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After seeing all the theorycrafting threads last thursday, I thought "Come on, there's gotta be something for the lore enthusiasts." So, I spent the better part of the night translating the Daedric runes found circling the Dark Anchor on the recent developer gameplay video. I was hindered a little when, for some reason, some of the text was facing the inside of the circle, while the rest faced the outside of the same circle. I copied them facing the same way on the picture. I hope you guys find this somewhat worthwhile (at least), because I went in there thinking I'd find something meaningful, but ended up exasperatedly squinting at these mind-numbing messages. Though, on a brighter note, it's interesting how they decide to spell words, those daedra. Apparently, it goes beyond just the omission of X's and Y's, as once previously thought. I might have just discovered a new aspect to the Daedric language right here. Now, we can say that, sometimes, daedra like to spell their words according to how they sound, as opposed to just making a direct obfuscated version of english text, minus the X's and Y's. So, I guess I did find something out.

April 20th. A magnificent day for history. 1534 – Jacques Cartier begins the voyage during which he discovers Canada and Labrador. 1792 – France declares war against the "King of Hungary and Bohemia", the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars. 1861 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia. 1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day. 1939 – Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany. 1946 – The League of Nations officially dissolves, giving most of its power to the United Nations. 1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba. 1972 – Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon. 2013 – 231 people create an account on Elder Souls. Brought to you by Stool Brory, Co. Why did all of those people suddenly sign-up? I guess you do sort of need the context of what was going on leading up to that. Very well... Sometime in the evening of April 19th: Brodo Swaggins discovers someone has uploaded a leaked ESO beta footage video to Youtube. He quickly watches it, downloads it for personal lulz, and then posts a thread about it on ElderSouls.com. 10 Minutes Later: YouTube removes the video. 10 More Minutes Later: Blake gets on his knees and begs for the video, which he now can't watch. A merciful bro, Brodo Swaggins uploads the video on ElderSouls.com. Coincidentally David had literally just finished the new video library database here. Probably some conspiracy, but moving on... 10 Minutes following 10 More Minutes Later: Brodo uploads the video to the new video library so people can watch it onsite. David watches the video and then goes to sleep because it is now like 4am or something. David awakes at 2 PM, only to discover the video is getting hundreds of hits an hour from random guests, sucking up dozens of gigs of bandwidth in short periods of time. He initially laughs, and then realizes he has shitty shared hosting and this will potentially ruin him. He smacks a "Elder Souls Members Only" restriction on the video, thinking this will stop the onslaught of bandwidth. People just create an account and continue watching the video anyway. Do you have any statistical factoids that no one will actually look at? As a matter of fact, I do. Here's how many hits we were getting on a LIVE scale, meaning how many people were clicking something at any one instant... Here's a picture of how many hits the video was getting every 60 minutes. The hour/instant numbers don't make sense because I took the photos at different times. Just bear with me... Anyways... 212 people on the entire site, and 63 on the video. Now, the video was a 20-minute large-ass file totaling something like 150 MB. Let's just assume the worst case scenario: every visitor to the video downloads the entire damn thing. 150 MB is equal to about 0.147 GB. 63 people watching this in a 60-minute period comes out to 9.261 GB hourly. In 24 hours (one day for the scholars among us), this equates to over 222 GBs a day. This is a problem, mainly because this site generally averages something like 20 GB for an entire month. Remember that this is from the video ALONE. This doesn't even account for the extra visits to the rest of the site the video was leading to. I decided to restrict the video to stop the burning, so to speak. This all culminated to result in something magnificent... Two hundred and thirty one acconts. In. One. Day. And? I'm not impressed. Do you like charts? I love charts. In that case, maybe you'll enjoy this before-and-after graph. Please explain what I'm looking at in an unnecessary condescending tone. As you wish. Anyways, as you can see prior to April 20th ElderSouls.com was bringing in an astounding 1 new account per day. This all changed on April 20th, when the internets discovered that we were basically the only site that bothered to upload the leaked footage. I bet that made us pretty popular. You have no idea. Here's a snap-shot of the "Members Online" list in the 24 hours following the member-only restriction on the video. Damn. I bet that came close to some kind of record here. Sort of. The previous 24-hour record was 45. 318 almost got there. You don't have to be a dick. I was just trying to make conversation. Whatever. I don't get paid enough for this. So just how far into the interwebs did this little Elder Souls explosion go? Far enough that we got our own 4chan thread, basically. I'm not kidding. Dear Diary, Today OP was a pretty cool guy... For some reason I don't see b-tards being too happy with the whole account restriction thing. After all, it's not like we had hard-core gay furry pornography. Well, there was this guy... Lel. Who didn't see that coming? Shut up! Between him and the following account name registrations... ihatethissomuch dontwanttomakethis Noneofyurbidness ... I took a kick in the feels. I'm sorry. So I bet this day became the saving grace of Elder Souls, which was bolstered by hundreds of fresh accounts every day into infinity and beyond. Right? Well, not exactly... Here's the rest of the registration graph in the days following. On the bright side, we have been fairly constant at about 10 new accounts on the weekdays, and 18 on the weekends, since the fateful explosion. It still beats the 1 we were getting previously. And you never got shut down for bandwidth over-consumption! All's well that ends well, eh? Yeah, I guess. I miss having 300+ online at once, though. Those were the days...

Ah yes deployment. Something that most people in the united states can't say they've done. Anywho I've had a few close calls in that horrible place, let me list a few dates. I can talk alot of shit about that place but I'll keep most of it short haha. February 2011 - I'd say around the 20th is when I first got shot at needless to say I almost shit brix when a round flew past my head lol. March 2011 - Appendix acting up, I tend to just fight through the pain and keep going. April 2011 - First IED found, scary stuff as I found it with a minesweeper. May 2011 - Lost 6 of our guys. Helicopter crashed, austrialian pilot died. (Side note we were supposed to get on said helicopter; longest mission May 27th-28th 40+ hours) June 2011 - BP Osman established, start having weekly rotations out to a sand hunt. (If you knew me you know what I'm talking about) July 2011 - Can't really recall anything..(A few helicopter recoveries) August 2011 - More IEDs found throughout this month. September 2011 - Came back from a rotation at BP osman. My body goes limp and I crawl up in a ball for hours. Someone finds me and they send me on a helicopter out of there to go through surgery. Lost mah appendix, doctor told me I would have been killed in a few hours. October 2011 - One month after my surgery I am mission ready again. Come to find out that another soldier died. He was an american soldier but he was still a good guy. IED goes off within 35m of me when I was using the minesweeper. The charge didn't go off so I'm still here. December 2011 - Missions start dying down. January 2012 - Happy birthday to me. Go out to a village with the minesweeper and this other device I can't mention. Said device goes off notifying me that there is a huge threat in the area. We leave asap and they start shooting us lol February 2012 - FInal mission escorting the guys replacing us to the village last week. Everythings calm nothing bad happened. February 12 - Returned to the us. There is so much more I can add to this but I can't re-call most of it or I mentally blocked it. Because we did well over 100 missions..

Its 1 in the morning, and I found myself here procrastinating as usual. Before long, the red solo cup to my left was tipped over, and its cold contents sitting in my crotch. First instinct? Paper towels. I often find that when I run to grab paper towels, I am reminded why I dislike them so much. Prepare yourselves, i'm about to Andy Rooney on dis shiz. You can never use just one. No. I dont care what any commercial says, i dont care how absorbant it says it is on the bag. When something spills, you're grabbing a shit ton of them. I've tried using just one, I really have. It doesnt work, it never works. Its 256 times more absorbant? Great, 256 times more absorbant than what? Stone? You took too many? You want to roll them back up? shit, that aint happenin. No my friend, you're just going to have to settle for this. Obviously as a college student. I dont have much money. Laundry is tied up a lot. So when something spills, I depend on paper towels to do the job. They dont. Rubbing them into the ground accompanied with windex only gives your carpet what i like to call "The Dandruff Effect"TM Where rolled up bits of paper embed themselves deep in the carpet and require more cleaning to remove. Great. Honestly, they just seem wasteful. When I look in a trashcan and see an enormous ball of paper there to greet me, I cant help but wonder where it all goes. Where it all builds up? I'm not much of environmentalist, but it bothers me to see windex soaked balls of paper disappear daily. So thats my rant for today. Peace. COMIC SAAAAAAANS!! (Fist Shake)

Well I can't believe the past couple weeks or months. I haven't been active here in such a long time. Well, I made my first welcome back guide for a post 1.9 update power-leveling. Recently I got back into Magic:The Gathering and have been playing Borderlands 2 like a cocaine addict. My main Assassin has over 19 days of game time and about 1,000+ items in my bank. I hope to get around to more builds for Skyrim and even Borderlands 2. I hope somebody can beat my record for hitting 251, as I currently sit at 81-252 in 3 hours and 55 minutes. short entry, pain and love mixed in my life, no idea what to do with the dawn of official adulthood looming.

