a cartoon duck posted:

I really appreciate the browser tabs in these videos.

Unoriginal One posted:

What's the docket look like after these? You two are going to need a palate cleanser after this trash.

Lizard Wizard posted:

You, uh, might want to see this.

Lizard Wizard posted:

You, uh, might want to see this.

Pear-Drop posted:

That's loving crazy! Well there goes another forty hours of my life- thanks dawg.

Lizard Wizard posted:

I can't wait to find out.

Also, someone told me you were having trouble getting Castle Infinity, so here's the website.

Herr Tog posted:

these tabs continue to be amazing. these games continue to be bad and I can't tell if they are getting worse or better

Herr Tog posted:

okay is a clicker really an mmo?

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

Those ponies look so creepy. Why are their eyes so big and have no whites?

e: also this is the worst tetrisy colour connecty game. You can't chain combos or have bombs or lasers and poo poo.

Cartoon Violence posted:

New video up soon. In the meantime, I thought you'd be interested to know we have a new title in the works:

Cartoon Violence posted:

90s Cringe Rock posted:

Is there a free train mmo because I feel like train miku has potential.

CommissarMega posted:

Well, is it?

Cartoon Violence posted:

http://www.railnation.us/


Here at Two Trans Gaming, we make videos only for Trans People, and anyone who watches our videos has retroactively become Trans.

quote:

Day 1.
The controls are clunky. Slow clunky. Bad clunky. Keyboard turning is required. Your character fidgets a lot when moving. Sometimes moving is unresponsive completely. Trying to target stuff is a nightmare and Tab-Targetting doesn't exist. Ugh.

My character went from wearing lingerie to wearing a bra and boyshorts.

The translation is.....SO....bad, holy poo poo only a little better than Google Translate, I can't believe people paid for this back in the day.

WoW actually does an amazing job getting you right into the action. Almost all of the tutorial (First hour or so) of this game is running between people and talking to them. Not really good for a game that is 100% about mindlessly killing everything.

After going through all of the tutorial stuff, I'm Level 20, have progressed my Class to the a proper Dark Wizard or whatever, and am now being plopped into my first proper non-tutorial town.

Character models seem to have been upgraded over the years. The game lags so bad that the only way I can get it to run is to set it to minimum Graphics settings.

Combat is awkward, running around is even worse, HP and MP don't regenerate to full out of combat, they just naturally regenerate incredibly slowly, and just doing basic things, like, it reminds me of Shaiya, but still not as bad as Tibia.

quote:

Day 2.
I'm beginning to take a look at the world map to try and figure out how the game world is laid out. It's had so many updates that there are just massive zones going completely unused. It's like when people go explore 3D Worlds to find long forgotten internet culture, but this is exploring a massive dying MMO with huge swathes of content, items, mobs, models, and landscapes that will just never be seen even by those still playing it. It's intense.

I'm entering the first "real" solo "Hunting Zone", which is what they call "Place you go to grind". "Windmill Hill". It's a stark contrast to the kind of dreary, dull stone ruins of the tutorial. It's vibrant green with rolling hills and farmland. It's super generic, but hey well you know.

Oh, so this game has Summoning Spells. There's an entire Class called a Summoner with a heavy focus on Summoning creatures to fight for them. EXCEPT...every Summoning spell is temporary AND requires a reagant. An expensive reagent. A reagent that goes for millions of gold on the Market. Yep. Fun game.

Also this game has intense lag. Lag so bad that sometimes you're stuck rubberbanding for 10 to 20 seconds, and it happens fairly frequently. Good stuff.

As I do quests in the new area, the translation seems much better. From what I understand, a few years ago, this game underwent its own version of WoW's Cataclysm, in other words they re-made the 1 - 100 questing experience to be more streamlined and made it so everyone starts in the same tutorial island instead of Racial starters. The newer stuff has the Google Translate English while the older stuff appears to have actually been localized. I hate to see what the newest updates from the past year are like.

So I have these recurring dreams. While the dreams are always different, they all take place in the same setting. I call it "The School of Shadows". It has consistent rules. It always is a mashup of my elementary, middle, and high schools, and in recent years, it also has elements of the two workplaces I kept jobs at the longest. They kind of merge together into one entity. Entity is a better word for it because, while there's not really any evidence in the dreams themselves, when I'm there, when I'm dreaming about this "School of Shadows", I know that the place is....alive. Every time I'm there, it's impossible to navigate, things twist back on themselves, corridors rearrange into nothingness, everything is loopy in a way only a dream can be. But no matter what I do or where I go, I know that the entire building A) Is alive and always watching, and B) Impossible to escape. Well, one could leave through a window or doors and walk into the bright, sunny grassy fields that surround the place, but if you go out there, then, well, THEY arrive, y'know?

