riari

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has an official release date! December 7th is when every one and their cousin will be on the servers trying to play. And the servers will probably be horrifically laggy. :)

In other news, I've decided I'm going to finish selling my books by new years. Or make a real attempt at it. My paid account status is up in the air in January and I'm not sure if I want to renew it. So that image gallery I've been using to help sell items that comes with paid users will not be there if I don't renew. So yeah. And I want that space back where the books are being stored. It's grown a lot recently cause I've been clearing out most of a bookcase.

And in last news, I have purchased a white pumpkin from Central Market. It is awesome but I'm still deciding on whether to carve it, or just decorate it for Halloween. :D

So I decided randomly to start playing Final Fantasy XII yesterday. Time to start working on my PS2 backlog I think. So that's the first game I chose. And I'm having fun with it so far.

Balthier just showed up and he falls under the awesome category. I do so like the voices for the game. They all have accents too. Interesting. Ivalice being the base of this game makes me happy as that's where Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story's background is at. Being from the Vagrant Story art design and several of their crew, I'm not surprised I'm happy about it at all.

Btw, my first hunt? A rogue tomato? No, I'm not kidding. A tomato that went rogue and is destroying the couriers. O_o

Expect some more comments about it. Cause that's what I do.

Huh. So first off this post is probably all City of Heroes. Just to warn ya.

And second off, I have to admit but they're doing a much, much better way of handling the noise to signal ratio this open beta. For past open betas, there were two forum boards: the bugs and the feedback & discussion forum. This time the mods are on top of it and opened up another forum called chatter & discussion along with the other two forums. Ex Libris, the main community mod, also put up a bunch of pinned and unpinned threads in the feedback one, including a negative feedback thread. The chatter board is perfect as people are discussing more in this forum, which is exactly what they should be doing.

I'm just amazed and thankful that she did that. When the PVP changes went in last issue, all hell broke loose on the open beta boards by a small amount of people. It got to the point where if it even mentioned PVP in the title or looked like it would discuss it, I wouldn't read it. It just annoyed me way too much. And sadly the pissed off PVPers lost the support of many who would support them normally due to their methods of complaining.

But that's the past.

So I've been reading the open beta boards (if you could't tell :>). And man this issue may make me come back to playing. Mission Architect is the main component of Issue 14 and they did a lot of work for custom critters. You can't place where you want to the spawns to happen, but I've been reading threads that they've made them tough! Apparently they're using the player scale for damage and I'm hearing it hurts.

And you can make just about any combination. People are combining power sets that normally aren't in game together because the custom critters do not have our AT restrictions. And different maps make for different spawn points so I heard try a different map if you dislike the spawn placement. You can have helpers. You can have escorts. You can have escorts betray you.

Dunno if non-subscribers can see these boards, but I'll post links to interesting topics anyway:
Advertising arcs I hope some of these arcs go to Live. I'm wanting to run some of them.
Holy Crap (the power of Custom AVs/EBs) Best quote: "It's a little jarring the first time you come up against an enemy that has all the player powers and more, instead of just being a bag of hit points."
Open beta: Mission arc creation tutorial

I have much love for trailers. They are great at trying to tease you into trying the movie/game. I think you all know my love for trailers, if my excitement for preview trailers at movies haven't tipped you off about it.

I do so love getting ahold of trailers to watch again later. So I have quite a few on my harddrive. And since I got to bring my machine up to lantyssa's house, I got to download some more.

Awesome trailers: Prince of Persia. *makes grabby hands*

This game looks like Sands of Time in terms of fun and awesomeness to play. Granted I didn't get very far in the next game after that, which I hope to remedy sometime.

The art looks awesome. The newest trailer I got to download is the Launch trailer. And I got this The World one which is a short video over the world of the new Prince of Persia. I'm so looking forward to playing it.

Of course after watching the Halo Wars trailer I downloaded, I realized that I downloaded the wrong one. Drat. I was hoping to watch the end of a video that some game trailer show started. One of those 'cut it off in the middle and go watch it on our site' bits. Well I'll find it eventually. It was probably the opening sequence.

I also did find new trailers for Final Fantasy XIII and Versus XIII. Who knows when those are coming out. Maybe 2009 if we're lucky. Also Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete to see what some of the new scenes were like. Just realized I forgot to look for any new Kingdom Hearts trailers. But they're probably not around anyways yet.

Moo.

Okies, birthday was awesome. I got a DS with TWEWY, delicious dinner, delicious snack, delicious carrot cake, and MASH season 3. Awesome. :D :D :D :D

(That cake was taunting me yesterday. I managed to make it until after lunch to eat it. :D )

Also, the cold is getting much better. Still congested and runny nose, but the coughing is so much less.

TWEWY is kicking my butt. I need to get the knack of fighting with the stylus. But I also don't want to ruin the touch screen. Need to get a screen protector. Also I would like to get Brain Age and that cooking training one that's been advertised a lot lately. But that will wait. Kingdom Hearts Re: CoM is first.

I'm also debating what to make for Christmas giving. Rice krispie treats most likely, but I'm also considering cupcakes. With blue sprinkles. :D But Dad also makes an awesome Monkey Bread. Maybe just cookies. Decisions, decisions...

Figured I wouldn't be posting another day yet, but eh, that's how it happens. Things pop up and I want to share.

This post is going to cover many things. So many things. Okay, not really, but there's a few topics. :>

First up, City of Heroes. Guess what? According to Position, the lead dev, re: the Mission Architect in a post today:

( Excerpt from Positron's letter )

So the news for today? The Mission Architect is moving to Issue 14: Architect, releasing 1st Quarter 2009, and now Issue 13 will be called: Power and Responsibility, releasing Fall 2008. Current tally for Issue 13:

( Issue 13's listings )

I'm sadly looking forward to the boards' reaction to this. Should be awesome.

