Wednesday, March 3, 2010

"I consider addiction to be a pro, not a con..."

It occurred to me today that while in general we'd probably say something like "games aren't inherently bad--if people get mindlessly addicted to them, it's their own fault for not having self-control"...but in my case it's more like I play games nonstop and have no self-restraint, but end up suffering no ill consequences...=X

Adventures of 3/2/10

Massive post, with lots of screenies! =D

So, yesterday (Tuesday) we met in class for a little bit and discussed some plans and such, but didn't really have much time to play as both me and Colleen had to leave.  Our plan instead was to meet back online at around 11:00 or so.

Unfortunately due to some bad timing, I ended up not really being able to log on until closer to around midnight, but all was well and I met up with Colleen, Natalie, and Kotaro in game (Michelle was MIA for the night =/).



Here's all 4 of us.  From left to right: Kotaro's knight (notice the freaky headgear), me as high priest, Natalie as a wizard, and Colleen's hunter.

After running around and buffing colleen while she leveled for a bit, we met up with Natalie and went to one of the MvP rooms, I think in search of a Ribbon (so I could look cute =D).




We met this guy named "Bendalene" who apparently is from Singapore and doesn't play with other singapore people. *shrug*  I think this was the first person I charmed with my oh-so-cute character and giving him buffs.  He was lvl 255 so he was tearing through the monsters pretty quickly, and just randomly came up and asked us where we were from.  After answering "USA" he just said "wow" and then said he was from singapore, etc etc.  Then he gave me an Angel Wing, haha.  And told us we should go to pront dungeon for ribbon[1] (which makes sense, I vaguely remember getting one there when I played RO before).




So then I had my cute ribbon!~  And slotted it with a Mistress card from Natalie so now I can cast ME/Safety Wall/etc without any catalysts.  Yay!  I remember not really liking the ribbon quite that much when I played RO before, but I actually am kind of fond of its look now. (of course, I always prioritize cuteness over stats when picking out equips ^^;)  This Bendalene guy also friended me, apparently.




Meanwhile Taro was off doing his own thing...and we didn't really know where he was.  He was using beserk all the time, which meant he couldn't chat with us, so that caused a bunch of 9_9 from us.




Astarael: Whack that thing, Timmie
DDRKirby(ISQ): that's what she said
FireJade: dang you

We also had an "I lost" moment happen earlier ^^;




More running around buffing Colleen to help her level.  I'm really liking my role as a priest--supporting people is really fun!  It -does- get slightly monotonous sometimes since you're not killing anything, and since you're just casing the same buffs over and over again...but eh, it's fine.




The top of Morocc has become our informal meetup place, for some reason or other.  We also had some interesting issues, with Natalie and me not being able to trade for some reason (I think it was just because we were too far away from each other at the time), and also for some reason the spam filter doesn't allow you to say "olol". -_-;

Eventually Taro told us what he had been looking for (some card drop i think?) and Natalie went to help him out.  Naturally, Natalie ended up getting the drop after her first kill xD...



Eventually Colleen called it a night, and Natalie and Taro found a Valkyrie, so we met up and formulated a plan to take it down...



Random: I thought the Angel Wing looked kind of cute, but it jutted out a little too much and was too flashy to fit the rest of my image.  Plus I wanted the Ribbon (the Mistress card was useful anyways).



We managed to kill the Valkyrie without too many problems =D.  Though, I don't think it ended up dropping whatever it was that we wanted.  The actual boss that would have that drop apparently summons Valkyries as slaves T_T



We kept running into the "orcface" problem on certain maps, which was really annoying since we didn't know how to cure it, other than just running into a mob and dying and respawning xD.  Taro looks hilarious here though.



One thing about RO is that if you go to a crowded area like Pront, you always see all these other chars and they have such flashy and flamboyant avatars; it's a real stark contrast from the simple look that I always went for.  In a way it's slightly intimidating for newer players to start off and see these people walking around with huge gargoyle wings or whatever.  I guess that also makes the newbies easier to pick out...



xD



At this point we just started looking for accessories.  The lower angel wing ears, added to the regular angel wing, was really weird since you have 4 different wings on your head xD



I really liked them though. <3~  They complemented my look perfectly, and matched the cuteness of my outfit while still retaining the simplicity.  Hooray~



/ho became my most used emote.  And, as Natalie is pointing out here, I was kind of a people magnet since I would just buff random people sometimes (though, other times they came up to me and asked).  One of them gave me a horn card too, haha.  They probably think I'm some cute girl...=X  But, I guess that's sort of the point.  Being able to have an image like this is one of the main reasons I have so much fun in RO in the first place! ^_^

Also note the chat filter message when you try to type "lolol": "Yeah, uh, I don't think so buddy..." o_o;



I went to Abbey Dungeon and ME bombed for a while until I was at level 221 or something, so that I would be able to share experience with Natalie and Kotaro.  At one point Kotaro helped by just aggroing a bunch of mobs and then bringing them back to my ME bombs xD.

After that we went to Thor Volcano Dungeon for a while, to level, and because I think because Kotaro wanted to look for Ifrit.  We never found him, but we did manage to go through the entire map =D.  We didn't have too many problems either, except for a few times when we got caught off guard.  The first time I was actually alone IDing some items when some monsters mobbed me.  I frantically teleported to some random location where a hunter proceeded to finish me off (I was only at like 10% hp anyways xD).  There was also a time when a Sage came at a bad time and got me and Taro pretty quickly.

After finishing, we were all lvl 255, so yay us.  Interactions with other PCs (player-characters) have been interesting I guess.  Most of the time when I run into them as I'm soloing I just give them a quick buff as they run along their way.  Well, except in Abbey, where I just cast another ME bomb and then teleport away xD.  There was one point where Kotaro (?) randomly attacked some hunter who happened to also be in the dungeon with us.  And I remember Natalie tried to Storm Gust me once, haha...



After that Taro went and...did his own thing for a while again.  Meanwhile I was with Natalie, who had gotten a pair of Arctic wings and was looking through different clothing styles.  I went through different styles briefly as well, but honestly don't think I could find anything I liked more than my current look.



And, at this point Taro realized that it was almost 5 -_-;



More messing around in Pront.  I think this stemmed from when I pointed out that Natalie and I contrasted nicely with the Blue vs Red color schemes.


Astarael: Taro be the priest XD
Void_Eternal: o.O
Astarael: ... wow role reversal



We -do- kind of look nice together.  Natalie pointed out that I need flame wings though xD.



Though, we had some issues with Natalie's wings chopping through my forehead.  Owww...



Eventually we stopped goofing around and called it a night.  We ended going to bed way too late, but I don't really regret it--this was the first time I had a real group to play an MMORPG with anyhow, so it was really nice.  And I can't stop feeling happy about how cute my character looks <3~

Our presentation is...uhm...tomorrow -_-, so I'm not sure how much more we'll be able to do between now and then.  Perhaps we'll actually get to see Michelle in game, or finish leveling Colleen...or maybe kick ass in some WoE fight =X.  Natalie and me also randomly got invited to join a guild, but they just ended up spamming a bunch of nonenglish messages in guild chat, haha...

Most (?) of us have expressed some sort of interest in continuing with RO after our project is done, most likely on a different server that's not as high rate, and where less people speak weird languages xD.  I'd definitely be down; I always manage to "generate" enough time to have on my hands to do all these kinds of things anyways...

Feel free to delete this; I'm just saying

Ugh. Okay, no more adventuring after midnight on school days. No matter how close the deadline for this-should-having-meaning is, or how shiny some item looks.