simple and didn’t mesh well with the large multiplayer games we would have at lunch. The twins saw us play Magic, and wanted to learn. We would teach them, starting with the basics. Soon, they were playing games with our decks with us correcting them if they made any mistakes. They got better, and soon wanted their own cards. I sold the two of them some simple decks with mainly commons in it for a couple of bucks each; one was a blue deck and one was a red deck.

The lunch games I had with my friends were great. Some people would die, but the games rarely finished; we didn’t care. However, one day, I was just getting pounded on. I was down to four life. Then, it was one of the twin’s turns. He had the red deck; he had a Lava Axe; he dealt five damage to me. I tried to convince him to keep me alive, but he didn’t want that. He wanted the victory, and my friends backed him up saying the win was fair and square.

He beat me.

This was a guy who was literally near the bottom end of intelligence at the school; he was segregated out to take specialty classes because he couldn’t handle normal ones. I was one of the school’s brightest, acing the AP classes I was taking without breaking a sweat and earning academic awards from the school and from outside events.

He beat me at my own game.

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MMO vs Multiplayer

This is a topic I've been thinking about lately.

In my past mmo's have been a large chunk of my gaming time. I played games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft, which involve countless hours of "grinding". Grinding for xp to reach max level, doing dailies for money, doing heroics for valor, etc. Then there are the raids which can take hours, with chance you might not get a single drop. All of this is so that I could get a small increase in my characters stats.

Vinzulu - 19 Troll Rogue Twink - World of Warcraft

It seems in mmo's that you have to put in an incredible amount of work to have a little fun. I've read before that mmo's are designed to get you to play as long as possible. This means dragging out everything as far as they can. In 2011 I started slowing my grinding to an eventual halt. I first stopped raiding, then heroics, then dailies. I still enjoyed pvp doing battlegrounds, but since I didn't grind for honor points I didn't fare very well.

Then in 2012 I eventually stopped playing WoW, and pretty much swore off grinding. So what had brought on this change to reduce and eventually remove grinding from my life? I came to a new philosophy. If I am playing a video game, I am playing it to have fun. As such, I am only going to play it if I am having fun. What I realized is that I wasn't really playing at all, I was working. Doing dailies, heroics, etc was work, not play.

Since then I've rarely played an mmo, except for Guild Wars 2. I'm mostly playing single and multiplayer games, such as Skyrim, Tribes Ascend, Farcry 3, and Chivalry. These games can be immensely enjoyable, and have a high fun for your time ratio. Have half an hour to kill? You could do a heroic you've done fifty times before, or you could rack up a great kill count or go on a quest to save a town from pirates.

Zappi - Asura Engineer - Guild Wars 2

Writing this article has brought up a few questions however. Leveling up is found in both an mmo and in multiplayer/single player games. So what is the difference? Why does one seem like a chore while the other is often just a byproduct of having fun? One of the answers I think lies in an earlier statement of mine, that mmo's try to stretch things out. Why are there so many games coming out as mmo's?

Also, what MMO would you like to have been a multiplayer game instead? What would it be like?

Chivalry - First Impressions

Chivalry is a new game made by Torn Banner Studios. It's an FPS game that takes place in medieval times, as such players use melee weapons instead of guns. While that alone is something that sets it apart from most other shooters, its combat is where things really start to get interesting. There are several types of attacks you can perform, such as overhead chops or stabs. You can also block a players attack if your timing is right. It is all very skill based, meaning it takes time to master and good reflexes help.

It's better to watch a video or play the game yourself to get a better understanding of how fun the combat and gameplay is. Chivalry offers several types of pvp, such as arena deathmatch, or team based objectives. There are four classes, Archer, Man At Arms, Vanguard, and Knight, each have their own play styles and weapons. As you further play a class, you can unlock even more weapons for them use. These weapons you can unlock seem to be sidegrades, each having different pro's and con's.

As mentioned in the title, I am still new to the game. I purchased it during one of the steam sales and had been putting off playing it. I finally started playing it this past week. First thing I did was use the handy tutorial that came with the game, then rushed to a game. It was a team objective type game, meaning two teams with an objective such as pushing a cart. Somehow I feel as if I've done this before somewhere.

I didn't fare too well of course, as to be expected of a noob. I didn't have the timing down for blocking attacks, and I only managed to get a few lucky kills. After getting thoroughly owned for a good while, I decided to hit the showers. While the gameplay was certainly interesting, there was a bit of a rough start. Then a few days later some steam buddies wanted to play the game, and we hopped onto an arena server.

I tell you I laughed so much I couldn't count the times I almost peed my pants. Afterwards not only did I learn some pretty decent fighting skills, but also had unlocked several weapons for the knight class. So I guess the moral of the story is to hang in there, and bring your friends if possible. Thank you, and I hope to be dismembering you in the game soon!

[All video and pictures courtesy of http://www.chivalrythegame.com/]