I got banned!

For those who do not know, I have recently(ish) gotten pretty into Minecraft and have been spending a lot of time on it. I enjoy the sandboxyness(yes, that is a word okay...) of it. Over the past two weeks, I've been searching for a well run, buzzing multi-player server populated by (mostly) mature adults who are capable of displaying even a morsel of etiquette to strangers.

So I joined the server owned by Exiled Gaming. At first glance, I liked what I saw. They had some stable mods running and a buzzing community. The website was detailed and helpful. I spent a bit of time browsing over the rules to make sure there wasn't anything that would hinder what kind of game play I and my friends would like. Mostly assured, I logged into the server and began the polite but insistent procedure of injecting myself into an admin's attention.

Shortly, I was offered a plot and began to build. During this time, I watched the chat to get some idea of what the community was like and how the server economy and maturity was. Everything seemed on the level. Over the course of the next two days, I invited 5 friends to join me in the lovely town of Redstone, where we worked to "keep it western." We are the foundation of this town, as it was mostly uninhabited when I first started building there.

Other than a few incidents (getting my chicken farm /butchered every day, getting blown up by TNT randomly, being PvPed and then outsmarting those same pvper's and getting my diamonds back...), I have not been disappointed and have enjoyed my time.

Today, I checked the website again, as I have every day, to see if the donation page was still down. I wanted to contribute because I know running something like this takes time, work, money and blood and tears. The page was still down.

MasterKnives(MK for short) is one of three listed server owners. I jokingly said to MK, "The donation page is still down." The response I got? "No shit!"

Wow... isn't that pleasant.

Now let me back up a bit. I have had no trouble with any of the staff other than MK. Ever since I first heard MK speak, I disliked them for their abusive attitude towards everyone. Everything that came out of their mouth was insulting, down to lines such as, "Some of your parents should have had abortions." I disliked them with a passion, but was also smart enough to know they ran the show (in part) and so mostly kept my interactions limited and tried to ignore the onslaught of verbal abuse this player dealt out constantly to likely 15 year old kids.

Tonight, though, after being offended myself with this rude response to my subtle way of saying, "Hey, I like what you guys are doing and want to show my appreciation," I was less inclined to just bend over and let this stanger slap me around like I'm one to be bullied.

A short while after the initial lines the following dialogue summary occurred. I am now pasting what is my ban appeal ticket, all grammar issues included! It's authentic!

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MasterKnives and staff,

The following (not to the exact letter, but accurate nonetheless) conversation lines occurred tonight.

Me: the chat does suck (referring to the Mine craft base chat UI)
MK: (I can not remember the exact wording, but MK informed me there was a mod for that, and there was a website used to find mods, called Google)
Me: You're sarcasm and constant over reacting to everything is getting old.
MK: Your. You're is a contraction of you and are
Me: (apologized for typing fail)
MK: Spelling has nothing to do with typing skills.
Me: (and here's the ban line) It's called muscle reflex, if you don't know what it is, try google.com.


This server is a good one, and I have found potential enough with it that I have invited five other friends (with a few more on the way) to join. We are searching for a mature environment and would like to give this server a chance. I never join a server asking for a babysitter, nor do any of my friends. We are all old enough to think for ourselves and appreciate knowledge and sharing. However I do not appreciate the constant verbal abuse that is being spewed out. The concept of mutual respect was completely absent during this entire conversation. I started a neutral line of a discussion and was delivered a condescending response and an knee-jerk ban.

As the payer for the server and one to be looked up to, I did not expect these kinds of over reactions. With a simple retort and no direct violation of any rules, I skipped three levels of ban punishment for defending myself in an offensive and pointless little back and fourth over something so miniscule that I feel like the players on this server are there to be subject to verbal abuse for any small thing at any point MK is logged in.

I have not had any trouble with any other staff. I find, in general, everyone is very friendly, and they carry the weight for making me put in the time and effort for this appeal. I have 5 friends who look to me for the next move and I can not help them or give them ideas when I get banned for refusing to deal with being someone's punch bag on my hours off. I don't get paid for that either.