It's been a long time since I've bothered to document any changes/updates that have either been completed or are in the works. Mainly because no one ever reads/responds to these blogs. Since I miss the days of 2-3 new, original blog posts a week, I figured that I may as well take the plunge and post a quick one of my own. The HeaderRemember the days when navigation consisted of bookmarking "View New Content"? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Nothing really fancy here, but you knew that already. You've been staring at it for months, after all. But if I didn't include ancient changes I would have nothing to write about here, would I? At any rate, since the purpose of these is to generally explain why I changed what I did (because fuck change, damn it), I suppose I'll delve into that... The LogoSince I know the majority of you have alzheimers here's what it used to look like. Sort of bummed the logo is now gone from the top, but I have OCD about things being symmetrical. My reasons for switching it up are actually that petty for most things. The Category MenuThis is the black fade-in/out thing that no one actually uses. Did you notice it even changed? Probably not. Want to know what did, after months of arduous planning, engineering, and development? I got the drop-down columns to light-up in white when you hover over a sub-element. I also re-ordered everything so that it, you know, made some sort of logical sense. But no one cares about that. Fa-Fa-Fa-Facebook LikesEvery day, as soon as I wake up, I jump out of bed and sprint to my laptop. I then quickly load the site to see if we've received any new Facebook likes. The number 37 once again appears before my eyes and I just think to myself, "There's always tomorrow." This has gone on for 4 months. Meanwhile, rival sites have been created from scratch, thrown up a Facebook page, and are now over 1k likes over the same 4 month period. It made me sad. Following a few hours of frustrated crying I decided that I NEED MORE LIEKS and that EVERYONE should ALWAYS have to STARE INTENSELY at the facebook like counter as it scrolls with them ON EVERY PAGE AT ALL TIMES. It's been 2 weeks now and we still have 37 likes. Buttons, LelTo quote Blexun, "somethingsomething Fancy somethingsomething I'm gay." At least that's what I think he said. The main point is that the buttons are, like, beveled and stuff, man. Here's what they used to look like. This was all fine and dandy for damn near a year, if not longer. Then, one fateful day, I accidentally copy-pasta'd the CSS for the above buttons into itself. The resulting abomination was surprisingly appealing, and it is now.... A wild incompetent Admin appeared! God used Buttonception. It was super effective! David vs. "Where's Lydia?"Once upon a time someone posted the 15th thread about "omg lel I lost Lydia wut do?" After writing painfully detailed "If you did X, then you must now Y" solutions 14 times, I typed up about a paragraph in all caps tearing the person a new asshole for daring to not just search for an existing answer. After finishing my rant, I realized that since we switched to the new skin, I had never re-added the search function. So here we are. People are now able to search everything to their heart's content. The Lydia threads have at least slowed. Brad continues to post pictures of himself pooping dildos in the Premium forum. This is all because some kind soul told me to re-add the search bar through a Lydia question. Social MediaThis was added because I liked the little grey-scaled icons next to the links. Yep, that's the only reason. In fact, as Jake pointed out a few weeks ago, the Youtube link goes no where. Because fuck you for clicking it. The FooterI was sort of annoyed with the boring black line at the bottom of every page, so out it went. I was pretty happy after another several weeks led me to the final result below; a boring black line with a boring gray line on top of it. Did you know that hovering over our logo not only causes the thing to fucking GLOW, but clicking it will bring you to the top of the page? Of course you didn't. You really need to slow down and just smell the roses, man, it's the little things in life like this you need to appreciate. We Have a Privacy PolicyNo part of our website is structured to attract anyone under 13. NO. PART. OF. THIS. WEBSITE. Please disregard all textual references regarding video games. Please disregard all images regarding video games on this website, especially the 8 million pixel HD background image. Please disregard the gray-scale theme, clearly intended for the Male Under 25 demographic. Please disregard this website. Also don't sue me and stuff, because all I have are empty pizza boxes and unused condoms filled with taco sauce. © 2013 ElderSouls.comI will sue you, though. The BackgroundIt has snow-capped mountains and trees and things. Also it fades into dirt. That's sort of cool. I guess. So? Why am I here?I don't know, man, this is pretty pointless. It's also 4:20am (huehuehue) and I don't know why I'm still up. Here's what all of the above changes have added up to, though. Here is the old. Click to enlarge, obviously. Contrasted with the new that I started this blog with. You are now shocked. Just try not to seize up and die in amazement because I only have 3 readers and need all of you.

Skullgirls Created by: Reverge Labs Skullgirls is the combined creation of renouned tournament player MikeZ along with the artistic and general ideas of Alax Ahad ( or 'o_8' as he is more commonly known ). MikeZ being a very well known BlazBlue player knows his fighting game mechanics. He understands what problems most fighting games have and what things work wonders. His tournament and just fighting game experience in general really shine through so many different parts of this game. The IPS ( Infinite Protection System ) and ability to block the dreaded High/Low or assist/crossover are two things that bring the high level gameplay up a notch or two compared to games such as MvC. On the other side though, with all his experience in the fight game community. MikeZ seems to understand that not everyone who picks up a fighting game understands things many people take for granted. The ability to spot and defend against a mixup, ADC ( Air-Dash Cancel ), and even the concept of hit-confirming and poking are all explained in a simple yet informative way. Not being too big in the art community. I do not know much about the artist of Skullgirls, o_8. I do know that in tthe game of Skullgirls though, o_8 dealt with quite a bit of the game. Not only the artwork and animations. He also contributed to the story mode and the general concept of the Skullgirls game ( Having the designs for many of the characters long before the idea of Skullgirls was even born ). Skullgirls so far feels like another MvC ( Marvel vs Capcom ) game that was released. The only difference, all the problems from the previous games were fixed! Gameplay appears smooth and fluid, keeping up with the fast paced gameplay of MvC while slowing it down enough where it does become TOO overwhelming. The ability to pick your team of either one, two, or three is also a genius idea that has never been done before. Changing character HP and Damage depending on how large your team is. If choosing a team of two or three, you also now have the ability to set your own assists! Another feature never heard of, but very welcome. As of right now there are no Infinite combos ( Although there are some 100% combos for a team of 1v3 ) and no single character has been proven to be over-powered. Meaning balance so far is not an issue, a problem every fighting game is plauged with. Yes, I'm looking at you Yun-Fighter IV! The game in general is very solid, especially for Reverge Labs very first game to ever be created. The controls are just as solid as the gameplay is. Having three punches and kick buttons makes the combo system much more open. Meaning you can change your BnB ( Bread-and-Butter ) combo up if you feel one of your hits may push your opponent back too far or possible miss, causing you to drop your combo. The ability to air-dash and ADC/iAD ( Air-Dash Cancel and instant Air-Dash ) adds another major gameplay feature. There is also the DHC ( Delayed Hyper-Cancel ) to help with tagging. Many of these features will make you MvC players feel right at home. Anyone else, might have a bit of studying up to do. Negative edge does not seem to be a problem at all, making timing more strict but allowing more precise combos to be formed without the fear of different move coming out and being punished. The cast of characters at this moment is a full female cast. Eight characters and two DLC already announced. For any of you anime loving horndogs, there is plenty of eye candy here for you. With short skirts, long legs, and bouncing bewbies, some people may even forget they are playing a fighting game! Graphics aside, the cast all feel distinct from eachother while still keeping a balance between characters. Some are heavier, leading to weaker air combos but having more power on the ground. Some are slower with no air-dash but can move in the air in other ways. The character designs are also unique in their own way. My only complaint is that the move sets feel like I've already been here. Many of the characters moves have been... stolen. I understand the game is meant to pay homage to many of the games before it's time. As well as many meme's that have been floating around ( Such as Peacock using Rio Brando's finishing move from JoJo's Bizzare Adventure ). The characters almost feel like I've played them all before though. Filia's hairball is stolen directly from Felicia. Her Gregor Samsom hyper combo seems like an exact replica of Psylocke. Her Updo is simply another version of the Shoryuken. Also, with only eight characters, there isn't a lot of different magtch setups at the moment. Meaning the game will reach it's peak much sooner than the average fighting game, then burn out even quicker. The game as of right now doesn't have many choices for modes sadly. There is single player. Which you can either play each of the eight characters stories ( Double and Valentine being locked until the other six are used ) and an arcade mode. Storymode is fun and interesting to run through, although no replay value. The arcade mode is more annyoing than anything in my honest opinion. Too many times have I ended up against the same team twice during one arcade run. It gets very annoying very quickly. The versus mode has three modes. A local, a 'quick match' aka ranked match, then you can create or join an unranked room. These are all the basic essentials to the versus in a fighting game. That is the problem though. Why do we get only the basics when so many other parts of this game shine? A spectator mode and the ability to watch any previous match would be amazing additions. Also, a King of the Hill type game would be very fun as well, and seems to be in every other fighting game. There is also the training mode. Here you can either play through the tutorials or enter a training room. The tutorials are must play, even for hardcore veteran players. You will appreciate the thought and time that was put into it. Not only to help the veteran player brush up on his ADC to extend his combos, but to help the first time player understand the concept of movement, poking, and the ability to tech. I was literally blown away by how informative and detailed the tutorial was. I also enjoyed the fact that when it came to the hands on piece, you had to complete the act three times flawlessly. So say they are teaching you about a basic high/low mixup. You are told to start a combo, if it's blocked low you want to end with the overhead. If blocked high you want to end with the sweep. You may get lucky twice and the sweep connects both times. You attempt it a third and it becomes blocked. Your counter reduces to zero and it must be completed three times still. This allows not only practice of important techniques. It also makes sure you didn't finish the tutorial without truly understanding what you've done. The training room is another place where this game tends to shine. It has basics for the average player. It then goes into serious detail for the hardcore player. It gives a list of your life, damage multiplier ( Different for different teams. So say it's 1v2. The 1 will get a 1.3x and the 2 will have a 1.75x ). The damage of each individual hit, as well as the unscaled damage of the full combo. You also have the ability to turn the hitboxes on, or even turn on advanced hitboxes. The simple hitbox shows where you must actually strike in order to hit a character. The advanced hitbox shows things such as where a grab will connect, the attack area of a move as well as how long it is active, as well as throw/hit invulnerability boxes. I only have two complaints, both of which can easily be fixed. The ability to set my training dummy to auto-guard, and the ability to set them to auto-tech as they hit the ground. I have seen many online combos that aren't true combos because a human player would tech out of it as they hit the ground. There is also a help&Options. Giving an even quicker tutorial on how to play. The basic controls. A basic settings menu, such as round time or number of rounds. Music Volume, etc. Things you would expect from a settings menu. You also have the ability to view leaderboards and achievements. There also appears to be a section called 'Extras'. For right now, this only holds the gaming credits. It states that art galleries and other things will be coming soon. Personally I have no problem with them doing this. On the other side, this appears to scream the fact this is their first game. I have been following them for quite a long time, and I know there have hundreds of pictures up in an art gallery already. The Extras menu at the moment is simply a place holder, something that many people dislike having in the games they are playing. Also, something I was hoping to find under extras would be a complete character move list. Sadly, the game doesn't have one at all. This is probably the biggest dissapointment of this entire game. They do tell you, during the tutorial, to go to the official Skullgirls website for a full move list. This is something that should be put into the game though. It is a MUST HAVE for any fighting game. In conclusion, and for all you tl;dr people. The game is solid, and a must buy for any fighting game enthusiast or someone who is playing their first fighting game. Even with the minor training mode problems, no actual command list ( Which, can easily be fixed in updates or patches) and the lack of unique moves for characters. These things do not take away from the major improvments they have made to the average fighting game. This game may not be the holy grail of fighting games as it was meant to be. It is a game changer though, and hopefully games such as MvC or SF will take heed to what they have done. ---------------------- As a side note, this review was written days after the game was released. I also forgot to add how amazing the music is to this game. I would also like to note that many of the problems I said in this review are being fixed and should be in the patch update that is being released in a week or so today. The entire patch notes ( The whole two pages ) can be found here on the SRK forums by MikeZ himself.

