Sideshow & Syrana

Now… to come up with fun rank names…

Today my open beta Aion characters have been wiped.  I will get to start anew with them once it goes live, but this post is about something more than just wiped beta characters.

Forgive my introspective, reflective thoughts.  I’ve been mulling over a lot of different thoughts, feelings, and whatnot.  I know, the thought of a Warlock having feelings is… inconceivable.

But we all get those days where we take a step back and ponder…

Several posts around the blogosphere lately have certainly made me think more philosophically about how, even an online presence and persona, can truly affect others.

From Spinksville’s The Power of Memory in an MMO:

If retracing our steps in the real world helps to relive memories, then it should be no surprise that virtually retracing our steps in a virtual world has the same effect.

From WoW.Com’s Study: Playing in a guild actually lowers stress:

Researcher Huon Longman studied WoW players who played alongside guildies in game, and found that players often shared their real-life concerns with their virtual associates, which resulted in lowered levels of “anxiety, depression, and stress.” In short, it seems that when you build relationships and share emotions even with people online, it can help you deal with problems in real life as well.

From Gnomeaggedon’s Soul Shards are people too!:

Syrana has a piece of my soul.

I dare say she has captured a portion of a lot of people’s souls… She’s just that kind of girl.

From Klepsacovic’s An Online Service I’d Like to See:

When we’re offline, we’re just not there. Without the individual logging in and saying something, there’s no communication. So getting back to the start, if I died, no one would know. It would be indistinguishable from me suddenly quitting blogging and WoW.

…. and there were more, but those particular posts seemed to hit me the most, for some reason.

People disappear from online for a variety of different reasons.  Sometimes we may know what they are.  Sometimes we assume.  Sometimes we wonder about them. (continue reading…)

What is it with me and posting multiple parts lately? Well, with BlizzCon, there’s no way I could write just one post to cover it all.  Ok, so that’s a lie.  There are 2 ways:

1- Use thousands and thousands of words that would take days to read

or

2 – Use one word: Epic.

Since both ways are such extremes, we’ll go for bite-sized pieces.

Ideal vs. Real

Remember how prior to BlizzCon I shared with you my ideal itinerary?  Yeah, so, it was practically impossible to attend all the panels I wanted to.  But you knew that would happen, didn’t you!

Here’s how it really went down: (continue reading…)

Hopefully today will not be a Murloc Monday.  I’ve had more than my fair share of ‘em, if I do say so myself.  I’ve also noticed I’ve been more irritated lately… lacking motiviation… lacking patience… too many little things building up.

I need another vacation.

Things are still nutty in my “other life.”  Today the new boss gets patched in though, so we’ll see how that goes.  Things have become a bit of a disorganized mess before her arrival due to “technical difficulties” that occurred (and took damn near 2 weeks to get fixed, thanks to psuedo-IT assistance. Blarg, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant).

I thought the few 3 day weekends I had recently would suffice, but seriously, being overworked makes those days off needed much more frequently than usual.  At least BlizzCon is coming up in less than a month.  It’ll be nice to get away.  And out of state no less! (continue reading…)