This entire line of conversation began when I jokingly mentioned that the donation page was still down. I asked about the donation page the first day I was here. I liked what I saw and wanted to contribute, but all this nonsense makes its impossible to tell if it's even valued.

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The server rules state that you are not promised any rights. When I read this, I understood that it could mean the staff may at any time do anything such as wipe the map, the assets, your money, your town, your city, etc. You play on the server to have fun and don't technically have "ownership." All this was understandable to me. However, running/paying for a server does not give you the right to transcend the golden rule.

Just sayin'.

Inb4 I never get a response, and if it's a 48 hour ban, I'll never get a response before the time is over.


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Edit (Dec 14th, 2011) - For those I have not spoken with since this post, I was unbanned the following day after a half-hearted attempt to slap me on the wrist. Whatever, it got me back in but MK still wanted to get a few sly google.com jokes in on me which I was more than happy to play along with.

After some idle conversation, MK gave me a tour of some old structures he had worked on in the past. Admittedly, these structures were impressive. His projects seem in line with something I know some of you guys have heard me say maybe one too many times, "Go big, or go home!" I have to say, I have not considered building on such a large scale, but yes, they were some very ambitious and successful projects. He's still as ass. But I can respect someone who speaks with that kind of creative passion.

I still get to wear a :smugface: however, as I was given, much to my surprise, an apology for my ban. I'm almost ready to sweep this under the bridge, but I think several more google.com joke are still required. And he's still an ass.

I'm... Dragonborn!

I know I have not been posting. It's been weeks! I'm sorry! It's just... but... I'm dragonborn! And the taste of dragon souls is just delicious. Even if a bear decides to charge me while I'm happily sucking up a dragon soul and mauls me in my low HP state.

Skyrim is the first of the Elder Scrolls series that I've had the pleasure to play. The game is fantastic. I'm level (EDIT!) 17 and have begun to avoid the main story line quest. There is so much to explore, so much to collect and create. It fulfills all the things I would like in a single player RPG: slaughtering things, constant ego stroking, making things, hoarding things, and shouting things to death. I always respected the power of voice, so how much cooler can it get? Not much!

I promise I will not put any spoilers in this post. My fellow Skyrim addicts know I've been pretty bitchy and whiny about spoilers. I made my own channel that I could hide in when folks would start talking about the game, even about the equipment they find. Technically, that is not a spoiler, but lalalalalaaaa I just don't wanna know alalalalalalalaaaa...

The game is (almost)endless. Just the perks section is this circle of possible main categories, and each category then has an entire tree of its own, unlocked by category level and also by getting the preceding perks of that tree. You can find perk details here on a wiki page, if you want to see the perks and haven't got the game yourself. While you're leveling up, there is a main mission tree, but also tons, absolute TONS, of side quests, misc missions, locations to explore on the map, respawning dungeons and things to kill and destroy. Everywhere you go, you can pick up respawning ingredients to brew pots, hunt for food and materials to craft gear. You can explore endlessly, and I'm sure that was the intent.

NPC interactions are generally a bit predictable, but I have had some VERY pleasant surprises. During one mission (not going to say which or what), you enter the rendezvous point and overhear your mission giver talking to some others about you. While the other are yakking on about how they predict you'll be complete crap and never make it to the rendezvous, he turns around and basically says, "Oh yeah? Well look what we have here!" I know its programmed for when you enter, but its a great touch and immersion points are deserved. Plus, see my previous mention of ego stroking. The game basically strokes your ego the entire time and we all need that from time to time! (Is it sad that it makes me happy to be awesome and envied and respected in a game? I mean... I'm dragonborn! I deserve it!)