Oh poo poo I got disconnected from AFKing for a few minutes.

This game is pretty chill so far so I just mute it and listen to music while I play. I currently am listening to Lemon Demon's discography for the hundredth time. What kind of music works best for chillaxing in a game? Anything?

It occurs to me I should attach some pictures to my post, so I'll take some screenshots and re-size them and attach them at the bottom of this entry. Let this Journal serve as a catalog of the events leading up to my demise (From video game ghosts)

Scrolling the wheel in and out to zoom in and out is reversed in this game for some weird reason? It's the only game I've played where you scroll down to zoom in, hmm.

Another quest, another new zone. This time it's the "Ruins of Agony". Screenshot also attached below. Welcome to new lands, hero! Please slayeth about 50 monsters please and thank you! Yep, this is an early MMO alright. I'm doing Level 24 quests and still killing everything in one hit, by the way. I fear that there's going to be some random difficulty jump later and I'll be hosed because I never got a chance to learn my Class. Also, they've been giving me teleports directly to the areas with the quest mobs and teleporting me back, I've not actually been told to run around the open world as of yet, but something tells me there's not much to see. My character gets a cheap thrill when she runs, by the way. poo poo WHY DO I SOMETIMES STOP MOVING AND GET STUCK ON NOTHING? Trying to do anything in this game pisses me off.

Disconnected out of nowhere. This combined with the constant lag makes it quite difficult to just attempt to play the game. I don't have connection issues with other games, so no idea what's going on.

Sinful and damp above the rain
You meet scary shivas behind the flowers
Dig it! The fun shall flee
So lustful before the air
I converse with happy delusions in the gods
Awaken! The sin has gone
Strangely colorful under the fog
We breed quiet devils behind the dreamscape
Dig it! The thought is dying
alone hesitant
a long way from home
sun on his face
At how many harbours
your brother
miss his chance
never knowing how

Okay, logged back in, still working on killing 50 monsters. When you were younger, were you ever really into something that seems embarassing in hindsight, even for a kid? Like, not a thing that you liked and was actually good. Like, when I was little I absolutely adored Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls but that's okay because those are great, right? I mean, when you adored something as a kid and you're like "poo poo I loving sucked as a kid". You ever get that feeling? When I was a young and impressionable girl, in Middle School, I had mostly boys as friends. This would change later, but that meant that in Middle School in a hick town, I was a young girl being taught all kinds of fun sexist poo poo by my friends at the time. Well, anyway, they were into anime and told me to watch Love Hina. As a middle school child, I watched Love Hina and somehow loving loved it. Like I don't know???? Why????????? I even had a website I made on weebly.com at one point that had the Love Hina theme song playing on the front page. Holy poo poo. You know, I haven't told Darcy this fact about me yet, so it will be a pleasant surprise when she reads this.

Well, I hit my first snag. Officially I have to grind in order to be high enough level to continue the main quest. I thought this game got rid of grinding until Level 100 or something???? No don't worry everyone it's cool I only have to kill a few hundred mobsssssss~~~~~~
See it's funny. at first I was like "With an economy where everytghing costs literally millions of gold, why do enemies only seem to drop, like 5 to 10 at a time? Oh it's because you're expected to just casually kill hundreds of thousands of mobs hahaha =)
When you lag in this game, and I swear this is true, when you lag in this game, your character first rubberbands to where she was 10 to 15 seconds ago, then starts to slowly rotate in a circle with a running animation for up to a full minute at a time. This is the third time this has happened to me.

EvErY tImE yOu DiScOnNeCt it forces you to exit the entire game and sit through several minutes of loading to play again. I can't even. Also when the game closes it leaves up a fragment of the launcher with no text that must be closed and then re-opened again before you can launch the game for a second / third / fourth / whatever time.

So the game is pretty broken in a lot of ways. Like, sure it functions, but everything's all abandoned and poo poo. So I've come to the conclusion that we've hit yet ANOTHER haunted video game. Great Goddess above when will we stop being haunted by video game ghosts???

