So, I’m actually doing homework today. The internet ban really helped me learn how to focus and concentrate, despite distractions and time-wasting websites. I’ve nearly finished one of my Computer Skills assessments, and I’m planning on finishing another one today. I also want to draft (finally) my Journalism article.

Although it does feel fantastic to be getting work done, I’ll admit that I’m looking forward to the end of semester a great deal. The workload hasn’t been extreme, but it has been fairly consistent, and I’m tired now, heh. I think most of my class are feeling the same way, to be honest; sizes are dwindling as the break approaches.

I spent most of yesterday playing Guild Wars, and much of that was spent playing with my Mum. She has had Guild Wars for almost as long as I have, but didn’t really get into it until recently. One of the quests we did involved escorting an NPC called ‘Farmer Joe’ back to Ascalon, or to safety or something.

We’re running back to Ascalon, and Farmer Joe is fine and dandy, all healthy and running along ahead of us. Mum’s character suddenly has an enchantment cast on her, and her health starts to decline. Then she gets attacked and takes more damage. She yells, “What’s going on? What the? Farmer Joe’s attacking me!”

I died. I don’t know why I found it so funny, maybe because Farmer Joe was still running ahead, or because he was green named, still. Maybe just because of how affronted she sounded, all, “How dare he attack ME?” It was funny, anyway; we both cracked up and laughed about it ’til my cheeks hurt from smiling.

I guess you had to be there.

My brother was up at the new shopping centre a few days ago, and EB Games was having a sale. I generally don’t shop there any more; since I found Dungeon Crawl, EB has proven to be fairly unnecessary. Still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that they were offering up Guild Wars: Eye of the North (GW:EN) for half price.

That meant I could have the final Guild Wars expansion for the low, low price of $25.00 - and despite my misgivings, I couldn’t pass that up. Although, the expansion really is a lead into Guild Wars 2 - and I’m not planning on buying or playing that - so I could have probably skipped it and not missed much. Probably.

In the end though, I’m glad that I bought it. Or, got Dwain to buy it for me, rather. Either way, I’m having a lot of fun; the monsters are all above Level 20, the quests are involved and complicated, and I really like the fact that I can hunt with danger, but I don’t have to take other players with me. Awesome.

Unlike the other two expansions, GW:EN can’t be installed and played as a stand-alone game; you must have Guild Wars: Prophecies to play. Most of the new content is armour, heroes, skills and DUNGEONS. I haven’t actually made it to any of the dungeons yet, but apparently they are extremely challenging.

Completely unrelated: Katie bought home a box of fundraising chocolates last night. Her school is raising money for something, I’m not really sure what, but did I mention CHOCOLATE? There goes my paycheck! Each box is $4.00, but when I spoke to Mum this morning, she said that Katie told her they were $5.00 each.

I’m assuming she was trying to make a profit, heh.

I have had a very lazy day, and I am glad for it. When I woke up this morning, my first thought was of school, and homework, and assignments. Something just snapped in my head when I thought about doing work all day after working so hard all week to get things finished. So instead of working on things like my Dreamweaver assignment (which isn’t due for another week, anyway), I worked on the SQ Manual.

The further I get into ‘The Manual Project’, the bigger it becomes in my mind. I seriously do think about it just like that, capital letters and quotation marks and everything. There are a million things to do, and a million things that I want to do; I’m so excited about working on it; excited about gathering all of the information floating around that I can and presenting it cohesively, all in one place.

Geeky, I know. That’s ok. You can laugh; I laugh at myself when I realise how happy I am to be working on it. Seriously, who actually loves categorising, and sorting, and filing? Essentially, that’s all this project involves: filing. And yet, I’m ecstatic about it. I DON’T GET IT EITHER. Particularly not when I look around my room, and did I mention that I can’t actually do that? Because the junk has eaten my room.

The other thing that I did today, was play The Sims 2. This is exciting to me, because basically? The Sims 2 is awesome. I shouldn’t even need to say that. And you know, it isn’t all about the decorating, and the building, and the design. When I first started playing, I used to build these really awesome houses - hours spent building, literally - and the Sims were kind of secondary. I didn’t really play them, at all. Just killed them.

Since I started playing by the rules (thanks to a certain someone), I’ve discovered that it isn’t actually necessary to have ten copies of that fruit painting in your living room. It helps, but you can actually survive on that lousy twenty grand they give you. By sacrificing the beauty, I have come to appreciate the actual game. Mind you, I can still spend hours creating my Sims:

Tell me she’s not worth it, seriously.

P.S - I am turning comments off on some of these entries. I usually don’t get that many comments, and I think that some posts really don’t warrant it. There are other ways of contacting me and since this is, first and foremost, MY online junkroom, well. My call. =)

I’m getting ready to leave for my night away right now, and believe me, I’m ready for it. The girls have done nothing but bitch, and fight, and whine this morning; even when I tried to do stuff with them it ended up in a brawl. Tiffany is in a whiny, sulky kind of mood, and Katie is - although it’s not nice to say - Katie is in a bitchy, snobby kind of mood. The two of them together are, as you would imagine, not so great.