On the PC, the game is just stunning. I am able to run it on ultra with the crossfire enabled, but I do still get frame freezes if I try to give myself whiplash. I have not seen it on console, but my prediction is it just is not going to look as good. If you have a console, feel free to send me some screenshot links to prove me wrong, but I really just can not see how it can be matched. Anyway, did I mention the game is stunning? Facial features are ridiculously smooth, the stuff that doesn't matter are gracefully lower quality so your eyes can focus on the stuff that you can actually interact with. I love that! Instead of making it extremely obvious 'outline-it-in-neon-and-make-it-glow', the game gives more focus to elements you can interact with. Immersion +1point. Salmon jump over the crests of waterfalls, which was a sweet thing I noticed that actually caught my attention. How detailed is that!? I spent a good minute just watching these salmon swimming and leaping against the current.

Finding missions isn't really difficult. You can expect to be able to pick up at least a couple of missions from any npc location you go to. I have a hefty stack of side quests already and I haven't really been actively trying to pick them all up. This is probably the most mechanical part of the game, you can walk up to the npc equivalents of every town and expect to get missions from them. Some people will walk past you and complain about this or that, and if you really want to, you can stop and talk to them. Though some just want more alcohol. Typical.

I haven't really gotten that far (I'm level (EDIT)17 still!) so I'm sure I will encounter plenty of new things to slap around, or get slapped about by, soon enough. So far, the combat has been generally challenging. I've died plenty of times and had to run from a good few fights in the beginning. The sneak mechanic is a very cool and lets you gauge how alerted the enemy is to your presence. You can expect to find the usual encounter mechanics, aka, enter a large open room, step forward, and trigger things that want to axe you. See a room of goodies, walk forward, and get slammed in the face by a grid of spikes. That sort of thing. A few bosses I have encountered have probably been above my level, skill level and player capabilities, but I've been able to cheat the game a bit and get myself into difficult/impossible to get to positions in order to poke them to death with arrows. To date, my record is 112 arrows for one boss. No, there really was no other way for me to kill him.

You get your own house(s). You can even get it decorated for you and there is so much storage space! The bookshelves don't store a ton of books, but of the books you can store, it arranges them on the shelf for you. But I've still dozens of books that sit in a chest somewhere. I collect them for when I'm bored and want to read the contents. Some of the books actually can be helpful (and long winded) tips for your in game encounters. My only complaint about the house is its pretty much impossible to decorate it yourself without the contents of your home flinging themselves in random directions every time you turn around. I can't count how many times I've put that jumpy bit of seared slaughterfish back on that kitchen plate. I'm not eating that.

Obligatory summary on my play style. I have not been planning my perks or really picking anything in particular to skill in. I assign points in whatever I enjoy using and choose perks from point to point. I might regret it in the end if I'm not powerful enough, but I'm not worried about that until it happens! My perks usually go into conjuration, restoration and destruction. My combat begins with conjuration and maybe a bit of destruction if the fight is particularly tough. Otherwise I run around macing everything. Generally on a boss/dragon fight, I will lay down an atronach, put a few poisoned arrows into my target if I have the chance to, charge up to it while it is (hopefully) distracted with my atronach and give it dual poisoned maces to the face. Stamina drained, I circle back to using destruction/restoration until I sink my mana, then frantically start sucking down potions/food so I can do it all over again. Typically the end of a dragon fight involves me macing it to death. Of course, this also often ends in the dragon getting a nifty cinematic kill move involving my lifeless body being thrown around in its jaws.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before the Thanksgiving weekend. If I don't manage to clock at least 40 hours on Skyrim during this holiday, I'm going to be sad. EDIT: Opps. Apparently I'm level 17 still. Not 19... Eh...

The Minecraft, it spreads!

This is not a Battlefield 3 post. Sorry! I simply have not been playing that much to have a good amount to say. Unfortunately, not all in our group have been able to get copies of the game due to financial issues. When you're short on money, 60 bucks is a lot to just drop on a game. Hopefully, as the holiday season gets nearer, everyone will be able to get a copy.

