So I got an email today...from Blizzard! Like, the real Blizzard, not those fake ones that tell me my account is compromised and I have to send my account into back to them via website. In it...well lets just quote:

"Veloxedk,

You've been summoned back to Azeroth. Experience all of the new and exciting content that's been added to World of Warcraft® in patch 4.1, Rise of the Zandalari, with 7 FREE days of game time for your account, *insert actual account name here*. Simply click below to claim your free time... but act fast, as this limited-time offer will expire soon."

Come on Blizz! Freaking CCP gives me more tempting deals to go back and play EVE Online some more! Free ships, free play time + discounted play time! The most recent one offered 5 days free, combined with a reduced monthly fee for 2 months (2 months for 19.95) AND they were going to calculate out all the stat points I should have gotten but didn't and let me place them wherever I wanted (basically in EVE you choose what to level and then over time EXP gets thrown into that skill (ranging from a couple minutes/hours for lower skills to weeks of time for higher level stuff) and you can basically plan out 24 hours of skills to put EXP in! Be like if I came back and they gave me a whole bunch of the badges points to go buy myself gear!

Seriously, if CCP can offer me such interesting and useful things for their game I'm sure that the WoW super-behemoth MMO can offer me a bit more then some free game time in hopes that I get addicted to it again. You know what would probably get some people to come back? Maybe like, a free character re-customization/realm transfer! Imagine the possibilities! Why did you quit before? Didn't like the people on my realm/faction but didn't want to start at level 1 and lose all my progression but also didn't want to pay for the transfer! Make it happen Blizz, that might tempt me in to coming back for a couple months.

Ok, so pretty much everyone knows the "To be, or not to be" phrase, but the entire soliloque is something that not everyone knows. I remembered some of it and went and grabbed the whole thing. I was leveling monk and was bored out of my freaking mind (engage, AFK, check every now and then if I needed heals) so I started to rewrite it to be about MNK. Here is what I came up with:

To punch, or not to punch, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the fists to suffer
The spells and damage of low level mobs,
Or to take arms against a sea of links,
And by punching end them? To punch, to level,
No more; and by a level to say we end
The HP-ache, and the thousand hits of shock spikes
That punching is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be kicked. To punch, to level;
To level, perchance to ding - ay, there's the cap;
For in that level of 90 what gear may come,
When we have atma'd off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause - there's the atma
That makes HP of such large vitality.
For who would counter the attacks and TP moves of NMs,
The challenges owned, the proud man's counter,
The pangs of crits, the game's lag,
The insolence of mages, and the trolls
That patient merit of the unworthy leechers,
When he himself might his kill shot make
With hundred fists? Who would the mog sack bear,
To boost and sweat under a long grind,
But that the dread of exp loss after death,
The unlearned weaponskills from whose damage
No monster returns, puzzles the Link Shell,
And makes it rather bear those gils we have
Than chocobo to nations that we know not of?
Thus atmas do make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of gimpness
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of heals,
And changes the great sway of battle,
With this punch their current target turns awry,
And is forced towards a TP move. Punch you now,
The fair Destroyers! Not like thy Orisons
Be all my Tantras obtained.

Although it is young. I am 22, this kid was like 5 probably, still same generation right? Whatever, on to the story!

So I take the bus places, I just do, way cheaper then a car (I won't pretend it's to be eco-friendly or anything, it's just way cheaper) and I went out to grab a new game from the store today after school. So I go buy the game and then head out of the store and wait by the bus stop. After about 5 minutes a bus pulls up (not mine) and a women and her son step out (I guesstimate he was 5) and wait near me. Eventually the kid gets bored and starts talking to me. So I turn my head to talk to him and I notice he is wearing a black/red Autobot hat! First though "I bet I could steal that and make a break for it and they'd never catch me" "Awesome hat!" so I kept talking to him and he asked if I liked Transformers (this is a big yes).

After talking to him about Transformers for awhile I realized something...he is talking about the old school Transformers! Why is it that one of the few people I can actually talk to old school Transformers about ends up being 5?! According to his mother, his father is a big Transformers nerd and watched the original series with him since he was young. It's good to see that there are parents who still know how to raise a kid!

So, after awhile the Mom says that they should walk home because they are close and it would be faster then waiting for the bus. The kid complains that he doesn't want to because he's tired (He's 5, I cut him some slack) and he wants to wait. The Mom keeps trying and eventually convinces him to walk the rest of the way, she also tells him to say goodbye to me. He does, and I responded with "Transform and rollout". Last I saw him he was running around his Mom making car sounds. Best, kid, ever!

Maybe this generation isn't as screwed as I thought?

Seriously, sometimes I wonder what went wrong with my head when I left FFXI. I still think the level cap increases are stupid (here, go grind for a bit to keep out of our way) but pretty much everything else has been spot on.

-Up to 20 merits instead of 10 on your character at one time? Great plan! Making it better? Let me spend my merit points where ever I am, not only in a mog house.

-Abyssea events? Pretty decent, there is so much to be done and most enemies are farmed multiple times for pop items so your chances at drops are good. Death isn't as annoying since you get so much EXP (we were getting 5k for killing one of the high end "final tier" bosses, which we did like 4 times. Also there is so much to do you can spend like weeks in one zone, then goto another for a change of pace!