Hello there everyone! This is Blue speed aka Ghost aka Ghostthefox. This is mainly for people who have known me for awhile but if your new feel free to hit me up haha. Anywho...On May 7th 2013. I Walter re-enlisted into the military. Lol to make this entry incredibly short I'll just say that I knocked someone up. *cough* I'm currently stationed in Italy and you can figure out what the hells going on with that. I'll post an article :L http://www.armytimes.com/article/20140422/NEWS08/304220055/4-Army-units-heading-Eastern-Europe?fb_action_ids=10202774084525970&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_ref=artsharetop&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582 I'll try to stay in touch! *Edit. Holy shit. 10k plus views on my other entry. Wow...

Before I start I want to mention that any words underlined like this are words that have an explanation on my glossary page so you may want to have a look at that if you don't understand those words. So I've wanted to do this for a while, that is write about anime and manga, but it doesn't really belong as an article, nor does it exactly fit in with the theme of the rest of the site. Eventually it occurred to me that it would be perfect for a blog. And I recently started watching the perfect series to kick this off for this site since even if your not a fan of anime or manga if your on this site you're probably a fan of The Elder Scrolls series (which are fantasy RPGs) or your a remnant of the old Runescape Clan (which is an MMORPG) so Sword Art Online is a good fit. Sword Art Online was initially going to be Reki Kawahara's competition entry for ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Game Novel Prize, but he ended up exceeding the word limit so he published it online instead and ended up writing more volumes and a few short stories. He entered the competition again with a different work called "Accel World" and won the grand prize. ASCII Media Works asked to not only publish Accel World but also Sword Art Online, and so it was published as a light novel and was no longer available online. It has since been adapted into several manga series and an anime and even a game. At first I was confused by the order of the different versions and what differences in the story they had. It turns out its not that complicated. Basically the novel currently consists of 6 story arcs (across 12 volumes), there is a different manga series for each arc and the anime covers the first 2 arcs. The game is an original story on what might have happened if the first arc had turned out differently. Okay that sounds confusing, but its actually not as bad as it sounds especially once you're further in the series. The anime (which I have watched through completely) consists of 25 episodes and is fairly recent, having only started and finished late last 2012. Its yet to be given an english dub (if it does end up getting one) however it has been subtitled in english and is being streamed officially by a few sites at the moment (I know crunchyroll has the entire series and madman, which has the distribution rights for Australia, has begun streaming before they have a DVD release) which is great because it means you can support the creators of the anime (rather than getting it illegally) without having to pay huge anime prices for the DVD, in fact it shouldn't cost you a thing. So the story starts in the year 2022, when the worlds first Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (VRMMORPG) is released. If your like me you may have be thinking about how unoriginal the topic of Virtual Reality Games are, and how they've never really been explored that well, but bare with me, as I will explain in a moment this series actually does things quite well. Anyway Sword Art Online (SAO for short) is the worlds first VRMMORPG and has a very limited initial release to only 10,000 players after a beta test of 1000 beta testers. At the beginning of the first episode the main character Kazuto Kirigaya (more often referred to by his username, Kirito) is teaching another player how to fight within the game since he was one of the lucky people to be selected for Beta testing and has a better understanding of the game. Shortly afterwards they realize the log out button is missing. For a moment they assume this must just be a bug, and reflect on how such a big bug could impact on the future sales of the game, until there is a system announcement and they are force teleported to the center of the the Town of Beginnings along with all the other players. The creator of SAO, Kayaba Akihiko, appears and announces that its not a bug and that the system was designed to trap them in there, and the only way to escape is to clear all 100 floors and pass the game, furthermore if you die in the game you die in reality as well. Real life death in a virtual reality game isn't exactly a new concept, in fact its been the plot of several movies and books etc but I've always found those stories quite poorly thought out or at least poorly explained. For example they rarely do a very good job of explaining how death in the game causes death in the real world, however in this series they explain very clearly how the same system that reads and blocks signals from the brain (so that you can run in the game without running into a wall in the real world for example) and that sends signals to the brain to show the world, can just as easily trigger certain parts of the brain to deactivate it, thus killing you. The other issue I've always had is why doesn't someone in the real world just notice somethings wrong and remove the player, and sometimes they explain this by something like time isn't moving in reality (which is stupid) but again they explain in SAO that attempting to remove the device triggers the same response that kills the brain. Okay again, not exactly new, similar stuff has been done before but how do people in the real world know that removing the device will kill you and the thing is in Sword Art Online the general public don't initially know, but as Kayaba Akihiko announces 200 people had already died this way within the first moments of the game so people quickly learned. So basically I really enjoyed the way they explained the theory behind everything that's going on in SAO, but I also really like some of the themes they explore. Firstly I think its quite obvious that the author understood games on a personal level. There's also issues of prejudice (similar to racism) towards the Beta players by other players for supposedly not sharing information. Then even in this world where death is real there are still Player Killers (PKers) and people gradually work out how to exploit the system to do things like kill people in safe zones without them being able to put up a fight. The other thing is despite being a fantasy game, SAO doesn't allow players to use magic and they even mention in the series how risky that is for an RPG but it works perfectly and its something that is eventually explored in later story arcs. The graphics and design of the characters as well as the SAO world is amazing heck even the way the menus look and work is awesome. I was very quickly reminded of all the praise Skyrim got for its amazing expansive Mountain landscape when I saw all the landscape of SAO and just how massive that world is. The buildings and towns and even the dungeons all look amazing and like they really fit in as well as looking realistic and you can tell a lot of work has been put into it. One issue I had was that a lot of time seems to be skipped between episodes, they seem to clear about 10 floors between most episodes and within 15 episodes 2 years has passed. But its also understandable why they did it to quote the anime "Every gamer knows how boring it is to watch someone else play an RPG". This is possibly more an issue in the anime, rather than the novel and manga. I've only just started reading the novel but I feel like it's quite possible that it fills the gaps in a bit more. Something I thought was quite interesting was although SAO is such a short anime it used the extra side stories (which don't necessarily fit in with the rest of the series from what I've heard). Usually I really hate fillers but in SAO they work. They don't stand out from the rest of the series as being different like most fillers do and they actually add to the character development. Anyway I really enjoyed this series and highly recommend it.

My duty as a Norwegian and my nightmares. Maybe not so much my nightmares anymore. I've never really liked skiing. The reason skiing isn't so bad anymore, is because I've learned how to go up-hill and doesn't fall in every down-hill anymore. I did before though. It was pretty horrible. It's kinda odd, because I'm the only one in my family that dislikes it so much, and my father is pretty good at it. I went skiing today, which you might have guessed. It was the first time this year, and I had forgotten how much your feet hurt the first kilometer or so. But then it passes. I fell going down a hill, and a kid laughed at me. I didn't really mind, especially since he immediately after started crying because he couldn't get up the hill. Even though I don't like skiing, my parents (my father especially), make me go a few times a year. The last few years it haven't been to bad, but the place I went today have two hills I hate, and we go there every year. Today we only went down and up one of the hills, the one that got a sharp turn at the end where I always fall. The trip turned out not too bad. Anyways, have anyone else here gone skiing? And do you do it often?