This past week I was gifted a copy of Minecraft (yay! thanks!) and have been caught up exploring that. I find it quite fun and think the idea is a great one. My favorite part of the game is the initial survival. Sadly, as you progress in the game, it become less challenging since it is too easy to find food and resources to be able to survive, the creatures are not aggressive enough to pose a problem and even if you die you respawn with full health and food bar. So yes, I do think the game is too "easy." Usually the only ways I'm worried that I might die is getting stalked by a creeper and getting blown to bits before I realize it's there, or falling off a cliff. My biggest disappointment is the limited number of recipes available. For a game such as this, the things you can create are the most important, and looking at the wiki the list just isn't as long as I expect it to be. For all those copies sold, I certainly expect there to be more! Hey, Minecraft devs, make some more creatures and recipes, please!

That said, I absolutely love the idea of a giant sandbox of randomly generated landscape and being given the means to just meddle with it, altering it to fit my taste, building things and coming up with ways to entertain myself and personalize the world. I appreciate that it can go on pretty much forever, as far as your creativity can go. I understand the game isn't centered around being difficult as a survival game but I hope the developers realize that it shouldn't rely so much on the player creativity. The more complex your world becomes, the harder it should be to progress. And when you die you should not respawn with full health and food bar, you should not be able to retrieve all of y our gear and you should not explode into so many XP orbs that you can crash your friend's server. Sorry!

The game is more fun in multiplayer, so we are running a few private servers. It seems like an obvious fact. When you are building a world, it's just good to have some friends around to laugh with and talk about potential projects and things to do. Otherwise it's just you, the rain, and MOOO! and BAAA! and SSSSSSSSS BOOM!

Enough talk... here's a quick tour of my own single player world:



In the first night, I had dug my shelter into the ground and enclosed it. As I explored, I found a fantastic underground cave system and decided that, though it would mean the top level of my home would have to be pretty small, the cave would be great to live above. I reshaped the cave a bit to make the edges smoother and lit it so the archers wouldn't come at me out of the dark. I even have an underground pool! How cool is that? To make my location even sweeter, there was another pool just outside my door. I used that for a small, covered wheat field. I can survive in this sheltered zone indefinitely (too easy, Mojang!)

I also got the idea that I would like to have some farm animals. Though you can't build your own animal farm yet, I did it any way with much pushing and shoving. Now I can hear moo! and baaa! anytime, anyday.

On one of my first days, I got lost in the woods, died, and could not find my way back. I had built a stone pillar about 10 blocks high, but it simply was not enough to see over the trees. So I exchanged the stone pillar for something a bit more visible. I have a terrible sense of direction, everyone knows this. Hopefully, with this tower, I will be able to explore out a bit futher without losing all of my gear, as challenging as that would be. I built a perimeter around the tower that I can shoot out from. Somehow the creeper got in there. First time firing the bow - fail!

I'm more into the multiplayer worlds we have right now. I's sure I'd still run the singleplayer world when no one is around, but I'm actually pondering running a multiplayer world constantly on my old PC....

Anyway...thanks for visiting!

Trick or Riot Point Cards?

Today I braved RL again to acquire myself a sweet Halloween treat: Riot Point cards! I have to admit I feel a bit guilty splashing out money like this, but lets be honest here, these make me so happy! Riot created some cute Halloween themed champion skins (I mentioned them in my previous post). Though none of the featured Halloween champions this year are characters that I regularly love to play, my gut tells me that if I pass up the chance to buy at least some of these skins, I will regret not having them later on. So I said !@%# it and grabbed me a few of these.

One for my super cool bro and two for me!

It's hard to explain why I feel a bit bad about buying these. I don't often chuck out a good sum of cash like this (anymore) to feed my gaming, and I still have to sometimes remind myself that its not bad that I sometimes spend money on what I have fun with. But for some inexplicable reason, dropping 75 dollars on three cards still feels a bit weird. It's not the same feeling as if I were spending 60 dollars on an actual game title. The only similar comparison I can think of is if I were to go to the pool hall on a weekly basis. I can go to a public place and spend money weekly to play and enjoy the whole experience of being out and playing, or I can just buy a table. I may have the table to own, but both routes have their own cost and pros and cons. One route is just a bit more tangible than the other.

