A Mix-Up Grab Bag Selection of Meaningless Topics
Well, the topics may be meaningless to those not interested in them.
Umm, to get things rolling, I am alive... sorta. I've been sick for about two weeks... maybe longer. It was interesting, it flared up one night and I was instantly out of commission from then on. Fevers, chills, coughs, sneezes, phlegm balls the size of Texas and... oh yeah, my voice is no longer what it used to be. It's taken on a really raspy quality where the starts of certain words or phrases comes out as barely more than a whisper. I remember there being a rather famous female person that had a raspy voice... my voice is now sorta similar to her's... if only I could remember her name.
Next up, F2P MMOGs (Free To Play Massively Multiplayer Online Games), they do exist and some of them are even alright! I have tried a fair number of these F2P games, ditched a few, kept others and actually play two of them currently.
Firstly, I would like to congratulate Brasilian company, Hoplon Infotainment, for reaching beyond their Portuguese speaking borders with the release of a multi-lingual version of Taikodom! It's a game that comes the closest to what I've been looking for! It's a sci-fi MMO that allows you to pilot ships around the universe, of course, this universe is currently a lot smaller than we like to think it really is. Taikodom's universe has a very well defined border, however, the maps in each "node" are quite massive. So you have room to fly around, fight enemies and mine asteroids (a system that is currently "shoot the rock until it explodes, collect the loot, shoot the next" but should eventually change into something that only freighters can do in the future.) With the information in parenthesis, yes this game is still in development on multiple fronts.
One of the major fronts of development is the current lag situation. There is simply a massive amount of data that is trying to get shared between the host and client systems, then there is the number of players that the data is getting shared with. Ok, so that last tidbit is true for all MMOs, player location is rather important after all. (See? I told you it was going to be meaningless, I just didn't say it was going to be meaningfully meaningless.) Taikodom has a lot of potential being what it is. I hope to see the rules for certain activities put into place so that the game can be fleshed out to it's intended purpose. Taikodom has something for everybody, if you want to be a fighter pilot, hotshot is the name of the class for you. If you like to strike from a long distance with lock-on targeting missiles, Juggernaut is the name of your career. If you like to explore where no-one has gone before, Scout is your M.O.S. If you are a penny pinching, hard-working miser that places more faith in cold hard cash and the materials to make it, Merchant is what you wanna be.
For the time being, take note, while Taikodom is online and playable in it's present state, the English client is still under development (most of it is already translated) and the current data transceiving methods introduce a lot of lag when more and more players jump online. Also, the player-base of Taikodom is largely Portuguese and maybe but a handful of those players understand English. Take heart, though, between 9pm and 12am my character(s) can be found mining or shooting down NPCs (or both). Other than that, one player in particular has been extremely helpful to me. He goes by the name of Seth Apophis and has been known to help out many a new-comer to Taikodom. Thanks again, Seth!
Another note-worthy game on the F2P market for all of you Shin Megami Tensei fans! Come on, I know there's a few of you out there in the world. Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine takes the series out of the normal box. I didn't even know that Shin Megami Tensei even existed before I found this MMO. After playing it for a bit, I found out that SMT games were quite a bit different in some aspects. From my research, you'll be meeting some old SMT favorites again if you jump into the world of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. In this MMO, you play a human character called a Demon Buster (DB for short). There are classes but none that you pick right away. So, you don't start your life as a gunner equipped with a gun or as a mage with a handful of already learned skills. The birth of your character, no matter what you turn it into later, is the same for everybody. Everybody gets one basic spell and is taught the fine arts (or basics, rather) of melee combat. But, I'm not going to go into a full guide or anything here. There is a very useful wiki on Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine's website that will explain a good portion of what you need to know before you roll a character. Pay attention to the expertise chains and which ones sound like they might be interesting to you. (NOTE: If you need Demonology 2-0 for anything you're interested in, it will take the most time to unlock, trust me.)
