ArenaNet and All of My Rage

Scratch ‘Rage’, I meant ‘Love’, honest!

I actually don’t hate ArenaNet, despite what certain articles may imply. I love them, to near-death. They managed to create a game that satiated a lot of my gaming needs, and I admit, I do disagree with some of their later updates to the 6-year old game, but it’s time to put that all behind us now because on the horizon is Guild Wars 2.

“But, Connor! Didn’t you write from 5 years in the future warning us about the follies of Guild Wars 2?” Well, yeah, but that was jumbled randomness mixed with irrational fears (except the alchemist bit, that’s still true…maybe). So, what do I want to talk about now for Guild Wars 2? Well, read on. Continue reading

It’s Friday!

No, it’s not Friday, it’s just a normal, Thank-God-It’s-Friday-and-Almost-The-Weekend Friday. So, what’s been going on? Stuff! Can you imagine that? I bet you couldn’t. So, let’s talk about this ‘stuff’.

Well, first off, I’m working semi-working on some projects in-between assignments for college and other things, like websites. Two in particular, are new and still need some tender loving. First we have a livestream capture of my adventures through Rift’s world of Telara. Why? Because I can, and I can look back on it later and sigh at how noobish I was when leveling my mage. Nothing too special about it, but I’ll ramble while playing it sometimes, and me rambling is always good fun, so check it out.

The other project is for my more imaginative side. It’s no secret I love me some Minecraft, but when playing one evening, I had an urge to do some self-reflecting while I ran away screaming like a girl from a creeper. In short, I decided I would look more into this self-reflection and write about the strange world of Minecraft. It’s a tale of isolation and self-discovery and some other really important character-developing things. You can check out how it’s progressing over here.

Now that those have been talked about briefly, let us talk about what’s going on this weekend! More importantly, this Saturday. This Saturday, the Gaming World Entertainment Network (GW-EN) is hosting a Guild Wars in-game event called the ‘Toga Party for MS’. It’s a charity event being held to raise awareness of multiple sclerosis and gather up donations for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. There are even a bunch of awesome, geeky prizes. Like Star Wars toys action figures, and some comics! You’ll have to head over to the main Toga Party page for more info. And if you play Guild Wars, stop by Chahbek Village International Districts for in-game fun.

Stay lazy, my friends.

What Did Twitter Teach Us Today?

Well, for one, spamming nonsense has gotten me more followers! Well, maybe the new hashtag trend for the day, #ims211, had something to do with it. But only maybe! Let me break it down for you. Early this morning (Around 10-11 hours ago) Sean C. Duncan, (@scd) a professor of interactive media studies at Miami University in Oxford Ohio, tweeted

Hey, if you work in games, can you tweet hi to my class (#ims211)? I wanna make a point about Twitter and the game dev world.

More or less, it was a hit (but is NOT trending…yet) and just from it, I’ve found a wealth of followers and followees, all of whom work in, want to work in, or are in school for gaming. And, while originally asking for developers of the medium, many others (including myself) threw in to the mix soon after.

Gaming journalists, gaming enthusiasts, gaming marketeers, and who knows who else all networked together around #ims211 and it’s still going strong as an interesting point about today’s social networking and interactive media. Hell, someone went as far to create a website just for #ims211. I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty awesome, and this is the kind of thing Twitter was created for. This easily shows the power of social networking at its best and if you were wary of twitter before, this could change your mind.

So, what does it all really mean? Well, there’s no super-secret behind it. It was (is) a fantastic way for the gaming community to see all the developers, big or small, as well as others who work with games. It was a social experiment to prove a point and it grew bigger than the original creator planned and, in the end, everyone wins.

So, follow me on Twitter, because #ims211 says you should!