Every time the game re-launches the Real Money Shop re-positions itself closer to the center of the screen. Just thought I should point that out. Also another thing I noticed - the Daily Quests are google translated so I don't know what a few of them mean? One just says "Log In Once During Month" or something like that, but I've not completed it yet despite logging in many times?

Okay so here's the thing. I forgot where the guy with my next quest is. He's not marked on the map. This ruins area is actually quite big and everything looks the same. Oh yeah and Mob Trains seem to exist in this game. Am I hosed? Do I just, like, never continue the main story now?

Disconnected again. Heh. Hehe. Yeah. Fun. I like it.

End transmission.

Unoriginal One posted:

Just remember as you go through it that, as bad as it is now, the game used to be much, much, much worse.

Cartoon Violence posted:

Holy poo poo.

quote:

Day 3.

Lineage 2 is a haunted video game. The ghosts inhabiting it have yet to try and communicate with me, but soon they will I predict. If they communicate with me during this session, then I will consder it a positive change of events. But I must wonder. What happens if a video game ghost tries to spook me and I get disconnected? Do you think the ghosts also get stuck rotating in place? Hmm. Yes. Observation in the future.

So, right. As I was doing. Attempting to locate this quest giver.

NEW SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT - I can no longer get past the terms of use screen. Clicking Agree does nothing. Screenshot attached.



Oh, right nevermind I got past it. Because of being unable to find the main quest means I have to make a new character. This time I'm going to be playing as Cici, a Mermaid Performer. Screenshot located below of my new character.



Performers are a weird class, because you'd expect them to be purely Support, but the lore is that they love to do pretty much everything and have never been able to focus on one thing. So jack of all trades, master of none and all that. The mechanics reflect this lore.

Playing a Mermaid Performer gives you a unique starting area. Instead of starting on Talking Head Village Island or whatever it is called, you start in your home perparing to enter a festival. The tutorial covers you trying to enter this festival as a contestant, and you're immediately introduced to the four major NPC's. Those are screenshotted below as well. For whatever reason, the translation takes a radical shift here, becoming very well-localized, and I'm pretty sure these character models don't show up elsewhere in the game. Take a look at screenshots 2 and 3 if you're interested in this, otherwise, just keep reading.



Now, each one of these four NPC's are your Subclass trainers, so I have to think about what my Subclass will be and choose the right NPC for that. This being Lineage 2, you can only learn all of this through trial and error.

Hmm, I seem to be having trouble with the game again. Every time I launch it now I can't get past the Terms of Service. And this last time I booted the game, I got an error message followed by Screenshot #4.



OH HEY CHECK IT OUT! Screenshot 5! I found the guy! Turns out he DOES appear on the map but only the minimap and only when you're already in his general viscinity. Cool! Let's continue the main quest!



The quest leads me to a new Boss Fight to take on. Against the twin brother of some villain that appeared during the tutorial. I'm really curious, are there people who legit care about this game's story? Anyway, I beat the boss and now it's time to leave this ruined town place of despair! Also you can see the constant panty shot the game gives me at all times in Screenshot 6.



Oh wait nevermind the game is telling me to go right back to that lovely ruined town for my next quest. Siiiiigghhh BUT DOUBLE WAIT! It turns out they're NOT the same ruins! See, the old ones were Ruins of Agony. THESE are the Ruins of Despair! Great! I near Level 30. Once I get there, only 70 left before I hit the wall that forces me to quit the game and stop making these very very funny all improv all funny journals.

Another drab, lifeless, dull, lovely, grungy brown zone full of brown crumbling buildings. Also another quest to kill like 60 enemies. WHY IS IT SO HARD TO PLAY THE GAME? Why must my character stop mid-movement? I also just realized that once you start casting, you can't stop by moving or jumping, in fact this game has no jump at all. I'm guessing you have to make a casting cancel macro just to cancel shiiiiiit.

The town I've been wandering around between quests is pictured below.



As you can see below, this questing spot is identical to the last one.



Also the quest sent me to a new area, which is identical to the first area I went to, but I haven't yet screenshotted it yet so here you go.



Another quest completed, another Level I have to grind out. Yippee. Okay, so here's the great part - In order to grind out that quarter of the level I had to kill a bunch of Bugbears and Zombies, but AFTER I leveled up I was given a quest to go kill those same enemies. After a couple of grind quests in general, I fought the next boss which uses the same model as the last one I think.