Benefits of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine's character non-class starting form include the fact that you don't have to be tied down to just one class. You can be a jack of all-trades if you prefer. So long as you realize that a Jack-of-all-trades isn't going to max out any one particular category of expertise, it just depends on which one you use more often. Of course, at any time you feel that you've learned enough of any certain expertise, you can just 'shut it off' so to speak and work on other expertise without adding more points where you don't want them. After all, you can only remove stat points in certain areas while you are under level 30.
Onto other topics, isn't it ironic when you talk about N1H1 at work and then end up getting rather sick? And I don't mean sick in a figurative sense, I mean sick sick. The kind of sick that puts you out of work... right after you mention N1H1 at work. I'm not saying that talking about N1H1 made me sick, but it did happen directly after doing telephone surveys that did mention the ol' Swine Flu. I know that how I got sick was directly related to a toddler bringing some unknown viral buggy bug back from head-start with him. Although his "teachers" say that all of the other kids are just fine and not sick at all. I know they're not doctors so they would be unable to identify a carrier if one existed in a bunch of kids, but it is entirely possible that this toddler made friends with another toddler who may have been an outcast type, sitting over by themselves somewhere.... but I'm just speculating. Blah. Anyways, the toddler that comes back here and calls it home usually goes through a night-time procedure known as "Sugars Time" where he and his little sister roam the house looking for peoples with whom they exchange hugs and a peck on the cheek. Well, being the recluse that I am, doesn't make me immune to the whims of "Sugars Time" and this is, my friends, how I got sick. Unfortunately, I've been out of work ever since it started and now my voice is ruined (which didn't happen to anybody else but me, so what makes me special I wonder?) or at least, I wouldn't be able to carry out a 32 minute survey with anybody for awhile. My raspy voice probably wouldn't get met with anybody willing to take a survey anyway. They'd probably think I was some kid with a voice modifying device trying to prank call people.
Oh, well, life is life and I'm still living it. I just talk at you in a funnier dialect than I used to.
Umm, to get things rolling, I am alive... sorta. I've been sick for about two weeks... maybe longer. It was interesting, it flared up one night and I was instantly out of commission from then on. Fevers, chills, coughs, sneezes, phlegm balls the size of Texas and... oh yeah, my voice is no longer what it used to be. It's taken on a really raspy quality where the starts of certain words or phrases comes out as barely more than a whisper. I remember there being a rather famous female person that had a raspy voice... my voice is now sorta similar to her's... if only I could remember her name.
Next up, F2P MMOGs (Free To Play Massively Multiplayer Online Games), they do exist and some of them are even alright! I have tried a fair number of these F2P games, ditched a few, kept others and actually play two of them currently.
Firstly, I would like to congratulate Brasilian company, Hoplon Infotainment, for reaching beyond their Portuguese speaking borders with the release of a multi-lingual version of Taikodom! It's a game that comes the closest to what I've been looking for! It's a sci-fi MMO that allows you to pilot ships around the universe, of course, this universe is currently a lot smaller than we like to think it really is. Taikodom's universe has a very well defined border, however, the maps in each "node" are quite massive. So you have room to fly around, fight enemies and mine asteroids (a system that is currently "shoot the rock until it explodes, collect the loot, shoot the next" but should eventually change into something that only freighters can do in the future.) With the information in parenthesis, yes this game is still in development on multiple fronts.
One of the major fronts of development is the current lag situation. There is simply a massive amount of data that is trying to get shared between the host and client systems, then there is the number of players that the data is getting shared with. Ok, so that last tidbit is true for all MMOs, player location is rather important after all. (See? I told you it was going to be meaningless, I just didn't say it was going to be meaningfully meaningless.) Taikodom has a lot of potential being what it is. I hope to see the rules for certain activities put into place so that the game can be fleshed out to it's intended purpose. Taikodom has something for everybody, if you want to be a fighter pilot, hotshot is the name of the class for you. If you like to strike from a long distance with lock-on targeting missiles, Juggernaut is the name of your career. If you like to explore where no-one has gone before, Scout is your M.O.S. If you are a penny pinching, hard-working miser that places more faith in cold hard cash and the materials to make it, Merchant is what you wanna be.