I'm not making any sense am I? Don't listen to me! Just look at the RP cards! I'm gonna get me some cool skins now! You jelly?

Taking a day off for Battlefield 3!

So I requested a day off next week Friday in anticipation of the Battlefield 3 launch. After playing Battlefield 2 for quite a long time and then being somewhat disappointed with Battlefield Bad Company, it seems EA has delivered a true successor to Battlefield 2. I am excited! I'm not sure if I'm more excited about the day off, or Battlefield 3. But I am definitely excited about tv guided missiles. I have landed some shots in Battlefield 2 that even I can't help but be a bit proud of (read: I'm so f$!%in awesome!!!!!!!!). I'm sure it will be more fast paced than Battlefield 2, so big hopes that I can keep up. I downloaded the Beta and played it briefly, but the buggy party system was a bit of a turn off. Here's hoping those issues are resolved when we all sit down to play this upcoming weekend. And here's hoping my 1K:12D ratio doesn't last very long. (Doing a lot of hoping over here.)

Still obsessed with LoL, I went to Best Buy yesterday planning to buy more riot cards to pick up a bunch of cute Halloween skins. I couldn't find the cards (why on earth do they split cards up by departments, and then put multiple stands in different parts of each department with different cards?! How is that in ANY way intuitive?!) but on my pass around the games section, I caught a trailer on the TV saying "Blizzard DOTA!" and did a double take. Apparently Blizzard is making a fun little version of DOTA as well. I walked out without continuing my RP card search, unsure of whether this would draw me away from LoL. But after reading up about Blizzards version, I feel it will not quite be in the same competitive ring as LoL or other dedicated MOBA titles. Maybe I should go and get those RP cards...

In the meantime, I made another video, this time without all the talking and the Teamspeak sound. Mostly because I was shouting and swearing a lot and it sounded terrible. Here is a game of Dominion I played with Soraka as my champion. Without any idea what to do about music, I did a search for "unicorn" (get it, Soraka, unicorn, eh? eh?) and "remix." It seemed to work out pretty well so maybe that will be what I will do from now on!

Dear Random Person that Pushed Dislike Within 5 Hours of Me Uploading, While I Was Asleep, 

Why you no like mah video?! I'm ultra-sadface :(((( 

the mangO tourbus is here with Iron Grip: Marauders!

Preface: If anyone knows of some good free or affordable video editing software that I can use for speeding up some gameplay videos, please let me know! Love you long time!

Hello my browser game lovers. I made two videos today because I couldn't be as short and sweet as some might have liked. The videos feature a F2P browser based game called Iron Grip: Marauders. I mentioned it in my first blog post as one of my current toys that I get to play with for free!

The game was featured on Steam a few weeks ago and I'm glad to have it in my arsenal of entertainment. If you sign up via steam before Oct. 30th,2011, you will get some Steam gifts, so don't wait!

This first video will go through some of the browser views for IG:M. Sorry if I talk a little fast but YouTube doesn't give me as much time as I need to say the millions of words I want to say. This one is a bit dry but will give you some tips as you begin your marauding career.

This second video are some clips out of my example raid and includes some narration about my thought process behind my moves.

I hope this helps. If it does not, you can always view some game play by a IG:M vet. These videos helped me learn how to win fights instead of getting trampled by the AI.

If you are interested or need something to occupy your time at work, I recommend giving this one a try. It's free and you can save your raids at any time and come back to them later! You can find me on IG:M as mangOskittle. Write me and let me know where you found me from so I don't ignore you. Thanks for tuning in.

I made a video!

Since I am going to be ranting and raving (mostly just ranting) about games on this here blog, I decided to learn to take some footage and make some simple videos. The first attempt features League of Legends, a F2P (free to play) game we've all been playing pretty obsessively for almost half a year.