Second up, I just found out today that Lynn Flewelling, one of my favorite authors, will be signing at Yaoi-con this weekend. *arrrrrrrgh* Yeah, lets drive the whole "haha you can't go to your favorite convention this year" thing a little further yeah? *headdesk* (Sadly if I had the plane tickets already, I may have been able to go, because Dad offered to pay some of it while I was in the midst of cancelling the hotel rooms. *sigh*)

*checks calendar* Oh hey, Rikti attack tomorrow till the end of September on CoH. That's fun.

Third up, power went out for a little while this afternoon. While not bad, and it did come back up after an hour thankfully, it was a flashback to those days without just recently and I was definitely not pleased. On the other hand, it's getting me a bit further in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. I just defeated Maleficent (after three tries) and now I'm at Vexen. Man, I need to get my card deck and HP better or Axel is going to kick my ass.

Fourth, progress is slow but starting on my Renfest outfit. I have hopes of a new one finished this year because I don't want to wear the dress again...unless I have to. I picked up a fall garland thing that might work well as a hair ornament. Or even an outfit ornament.

Fifth, I did get Steam downloaded finally. Did the overnight download method and it was ready to go the next morning. *kicks internet connection* I have Half-Life 2 and Portal installed now. Didn't much feel like it yesterday. Maybe Sunday I'll try out Portal and see how much this machine chugs on it. :>

Books read for this June!

Death Note Vol. 04-10
Clan of the Nakagamis
Return to Scandalous Seiryo University
Beyond Scandalous Seiryo University
xxxHolic Vol. 12

Nightrunner Series by Lynn Flewelling:
Luck in the Shadows
Stalking Darkness
Shadows Return

Yeah, not much. The internets ate me. And Odin's Sphere. And then at the end of the month Shadows Return came out and I've been re-reading the series since I finished the fourth book. I hope to finish Death Note in the next week.

Also, fun note: DDR has to be the only game that I know of where Silent Hill is known as a Christmas song.

No, I'm not making that up. DDR Max 2 has it.

Yesterday I got to find out why people like using Vent or Teamspeak with MMOs so much. It's a lot faster to relay information. If you're getting hit hard, commands to pull back are happening as it occurs. It's pretty neat.

I played City of Heroes for several hours yesterday with a friend on the phone while we played. It made it much easier for me to let my teammate know that my connection needed time to settle and for them to go ahead and do stuff. We also coordinated our attacks on the Elite Bosses we took on. Though holding the phone like that while playing got a bit uncomfortable after a while. I should get a headset if this occurs more often. ^_^ Though talking with friends is probably a lot more fun than random strangers.

Man, the Mistress of Madness was really tough. We ended up digging through our temp powers in hopes of finding something to help us. Thankfully, we both had a Build Snowbeast pet from the Christmas gifts. Without those, I don't think we could have taken her down last night. Unless we went to get Shivans...

So it was a lot of fun. And I'm further along the path of level 44. ^_^

Oh! I forgot. Today for Random:

-My throat's been bothering me today. This worries me, because my throat bothering me is one of the symptoms I have before I get sick. It started a little bit late last night, but its worse today. I'm drinking peppermint tea to help a bit. The funniest thing that helped was some sweet tea from Sonic.

-I wonder what that flower tea from Yum Yum Cha is called. That was good to drink with honey when I was sick at work.

-Speaking of sweet tea, my university's Sonic has a nice deal on. A 36oz drink of sweet tea with ice for a dollar.

-Death Note volumes take a while to read. Words, words, words... I think I'm reading it mainly to see what Light does next and how will L capture him. I'm almost finished with volume two. Though I don't think I can marathon read this series. One book at a time is enough. ETA: Woah, social engineering. Works rather well really. So, L's getting closer, someone figured out most of it, but she's now dead. Sad thing about this series is that you start getting to know characters, then Light offs them. Huh.

-Pumpkin Scissors is interesting. We see bits and pieces of the corporal's history. The blue steel lantern tale...

-An anime series that has been rather odd but rather interesting at the same time is Library Wars. No, really. Two organizations going to war of sorts with guns and battles, over books. Give a try.

Hmm, been a little bit since I updated, huh? A second Twilight Princess run through, City of Heroes, and a few websites have been eating my time...when I'm not out with friends on the weekend. ^_^

So! Regarding City of Heroes Issue 12:

Video has been released today about the Villain Epic Archtypes. I hope to actually be able to watch the video this weekend. (Curse my internets.) Supposedly there is more information being released later today. (ETA: New link now. The original site deleted the video because they don't carry game trailers. Someone messed up there.)

Massively.com's Exclusive Over Villain Epic Archtypes

Oh! And the Rikti invasion starts tomorrow and goes through the 24th. (I'm still highly amused that story-wise we know these invasions in advance.) They had to move this month's invasion a week earlier since the event code would conflict with the anniversary coding. Wonder what they're going to do besides the buying slots on servers thing? And you know, a badge. Though I don't need to buy any slots with the three I get from vet rewards and the two free ones.

As for Twilight Princess, yeah I know what y'all are thinking. Why am I playing through this game again? Especially since I just beat it a week or so ago. Well, it's just that awesome. ^_^ I really like the story and I'm finding things I missed on the first play through.

Running through it again so far has been fun and a little faster dungeon-wise since I remember parts of it. (Water dungeon was still highly annoying but better this time around.) I hope to get the Cave of Ordeals done before defeating the game this time around. But right now, I'm just before Snowpeak, and I've been hunting Poe's souls, pieces of hearts, and uh...fishing. It's kinda fun to go fishing in this game. ^_^

I do have Wind Waker pulled out and ready to play though when I finish Twilight Princess. :P