Home PageI'm not sure if you've noticed, but I've recently begun turning what was previously our articles/content database into our new home page. You can see its current state by clicking here.My main goal is going to be to ultimately set that as our overall home page so that eldersouls.com redirects there instead of to the forum index as it does now. Obviously this is a ways off, and I need your help in choosing what feeds to have on the page. As of now, we have feeds for recent articles, topics, and blogs. I can add pretty much whatever type of feed you can imagine, whether it be from a specific forum, member, "your" content, etc. Some input would be nice. Eventually I hope Elder Souls generates enough unique content to make bookmarking and viewing that page daily practical for the website visitors. I believe that there are ultimately two types of users: those that bookmark the main page and check about once a day, and those that bookmark the forums/become involved in the community personally become power-users. Hopefully with the new home page we'll eventually cater to the former a bit. Article UpdatesIt began with me taking a tangent and re-designing the article headings/titles to be more professional, like so... Which was clearly a large improvement over what we had previously... This led me to decide that we needed to start standardizing the format of our articles to appear more professional, and so that we didn't have various ugly colors such as the ones I used in my first Skyrim guides. Blexun used equally ugly colors, as did everyone else who ever made a post on this site. But wait! They're not ugly! Well, you're right. There's just one problem when you make things various shades of orange/blue/red/etc: it looks great on the skin you're currently using, but what happens when you turn on the all-white "Light" skin? What happens when I upgrade the site or completey change the default layout? Answer: everything either looks like shit or is impossible to see. That's bad for obvious reasons. Luckily there is also a solution: implement html through custom BB codes so that one single format can be used for every article, and automatically be changed to match whatever CSS the skin the user is... using... has. Yeah, you probably don't understand that because I don't really either but let's just agree it's cool and move on. Anyways, Blex and the other Publishers are about to get used to the new custom BB codes I've invented... Oh, yeah. I also already re-made the guest messages to reflect these changes as seen in the picture above. As you can see I've already used the H1 in this article. It's the standard BB code thing that everyone knows how to use... [h1] HI THINGS GO HERE [/h1] [h2] THINGS ALSO GO HERE [h2] The H1 tags are actual HTML elements and Google pays a good deal of attention to them. They should be used as your main headings (which means sparingly) and be made up of your article's main keywords. H2's can be used as much as you want and function as sub-headings. After I finished all of these shiny new things I was excited and wanted to write an article to put them on display. Before I get into anything else I'm going to have to step back a bit and explain the last few days of hectic panic experimenting that I've found myself in after writing my 3,500+ word article, The Dark Knight Rises - Plot Holes and Problems. I wrote the article. I submitted the article. I made something like 73 revisions (actually this is accurate D:). Here we are, right? Nope. I first split the article into 6 different pages to show off the new multi-page articles I haven't explained yet. You make one article with multiple pages if you're having a hard time keeping up. Anyways, I thought this was cool. Considering the multiple clicks allowed me to gather 4,000+ pageviews on the article in 4 days (for comparisons sake it's taken 8 months for other "popular" guides we have to get there, this all goes back to timing your article when the topic is popular). Oh, yeah. That reminds me: the article was vaguely successful. Whenever I looked at it there were 10-20 guests reading it. Google graced me with a top 3-5 ranking and people flocked to it. It was our most popular content, even beating out the Catwoman Lesbian thread and Skyrim Water Freezing. It was serious business. This all peaked on July 31st and I essentially sat home and F5'd the article stats all day in my underwear. Following that, Google decided to bitch slap me down to page 2 and the hits all but stopped. This caused me to panic and do some stupid things, such as... I re-did the page titles of all articles to be more search engine/people friendly. A good move long term, maybe, but it made Google angry and it dropped me further. Panic v.2.00 caused me to change the layout from 6 pages to 1. This is because multiple-paged articles are only indexed as far as the first page, so I figured 90% of my content wasn't getting counted by Google. I decided to lose the 6 pageviews per read and try my luck with just one page. Again, good idea long term, not so good short term. So there I was, getting like a couple of views every few hours. I was pretty bummed, but kept stupidly trying things that made the situation worse. I invented a new BB code! Page Jumping! Aye, it's as fun as it sounds. You can try it out by hitting the "Go to the Top!" and "Go to the Bottom!" links I've added to this blog entry. Go to the Bottom! This is a little bit hard to use, so I'll explain it for Publishers here. You'll only be able to use this when submitting articles or blogs. Create an anchor for the link. This is where your link goes to. It uses the following BB code... [jumpanchor='option']CONTENT HERE[/jumpanchor] The "option" is the key you're going to need for step 2, so remember it. It also turns into a link in the URL so it should reflect what you're pointing it to. Content is just whatever you highlight or write in; it's what everyone sees as the name of the link. Create the link. This is what people click to be taken to the anchor... [jumplink='option']CONTENT[/jumplink] Again, the option is important and it needs to be the same as the anchor you want to send it to. For example, using "tag" in the link will take you to the "tag" anchor. These things need to be unique and can only be used once or you're going to have a mess. Go to the Top! To get the looping effect you're going to have to wrap the text in an anchor AND a link. I use the effect in the example above as well as in the TDKR article. You're going to have to be somewhat careful in using these; example being I didn't realize there's a "top" tag in every page automatically so it didn't work until I figured out I had to use something else. My next move was to re-design the article sheet I posted above for a third time... I figured if Google was going to continue to kill my ranking I may as well go for the social media boost. I added a bar containing the whole nine yards there, as well as at the very bottom of the article. This actually worked pretty well and as you can see I had 26 Likes and various other views feeding off of them over about 8 hours or so. I just wish I had done this when I was actually getting heavy traffic. Anyways, this brings me to where we are now. My TDKR article is pretty much dead in Google and there's usually not even 1 guest reading it anymore. The good news is that most of the changes I've made should really benefit us in the future, and I think all of the Publishers will see the benefits of it immediately. Please leave suggestions and comments below!

So, Finally returned to Runescape and to the clan For a while I've considered rejoining the clan but I couldn't find it since the old website was down (with no link to the new one) and through searching TRR or the Runescape Rebelz all I could find were old recruitment posts which linked to the old website (ironically many of them were posted by me from my time in the Recruitment Team). Similarly I thought about playing Runescape again but I really wanted my old account back (I'd forgotten the password) and I sent recovery requests several times but never even got a response until the last time I sent one and I was immediately sent a link to change my password at about the same time I decided to search for the clan on the official Clan list thing, and found it instantly so I decided to rejoin. And here I am. Unfortunately I haven't been able to do much on Runescape yet since my Bank account is far beyond the F2P limits (and theres nothing I really want to get rid of) so I won't be doing much until I get Members, (which I intend to do soon). My crappy computer doesn't really help either. Once that is all done I plan to do a lot more in the clan since I no longer have to work around school hours (I still have uni but I can be a lot more flexible about that). Its funny to think that TRR was actually what got me interested in Manga/Anime when there was a post about it and Death Note was mentioned so I decided to watch that and now I'm a huge manga fan (yes I have even gone to conventions, all though both times it was mainly because members of the RoosterTeeth Staff went). So yeah...brief explanation of what's been happening with me since leaving the clan, I really look forward to catching up with all the old clan members I remember as well as meeting newer ones

Knock It Off, Netflix! I've had Netflix on my game console and computer for a bit over a year now, and for the most part, I've been happy with it. I spend a lot of my time at school and the ability to stream TV shows and movies when I have a bit of a break is very convenient. If I had to complain about one thing though, the collection of movies leaves something to be desired. I mean, they have Hot Tub Time Machine just a couple of weeks after its theater debut, but when I want to see the first Iron Man, and not the countless cartoon versions of it, too bad. Netflix biggest offense is its large amount of B-movie knock offs, or mockbusters, most of which is produced by The Asylum. Scary name for a scary company. Just to educate you, The Asylum is an American film studio and distributor who is known for producing direct-to-video knock offs of major motion pictures. They also take pride in the fact they haven't lost money on a movie ever, which isn't hard to do when your budget is below one million and you make it back in three months. I find them highly annoying for three reasons. They do it quickly. To get an idea, they shot and produced American Warships (American Battleships before they were sued and had to change) on May 15th, three days before Battleships. On average, they can shit out movies, from decision to create title to final product, in 4 months. Their knockoffs are so blatantly obvious, it is sickening. You'll see a lot of this in the list, but to give you an idea, one of the Dis-Honorable Mentions for this list was I am Omega, which is a rip off of both Omega Man and I am Legend and robs plot details from both movies. The quality is shit. I mean, I can't stress this enough. It is 2012, they are ripping off huge movies, and the video and audio quality looks like 70's porn. Furthermore, they have a tough time finding actors for their movies. In The Almighty Thor, a recent knockoff of Thor, most of the deaths happen off screen, where Loki points his stick at somebody off camera, who makes a "ARRRGGHH" sound, then presumably dies. And Netflix must have some deal with them as pretty much all of their movies is available for instant watch. So yeah, the title of this blog is a bit misleading, but the pun was too good to avoid. So without further adieu, I give you the Top 5 worse The Asylum knockoffs available on Netflix. No particular order, except maybe hilarity. 5. The Da Vinci Treasure Not To Be Confused With: The Da Vinci Code Plot: Some forensic anthropologist inadvertently discovers subtle clues in Leonardo Da Vinci's works that will lead the finder to "enlightenment". As he pieces this puzzle together, it becomes obvious that other treasure hunters are after the treasure as well. Opinion: If The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure were related and they fucked, this would be their 91 minute long, inbred, off-spring. Containing only 15~ speaking parts, including the one line guys, even die hard B movie fans won't be able to stand this one. 4. Sherlock Holmes (2010 movie) Not To Be Confused With: Sherlock Holmes (2009 movie) Plot: Sherlock Holmes and Watson are on the case again when reports of monsters, both mythological and historical, are attacking London. Their case leads them to a mad scientist, who created and can control said monsters for some, ultimate reason. Opinion: First of all, yes, that is indeed a dragon, a T-Rex, and a giant squid attacking London. I'll give that a second to soak in. While I have to give props for the creative thinking of having Sherlock Holmes fight these monsters, with a film budget of 600,000, I promise you you don't want to watch it. And as for the plot, it takes so many twists and turns that I gave up trying to watch it. Spoiler alert: the scientist is Sherlock's brother. 3. The Day the Earth Stopped Not To Be Confused With: The Day the Earth Stood Still Plot: 666 robots land and invade Earth. Two humanoid aliens are captured by the military, where they reveal that the only way the robots won't destroy the Earth is if the humans prove their is still faith in humanity. Keep them away from Facebook. Opinion: Bad visuals comes to play yet again. What is worse is the horrible horrible horrible acting. Similar to The Almighty Thor, they must of had a tough time finding extras. When the giant robots land in the streets, nobody is panicking or comes outside to see what is up, except the handful of main characters of course. And to add insult to this, they released this 3 days before the Keanu Reeve's The Day the Earth Stood Still. 2. Transmorphers Not To Be Confused With: Transformers Plot: Aliens piloting robots have invaded Earth and forced all of human kind underground by creating an endless night and rain. It isn't until 300 years later that the humans rebel and find out their invaders are actually robots. Opinion: Not much to say that hasn't already been said. Awful acting. A really really small amount of actors. Horrible effects and visuals. I actually misread this as Transformers and got a shameful amount of time into it before finding out I've been misled. 1. Snakes on a Train Not To Be Confused With: Snakes on a Plane Plot: A woman has been put under a Mayan curse that causes snakes to hatch inside her stomach and eat their way out. Brujo is trying to take her by train to a Mayan shaman in Los Angeles, keeping all the snakes that eat their way out in jars so the shaman can piece her back together. Bandits attack them, the snake get loose and attack all of the passengers. Later the woman turns into a giant snake and eats the entire train. 6 passengers escape and one of them uses magic to make the giant snake-woman disappear. That is actually the entire movie. Now you don't have to see Snakes on a Train. Opinion: Snakes on a Plane wasn't really a good movie, but a cult classic. You had to see it just because it was so unique, quirky, and off the wall. You definitely wouldn't see Snakes on a Train. Besides the obvious problems you can expect, the movie poster is misleading. You probably can't read it, but it says, and I quote, "100 Trapped Passengers-3,000 Venomous Vipers." In reality, there is only a dozen passengers and a couple of snakes actually shown on film. All in all, the most hilarious and awful knockoff on Netflix. Dis-Honorable Mentions I could of went on and on about these movies. So here are some that either aren't on Netflix or I just didn't talk about. Pirates of Treasure Island-Warning: Jack Sparrow is French. War of the Worlds II-the sequel to the Tom Cruise movie they didn't make Paranormal Entity Chop Kick Panda 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea Titanic II Sunday School Musical-nothing can douche up the Disney rip off like a Christian version of it The Amityville Haunting 18 Year Old Virgin