For the time being, take note, while Taikodom is online and playable in it's present state, the English client is still under development (most of it is already translated) and the current data transceiving methods introduce a lot of lag when more and more players jump online. Also, the player-base of Taikodom is largely Portuguese and maybe but a handful of those players understand English. Take heart, though, between 9pm and 12am my character(s) can be found mining or shooting down NPCs (or both). Other than that, one player in particular has been extremely helpful to me. He goes by the name of Seth Apophis and has been known to help out many a new-comer to Taikodom. Thanks again, Seth!
Another note-worthy game on the F2P market for all of you Shin Megami Tensei fans! Come on, I know there's a few of you out there in the world. Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine takes the series out of the normal box. I didn't even know that Shin Megami Tensei even existed before I found this MMO. After playing it for a bit, I found out that SMT games were quite a bit different in some aspects. From my research, you'll be meeting some old SMT favorites again if you jump into the world of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. In this MMO, you play a human character called a Demon Buster (DB for short). There are classes but none that you pick right away. So, you don't start your life as a gunner equipped with a gun or as a mage with a handful of already learned skills. The birth of your character, no matter what you turn it into later, is the same for everybody. Everybody gets one basic spell and is taught the fine arts (or basics, rather) of melee combat. But, I'm not going to go into a full guide or anything here. There is a very useful wiki on Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine's website that will explain a good portion of what you need to know before you roll a character. Pay attention to the expertise chains and which ones sound like they might be interesting to you. (NOTE: If you need Demonology 2-0 for anything you're interested in, it will take the most time to unlock, trust me.)
Benefits of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine's character non-class starting form include the fact that you don't have to be tied down to just one class. You can be a jack of all-trades if you prefer. So long as you realize that a Jack-of-all-trades isn't going to max out any one particular category of expertise, it just depends on which one you use more often. Of course, at any time you feel that you've learned enough of any certain expertise, you can just 'shut it off' so to speak and work on other expertise without adding more points where you don't want them. After all, you can only remove stat points in certain areas while you are under level 30.
Onto other topics, isn't it ironic when you talk about N1H1 at work and then end up getting rather sick? And I don't mean sick in a figurative sense, I mean sick sick. The kind of sick that puts you out of work... right after you mention N1H1 at work. I'm not saying that talking about N1H1 made me sick, but it did happen directly after doing telephone surveys that did mention the ol' Swine Flu. I know that how I got sick was directly related to a toddler bringing some unknown viral buggy bug back from head-start with him. Although his "teachers" say that all of the other kids are just fine and not sick at all. I know they're not doctors so they would be unable to identify a carrier if one existed in a bunch of kids, but it is entirely possible that this toddler made friends with another toddler who may have been an outcast type, sitting over by themselves somewhere.... but I'm just speculating. Blah. Anyways, the toddler that comes back here and calls it home usually goes through a night-time procedure known as "Sugars Time" where he and his little sister roam the house looking for peoples with whom they exchange hugs and a peck on the cheek. Well, being the recluse that I am, doesn't make me immune to the whims of "Sugars Time" and this is, my friends, how I got sick. Unfortunately, I've been out of work ever since it started and now my voice is ruined (which didn't happen to anybody else but me, so what makes me special I wonder?) or at least, I wouldn't be able to carry out a 32 minute survey with anybody for awhile. My raspy voice probably wouldn't get met with anybody willing to take a survey anyway. They'd probably think I was some kid with a voice modifying device trying to prank call people.
Oh, well, life is life and I'm still living it. I just talk at you in a funnier dialect than I used to.