Just as I'm worried that the next area will also be lifeless, grey, brown, and dull, I hear that it's a place called "The Wasteland". Nervous gulp and all that. I get there and am told to kill the enemies until I get 20 quest item drops. Unoriginal One pointed out that the entire game is balanced around constantly having every buff that a support Class could give you. Instead of fixing the game in its updates so that those buffs are simply a benefit and not a requirement, they made it so that until you reach Level 70-something, you can talk to an NPC to get every buff applied to you. I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes because I kill enemies in 1 hit whether I have the buffs or not.



Welp. It's definitely a Wasteland alright.
Has anyone ever listened to The Adventure Zone? It's an actual play podcast and I'm in love with it. Listened to the first 69 episodes that make up the first Campaign, it's beautiful in many ways and anyone who loves the Mcelroys and / or Dungeons and Dragons should give it a listen. Wonderful.
You know, I'm starting to make a bit more money now that I'm higher level. I also seem to have made a mistake. I THINK that the Summon spells are permanent until the Summon dies. If that's the case, it's still stupid to have to spend 500 gold on a reagent, but at least I can still do my plan of becoming a Summoner and just have monster best friends help me kill stuff.

I'm mostly just wandering around this reddish brown wasteland and killing monsters, trying to collect 20 items. It's not very exciting. Speaking of The Adventure Zone, I'm currently listening to their current mini-campaign, Comittment. It's a Super Hero story where the main character get sent to a Bible-themed theme park with animatronics and stuff.


KITTY!

Well, the enemies are getting a bit different. They're starting to take 2 or 3 hits instead of 1, so at least I get to try out my other Spells. I should head and get the Summoning reagants soon so that I can have shadow friends with me to make things even easier. Holy poo poo even the scrolling in and out to zoom in and out is lagging! If you have a poor connection, you can't control the camera without it lagging aaaaaaaaaa!



Cool tree.

Finally, after the item collection and yet another return to town, I hit Level 38, learn the rest of my abilities and am told that if I beat the next boss, this "Sakum" that they've been building up since the tutorial (If I recall correctly he was, like, a Beholder?) then I can unlock my next Class upgrade. Summoner maybe? Don't remember, it's been a few days since I looked at the wiki's Class chart. So I have to find the two bosses I beat before in the massive Wasteland where everything looks the same. Even with the minimap marked, I ran in circles for a few minutes before I found the first one. Along the way, I helped two other players defeat a mob called Thorn that was marked as "Raid Boss", but it seemed to just run in circles trying to autoattack us? I kill the first miniboss and run off to face the second. This time around, they seem to take several hits before dying instead of one or two.

Finally! The boss they've been building up! Here goes nothing! And wow he went down even faster than the two minibosses. Well, at least I'm STARTING to understand some of my Class' abilities.

The game just told me that I've been playing 1 hour and I need to take a break. Ha.





Caught in the net of continuous thoughts
Lost in the wonders of wondrous evils
Taken by the complacency of dirty deeds of life



Butchering the youth of nourished purity
Becoming a pig of the sane insanity


Only but a impure residue left-
in the pallet of humanity


Daydreaming..
Fantasizing...
Idealizing...



Now sluggish-
by the sugared whispers of empty worth
Mind weakened-
helpless to counteract the interference of malice




There's no valediction to the befouled new nature




Already clouded, and faded ;
"What is the meaning of this meaningless future?"

Development?
Improvement?



Statements of such constructive manners-
now only a pun


The punctures of the society cannot bring success



...



Time to choose my Class upgrade!



Because I hate myself and I always liked playing Minion classes in games, I'm going to choose the Phantom Summoner. Hopefully that means my Summons will be very worth it to keep around. I'd better not regret this.



Oh wow yeah glad my character is going for a "Sexy Hogwarts Professor" look. Blah. Also when I run now I still get a panty shot but I'm wearing WHITE panties instead of black. Very immersive. Oh wait. It's not white panties, that's my character's bare rear end. It's a black G String. Even more immersive.

End Transmission.

quote:

Day 4.

So now that we have our second Class transfer (Phantom Summoner) we receive a tutorial on how to set up our weekly schedule in-game.



