Girls Exist on the Internet and GW

OMG Girlz Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1

Kudos to Roon Beest for linking me to that. When I read things like that though, I get fired up pretty well. To hear that anything like that happens, even if it isn’t to me, gets me rather mad. Just because we’re a different gender doesn’t mean guys need to be sexist jerks living in a world where guys dominate the “interwebz.” If people like the author of that article are forced to keep their gender secret in situations because of the reactions of others, all the guys out there need to brighten up and open up their world a bit to realize yes, girls exist online and no, not all of them are fat pedophiles or something.

That article was written two years ago, so I’m guessing (since I don’t play WoW) that things have changed since then. I’ve never really been in situations like the one the author describes (or maybe I’m just fortunate to have found a community like RSBANDB), although I still get people following me around on Runescape asking for me to be their gf. I’m glad you think my pixels are hot but no thank you and get a life.

Anyway, Christmas passed. I got $25 for iTunes, two books (full set of His Dark Materials and the Prophecy of Yonwood), and Guild Wars. I’ve been no-lifing Guild Wars for the past few days and dang it’s good. It’s more different than most free MMO’s I’ve played and I love the cinematics. I’m a level 8 Elementalist/Mesmer atm (I wish I had chosen Monk as a second profession since they can heal, but oh well).

Wooot

Ic3magic held a party today and dang he gave away a helluva lot of stuff – thanks x 2398723424 Ic3! I sold the steel bars + rune ess because I don’t runecraft or smith a lot (kept the 15.3k fire runes + all the food though). Selling all those gave me about a 600k profit which gave me enough to buy the kite/legs/plate for full guthix. Yay! My Xmas look is complete.

I’m thinking of getting full Sara now …will I ever be satisfied?  Maybe if I get Sara and Zamorak (but Zamorak’s ugly so I doubt I’ll be wanted that if I get full Sara).

RS Xmas Event

I did the Christmas event yesterday and to be frank I was a little disappointed with it.  Basically you need to gather snowballs from snow piles around Runescape and make a snowman.  It got a bit annoying after awhile because you need 10 snowballs (I think) to make each part of the snowman (bottom, body, and head), so it was a lot of clicking.  Talk with a snow imp to get a snowman hat/weapon to finish off your snowman.  After you make a snowman you go to Draynor and talk with a snow imp who will then teleport you to the Land of Snow.  You can talk to the Queen of Snow there and she will give you a snow globe that will fill your inventory with snowballs.  Along with using snowballs to make snowmen you can throw them at people (however it doesn’t affect them in any way).  I was really hoping for some sort of wearable item instead of a snow globe.  The snowball idea is nice because a lot of people were hoping for that last year but snowman-making is a little tedious and the item isn’t very good.

Golden Compass

Just saw the movie not even half an hour ago.  I haven’t read the books in about a year and a half, so I’ve forgotten the finer details around it.  However, in my opinion as an enjoyer of the books and not a die-hard fan, I quite liked the movie.  Besides the fact they cut out the whole ending of the book, it was pretty good.  I loved how the Panserbjorn fight was done and Ian Mckellan as Iorek was awesome!  Dakota Blue Richards was fantastic as a first time actress and besides a couple spots where her acting could have been a little better (example: the part where Mrs. Coulter’s daemon grabs Pan and she cries out) she was very, very good as Lyra.  Nicole Kidman was amazing as usual and the rest of the cast were great.  I feel bad though because the movie didn’t get as much money as it should have during the opening night >.< stupid people boycotting it.  Ah well, that’s their choice.  I really hope they make the next two movies.

More Duels

Lucky kill, he didn’t have food.

Duels

I finally went to go look at the Dueling Arena.  My win/loss is about half and half.  Here’s some win pics.  Btw I’m level 71.

This was really unexpected.  I got lucky because he only had salmon.  Took out a good chunck of my food though.

Gave up with 2-4 hp left.  Gr.

Well this time he didn’t give up.

I like it, but I wish you could stake more than 3k >.<

Bittersweet

Many updates were released today, ones that will change Runescape forever (not meant in a dramatic/sarcastic way).  Some I highly like, some I highly dislike, and some I don’t really care too much about.

I think I’ll start out with the updates I like.  Before I do though, I would just like to say that P2P members can be quiet and stop whining about F2P updates/changes.  Nearly every single update up to this point has been geared towards members.  4/5 of the Runescape land is yours.  1/3 of the skills are yours.  Summoning will most likely be yours.  When something is updated for F2P, it is usually also given in greater quantities to P2P (example: slots for the Grand Exchange and the amount of new bank slots).  You have about 10x more items than us (as well as 10x more bank space).  You have more minigames, the God Wars Dungeon, tons more spells, more random events, etc.  Does it really matter if once every two years there is a decent update that is directed towards F2P only? (Well maybe not two years, when did the Stronghold of Security come out?)