Kog Maw, Ashe, Soraka, Kassidin, Cho Gath (GO TEAM!)

vs

Mundo, Vayne, Janna, Kog Maw, Xerath

I messed around with it in Live Movie Maker to cut a 30+ minute game down to 10 mins and added copious amounts of narrations. Some swearing made it in and I suspect that will be the theme for all my videos. So if there are young ears about, I would suggest headphones! At least I did not record my own microphone input otherwise there would have been a lot more.

It took many attempts at saving the video out in varying qualities before I realized that I was using the wrong aspect ratio which was why my video kept turning up squished and distorted. The resolution I snapped the video with is widescreen, so as long as I save it out in wide screen mode, it was surprisingly good at maintaining the working quality.

Hope you enjoy.

I swear excessively when I game.

Before you subject yourself to this long winded blog post that will go on endlessly talking about me, me and me, I want to say thank you. You actually clicked on a link to view this post in the first place which means a great deal to me. I suspect I already know who will be my earliest audience; you know of my previous attempt to start a blog like this. You guys are truly my closest friends and you know who you are!

I'm mangOskittle. I'm a gamer and have been to some extent for most of my life. Over the course of my gaming life, I have used dozens of aliases, but this one has been the flavor of the year. Though I have been gaming for most of my life, I only started to pursue games to my full potential about five years ago when I gained my financial freedom (read: I got a full time job). Since that time, that fabled "IRL" has become more and more mysterious. I love games like some might like reading books or watching movies, listening to music or going hiking or having drinks with good friends. Games help cure my stress after dealing with a bad day. I escape from this bizarre thing called reality by playing games. I socialize with great people while playing games. I also use gaming as an excuse to splurge my hard earned money since I am not nearly as inclined towards other activities like drinking.

So this entire blog is my tribute to games. Here I will share all the juicy (or not so juicy) stories about my past, present, and future gaming career. I cannot guarantee I will cover any enlightening topics from post to post. However, I did write a post in my previous blog about fear in games compared to real life experiences and the element of control. The same topic was covered in GamePro magazine about half a year later, but I had ripped my blog down by then and I could never prove how awesome I was. But I am awesome, really.

I'm sure I will stress about more awesome topics to fill this empty blog with. In the meantime, I will selfishly eat more of your time by talking more about myself. My first gaming experiences were with my family's Nintendo Entertainment System, playing some of my favorite games like Super Mario Brothers, Bomber Man, Penguin Adventure, Joust, Excitebike, and Twin Bee(I loved this one, thank you bro for reminding me of it!!!). When we got the Super Nintendo, the old system was slowly forgotten and replaced by more Mario and Donkey Kong games, as well as some crazy Star Wars games. I can't honestly even remember most games I played. I just remember that my father had gotten big disk boxes full of games (let's not speculate where these came from, yeah?) and we didn't even get through a quarter of all those games!

When my father finally built a PC for me and my brother to use, it won over our consoles easily and soon the Super Nintendo was left to collect dust. Together, my brother and I played all the usual classics like Doom (my father had bought us some silly extras like Doom Barney. We enjoyed killing him under closing doors frequently). Wing Commander was one of my favs, I will never forget how heartbroken I felt when our next PC could no longer run the game properly (it would speed through it like it was on fast forward). Civ2, Mario is Missing!, D/Generation... and of course, Monkey Island!

During our visit to Taiwan in '97, my uncle got me and my brother hooked on Star Craft. Once back in America, we joined my first gaming clan where I was always the total noob that had to be baby sat through most matches. Eventually we moved on to Counterstrike (I'm sure I'm missing games in between).

Around my high school years, I started playing a lot of obscure titles, many alpha/beta tests that eventually didn't survive. But they were free so the price was right. Some names still stick in my memory, like Astonia, which remains F2P to this day. I also remember playing Ragnarok Online during testing phase. Shortly before I had to pretend to be a responsible adult (apply for college), I became an overlord (how the hell did that happen) for Shattered Galaxy Beta. That's just a fancy term for someone who has shout and map tagging rights and can tell people where to go and what to do.