Kids These Days In the eight grade, I had to interview my grandfather with a list of questions given to me by my teacher. I then had to compare them with myself for some ultimate lesson I've failed to remembered. I love my grandfather, but that project made me realize he is a bit of an old fuck. When he wasn't bragging about all the farm work he did or how he built his log cabin workshop, he was droning on and on about how "kids these days" are lazier, namely how they play video games all day. I think he is just pissed off I beat him Wii bowling. What was the point of that? Well two main reasons. One, I like writing intros. I mean, you have to admit, that intro will tie in nicely with the rest of this blog. You are probably reading this sentence, but still thinking about that introduction and wondering where I'm going with this. Maybe you are laughing, or at least smiling. And you are resting your head on your hand. Secondly, that experience made me vow never to become like him, in the sense that I complain about today's youth. It wasn't until around a month ago that I remembered all of this and realized I've failed. So without further adieu, the top 5 things I hate about kids these days. Wait. Not enough hype. http:%3Cspan%3E/%3C/span%3E%3Cspan%3E/%3C/span%3Ei.imgur.com%3Cspan%3E/%3C/span%3E2jKom.gif Nice, right? Just don't click it....Oh nevermind. My flashy banner didn't work. You might as well click it now. 5. Weird Ass Things To Get Drunk/High Sorry for the crude title, but that is the only way I could efficiently describe how I feel about this. My little sister recently came home with a note from the school. Apparently kids have been drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk. I mean, what the fuck. And this isn't even the worse. I've seen news and commercials about the choking game, inhaling some crap that comes out of air conditioner hoses, and my favorite, raw sewage inhaled out of bag, commonly called BUTT HASH. Not sure how popular any of these things actually are, but if one kid does it, then I hate all of them for it. 4. Stupid Clothing Honestly, this is the major reason why I hated the majority of people I went to high school with. Well, not really. They were all douches. But this is a close second. So what attire did I find unbearable? A bullet-ed list for your viewing pleasure. Jordan sandals with sock Shorts with long sleeve shirts (this isn't that weird. I just don't like it) Black plush hoodie lined with fur. There were at least 10 different guys who paid like 90 dollars for this coat Crocs The feather in the hair thing And much much more!!! 3. General "No Fucks Given" I'll admit, this one makes me sound like a boring prick. I'm not so much against this type of behavior, just when it leads to whoever doing stupid crap that we all have to deal with later. Two major instances of this happened to me when I was younger. Some kid threw a rock at a school window and we had to sit in assign seats at lunch. I hated that kid for the rest of my school career. Secondly, some kid in high school shat in a Pringles can and offered it to the bus driver. In hind sight, it was hilarious, but he became the bus Nazi and made me hate not driving for the rest of the year. 2. Taste In Music Mainly, stupid rap songs, hip hop shit, and Disney douches. Apparently the new big boy band is One Direction. After seeing this picture, I promised to hate them forever. 1. Facebook Habits Sign in to Facebook. Look at the people you only add to boost your own friend count/because they requested you. Look at their statuses. Shoot yourself. So maybe I'm a boring, irritable person. At least I can look back when I'm 80 and proudly tell my grandchildren I've never stooped as low as to wear sandals and socks and listen to Lil Wayne. My dignity remains intact.

RWBY (pronounced Ruby) is the latest series from Roosterteeth Productions, the creators of popular web series such as; Red vs Blue, a comedy series created in the Halo game engine now in its 11th season; RT Shorts, A series of skits featuring some of the Staff members; RT Podcast, formally known as the Drunk Tank and has topped the iTunes charts several times; and much more. RWBY is a very different venture for Roosterteeth as it ventures into the anime style. Whether or not it is technically an anime (due to the fact that its not produced in Japan and is mostly CG animation) it is definitely worth watching. The show was thought up and directed by Monty Oum, who you may know as being the person who created Haloid, Dead Fantasy and responsible for most of the animation in the later seasons of Red vs Blue. Before the series had even started to air the show had already gathered a wide fan base and even cosplayers, not just because of the loyal fans of RoosterTeeth but also because of the 4 trailers that were released introducing each of the main characters. So Talking about CharactersThe show gets its name from the four main characters, four girls who each represent the colours Red, White, Black and Yellow. (Click on the characters name to see the trailer) Ruby Rose - The main character of the series and the first to be revealed through the trailers. She is a young girl who resembles Red Riding Hood. She wields a giant scythe that also functions as a sniper rifle. She is a really bright and cheerful character, but she is quite awkward and has difficulty interacting with people. Weiss Schnee - The Second character to be revealed, Weiss is young Heiress to a large company that seems to be pivotal to the series. Weiss uses a special rapier which has a revolving chamber that appears to give the sword different effects. Weiss acts very self entitled and important, and feels others should treat her in accordance with her stature. Blake Belladonna - Blake is the third character. Blake seems to be a very talented fighter and uses a katana, which can transform into a pistol on a chain that resembles a japanese sickle (kama). Blake is a mysterious character who is very quiet and reserved. As such we know very little about her at this stage in the series. Yang Xiao Long - Yang was the last of the main characters to be revealed through the trailers and is also Ruby's older sister. She uses gauntlets with barrels for bullets and can shoot explosive rounds when she punches. She is usually incredibly cheerful and confident and doesn't usually take things seriously. She clearly really cares for her little sister but her Brute Force also applies to the way she tries to help Ruby. There are obviously many more characters, but I felt like introducing these characters is far more important, probably even more important than talking about the plot. SoundsRWBY has an amazing Original Soundtrack by Jeff Williams who has done music for several Roosterteeth productions for the last several years. Up until the last trailer there was little to no dialogue but because of the way the music complemented the scenes it really wasn't necessary. One of the main things RWBY is criticized for is its voice acting but personally I don't think the voice acting is that bad even if it is done by Roosterteeth Staff. I believe a lot of people formed their own vision of the characters and their personalities from the trailers and since the actual personalities didn't much up with what people had formed by themselves neither did the voices. Something that really supports this is that when Yangs trailer was released people were really disappointed by high pitched Ruby's voice was when she spoke for the first time saying it didn't match her character but obviously at that point we knew very little about her character and it turns out she's younger than the other characters and she's a chirpy and energetic character so a high pitched voice works fine. The other reason people criticize the voice acting, at least from the anime fans, is that they are american voice actors not Japanese. This is a pretty stupid criticism to make since the company is American and the target audience are primarily from English speaking countries. There are a number of anime fans who suggest that because the Japanese voice actors are "better" (which is obviously subjective) the Japanese voice actors should do the voices in English as well, but if you've ever heard a Japanese voice actor trying to speak in English you will know how ridiculous that would be, I've watched non-dubbed anime where a character will say about one sentence in English and despite knowing very little about the Japanese language I feel like I would have had a better chance of understanding if they had just said it in their native language. You also have to remember that despite Roosterteeth being over 10 years old and having over 40 employees they are still technically a small business and so they can't afford to hire voice actors for every character, especially since they produce so many different series. <h1>Conclusion</h1> Most episodes last for about 5 minutes (rather than the standard anime length of 22 minutes) and although it would be great if they were longer they do manage to fit a lot into those 5 minutes and still keep a good pace. Once again you have to remember that they are a relatively small company compared to most Anime companies, and again they have several different productions being released at once. The other thing to remember is that Production started months in advance and as this is a new production and such a different style to past ones that they could never have known it would be so popular, and it would have been a waste of time and effort if they were to produce 30 minute episodes that nobody watched. Overall I really love this series, its probably my favourite Roosterteeth series and I'd recommend it to anyone who is slightly interested. One of the great things about it being produced outside of Japan is that the references are more likely to be understood by a western audience. I purposely didn't discuss the plot, simply because there is so little out at the moment and what I know of the plot doesn't really give a great indication of the kind of series this is, but it seems to fit into a similar genre as red vs blue with a lot of comedy moments but also an action based plot line. Episodes are free to watch on Roosterteeth.com and as of recently Crunchyroll.com and new episodes are released every Friday and as of writing this there are 6 episodes so far. The DVD and Blu-Ray's are available for Pre-Order on Roosterteeth.com and will ship on November 12th (which I believe is the same day as the final episode) with a bunch of special features. I believe the full series will be about movie length somewhere around 90 minutes. If your watching this series comment what you think of it (no spoilers) and if your interested but want to know more just ask and I'll be happy to answer.

17th of May and russ! Now, you may wonder what happens the 17th of May. Well, its the national day of Norway, celebrating the constitution being signed on the 17th of May 1814! But what is a russ? Well, graduate students celebrate the end of the year, although their exams isn't over yet. But that's because it fits so nice with the celebration of 17th of May. So from May 1th to May 17th they are partying every day, and they are trying to get these knots to have in their cap, showing that they have done some weird or stupid stuff. Like riding a tre-wheel kid's bike 5 times around the traffic cricle, or getting 5 teachers to sign your underwear. Now, I'm not russ, but my brother and his friend, who's staying with us are russ. And its quite fun to watch them get drunk every night and sleep all day when they get back from school. Because they still have to go to school, and they have to prepare for their exams, which is later. Ther russ is between the ages of 17-19, although the "black russ" isnt really accepted, since they are too young to drink legally (they are 17. and a few are 18, and 18 is the age limit). On the 17th of May, we also have parades. Here you can see some different coloured russ. Blue is originally economy, but some have choosen to be blue eventhough its not really their colour. The red russ is general subjects. There's also black russ, which are on their last year of school, before two years as apprentice. Green is ecological russ, and white is christian russ. But christian russ do completely different stuff ofcourse, and green and white are pretty rare. Red is the most common. 17th of May parade. Here you can see the King's castle/palace, which is where the parade ends in the captial, Oslo. Now you know a bit more about Norway! Edit: Now I forgot to tell you about russ cards! They are sort of like business cards that the russ give out to people, mostly children who collect them. Most of the cards got jokes on them that the kids don't understand, but that the russ think is funny. I made an example of a russ card, so you can see what it's like. I know. I'm good.