So the thing is I need to schedule my character's day-to-day life in order to be a proper Phantom Summoner. Doing this will earn me some gold that I can use to buy those stupid loving reagents that I need to Summon my shadow boys. Since this is Lineage 2, practicing for the festival talent show just involves grinding on hundreds of mobs, which isn't TOO big of a deal since I can still kill stuff in 1 to 3 hits. Also being a Spellcaster means I can heal myself back to full outside of combat without any issue, and as long as I kill enemies at a high enough rate, they drop health and mana herbs which restore me as well. So it's really not too bad. I'm sure it used to be much, much worse, though.



This being a game where you have to kill so many enemies, I'm going to be focusing on Fighting. Each type of training involves working with and getting to know one of the NPC's, the fighting trainer has tentacles which means she's the ideal fighter, being able to hold a weapon in each one and all. In order to do the training, you do have to grind, like I said, but according to the lore, your character has to spend 4 WEEKS grinding out skills in order to succeed at the talent show. I think with the major update that streamlined the 1 - 100 questing experience, they made it so it only has to be 4 in-game weeks. So if I spend all 4 weeks fighting, I can easily overcome the odds and Level up to, I think, around Level 45 by the time I'm done with this.

So last year, in the Spooky Pictures thread, someone posted a link to a Vice documentary about the most bloody massacre of a wrestling match or something. I think I'm going to watch it while I complete this grind and tell you how it is.





There IS a story going on through all of this, but come on, this is Lineage 2, the story is just there to - actually, Lineage 2's story doesn't even justify you killing 200 mobs. Like, WoW does a pretty decent job of making you feel like there's a good reason to kill thousands of bears, but Lineage 2 is just "HELLO THERE TRAVELER I AM OF ASSISTANCE REQUIRED PLEASE SLAY 100 TROLL GOBLINS". Well, in this case, the translation is suddenly really good. It varies. The newer the content, the worse the translation seems to be, so I'm guessing this Talent Show stuff was added back when it was a pay-to-play game.



Huh. Well, this is a Korean MMO and many of those games like Mabinogi like to be life sims, so I guess they want me to spend some time getting to know these NPC's? Weird for a grindfest MMO but it's a welcome change. As long as it doesn't take place in any more brown or grey ruins. Of course it will who am I kidding.

Oh, and also, I just spent 5 in-game days "training" at the Dojo, which means I killed about 3 or 4 hundred bugbears and gerblins and spiders.



Uh.... ???

So the Passion Festival seems to be a big deal in the Lineage 2 setting. I actually have no idea what Lineage 2's world or planet or continent is called. Does it matter? I don't know. So this Festival is a big setting. Hey, so I have a story. When I was young, I went to Kennywood Park. That's kind of like a festival, right? I went there, and I rode my very first roller coaster there. I was about 10 or 11 years old. It was The Racer, where your coaster train and another one kind of go back and forth and "race". During a few points, you pass the other train and it passes you. At least I think so. So, I have this weird memory of riding it and enjoying it, but in my memory, I looked to my left at the opposite coaster train and this kid maybe 12 or 13 years old, she gives me the middle finger while smiling. I'm 100% convinced it happened and yet it feels like a dream. Anyone have childhood memories like that?



It's kind of weird, how much expression and animation they put into these character models. Every other model in Lineage 2, including my character's, looks like poo poo, I guess the artists really had a hard-on for Bea here. How is that pronounced? Like "bee"? Or "bay"? Hmm.

So for the second in-game week, I have to go back to grinding, this time on floating eyeballs, squidmen, and things that look just like the trolls from before but colored orange and with dreadlocks? It's weird. Anyway, a couple of in-game days of grinding passes and suddenly I'm challeneged to a duel by Bea! Holy poo poo, SOMETHING interesting happening! I'm assuming I kill her in 3 hits, too?





As you can see, it didn't go well. She was marked as "Raid Boss", like Thorn from the other day, and it didn't work when I tried to slow her with ice bolt. Luckily it seems like it was optional?? But even though I lost I decide to try again, this time I plan on kiting her around with ice bolt and keeping her as debuffed as possible, using my "servitor" (That's what they call minions in this game) to help deal damage, along with spamming Tornado, my main damaging spell.



And with that, it's all over! It seriously took loving 20 minutes of kiting to get her, a few times I ran out of MP and had to use Life Tap (I forget what this game calls it) and get my mana back, followed by healing myself before continuing my rotation. It was tense only because I didn't want to do this poo poo over again.

There's a bit of story about how Bea is upset because she lost the match. I mean, I kinda DID pelt her with spells for 20 minutes, but I didn't think she'd be upset!