I played Diablo II into my freshman year in college. I probably played it before too, but it's all a bit of a blur. My favorite story from Diablo II that I never get bored of telling was about my level 45 Assassin hardcore character that died to Mephisto on normal difficulty because someone came to visit us in our dorm and I forgot I left her there to tank him. When I got back 45 minutes later, she was a little puddle on the floor and I was doing my best Luke Skywalker impression. Around this time I also need to admit that I contracted a NeoPets addiction. I ended up with over a million NeoPet dollars, or whatever, and a !@#% ton of junk. I can't remember why I got so obsessed with it, but I did. I can neither confirm nor deny that I might have NeoPet McDonald's toys.

Thanks to my bother (thanks a lot bro, sheesh), I got addicted to online poker over the summer after my freshman year (okay, so it's not exactly gaming, but poker has plenty of life lessons, surprisingly). Later on I encountered my gambling addiction, spent whole days playing and losing and playing more and losing, overcoming the illogical gambler mindset and continued on to play poker to this day. Not saying gambling is right or anything, but it's fun to play poker on my phone while falling asleep.

Junior year found me playing another obscure title called Fairyland and also a not so obscure one, City of Heroes. After playing Fairyland obsessively for almost two years (my bf at the time was extremely tolerant, which I can't say for all the gentlemen I have been close to in my past!), on some lucky day, I read on the Fairyland forums that someone was badmouthing this game called Project Entropia where players could make money while playing! Blinded by the marketing that was just too good to be true, I made all of the appropriate sheep bleating noises while downloading the game which would eventually become my new obsession, addiction and my gateway to all the fun I am having now.

I say this because it was in Project Entropia that I met the crew of gamers that I now speak to on TS on a daily basis. When in proximity of my computer I am plugged into TS constantly, where we discuss old, new and upcoming games, play together and in general share and bitch about "IRL" together. Months after meeting these fine folks, I downloaded Eve Online with them. Eve became my longest MMO career to date. If you are familiar with Eve, this will hardly be a shock considering the massive titans floating in the background. Sadly, I am on Eve hiatus for tons of reasons, one big one being that the engaging content that has kept me going year after year has been sorely missing over the past few expansions. 

With my cool gaming crew, I attempted to improve on my shooting skills with games such as Fallout 3, Battlefield 2, Left4Dead, Killing Floor...Though I think the most significant improvement happened when I realize it wasn't that my arm likes to spasm randomly, it was my mouse pad being terrible. That's my excuse.

I have a terrible flaw which is I never seem able to finish games. I still haven't finished Fallout 3, nor Dragon Age: Origins. I do plan to! I can count on one hand how many I have actually completed; Portal, Portal2, Singularity, Resident Evil 5... and that's about it. Oh, and Plants vs. Zombies. That counts, right?!

I feel I should mention I do own SC2. But thanks to someone who I won't name, our SC2 crew was soon sucked into the SOTIS custom map. After months of playing this, I introduced League of Legends into the fold, and we have been (mostly) collectively obsessed with LoL since.

When my muscles aren't atrophying while I play LoL (every muscle except for my mouse clicking muscles), I have been exploring Steam's new F2P games. Currently, I am running Iron Grip: Marauders in the background, where a 3 Shield raid awaits me and I have a strong feeling I am going to lose.

That was my way of saying this is where I should conclude this absurdly long first post. If you have gotten here without skipping everything from the first paragraph on, I just want to say thank you, again. You are an insane @^%!. If you skipped everything, then well @#%!. I don't blame you(but secretly I do, I am disappoint!). If you played a game with me in the past and I forgot to mention it, you are more than welcome to poke my memory! Until next time... I'm off to pillage, raid, smuggle, and plunder!