Also in fact, if you're just now starting to craft, you'll probably need to do this anyway to get the mob drops necessary for damn near everything you make.  Might as well get them while exploring new territory, IMO.

The look of the game is something that I don't think enough of us pay attention to.  Granted, it's hard to focus on aesthetics when we're wailing on some zone boss with fifty other people, but I certainly can't think of another MMORPG that gets the small details down perfectly.  I can especially see it in the animation; the norn actually walk like small giants instead of large humans, with a slow, long stride and steady gait.  The asura have this little forward stumble they do when they land a running jump.  It's nothing that makes or breaks the game, but it shows the lengths ArenaNet went to to not only make a massive world with tons of things to do, but to make that world interesting down to the smallest minutiae.

I really wish my machine could handle it at higher settings.

Oh.  Well, never mind then. :P

So who is forming the guild?  I would rather not bother with it myself. :P  My in game contact is thedarkrider.4163

Well, it ain't like that suggestion was written in stone, I just liked the idea of a server with a shade of green in the name for the people from the site with a green fetish. :P

Fort Aspenwood it is.

It's been a while since I played an MMORPG with RPGFan people besides Dade and Dagg, and neither of those bitches are planning to play this.

I have been on a MAJOR Zelazny kick this summer.  It started out innocently enough with a reading of Lord of Light, then I went on a crazy spending spree.  I bought and read:

• The Last Defender of Camelot
• The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth
• Creatures of Light and Darkness
• Changeling (which sucked)
• Dilvish the Damned

And now I'm tearing through the Amber novels, which I already owned.  Book seven, I forget the title.  The second of the Merlin books.

That's a lot of Zelazny.  I think I'll be done with him for a while once I finish off Amber.

Bruce Dickinson - The Tower

I would take my copy of Final Fantasy 2 over to my cousins' house every day after school and we would take turns playing it.  The younger of my cousins was only like four or five at the time, and he pretty much learned to read by watching us play that game.  We'd take our time and let him read a wall of text before we moved on to the next part of a conversation.  I have a feeling he was the only person in his kindergarten class who could pronounce paladin. :P

That same cousin years later named Gau BUFALO when they bought Final Fantasy 3.  I've always assumed he was going for buffalo but ran out of room.  That shit still trips me out at the thought of it.

I remember when Kim's application and review came up during a typical hiring drive.  I said "Hey, that's that girl that posts on the boards.  I like her, and she can write well.  We shall hire her."  And it was done.

...Well, that's how I remember it, anyway.

The only one I really got into was the first one I played, Tales of Destiny.  I played that one from start to finish.

I own Tales of Eternia and Tales of Symphonia, but didn't get into either one of them.

Final Fantasy 12, by a long shot.  The whole time I played Xenoblade (which admittedly wasn't too long, because it ended up boring me to tears), I couldn't help but think that I had done all this before, and done it better.  I found FF12 to be superior aesthetically, musically, and mechanically.  It was mature, it was classy, it had a sense of elegance and refinement.  Compare that with Xenoblade, which never shuts the fuck up, shouting MONADO MONADO MONADO all the time and making me feel envious of Helen Keller.

It's not that I think FF12 is some fantastic game, either.  I beat it once and haven't touched it since.  I just think Xenoblade is the most overly hyped RPG in recent memory, and I simply do not get why people adore it so.  Then again, I gave up on JRPGs quite a while ago, so I don't think it was really for me to begin with. :P

Skyrim:  A fresh install, a fresh character, and some fresh DLC.  I figured that with the introduction of crossbows, it was time to step away from my usual axe-wielding Viking archetype and do something with a bit more range.  So I made a bow using sneaky character that also uses daggers for stealth kills.  And axes for everything else.  Old habits die hard.

The DLC looks pretty interesting so far, and crossbows have a satisfying sense of weight and power.  But the guy that gave me my first one annoyed me with his "Yeah, I bet you've never seen one of these before" spiel.  I'm pretty sure they were selling them right across the border two games ago, jackass, I bet there are still some floating around.

The Cure - Fascination Street

That fucking bass, man.

Voltaire - Almost Human

I played on Jade Quarry this weekend because I spent a stupid amount of time there in my GW1 career.  But considering the color scheme of this website, a server name with a shade of green in it seems almost like fate. :P

So beta is practically over, and that's it until release.  I'm curious as to what everyone is planning to start as.

I have to say that I really like most of the races in this game (except asura, fuck those creepy midgets), but I'll be starting out as a Norn mesmer.  Norn because I have a Viking fetish, and mesmer because I like the mechanics of it.  I pretty much had to relearn the class each beta weekend because it was tampered with so much each time, but I think they finally got it right this weekend.  Scepter/torch and staff for life. \m/

Engineer will follow shortly, because that is also awesome.  I'm just not sure whether it'll be as a charr (which admittedly makes more sense) or a sylvari.