I wasn’t looking forward to going to Blizzcon this year. It did, however, mark my 5th time to Blizzcon. My missed trip was during the ’08 con where ticket sales were horribly handled and I refused to support scalpers. Despite my negative view towards just attending Blizzcon (Friday alone, I missed 2 interesting seminars and The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony Concert) this year, I did have a good time, even if it meant wandering around the convention center aimlessly at least half of the time. I think part of why I was so negative was the $150 I “wasted” going to last year’s Blizzcon.

This will be a long post, but I’ve put a tl;dr list of highlights just after the jump.

The thing about blogs is they were once an outlet to do a mind dump, a stream of consciousness type of writing. This is my third attempt at writing this particular blog post. I am also writing this revision on 4 hours of sleep. Just yesterday I submitted my materials for a fellowship application, so some of that revision process is still running through my veins. Also, a lot of philosophical-type thoughts are running through my mind, largely regarding life and the future.

My dad is a big supporter of taking yearly vacations. He bugs my oldest sister if she’s gone on a vacation yet and is wondering where she plans on going next. He does the same to me. This particular post is a reflection on my view of the state of life, hopefully a little philosophical and a little practical. Disclaimer: it may get ramble-y. It is a side effect of going a couple nights on a few hours of sleep.

This was an idea that came to mind. It focuses on Talan, the eldest of the Sisters, and their first encounter with the angelic race in the world they’ve been sent to. She has a complex past (childhood) beneath her current calm and collected exterior. I hope it also shows the darker side that she struggles against and where it originated from.

Aside: I have a few topics I wanted to write about related to the theme of this blog (balance) and could not quite decide which one would get the honor to be the spearhead – the first “real” post of this reincarnated blog. However, I thought this topic best defined who I am as a player, what I find interesting about talking with other people about playing games as well as watching them, and sort of the idea that balance is not really a stationary concept as the word itself seems to imply.

Richard Bartle wrote an interesting piece in 1996 that categorized players into four different classes: killers, achievers, socializers, and explorers. These classifications were based on MUD players. Games such as World of Warcraft, RIFT, Lord of the Rings Online, and many other massively multiplayer RPGs have been attributed to be “graphical MUDs” prior to today’s more familiar label, the MMORPG. It is not too difficult to apply Bartle’s classification to MMORPGs as well. I take myself and my experiences in playing RIFT to show the evolution of my gameplay over time, the fluidity through which I move among the classes, and eventually settling into one categorization.

Derp?

Give me a few months and I’ll get this up and running again…