I’ve been hunting in SQ this morning, and trying to do some guard quests to raise my stats. What I really need to do is sail to Lore and pick up some merchant quests, but I think I’ll wait until fewer people are on - otherwise they’re all gone when I get there, and I have to waste time waiting for their timers to reset. I wish the quest timers were per character, and not on a global scale - that way I wouldn’t have to worry.

That’s actually one of the things I love about Guild Wars. No matter where you go, you have your own private copy of the map, and you don’t have to worry about other people hunting the same area. Three times today, other people have been at a spot where I wanted to hunt, and so I’ve had to find somewhere else. It’s very frustrating and not just for me. I would imagine that it happens to others as well.

*sigh* Okay, well. I better get ready for the hour long bus ride. Yay. *coughs*

See you all tomorrow. =)

I had intended to do, well.. not much (read: nothing) today, but I ended up having to go with my Mum and siblings to a birthday party. Lamae’s (close family friend) daughter Tannah turned eight today, and she was having a belly-dancing themed party to celebrate. I actually thought that the theme was a little mature for an eight year old, but all the girls seemed to enjoy themselves, so perhaps I’m just old fashioned.

I spent most of the time we were there chasing after Kydan, Lamae’s youngest son. The last time I saw him, he was still pretty bald, and spent most of his time sleeping. He was just beginning to push his upper body off the ground, and bunch his legs underneath him. I missed the crawling stage entirely though; he’s walking now, and is pretty steady on his feet. Cutest thing ever, seriously. I adore him.

Much of this evening was spent in Guild Wars, trying to complete the Ring of Fire mission. I grouped up with a bunch of people after waiting for Gentil for almost an hour (he didn’t show up until we had started), and we began. At first, I thought the group was going to be really crappy - they seemed to have no organisation, and no desire to work as a team. My suspicions deepened when one of the warriors left - bastard.

That left us with three Elementalists, a Warrior and three Monk heroes. I was doubtful of being able to pull it off with so few tanks, but we managed to complete the bonus, and even made it to the second boss. Then things started to go downhill; one of the Elementalists started calling the Warrior an idiot, and eventually left without saying a word to us. Great. Two Elementalists, one Warrior and three Monk heroes.

It took us half an hour just to kill the Monk boss, but we did indeed get there in the end. I resigned, as did the other Elementalist, but the Warrior wouldn’t, and insisted that we could kill it. We stuck at it, because I guess his enthusiasm and persistence was catching, or something, and you know what? He was completely right. I can’t believe we passed the mission with only one Warrior and two Elementalists. Insane.

I played Drawn to Life on the Nintendo DS for over two hours a few days ago, and I thought I would take some time to write a review of it, given that I have very strong opinions about this game. Just keep in mind that what follows is only a user review and I don’t claim to be an expert on games, or the Nintendo DS, or anything really, for that matter.

Drawn to Life is an interactive game where the player is able to draw certain things that then appear in the world around them. While the concept is fantastic, people with no artistic ability (ie. me) may find it frustrating when their creations look nothing like the lovely illustrations in the game manual. However, when creating the ‘hero’ that you then control, there are a number of templates available. This is a lifesaver if you don’t want to be running around as a stick figure.

There is a lot of dialogue to enjoy (or tolerate, as I did) at the start of the game; fortunately, pressing the ‘A’ button will usually skip ahead and make the process a little faster. You have to create a few things for the world, and then you start playing the actual game. This is where I expected the whole experience to be a little less painful, and frankly, it wasn’t. The game is obviously made for children, or very simple people.

Every time you have to do something, the game shows you how, and you have to wait until you recieve the instructions, no matter how simple the task is. The characters send you back and forth to one another without really advancing the storyline, and the goals seem to be the same for each level. It is, in short, a very predictable game. On top of that, the designers felt it was necessary for the player’s hand to be held all the way though.

The best thing about Drawn to Life? The levels themselves, without a doubt. They are large levels, involve the touch screen a lot, and can be challenging. The gameplay is actually excellent; I wish they had realised the concept could also be sold to an older, more intelligent audience. I think Drawn to Life is going to be one of those games that I play when I need something to keep me amused and don’t have anything else on hand.

Graphics: 4/5 (They’re pretty cute. Similar to Harvest Moon.)
Storyline: 1/5 (Way too annoying.)
Gameplay: 7/10 (Actually kind of awesome.)

Overall Score: 12/20

I got a new DS game! It’s called Harvest Moon! Yay!

Gentil and I were out and about for like seven hours today, just generally doing stuff and shopping. It was a lot of fun. =)

I’m going to go and play my new game now. Cheerio! (That sounded less gay in my head.) (No offence to any gay people out there.)

Ooh, and I bought stuff today! For my secret project, muahaha. *grin*