So, two weeks until the Passion Festival and that means it's back to grinding! This time I got to spend about 30 to 45 minutes killing Orcs, Ogres, and Grumbo's. It was boring.

Imagine my surprise when they interrupt my grinding to say I have to fight Bea AGAIN. Holy gently caress, they really were proud of their little boss fight weren't they? So I try to do it again and....



...I lost patience halfway through and let myself lose. Even though I lost, I still get a bit of dialog with Bea telling me the reason she fights and wants to be the best. I don't know why this part of the game is so well translated and localized, but it's a cute little story.











I....I...
HOLY.
poo poo.

Well, you heard it here first, folks. Lineage 2 might have been the very first video game to portray a trans woman, AND! This game came out in 2004, a year before the Simpsons premiered its episode where Marge outed a """""man pretending to be a woman"""" in front of everyone. Holy poo poo, Lineage 2, this game is great now! Love it! Positive portrayal, too! Great job, L2!

Okay, ONE more set of grinding before I can go to the Passion Festival and then advance with the main story! This time I had to grind on Slobberknockers, Galorpians, Grouchos, and Schleems.

There's another "Raid Boss" against the Dojo's Sensei partway through, but you're scripted to lose as you do 1 or 2 Damage to him with every Spell and he beats you in one hit. Some more dialog with Bea happens and I'm back to grinding! After all the grinding is finished, I get one last chance to talk to an NPC before the Passion Festival. Having talked to Bea pretty much nonstop this whole time, I choose her, of course.







HOLY
loving
poo poo

I shouldn't be surprised after earlier, but Lineage 2 might be the very first game to have ROMANCE OPTIONS! And not only that, but SAME SEX ROMANCE OPTIONS! And not only that, but an amazingly well-developed (for a video game) trans woman character that is super strong and stuff! Lineage 2 has truly won me over here, you know?

Anyway, the day of the Festival arrives and it's time for ONE more lovely annoying boss fight. I've done all this grinding and did a romance scene and everything, this better lead to me getting new gear that doesn't look like lovely sexy teacher bullshit!

So the first fight is typical nonsense. It's nothing, just cast a few spells and it's over. The second one is easy, but I DO need to do a little bit of kiting to take them down without losing too much health. Then comes what I've been waiting for, the final boss of this arc!

Aaaaaand that is it! Since this fight wasn't optional like the previous ones, it actually is ended in less than a minute, I just spammed spells until he went down. Easy stuff! They have this big show about how the Judges are announcing the "results", me against all the other NPC's. But of course I'm an MMO protagonist, hyper competent at everything, so we know how this is gonna go.





AND THAT IS IT! We're done with this obnoxious arc! Actually it wasn't that bad, I really loved Bea in the end, she was amazing, but other than that, I hated killing 100 grouchous or bagels or whatever they were called.

Next time, I'm off to the next part of the main quest - It'd better not be a Dojo OR a Ruin!

End Transmission.

Cartoon Violence posted:

Olivia's Lineage 2 Journal Day 4

Ysengrin posted:

It's amazing that Lineage 2 is the best mmo, how did I miss this amazing gem???

quote:

Day 5.

I've arrived in the next main hub town, where I predict I'll be staying until my next Class Transfer. Below are two screenshots of it. Let's just say it's a welcome change of scenery, for sure. I was getting sick of how drab everything in this game looked. But I guess that's just ~~~!!!Gritty Realism!!!~~~ for you. gently caress, I don't even know if I can say that. After all, this game came out before that was a fad in video games.





gently caress If you thought just walking around was hard, just try and loving swim in this game holy poo poo I didn't even realize this game HAD swimming! Anyway, I think this city is the equivalent of WoW's capital cities. It's got a lot of players wandering around and it's quite big, much bigger than you'd expect out of 2004 video game towns, that's for sure.



Would you look at that. Shameless, this game is. My opinion about poo poo like this is that it would be less sexualized for her to just be naked, you know? Whatever, I'm 23 loving years old and I'm going to just let this character model <3 ~empower~ <3 me from now on.

You know what? I didn't even want to play a Dark Elf all that much. I only chose it because the Classes in this game are Race-dependant, and I wanted to be a Summoner, so I had to choose Dark Elf. I would've rather played a Dwarf woman. They resemble the Gnome women from WoW, they're adorable, and you know if I can't be Miku, at least let me be a cutie, you know?

