Sideshow & Syrana

I know I can’t be the only one that has dreams that incorporate gaming elements or dreams about games.  The game I find sneaking into my subconscious the most is World of Warcraft.  I suppose it doesn’t help that I often listen to the soundtracks while falling asleep.  (The Eversong Woods music with the cellos and haunting voices is super relaxing.)

I previously shared a very whacked out dream that involved Samodean, Chris Metzen, and a live action zombie demo.  I had a LOT of details to share since I wrote it all down as soon as I could after waking up.

More commonly I remember snippets, if that.  What I’ve noticed more lately is that waking up is part of a quest chain.

I’ve had dreams where hitting the snooze button is a repeatable quest.

I’ve also had dreams that the “A” button was the snooze button.

Dreams are weird.  And yes, that’s a scientific term.

Ya know, I think this is why I love to slow time down when my Sims are sleeping.  Usually the game will auto-speed up time when the entire household is asleep.  I mean, they are sleeping, you don’t have anything to manage after all.  But, I like to slow it down just to watch the dream bubbles.

Hmm.

I never realized just how creepy that was before.

Samodean!  He worked diligently using “creative googling,” as he put it, to submit his blog scavenger hunt entry within 24 hours after it went live.

He did quite well too! Only 2.5 close-but-not-quite-on-the-money answers.  I’m almost glad he didn’t have a perfect score or y’all might think it was suspicious.  Or I’d have to question Sideshow to see if he sold Samo the answers or something.

He did answer the bonus questions right though! Woo!

Granted, he had the only entry… all I can say is lesson learned, I guess? Saved me some money at least…

I know a few people responded on Twitter suggesting I extend the deadline by a week when I tweeted this afternoon about only receiving one entry.  I had considered that over the weekend as the deadline drew near… but I decided not to do so.  I’m not sure if that would have actually resulted in more entries (especially if I hadn’t revealed the fact there had only been one).

And I woulda felt silly extending it if after an additional week there was still only one.

Also, I kept the promotion of the contest to the blog and Twitter because, well, I wanted it to be for our readers/followers.

Hey, at least this time there was an entry.  The last contest I attempted resulted in zero entries.

Baby steps, right Bob?

Well, if you still want to tackle the scavenger hunt for the helluvit, you may not want to look at the answers after the cut.  Otherwise, enjoy going through ‘em. (continue reading…)

Wowza, I can hardly believe the 1st Annual Hearts, Hands, and Voices charity drive organized by Azeroth United has come to a close.  It ran November 1st through December 13th.  It was filled with great mini-drives and support.  The initial fundraising goal of $5,000 was surpassed quickly too!

As for our own mini-drive, #iblamesyrana, we ended with a total count of 1237 blame tweets which raised $300!

I consider that a smashing success.

We started out sponsoring 500, then Samodean, Fulguralis, Fuubaar, and Pixelated Executioner offered their support and sponsorship as well!  Sure, we didn’t reach the updated goal of 1500, but we came quite close!

So a HUUUUUGE THANK YOU to everyone that helped out!

Just a quick update to let everyone know that we have a new #iblamesyrana sponsee!  That’s right! Pixelated Executioner has upped the ante!

Our original goal was 500 blame tweets, which we have reached.  Those were sponsored by Sideshow, Samodean, and myself.

Then Fulguralis and Fuubaar raised the bar by offering to sponsor the next set of blame tweets, putting the goal at 1000 tweets.

Now Pixel will be sponsoring a third set of tweets – bringing the goal up to 1500!

Let’s do this – For the Children!

Remember folks, today marks the start of the official #iblamesyrana tweet count for Azeroth United’s Hearts, Hands, and Voices charity drive for Child’s Play Charity.

Not sure what this #iblamesyrana tweet thing is all about? Check out this post here.

Also, there are 2 other bloggers that are also pitching in to donate based on these blame tweets!  Check out their posts about it:

The Price of Blame Has Just Gone Up by Fulguralis

Stepping Up by Samodean

Also, if you want to take a look at the #iblamesyrana tweets, you can check ‘em out right here on the site! (And hopefully it’ll make my daunting fun task of counting them easier!)

Have fun with this, spread the word, and let’s raise some money… it’s truly a time for the Alliance and the Horde to set aside their differences and together shout a new battlecry: FOR THE CHILDREN!

What an eventful past few days it has been.  The buzz surrounding Aion’s launch can be heard far and wide.  Apparently, the Asmodian race is a popular one.  Who knew? I mean, usually more people gravitate toward the shiny happy people, right?

Last Friday (9/18/09) was the day for pre-selection for those that pre-ordered Aion.  It meant you could reserve 2 character slots.  That’s it.  No playing yet, just reserving your name and faction on 1 or 2 servers.  This actually didn’t go over well for everyone.  Sure, it was nice to get to do that… but there was a lot of complaining too.

Some people had to change their server choices or had their names taken.  Then there was the blocking of creating Asmodians on a LOT of servers for a period of time.  This didn’t mean you never could, but you had to wait until more Elyos were created to restore balance.

Balance being the key word.

With a game like Aion that has a lot of focus on PvP, balance is important. (continue reading…)

So some of you may have noticed the #IBlameSyrana tweets the other day.  This is where the hashtag topic started (even though the blaming had started previously with this post.)

I admit, I’m a visual person.  Detail, colors, images, etc. are things I pay a lot of attention to.  Now, I’m not saying that stunning graphics make or break a game, but if it’s not visually appealing to me…. it’s going to be a hard sell.  For those interested in checking out these virtual vacation photos, please do so after the cut.   Oh and to check out my two spirit pets.  (Of course I’m playing a Spiritmaster, it’s the closest thing to a Warlock!)

If you want more information on gameplay details, impressions, and the like… please be sure to check out Massive Nerd and SpoonCraft (to go straight to his videos, go here).

What can I say, I like to screenshot loading screens.

(continue reading…)

I thought this was adorable and disturbing all at the same time… so I screenshotted it for your viewing pleasure.

After having issues with Deadmines being broken last night, we finally got to finish it… like 4 hours after we first started.  You see, we went in there, we were ownin’ face, but all of us got disconnected from the server after the first boss.  We were returned to the beginning of the instance -reset- and proceeded to farm the same beginning trash mobs a few times as we would get repeatedly booted again.

Eventually we received error messages about Deadmines instance not found, so we gave up and did some other stuff.

Several hours later, we decide to try again – and were successful!