Anyway, the main update that I like is the Dueling Arena that has been made public to F2P.  I went to it to take a look today and it seems cool (even though the highest stake you can make is 3k).  I guess this is the only real way to properly PvP now.  And honestly, how many P2P people used the Dueling Arena after the stake changes?  I’d imagine not a lot.  I haven’t dueled yet but I’m going to after I get some food.  Wilderness capes are also F2P now, which I like because the old capes were too bland.  Also, 8 more bank slots.  Not a lot, but it suffices for me as I was severely running low in places.

Now to the not-so-likable parts.  The Wilderness has, to put it bluntly, been killed and shrunken.  Instead of your good old pking with all its teaming, hugging, and fighting glory, it has now been transformed into a pit of “revenant ghosts”, clan wars, and bounty hunting.  Basically you can no longer team someone or choose who you want to kill, instead someone is chosen for you to kill (the bounty part).  And if you see that guy with full rune, nope you can’t kill him, you have to kill the person in adamant who was chosen to be killed by you.  Lame.  I was looking forward to Clan Wars but after realizing no items will be lost, I’ve kind of lost interest.  Also, now if you die you will have a gravestone put up for a certain time limit so that you can come back and collect your items.  This part I don’t care about too much because I don’t die a lot, but it certainly is interesting to walk around and see a bunch of gravestones.

That’s not even the bad part.  Item dropping and trading has been destroyed as well.  Now you can no longer drop something of a value more than 3k (or else it won’t show up) and when trading, the two offers must be within 3k of each other (based on the market price by the Grand Exchange).  Well, this is just lovely might I say.  No more drop parties (unless you want the whole Runescape world to know), no more birthday gifts, no more friendly item trading, no more clan banks, no main->pure trading, barely any more merchanting, no more air running (my main source of income too), etc.  I have a feeling the rants forum exploded.

I understand why Jagex made these updates – they wanted to stop real world item trading.  However, while trying to stop that, they also stoped many other things in Runescape that proved to be vital to clans and players.  The whole thrill of PKing has been minimized to a little minigame.  An iron fist has been placed upon Runescape’s economy, dictating the prices for everything and not allowing any item to escape its meager margins.  I mean, this does effectively stop real world item trading, but it also effectively changes the environment of Runescape.  I’m not going to go to the extent of quitting, because I’m hoping that things will somehow work out.  I’m just wishing that no more drastic changes like these will happen anytime soon and that the effects from this one will wither away quickly.

However, I’m betting Shane’s happy that pures are pretty much out of business.

New Look and Wikipedia

Oh yea, Guthix helm – spent all my Runewise winnings on it lol (new goal: full Guthix). F2P needs more boots, the SoS ones don’t match anything =(

So I heard from the Update that Warren Hills blocked Wikipedia, a town that literally is about 10-20 minutes away from where I live (which is in the middle of nowhere and it got enough news to be on the Update! Who would have thought of it o_O). I just don’t get why. Yes, everyone can edit Wikipedia, but that doesn’t mean that every edit stays. If it’s vandalization, moderators can roll the page back and IP ban. They can protect pages. They can see every edit made in every second. It’s not as though it’s reeking with spam or something. My librarian tells us not to use Wikipedia (it’s not blocked though) because it’s opinionated. Um, “Technology is a broad concept that deals with a species usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species’ ability to control and adapt to its environment” doesn’t seem to have one ounce of opinion in it.  I can see why you wouldn’t want to pull opinions out for research, but getting straight facts from Wikipedia is fine – you just need to read through the article to determine fact from opinion.  As long as people use common sense and don’t c/p directly from the article (plagiarism!) then Wikipedia is a very good source to use for research.  I’m hoping that because Warren Hills banned it our school won’t get ideas and ban it.  I would protest if that happened >.<

I Miss Band

Back before I moved, I used to play clarinet for my old middle school’s concert band and orchestra.  I loved it a lot, because both are more of a social activity where you get to make friends who share the same interests in music as you.  I was first chair in concert band and if I had stayed until eighth grade I would have been section leader for the orchestra.  Practices were usually before/after school/during school periods weekly, so everything worked out nice for me to balance band/orchestra/piano.

Here though, you can’t be in concert band without being in marching band.  I can’t do marching band because it’s a bit hectic with practices however many times a week/games, and I wouldn’t have that much time for piano.  Even so, I would have still really liked to be in some sort of band – being a Drum Major looks so sweet.  I mean, I love piano but it’s more of a solitary instrument to play.  And apparently I can’t try out for county/districts band unless I’m part of a school band, so screw that idea.  Now my clarinet’s sitting in some dusty place in the band room.  Ah well.

Oh yea, as for NaNoWriMo, I kind of gave up on that halfway through the month (in case people didn’t notice my stagnant word count).  I was going to update once I hit 10k words, but that never happened due to school/competitions/recitals/stuff.  The total words I got were 7,839.  Maybe next year!