In fact, I've attached a picture of the Dwarf women here. See? Cute, AND WEARING FUNCTIONAL ARMOR FUCKKKK. Wouldn't that have been nice? Oh well, maybe it's better that I suffer with these outfits. Maybe it's for the best of the Journal.



So in order to make things more challenging, they don't provide me with teleporters to and from quest areas, telling me I have to find my own way there from now on. Buuuuttt, they gave me teleport SCROLLS to those areas? I don't get it.

My next destination is Alligator Island. Maybe it'll be a nice COLORFUL forest?



Not /bad/, it just still pales in comparison to WoW. The reason I compare it to WoW is that WoW came out the same year as this game, and while not a direct competitor (different markets and all), WoW did a lot more with the technology present at the time to make memorable, atmospheric zones than this game. And what we're seeing is this game AFTER hundreds of updates!

I've been told to kill about 500,000 mobs and wander around for a while, so it's time to kick back and listen to some music while I do that. At least the game had to decency to warn me that I'm going to spend the next 5 whole levels grinding alligators and alligator men.







Cool texture in that last one.

The grind was just me running around Alligator island, killing enemies 10 times my size in one to four shots, and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat. BUT! Along the way I finally discovered my Summoner gimmick - I have these things called Cubics that are Summoned with the summoning reagants, but instead of acting as minions, they just kind of float by my head and automatically help me kill things when I cast spells, which is pretty cool and makes it even easier to grind. At one point during the grind, I stopped, went to bed, slept, and woke up the next morning continuing the grind. That's what I'm doing as I type this.

I guess I should also note a mechanic that I haven't mentioned yet - There are these things called Soulshots and Spiritshots. They seem at first like mechanical things to make your life a bit easier (Power up your spells and / or attacks), but like all other buffs in this game, they are required in order to do what you need to do and instead of just rolling them into your Class like WoW did with passives, they still are things you must acquire or buy. There's also a Inventory Weight Limit mechanic, but it uses such abstract numbers that it's hard to keep track of. Like, you know how in a tabletop RPG they might say like "Your Maximum Weight Carrying is Strength*2"? In this game it's like "Your Weight you can carry is exactly 6,132 and each thing you carry is some randomy number between 1 and 700."

Also, this game used to have a thing called "Path To Awakening" where you'd go on their website and follow a little advent-calendar-styled thing where as your main character leveled up you'd get rewards for your account. The button is still there on the launcher but you get a 404 when attempting to go there.

There's also a "Vitality" mechanic which functions identically to WoW's Rested EXP Bonus, that being if you don't play all hours of the day, you'll gain 200% EXP to make up for it.

As soon as I hit Level 46, I got a message on my screen telling me to travel to the town of Oren and talk to a Dwarven blacksmith there. So I went, bidding Alligator Island farewell, it was fun killing hordes of alligator men while it lasted. But I won't miss it.



The NPC told me to go to a new grinding location, The Outlaw Forest, and go grind some more. So off I went!





So as soon as I arrive, they give me a quest to kill over 50 monsters and then warn me that it's time to start grinding again. This time for SIX Levels. Fun, fun, fun. At least I have a wiki page here telling me a few quests I can do to pass the time.



First I killed a hundred basilisks and gargoyles. Then I killed what felt like thousands of lion-men. Then I prayed in front of fires and killed more Lion men. THEN I WAS ASKED TO GRIND OUT THE REST OF MY LEVELS. So I killed many, many, many lion men and animals.

HAVE I EVER talked about how unresponsive this game is? Trying to do ANYTHING can take several tries, just clicking on mobs and NPC's to target them takes a few tries sometimes. Sometimes it eats inputs to cast Spells and the like as well. This game is very bad, is what I'm saying. Except for Bea. I will always love Bea. She is beautiful and strong and perfect, you know.

So here I am, listening to music and playing Lineage 2 and listening to a Bjork album, which gives the whole thing a dream-like quality. Grinding. Grinding Grinding Grinding grinding dring grinding didnfg grinding ginrfrndf ginrdndfign dfifngrn gidnfsgsdf;lkjew;r``````````.

And that's that! To complete these 2 or 3 quests and get through the Outlaw Forest, it only took me MoSt Of ThE dAy! Tee hee!

Ha.

Haha.

Now, anyway, next time, we'll be heading to the new area! And as you can see in the screenshot below, my framerate has improved!

End Transmission