There are several terms in Japanese (like most languages) that don't really have a direct English equivalent and instead need to be explained a bit more. So instead of explaining the full thing every time I want to use such a word in my blog entries I'll just use that word an then have a list of all those words and what they mean here. I would recommend just using this to refer to words that you might not understand rather than reading the whole thing. Anime and Manga A lot of people who aren't very familiar with anime and manga probably don't know the difference so I thought it was worth mentioning here. Put simply manga are Japanese comics whilst Anime refers to the same style but with moving images, including but not limited to cartoons.Fillers Although fillers exist in Western media they aren't really known about as much as they are in Anime and Manga. A filler is an episode, or story arc that is not part of the original manga and are generally not considered as part of the "official" story line or "canon". Demographics Manga (and sometimes anime) is broken into several different demographics which target different audiences. This is useful for manga because various titles will all be published within a single issue of a magazine (such as Shonen Jump) and basically makes it quite clear how appropriate it is for different age groups. The demographics include: Kodomomuke: (or Kodomo) is aimed towards children, and are often very moralistic and teach children how to behave. Popular examples include Digimon, Hamtaro and Pokemon. Shonen: (or Shounen, ShÅnen) Which arguably is the most popular demographic is targeted towards young males (roughly between the ages of 10 and 18) but tends to be enjoyed by a lot more people outside of that age and gender group. It is categorized by high-action and often humourous plots and attractive female characters. It also often has a main character who has an ongoing desire to better themselves (or become stronger). Popular examples include Dragonball, Naruto and One Piece. Shojo: (or Shoujo, ShÅjo) is basically the oppopsite of Shonen and is aimed at young females (roughly between the ages of 10 and 18). They are often categorized by a strong focus on human and romantic relationships and emotions. Popular examples include Sailor Moon, Fruits Basket and Vampire Knight. Seinen: The word Seinen means "young man" and its target audience is males roughly between 18 and 30 (though there are some Seinen manga aimed at businessman well into their 40's). In my opinion this demographic shows the most variation between different titles with subject matter ranging from expiremental, to the mundane, to pornographic. Because it generally focuses on storyline and character development rather than action it is often confused with Shojo. Popular examples include Vagabond, Hellsing and Elfen Lied Josei: The word Josei means "woman","female" or "womanhood" and the demographic is generally written and targeted at women, and is essentially the female equivalent to Seinen. It tends to be written about adult women and is similar to a restrained and more realistic version of Shojo. To keep this as simple as possible I will add to it when I use new Japanese words in my blog.

I used to have the most popular blog, with most views, comments and entries. I still have the most comments and entries, however that damn sloth wizard Traaginen have overtaken me. I'm so angry I called him Traaginen. Well, I'm not really angry. Yes I am. Maybe later. Anyways; I had a pretty though leg exercise today. I think I'll just sit in this chair for a few days, as I already barely can walk, and it's just going to get worse. Exams are coming up. I have to take one exam this year. Because exams and end of year are closing in, I've had tons of tests, and still have a few more to go. Last week I spent most of my freetime for four days just rehearsing physics. I used to suck at physics. Used to. Well, I still kinda do, but not so much. I owned that test. I always sleep in physics class btw. That might be why I suck at it. I can't help it though, and my medicine forbids me to go to bed early, since I have to wait so goddamn long between meals and medicine. Once. There was a BÃ¥rd. His friend played MineCraft. He didn't. Then he pirated MineCraft and loved it. However, he wanted something more. He decided to buy MineCraft and play on servers. It was fuppin amazing. One of the first servers he saw was MinecraftOmega. He loved it. Since then he has been playing on that server on and off. This period, he was given the title "Recruiter". He decided to post on this forum to tell other members to join the server. Spoogan did. Now we are having all the fun without you guys. If you don't like/have MineCraft you're fuppin noobs. The End. The attached picture is what me and Spoogan has been up to. I made the tower, Spoogan made the other stuff. The brown thing coming off my tower is me planing something.

Since statistics are always interesting, I figured I'd post the following table highlighting the most popular articles on Elder Souls. I was going to sort them ALL by author and tally the views to create the biggest pissing-contest cluster-fuck possible. Sadly I lack any easy way to do this and am already procrastinating work, so I'll just do the top 12 (because screw top 10 lists). The following numbers are based off of the articles only, and do not take into account topic views (some of these articles have 10,000+ topic hits). [table] [th]Article[/th][th]Article Hits[/th][th]Author[/th] [td]Skyrim: Master Conjuration, Smithing, and Enchanting[/td][td]119,122[/td][td]Traaginen[/td] [td]Marriable Characters in Skyrim[/td][td]42,112[/td][td]Traaginen[/td] [td] Words of Power: Locations and Information[/td][td]33,471[/td][td]Blexun[/td] [td]The Different Types of Gamers[/td][td]24,387[/td][td]Squishy[/td] [td]Skyrim: Dragon Priest Mask Locations[/td][td]24,035[/td][td]Blexun[/td] [td]How to Get Married in Skyrim[/td][td]23,032[/td][td]Traaginen[/td] [td]Boosting Armor, Weapon, and Item Stats in Skyrim[/td][td]22,164[/td][td]Blexun[/td] [td]How to Cure/Become a Vampire in Skyrim[/td][td]13,638[/td][td]Traaginen[/td] [td]Hearthfire - Where and How to Buy Property[/td][td]13,064[/td][td]Traaginen[/td] [td]The Dark Knight Rises - Plot Holes and Problems[/td][td]12,172[/td][td]Traaginen[/td] [td]This Week in Gaming: Releases, iPhone 5, and G4[/td][td]10,812[/td][td]Deathirst[/td] [td]8 Sites That Probably Aren't Worth Your Time***[/td][td]9,792[/td][td]Blexun[/td] [/table]***There is some serious Skynet-esque bot action going on here, methinks.Following the top twelve are my "Fastest Ways to Level" guide at 9,291, Unknown's two table-based articles at ~7,850 each (they are weirdly close), and then the Gaming News stuff Squishy and I have done. Things to take away from this... Original content is king unless you're Deathirst. By this I mean that 'Gaming News' articles are good because they can be mass-produced but individually never get high view totals. If you're wondering how I got a rather shitty guide (compared to the others) to 120,000 views and blew away the competition, it was because I posted links to it on forums and Yahoo Answers many times. Networking your stuff works. Is this a Skyrim site or something? This isn't fair to a lot of the newer stuff that's been published, but yeah. I'll save the views/day and what-not for another day.

Just read the hobbit this past week, and i must say its lived up to the "classic" hype. Quite frankly its been a while since I've enjoyed a fictional book so much. I'm always a lover of journeys and runescapish tales. (Fun fact, Mithril actually was a metal that originated from the Lord of the Rings) So, who doesnt enjoy reading a story about a midget with hairy feet? Lord knows I do From what I understand a major motion picture is coming out for this book, though I do not believe it will be able to do this great book justice. There is far too much to cover in that short 2 hours, so much lore and history to work in that I feel it will fall short of offering everything Tolkien's novel has to offer. The book starts out slow, with Bilbo hanging around his little hobbit home, smoking his pipe (if you've read the book, you've become familiar with Tolkien's obsession with smoke rings) When suddenly, Gandalf the wizard approaches Bilbo (the main character/hobbit). Within a chapter, Bilbo finds himself smack in the middle of an adventure. Before you know it, they're on their merry way, and you're taken on a beautifully descriptive journey through the mountains, swamps, and dark woods of this new world. If theres one thing I enjoyed most, its that Tolkien slips in mythology and history of these lands without preaching it. Confrontations with trolls and goblins become gateways to understanding why dwarves dont trust goblins, or why elves trade only with men. Im kind of a history buff as it is, so learning about a history completely new to me kinda excites me. Bilbo's magnificent journey is kind of a a coming of age tale, except its not. Thats stupid, why would you even suggest that? Its a tale of how he becomes confident in himself and his skills, and discovers in himself a newfound love for adventure. And the reader slowly discovers that gandalf is one bad ass MF. Gandalf is a badass The battle scenes are epic. The journey is entertaining, exciting, and does not drag on like other books. The constantly changing perils present fresh problems which constantly challenge bilbo's shortcomings. The ending was great, and very satisfying. I fully recommend this book to anyone who enjoys runescapish lore or journey books.

The Gallery and Blog applications have both been updated. Gallery had a rather massive overhaul and as a result there are some issues with the dark skin I'm aware of (though they're just visual and don't affect usability), so if you want to check out what it should/will look like use the Light skin. Hopefully I'll fix whatever issues there are relatively quickly. Here is a list of improvements; each bullet links to an in-depth write-up by IPB if anyone is interested. What's New for IP.Gallery In addition to many fixes for reported issues, the following changes have been made: Redesigned Navigation We have redesigned the navigation and structure of Gallery to provide a more traditional navigational approach, while retaining a more social approach for those who desire it. Global albums have been changed to "categories". More Administrator Control Administrators now have better and more fine-grained control over moderators, albums and images. Miscellaneous Features and Enhancements pInterest integration; improved shared media image presentation; set as profile photo expanded Gallery-wide; hidden and unapproved ambiguity improvement; SEO improvements Navigational Changes Changes to albums and ability to list members, albums or images in the special member albums category More Miscellaneous Improvements RSS feed enhancements; notification improvements; homepage enhancements based on client feedback What's New for IP.Blog SEO and Microformat Improvements Improvements have been made to better optimize IP.Blog for search engines, and implement relevant microformat meta data. Promotion Ability to auto-share to Facebook/Twitter on entry creation; better image handling for sharing to Facebook; ability to auto-follow entry on creation; reputation integration in user profiles; integration with quick navigation panel Moderation and Miscellaneous Improvements Consistency improvements; custom block improvements; inline moderation enhancements; better category management In addition to software improvements, I've added new categories: Das GIF Haus - A place for all of the best GIFs. Image Hosting - Where people who add images to their articles should host their stuff. Otherwise it will likely be lost after a short period of time because people tend to hot-link or upload it to crummy places like imageshack. Premium Members are also able to host their own stuff. It just so happens that our licenses for these updates ran out awhile back, so I had to repurchase renewal rights to the software inorder to get these updates. Since renewal prices run about $210 a year, I'll just take this moment to say all Premium Member subscriptions go toward the site and really help me out. You can also donate any amount you want if none of the Premium Member tiers are right for you, or if you're already subscribed. I'd also like to thank Deathirst for donating $15.00 and taking over the hosting costs for August with it.