Making it better? Make the key items system in the game less of a pain in the ass. Pretty much all the pop items/atmas/abyssite are throw in with regular key items and it creates a giant mess of insanity. They need to split they key items into more options then "key items", "temp key items", "maps", "whatever the hell the 4th one was".

-New abilities! For most stuff it's just a 'more of the same' type of situation. New levels of BLM spells, new BLU spells, new level of current abilities; like Curing Waltz V and Divine Waltz 2, new "circle" levels, so if you have like Warding Circle for demons, you get a new ability which you can use to weaken the evasion and magic evasion and TP gain and such of 1 demon, good for NMs. Making it better? More "game breaking" job abilities. Some jobs are still under powered and some are still over powered and it would be nice to see bigger more badass abilities come to the lesser jobs to catch them up instead of a myriad of lesser abilities.

-Abyssea Procs! This is a mixed bag. On one hand they aren't required but they do help (if you proc the right ones, yellow/blue, it's like a guaranteed treasure hunter that actually works 100% and gets you a bunch of drops). On the other hand it's pigeon held more people into jobs they might not want to play. Basically if you go to abyssea it's almost mandatory to bring a BLM (BLU and BRD are less mandatory but still very wanted) to proc the Yellow for drops. It's like the old days when, "Oh you have BRD? Come BRD." except with BLM.

I know we have an issue with that in the shell I attend when I can because our BLU doesn't really enjoy playing on his BLU in abyssea since he's basically a proc whore and not much else. This also means that if you don't have a "proc" job (BLM, BLU, BRD, NIN, RNG (in case someone was stupid enough to pop something during the piercing time for blue procs), MNK, or WAR) then you better get into the group fast or you ain't getting in at all unless they are desperate.

Making it better? I'm not sure what to do about this. The most wanted (yellow) proc will probably always be a BLM/BLU/BRD world and nothing will break through that (unless they give RDM some spell that is also a proc and no one else can get). But the blue/red procs can be fixed I feel, looking at the list, on Red WAR can do 8 of the 13 procs. I know warrior is like, the jack of all trades of weapons but that's just too much. Especially when you have so many jobs (SAM, DNC, THF, MNK, RNG, DRG, so on) that can only really use 1, MAYBE 2, types of weapons. Each set of procs is placed into categories based on element. So Fire (1 proc), Ice (1), Wind (2), Earth (1), Lightning (1), Water (0), Light (4), Dark (3). There are just too few to go around! I think they need to add more weaponskills to the list that can be used by multiple jobs (that aren't warrior preferably) so it evens out.

Of course, not all of it is great, there are definitely the bad parts, specifically that basically every other event (save a few and just barely) are completely abandoned in favour of the better gear you can get in Abyssea. SE is attempting to make Dynamis more useful but basically unless you are trying for Atmas from clearance or just selling currency there isn't much of a practical point behind Dynamis anymore. Sure, a few piece are still good but they are mostly just macro pieces at this point. Limbus is similar, sure some of the pieces are still good but unless you are using it to make gil, still not much of a reason to do it. Same with sky except you can't make any money at all there (with few exceptions) so it's mostly just for like 3 specific pieces of gear. Sea was never very popular and now basically just serves for people to go and zerg AV, that's about it. Campaign, although not really an endgame event, has basically been completely abandoned and left for dead.

That's not the saddest part. It's that SE is going to try and ram these back into relevancy in the worst way I can think of, Random Augments...*facepalm* Of course, how will you augment this gear? Obvious! SE will shoe horn their most recent failed game mechanic (synergy) into this folly. Sure they are making it so that if you don't like the augment you can over ride it but I doubt this will get beyond the niche appeal of the hardcore and the crazy. Unless they make it so stupidly simple and the chances to get something good it would raise the question of "Why not just add this to magian trials?". You know, go kill 400 byakkos with his haidate equipped (ok maybe not that bad, but like 5 or 10 or something).

This is just like SE, they made stuff so good, but they stopped just short of making things perfect for some odd reason.

Does anyone know if there is a form to transfer out of this generation and perhaps go to a different one? A better one? I know people say stuff like "Same shit, different era." but I just can't believe it. I can't believe that all generations where this entitled, this "special", this annoying in the late teens/early 20's. It just doesn't seem possible that it could be like that for all the other generations. I have a superiority complex and I try to prevent it from cropping up but the people around me in my generation make it hard to not put myself on a higher level. This is in college! Weren't we supposed to have grown up by now?

I know that very concept seems off because college is also known for "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA PARTY!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOO! *puke*" but I just can't see how many of these people are going to finish here and become functioning members of society when they are done here. Everything is "shit", every adjective is "fuck(ing)", many of them are trolls, they "hate" everything even if they only disagree with it or simply don't enjoy it. They sit 5 feet away from each other and communicate on facebook and through text messages instead of just talking to each other, thus lowering lowering the english language more and more towards internet MSN speak. They don't know anything about their past and don't seem to give a damn about their future. Only the present matters, only the newest and shiniest things matter. It doesn't matter if you have the perfect cellphone for your needs and it does everything you could want, you need the new one.