Big Headline Croatia Not long ago I was in Croatia, on the island BraÄ. I was staying in a nice little town called Postira. It was very calm and not so focused on tourists, so there wasn't people trying to make you buy crap everywhere. On the other side of the island, on the other hand, it was like that, in the city/town Bol. It was a huge tourist place because of their beach. But I liked Postira far better. We couldn't find any sandy beaches though, i was just stony beaches. They were everywhere though. I also got an awful heath rash or something on my back and shoulders and I couldn't sleep for two nights in a row because of it. I'm not tan by the way, as no-body in my family have the genes to become tan. We are very Scandinavian/Norwegian in that way. But here's some pictures: This is the town we were staying in. This is Bol with the beach. Here is a better picture of Bol. The beach kinda starts where this picture ends. Hospital Monday to Wednesday next week I'll be in the capital, Oslo, for some examinations at the biggest hospital in Norway. My doctor sent me there because she thought I might have a very rare congenital disease that affects my liver. So my liver isn't working very well. My doctor decided at one point to do lots of examinations on my. But everything was fine except my liver, and my heart has a bi-sound to it that isn't dangerous. But yeah, I'm going to Oslo after the weekend. I'm a bit scared, I don't really know much about what is going to happen. I don't even know if I get narcosis or local anesthesia. But I'm sure it will be fine. Not sure if the disease is treatable though. I might have to stay away from alcohol for the rest of my life. Guild Wars 2 Earlier this week I bought Guild Wars 2 Digital Deluxe. I'm not sure if I really needed the Digital Deluxe version, but now I got it. So this weekend, before going to Oslo, I'll be playing Guild Wars 2 in the beta-weekend! I'm really looking forward to Guild Wars 2 and I cleaned my PC for dust yesterday to make it go faster. Not sure if it worked, as I have mostly been using my laptop recently, so I wouldn't know if the PC goes faster. Anyways, I hope we could gather a small group of people on the forums to play together, since I don't feel like joining a big guild. Now, a funny picture I took in Bol outside a hotel. It's not a very good picture because I took as the bus I was in drove by.

Facebook has been tanking downhill as fast as Myspace ever since it opened to the general public. Nowadays (at least in my case), my facebook "friends" (most of whom I neither know nor like) do little more than spam my feed with religious and political debates, game spam, idtiotic fake accounts, and the recent "LIKE/SUBSCRIBE TO RECIEVE 2000 FRIENDS LOL". It's a disgusting, horrible place that needs to die now. Facebook will be dead soon, and the cool people will migrate to Google Plus. A year or two later, it will be overtaken with the next wave of users: the preteen girl and "adult who doesn't understand the internets" demographics. Following this, it too, will die. In the meantime, I'm creating a blog. It may turn into a facebook blog of hilarious stupid shit people post, it may never be updated after today. Either way, though, I'm looking for people that are interested and want to run the blog with me. Hopefully we can all share laughs at our Facebook friends' expense regularly from this point onward. I'll start by providing the following.... My great-great-grandparents passed away the other day. I'd better just cease to exist because anything else is impossible. You don't even need to believe in evolution to face palm at this. Public education at work. Here's a graph I made in Paint in 4 seconds explaining how this is possible for those of you scratching your heads.

My 17th of May 16th of May This year we weren't supposed to have a big party for family and friends, but relax instead. Ofcourse, that did not happen. The 16th of May was a very stressfull day. Everything had to be ready for the 17th, and the new entrance had to be finished, so we could move some stuff in there. The food needed to be ready for the next day aswell. But it went allright, and eventually we got there. My brother could, as usual not help. Both because of laziness and because he "had" to go to the big russ part that symbolizes the end of the russ time. I don't blame him for going to that party, just the fact that he is so lazy and can never help around the house. He got the easiest job and not only did he do the job badly, but he got his friend to help him do it. 17th of May Now, on the 17th of May we had to get up really early. I'm not very good at that, and after my parents had yelled at me a couple of times to get up, I finaly did when there wasn't much time left until we had to go. So i quickly got ready, and we drove to the place where we usualy stand and watch the kid's parade go by. The parade is not for kids to watch, but for kids to participate in. All the schools and day care centers participate and they can win this prize for being the best part of the parade. Now, this is where Ole Gunnar Solskjær gets in to the picture. He got three kids in the parade, and he was standing right on the opposite side of the street for me. I'm always kinda shocked when I see him, as he is(or atleast was) one of Norway's most known man(footballer, soccer player). After the parade we went to my grandmother's house and eat some food and cakes, just for the family, pluss my brother's friend who's staying with us. He had been partying all night and hadn't slept, and he was still drunk. So he acted rather strange. After that we went to watch the russ train, which my brother and his friend was participating in, and playing the guitar. It was rather funny, and the "new" red russ got so much hate, because they have been blue for so many years, and then they suddenly decided to become red russ instead, so the "real" red russ was hating on them. After that, we went home and prepared for the party, and then the guests started arriving. Lots of people came, and it was funnier than I can remember it used to be. Ole Gunnar Solskjær I was not quite finished with Solskjær just yet. In the evening yesterday, a privatejet landed on the airport in my town. Turned out to be someone from the management of Aston Villa, trying to make Solskjær come with them to Birmingham so they could discuss a possible position as coach for Aston Villa(premier league soccerteam). Solskjær used to be a quite good footballer(playing for Manchester United), until he injured his foot or something, and then he started coaching for the reserve team of Manchester United. He then suddenly moved back to his home town in Norway, right next to where I live. And then he started coaching a footballteam in the highest league in Norway, and in his first year made the team win their first cup ever. Now, as I said I live right next to him. You could almost see his house from the picture i posted earlier of the view from my house. Here are some new pictures: The pictures are of his house. He paid 11m NOK(1,838,157.89 USD) for it. The pool was removed by the previous owners, but I can see that Solskjær made a new pool in the same place. You better like this, because I ran out without my jacket and took these pictures, and it was freezing. If you haven't yet seen the updated blog entry of my last one, please do. The edited version is a lot funnier. This entry isn't very funny either, it's more bragging and information about my life really. But I tihnk it's a pretty standard 17th of May. Lastly, here's a question for anyone in the US: Did any of you notice any celebration of the 17th of May in the US? I know some people celebrate it there. Also, Traag, you must have noticed that writing an entry can be quite annoying. If you backspace to quickly sometimes, the completly wrong thing gets removed, and it's really annoying, especially when you don't notice at first and keep writing...

Heh heh heh...you all knew this would come along at some point. I realise nearly everyone on this site and their brother has played this game. I just thought I would share why it is my third favorite game off all time. With its large world, decent story, and huge amount of content and freedom, you cannot miss this title. Judging by the site you are on, you probably haven't. Gameplay: Allow me to start by saying that this is what the sandbox style is all about. The world is moderately large, probably taking a half an hour to walk from one end to the other. Of course, once you visit an area, you can fast travel there any time, so don't worry about tediousness. There are hundreds of different quests you can access, and you will find yourself recieving new quests faster than you can complete them. Don't even worry about running out; this game randomly generates quests. Yes, you read that correctly. IT ENDLESSLY GIVES YOU QUESTS. This means the game has nearly unlimited replay value. You may have noticed I haven't talked about the combat. That's because there isn't much to it. You hit a creature with your sword, and it does damage. There isn't a complex math system involved, and there isn't a wide variety of sword attacks. While this is a very simple combat system, it fits with the open world feel well, as it allows for seamless transitions between combat and exploring. Art Style: The land of Skyrim is in the north, so it makes sense that the enviornments are similar to what you would find in Canada or Scandinavia. In the northern area of the map, you have tundra and arctic areas. In the south, you have forests. While the game goes for a realistic approach, I cannot deny that the game can look very beautiful at times. Story: You are about to be executed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, when a dragon attacks. You escape, and alert the countryside about the dragon attack. The Jarl, a sort of mayor, of the nearby city of Whiterun pairs you up with some soldiers to investigate another dragon attack site. When you get there and kill the dragon, you absorb its soul, and you realise that you are the Dragonborn. You are called by a group called the Greybeards, and they take you in and tell you of your destiny: To defeat Alduin, the World-Eater. On top of this, there is a civil war taking place in Skyrim that is sure to get in your way. Can the chosen one overcome all odds and save the world once and for all? Lasting Appeal: This game has a huge amout of content. When I finished the main story, I went and participated in the civil war. After that, I finished every guild quest. After that, I collected all of the Daedric Artifacts. Even then, there was still more stuff to do, and that isn't even counting the randomly generated quests. If you run out of quests, just explore. You'll find something worth doing. You will get tired of the game before you do everything, though. It doesn't stay fresh forever. Gameplay: 9/10 This game has one strength, and that is its open world structure. However, it's done so well that to give anything less than a 9 would be insulting. The first time you play the game, your mind will be racing with the possibilities. Art Style: 8/10 It's nice, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Unlike games like Dragon Age: Origins, the game's atmosphere isn't very dark, and therefore doesn't need a realistic approach. Some of the enviornments can be very pretty, though. Expect to look around a lot when wandering from place to place. Story: 7/10 The story is okay and will keep you playing, but it's nothing special. Considering this is an RPG, a deep story should be taken for granted, and this game just barely delivers in that department. Lasting Appeal: 9.5/10 Where do I start? There is so much content in this game that can keep you entertained for a long time. With the endlessly generating quests, the content is limitless. You can make choices, which warrents other playthroughs. The only thing holding this back is the combat. I like the combat, and it fits with the game, but it can get repetitive after a while. With combat being the bread and butter of video games as a whole, this is what will get you to move on to another game. Overall: 9/10 You may have noticed that my top three favorite games all have the same review score. That's because they are so close in quality. This is my third favorite title of all time. If you have even ounce of RPG blood in you, you will probably love this title, and should buy it. Oh, what am I saying? You probably already have.

An evil army is attempting to destroy the land, and it's up to you to stop it! While your first reaction may be, "Wow, how generic," Bioware puts its own twist into this Forgotten Realms tribute. What you are left with is an epic adventure that does a great job of defining what gaming is all about. Gameplay: Dragon Age Origins mixes turn based and real time combat together. You have four members of your party, and there are two ways to play. You can control one party member and switch every once in a while, playing it like a standard Action RPG. Your other choice, which is more efficient, is to pause the game, issue commands to each party member, unpause, and watch the battle play out. You have a choice of three classes. Warriors can take a lot of hits and are a reliable source of damage. Rogues can pick locks and disarm traps, but their combat skills leave something to be desired. Mages are rather "squishy," but they deal HUGE amounts of damage and large AOE attacks. Many consider them overpowered. Art Style: The game goes for a realistic feel, which I usually don't like. However, I feel it suits the game, as the overall mood is meant to be dark, with tension in the air as Ferelden awaits for its incoming doom. The wide range of enviornments means the color pallette is rather varied, and character models fit right in with the enviornments. However, I REALLY don't like the look of the lips of the females in this game. I don't know what it is. It doesn't happen with males; only with females. Story: You can choose from several prologues for your character's backstory. They all end the same way: You have lost everything and are joining the Grey Wardens, dedicated to fighting Darkspawn. Darkspawn wander underground, looking for an "Old God." When they find one, they use their corruption to turn it into an Archdemon, who leads them in an assault on the land called a "Blight." When you join the Wardens, there is a big battle at Ostagar Fortress. You may have won, but Loghain, one of the King's generals, pulls out the reinforcements in an act of betrayal. The King, who was fighting with the Wardens, along with the entire army, dies at the battle. That is, except for you and your friend Alistair, who were sent off the battlefield to signal the reinforcements. You are surrounded by Darkspawn, but are saved by a forest witch named Flemeth and her daughter Morrigan. After you and Alistair recover, you begin your long journey. You, Alistair, and Morrigan must bring the four corners of Ferelden into an alliance to fight off this Blight, and maybe get revenge on Loghain in the process. Lasting Appeal: As with many WRPGs this generation, you can make choices. Some are good, such as curing a werewolf curse. Some are evil, such as killing the werewolves. Some are grey, such as recruiting the werewolves to your cause without curing them. There are many choices in this game, and this warrents many playthroughs. The game is around forty hours long if you complete around half of the sidequests along with the main story. As with most Bioware games, you can romance characters. You get four romances in this game, two being Alistair and Morrigan. That adds replay value as well, because while the other two romances are bisexual, Alistair and Morrigan are not, so you should play through as both a male and female. Gameplay: 8.75/10 I enjoyed playing the game like a standard Action RPG, but the "Pause and Play" method was tedious. I enjoyed seeing what kind of strategies I could come up with, as this game gives you a lot of freedom in how you play. You unlock three warriors, including Alistair, two rogues, two mages, including Morrigan, and a dog. This gives you many combinations of characters, as they each have a lot of personality and you may make your selection off of whose banter you like the best. Art Style: 8/10 While the visuals aren't very original, I enjoyed the wide variety of enviornments. With the incoming Blight, it would be hard to imagine this game with any other art style. Story: 9.75/10 While the story may sound generic, Bioware puts its own spin on this classic "hero saves world" tale. The story is rather deep, and it will make you laugh, cry, and even feel paranoid at certain points. You may find yourself seriously considering the consequences of your actions. Lasting Appeal: 10/10 This is a long game. Some people have sunk 100+ hours into it. The game also gives you a lot of choices that warrent many playthroughs. I have done all that, have my platinum, and this game still isn't old. Overall: 9/10 This is my favorite game ever. The story and gameplay are very deep, and the game has loads of replay value. I beg of you, if you call yourself an RPG fan, and you probably are, considering the site you're on, then please, you must experience this title.

Source: Alchemy Ingredients and Their Effects This made my day, I can't even begin, but I wanted to share this awesomeness with you guys tonight!

Obligatory First Entry Stuff My name is Blake Rodriguez. I'm currently majoring in Criminology at NC State and live in an apartment in Raleigh. Half Puerto Rican, 3 sisters, been involved with David's online triumphs and downfalls for 3 years and counting, yada yada. Now that that is out of the way, on to the blog. Plan on writing on a wide variety of things I think of: game reviews, random list, semi-hilarious articles, and maybe a little bit of insight on my life. Sharing my wisdom with the world while all the while providing hilarity to the common man and exploiting the newly discovered horizontal rule. Quest 64: Revisited Between the raining and surprisingly cool weather, the fact I'm stuck at my parent's house alone during the day, and a 7+ paper on a movie slowly sneaking up on me, half of my Easter break was looking to be a bore. I decided to download and try to beat one of the hardest games I had when I was a kid: Quest 64. Besides it being a horrible, ball-bustingly hard RPG, my mother made a mistake in its purchase. Damnit Mom, you have to read the back of the box! Story If only you knew the first steps to hours of raging is beyond this gate. The creators of Quest 64 didn't spare any material when it comes to story. It takes place in the magical, monster infested, lawless land of Hard-To-Pronounce-Land. A thief stole some powerful book. Brian's father went to get it back and hasn't come back. You play Brian, some wizard who master elements, in hopes of finding your father, defeating the thief, and getting back the book. All the while, you are tracking down four other thieves who each stole some powerful orb from each major city. Sure it is horribly unoriginal, but it was 1998. We fell in love with The Waterboy and The Parent Trap: what the hell do we know? RPG and Video Game Elements This being one of the first, big RPG's for the Nintendo 64, THQ tried what I hope isn't their hardest to make it one of the best. And they did do some things great. The actual world of Good-Luck-Pronouncing-This-Land is huge with occasional houses peppering the landscape, although a bit linear. While you have a lot of area to walk around and explore, there is an obvious path leading you from town to town. The music is also pretty catchy too, although after hours of raging, this isn't a good thing. And of course, the graphics are nice for it's day and age. I should just keep on walking. Sadly that is all THQ did good with this game. First of all, there is no money system in this game, which is really unusual for an RPG. So you may be asking, how do you get food and potions to keep you alive? One of two ways: you either find it or people just give it away for free. Both of these are problematic. Once you find supplies, they obviously can't be found again, so if you were to waste them because you didn't pick up on the combat's steep learning curve, then you are screwed. This is countered a bit by civilians giving you free food and what not, but they refuse to give you an extra of any item you already have. Found a loaf of bread while walking to town? The baker denies you your free sample. It's nice, and somewhat realistic, of the civilians to supply the savior of the world with supplies, but when they have a hard time parting with dew drops, it really is pointless. Besides this horrible detail, the actual leveling up is confusing and the most grinding process I've ever messed with. I'd explain it to you, but even I don't understand it. In addition to that, its dying mechanic is really messed up. Upon the inevitable death, you are transported to the last inn you saved in and you keep your stat increases and items you gained and lose items you used up. While this makes you stronger the next time you enter whatever area you died in, the loss of items you had and the inability to buy more items is going to ensure your death again. Combat In case you aren't familiar with your Quest 64 beastiary, I'm fucked. Originally had this with the other bad things, but I couldn't sum up its awfulness and do it justice. Quest 64's combat is a mixture between turn based strategy and live action fighting. That is what some website said anyway. What you will actually experience is turn based strategy and the almost guaranteed fail dodge attempt. Pairing that with how fragile Brian is and you'll be dying. A lot. How about the combat that you do? Maybe that balances out how weak you are. Well it doesn't. On each level up, you get to raise either fire, water, wind, or earth. You can even combine these spells into useful effects, like a water spell that heals you or an earth spell that raises defense. Besides the fact these spells are useless for practical use (a healing spell that heals 5 isn't much good when you are being hit with 7's constantly), they drain your magic ridiculously fast, so you'll find yourself either drinking magic potions (good luck getting those), or hitting things with your stick. The game depends on too much grinding to really be worth it. I couldn't beat the first boss and don't plan on playing this ever again. Final Remarks My mom buying me games for Christmas was the result of some pretty bad childhood memories; I'm looking at you Yoshi Story. I remember being bummed out I couldn't get far in the game because I couldn't save it. Thank god I missed out on this train wreck of an experience. The only thing this game did for me is make me appreciate the upcoming beach weekend. So take that THQ. I hope this review affects your sells on a game made 14 years ago.

So, I finished platinuming Skyrim a couple months ago, and wanted a cheap RPG game I could move on to. I decided to give the FF XIII-2 demo a try, and enjoyed it, so I picked up the first game. While it is flawed and I see why people don't like it, I feel I got my $20 worth out of it. Gameplay: This is a party-based RPG, and you have different classes to choose from. Commando is damage, Ravager is building chains so Commandos can do more damage, Medics are healing, Sentinels are tanks, Synergists are buffs, and Saboteurs are debuffs. Each party member has 3 classes they can use, and you can have 3 members in your party. You set up paradigms, which are combinations of what each character is, and you switch between them in the middle of battle, depending on the situation. While every party member eventually can use all six classes, they all specialize in one. The game is completely linear for the first 20+ hours of the game, but it opens up near the end. Art Style: This is the closest to "graphics" I'm going to get. Graphics judge how realistic a game looks, while art style judges how creative the game looks, as well as the color palette it uses. This is probably the best looking game I've ever seen. So much detail and color, the enviornments are beautiful to look at. Also, while in many JRPGs the guys look like girls, the guys actually look like guys in FFXIII. Story: This is a story about the Fal'cie, which are the equivelant of gods. When they need to complete a task, they brand a human as a L'cie. They are given magic abilities, but if they don't complete their task in time, they turn into a zombie. If they do complete it in time, they are encased in crystal. I know, it's not much of a choice. There are 2 types of Fal'cie: Cocoon and Pulse. They are direct enemies, and rule over their own parts of the world. The main character, Lightning, is branded a Pulse L'cie, along with Sazh, Snow, Hope, and Vanille. Their only clue of their focus was a vision of a monster, and one word: Ragnarok. Together, they must figure out what this means and decide whether to attempt it or not. Some characters are good, such as Sazh, who is meant to be comic relief. Others, like Hope, fall flat and end up being annoying. Lasting Appeal: This game took me about 2 weeks to beat the main story, with around 3 hours of gameplay a day. After that, you still have a lot a sidequests, as well as trophies/achievements to collect. However, when all of that is done, there is NOTHING left to do. It lasted me about a month, and I don't think I'll pick it up again. Gameplay: 7/10 It's original, but it gets repetitive after a while. In the boss battles, there isn't much choice in your strategy. Art Style: 10/10 This is honestly the best looking game I've ever played. Story: 8/10 Many people hated the story, but I found it very interesting and captivating. I felt a pang of sadness when the credits rolled. Lasting Appeal: 6.5/10 Unless you are a trophy collector, you will play through the story, then play through the side missions, then never play this game again. Overall: 7.5/10 Is it one of my favorite games? No, it's not even close. However, for today's price of $20, this game is more than worth your money. If you walk in with an open mind and can get past the linearity, this is a game worth checking out, especially if you like party-based combat.