It's like some sort of commercialized version of 4chan, except with less cocks. Well, literally anyways. Figuratively there is plenty of cock waving as it is. I try to be one of my generation, I really do. But it's very difficult when my generation is so...ya. I'm going to make a note to remember this stuff. So when I'm actually an old fart and my grandkids are running around I can objectively figure out if we've evolved as a culture or if we end up sliding backwards, or if it's just another one for the status quo.

So, today I just finished off the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It was a very good read listen, the audio book version from Random House had a good speaker and he made sure that the voices were different enough that you could tell who was talking but he didn't go all crazy and obscure with accents and really thick voices and such. There was only one time that was a "what the fuck..." moment when he decided to make a noise of battle horns blowing instead of just reading the text. He only did it once though thankfully. Now behind a cut we go! (For spoiler reason obviously)


( A Game of Thrones )

That's all I can think of right now off the top of my head. I didn't talk about a bunch of the characters I realize but I'm still unsure as to how I want to feel about some of them. Looking forward to the next book! I will probably start listening in a week or two. We have a week off from school so I won't be listening to it then since I mostly did so on the bus. Here's to hoping A Clash of Kings is as good!

Also, because I'm in a good mood: Here is a video of a kitten playing outside in slow motion.

So I'm on chapter 11 (If you include the prologue as a chapter then 12), and damnit if I don't want more. I want to know if Bran survives his fall and tells about what the Queen is up to. I want Jon and Ghost to grow up and be badass. I want another Tyrion chapter, seriously, this guy is great! I want Arya to become like a battle maiden or something and just be awesome! None of that "I pretended to be a man so I could go out to battle!" stuff, just go anyways because she ends up being that awesome. I want Daenerys to get free of the bullshit she is being but through and her brother to die horribly.

Damn you Thistle.

So...LJ has games now.

A farm game, and a mobster game are 2 of them...

I see what you did there LJ.

Ok, so I finally finished The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin audio books! The Hobbit was obviously awesome, because it is the best book of the entire LotR world of middle earth. The Children of Hurin was entertaining but I had already read most of the book through The Unfinished Tales so I knew what was going to happen and it definitely had a feeling of that something greater then the characters was going on and it really made me want to know how it would all end before getting to The Hobbit and The LotR time lines. Then there was The Silmarillion...

Ok, this book must be huge and nigh unreadable. It is a nearly impenetrable forest of names of "this guy, son of that guy, brother of this woman" and it just goes on and on! ...But it was still awesome. It's basically explains all the events of the world up to (and briefly including) the aforementioned time lines. If anything else, I would liken it to a Bible for the LotR universe. It basically starts off with god creating children and one of them attempts to out do him. He create the world (Ea) to show him and those who followed him what they wrought and how their songs had become reality. Eventually one of the children of god falls to pride, vain, and jealousy and this one dude is like, the source of all evil in the world. When they all (save a view and god himself) travel and dwell on Ea they eventually rise up and stop this guy from doing his evil stuff. They bind him and hold him in chains in the darkness of the world for 3 ages. Then they bring him out and talk to him and he tells them how sorry he is and they let him go free again *facepalm*.

The rest of the book is basically the Naldor (first children of Ea, Elves) fighting this one guy (Malkor/Morgoth) and eventually the second children of Ea (Men) come and help/hinder them (since obviously Men are good and evil). Basically, this guy is Sauron's master and how he basically came about. Then it goes into how the rings were forged and corrupted men and such. It's rather indepth and get crazy at some points but it was great to see basically all the lines of Middle-earth and where they originate from and what lead to The Hobbit/The LotR.

So, with those done, I needed some new books. I remembered a certain series that ye' ol' Thistle had read/been reading in A Song of Ice and Fire. Seemed interesting, so I went and hunted down the audio book versions! It has to be good when iTunes gives me an error which basically reads, "Oh snap, this thing has like 1,200,000 bytes of spoken word! On older iPods this is likely to make them weep tears of blood since it's over 600,000! If you have an older iPod, cut the file up so it will work! If you have a newer iPod, don't worry about it." Will probably start listening to the first book today on the way home from school.

So the American Dialect (ha!) Society had their votes for words of the year! The overall winner was App (bah) but in second place overall and voted most useful was nom! That's right, nom. As in, omnomnomnom. But by far, this was the best part of their whole press release:

"ELECTION TERMS (new category)
All terms agreed to be losers. The entire category was deleted by acclamation.

Aqua Buddha Fictitious deity in collegiate scandal involving Rand Paul, raised during his Kentucky Senate campaign.
mama grizzly Sarah Palin’s term for a fiercely conservative female candidate.
man up Exhortation to be responsible or “act like a man,” used by Sharron Angle against Harry Reid in Nevada Senate race.
Obamacare Pejorative term for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010."

So even if you manage to come up with an election term, you still lose. I believe this situation is known as being the smartest of the idiots. If you're mildly interested check out the press release.

http://www.americandialect.org/American-Dialect-Society-2010-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf