Okay, so I took the bait. I really only know one person with Twitter, and it turns out that they use it all the time, so that got me to thinking... "Well, maybe I could put it on my blog. That way, I could essentially IM it with things when I'm bored." So, I decided to give it a shot. It only shows up on the main index, and it doesn't seem to slow anything down (more than it already is, Mister TW-With-A-Weak-Server). It also uses Javascript, which I know some people have shut off, but, really, the only ones I know with it shut off are Linux-crazed nerds who willingly submit themselves to browsing the internet with browsers that don't do anything pretty, so I'm not going to cater to them anymore. They just won't see Javascript!

National Novel Writing Month starts Wednesday night! Yay! Cue the month of madness... It'll definitely be interesting this year. I've got college going on this time, and I need to start working at least a little bit again, and now I have to write 2000 words a day. Honestly, 2000 words a day is no sweat. I can write 300 word college forum posts in about 5 to 10 minutes if I know what I want to talk about. So about an hour for 2000 words if I take that formula. IF I know what to write about! So I've been taking plot notes so I can chug along without stopping to think what happens next.

I've had some difficulties with deciding what to write about... I've got like 5 different stories to pick from that are all in their beginning stages, except for my signature masterpiece-to-be fantasy story. You know, the one I dream of releasing in a set like Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia and making my millions! (Er... Or, at least, getting published to say I wrote a book.) I started getting some brainstorm ideas for that again, so I decided to do it again. Hopefully, it'll be second draft and more. My last one was very bulky and fat and read more like the Wheel of Time with all its useless fluff than it did anything else... Personally, I'm leaning a bit toward the short, concise stories like Narnia, and just release more than one... and instead of, say, three giant tomes like Lord of the Rings. (Or the horror of thickness and poor writing that is Harry Potter.)

This year, I've got three things going for me... One, my story is more mature and I know how to write a little better than last time. Two, the fleeting thoughts I sometimes get that my ideas are stupid are quickly swept away by remembering that JRR Tolkien repeatedly wanted to stop writing LotR for the same reasons and CS Lewis kept convincing him to finish it and hey! Look how that turned out! Three, thoughts that someone might not like my style of writing are quickly swept away by remembering how terrible JK Rowling writes and how many hundreds of thousands of people somehow think it's the greatest series in history. Face it... You might like the story, but the writing is atrocious, and the plot devices are painfully predictable. "Oh, they learned a spell to disarm opponents in the first chapter? Bet they use it against the dark forces." Stuff like that... Oh-ho-ho-ho, you won't find that in MY story.

Anyway, hopefully NaNoWriMo releases those little widgets that I can put here so you can watch what I've got done so far. I haven't seen any notifications of that, yet, so I don't know. Although, hey! If you want to watch my profile directly, here's the link: http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/155172

Hey, Chronicshank, even though you'll probably never read this (although there is a chance, because I used to have a page up of a sort of Warcraft hitlist where I listed some people and I was getting hits from Google searching those names), I'm going to write this post to you. If anything, you'll serve as an example to everyone else!

I was leveling Kittari today. A 52 Druid... about halfway to 53. Rested experience, for the win! I could get to 54 in a day if I wanted. I was poking around Western Plaguelands, testing the waters for the quest levels. I was doing pretty good... That is, until I started seeing extra numbers popping up on my combat window. Lots of numbers. "That's an awful lot of output for a druid fighting a ghoul," I say to myself. There was a mage next to me, but he wasn't fighting at the time. Then I go, "ohh, look! there's an undead rogue behind this ghoul!" So I take the time to flee out of range while I determined your strength. Ouch. A 56 rogue. 4 levels above me, geez. Might as well kiss my druid kitty tail goodbye, right? Well, hold on... You attacked the mage! Alliance treaties dictate that all Alliance members should aid each other in time of need... So I rush to the aid of the mage... And we both completely overpower you in a matter of seconds and you die. Hooray! Disaster averted! Mage runs away and I never see him again. But then I see a passing 54 Alliance rogue. "Lovely!" I think. "Now I have some backup in case that rogue comes back!"

Well, come back you did... This time you resorted to killing us off with single blows in the middle of combating a mob. That is some really high Horde class right there. I don't mind PvP in the least bit, but sniping someone after a battle with an NPC is pretty low, even for an undead rogue. Maybe you were just angry and needed to kill someone. I understand that, because I do it all the time, myself. I get killed by someone who totally pwns me, and I go munch a nearby lowbie for revenge. But you didn't stop there. Which is also admirable! But you kept one-shotting everyone from the shadows while they were fighting NPCs. That is not so admirable.

A few of us got on the Local Defense channel to discuss the situation. General response: "Warning, lame-butt rogue in Sorrow Hill. 56, but must attack weak players. Will lose one on one." I must say that such a response was accurate. Not only did you keep killing me over and over while I was a) fighting a mob or b) healing after a resurrection, but when I actually decided to fight back, I murdered you. You stood absolutely no chance. Me! A 52 druid! Killing a 56 rogue! Such an impossibility is, in fact, quite possible after all! It was easy enough, in fact, that the first time, I thought you were merely 54. But the second time I killed you, one on one, with fresh health, I saw that, yes! You were 56. Such elation! Not only was a druid killing a rogue, but it was a 52 druid killing a 56 rogue!

Anyway, I just wanted to brag.

Well, except for that one time after I killed the rogue the first time and some doped up Troll mage with such a high level that he was ?? to me and a water elemental got me while I was fighting. Honestly. I'm very nearly convinced that all horde kill people in two ways. First is when their targets are so far below them, they're gray, meaning they give no honor. (As was the case with this mage. If it was ?? to me, then I was gray to him.) Second is killing a clearly superior enemy while he's already fighting. Either way is honorless, and if that's what it takes to make the Horde the most PvP-capable half of the game, then so be it. An honorless war-faring faction! Hey! At least you're living up to the roleplaying aspect of the realm, eh?

Of course, I'm going to defend Valve, because I don't know their personality very well and I've never seen them lay the smackdown to internet gripes like Bungie can do... So I thought I'd try.

The complaint hitting the internet today is the fact that some people are having their Orange Box installations deactivated. Why? Well, it's because they found some awesome deal from a country across the world, imported the game, and then installed it. Now... I know people do this with PC games sometimes, but isn't this illegal? It shouldn't be illegal, no, but it doesn't change the fact that it is. Take a look at region locked DVDs and console games. They're locked because of all the country's different laws, right? One country has a slightly different law than in the United States, and you're going to have to release the game in that country differently, perhaps with a different price to cover working within those laws.

Well, these people bought their Orange Box from, say, Thailand, for 20 bucks. (Thailand for 20 bucks? If that doesn't throw up red flags right now, you're insane.) I'm sure that after the export/import fees, it's going to be around $40 like it would be if you bought it via Steam or in the United States, but that's beside the point, I guess. They said the store they bought the game from is legitimate and they were going to do it despite a few warnings from people.

They get their keys... They install their games... They play and... Games deactivated. Woah! Big surprise! Apparently, Valve says they're playing a game from one country on an account in another and it's a no-no. Gamers are, of course, in a major outrage and overreacting by stating that they'll never purchase a game from Valve again. Well, your loss, buddy!

Now, many people are getting refunds by the stores they got their international keys from and buying US boxes, and they're still having some difficulties. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is because they haven't properly cleared their Steam installation. As everyone knows, it's a wonderful service, but sometimes it just needs cleaned. In everyone's heightened state of insanity, they're blaming every little problem on Valve and not using a little bit of common sense.

I don't know... It just seems to me that if you're going to go buy a release of the game you want from another country because it's cheaper after all the currency exchange, one of the things you're naturally going to have to worry about with Steam is buying a game from another region and then activating that number on another region entirely. That just reeks of irresponsibility. You might have been used to doing something like this on games without Steam, because hey, it's a global economy, right? I can buy whatever I want from wherever I want! Well, yes, I'll be the first to agree that you should be able to, but also the first to notice that it's not. What happens when you buy an NTSC format DVD from another region and try to play it here? It doesn't work, does it? Not unless you crack the DVD player. Believe it or not, that's not to inconvenience you/ Piracy countermeasures do inconvenience everyone, yes, but region locking isn't a piracy countermeasure... It's so the publishers can actually release the DVD in the country of the region number, because they have different laws. It's complicated, and I probably don't even know exactly why they have regions, but that's what I've always thought and seen.

Moral of the story: Valve is NOT evil, they will NOT randomly lock your games because they know that's a bad thing to do. But they WILL lock your games if you've done something odd like buy an illegal key from another region and Digg can scream "bloody murder!!" about it all they want. They're just a bunch of sensitive little gamers who take offense at every tiny mishap. (Remember the Halo 3 resolution debacle? Haha, honestly, the uproar over a few missing lines of resolution. Ah, the level of intellect you get when you mash a bunch of angry techs together on a tech news site.) Even when Valve is doing everything they can do to fix it. (Basically, it's your own fault and the fault of who you bought the game from. Since you didn't buy it from Valve/Steam directly, it's not their problem. It's their game, but see, they would have sold it to you properly.)

Game Consumer Rule #1: Buy games from your own country, noob.

I bought a Nintendo 64 on eBay and it arrived today. Nothing will ever explain the feeling of plugging it in and booting up Perfect Dark again. I guess you could say that Perfect Dark was my first "LAN party game", in the sense that I used to play it with my friend throughout the entire night. We used to play Goldeneye, but not nearly as much, and it became obsolete with Perfect Dark anyway, so there was no need to ever go back to play that. I got other games besides Perfect Dark, too:

• Super Mario 64
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Mario Kart 64
• Mario Party
• Super Smash Brothers
• Goldeneye 007
• The World is Not Enough 007
• Mortal Kombat Trilogy
• Quake 64

So it came with pretty much every game I ever wanted on the N64 for myself. And four controllers, so if you ever want to visit, we can do four-way multiplayer!

This in and of itself didn't make today the best day ever... No, that's reserved for something far more important and exciting. It certainly helped, but the following event alone could make any day the best day ever. (Until I actually own the thing, that is.)

Okami has been confirmed for the Wii.

I think that says it all and I don't need to explain further.

I'm starting to get some... interesting spam comments here. They're worded oddly and Akismet isn't picking them up. (Not to say Akismet doesn't work, mind you. Nearly 34,000 spams caught! I think that confirms workage to me.) It's almost like someone sat at the keyboard and typed a spam. Maybe it's a new robot that lets you mass post custom comments? I've had three, so far... I would have probably accepted them as comments and integrated them into the conversation, except for the fact that there's no real name, a obviously fake email, and a website link that doesn't work. I'm sorry, but to the smart filter I have installed (namely my brain), that means spam.

If you are the people responsible for a post about how World of Warcraft is behind gold sellers, how AVG AntiVirus is the best enterprise scanner, and how Blood and Chocolate is not worth your money, come back and tell me again so I can know if you're robots or not. I'm telling you, the lack of a name and email and web address that works is a little telling...

(Actually, I just rechecked the werewolf comment and the site works now, so I added that comment to the post. Still, it was a little odd...)

In the future, I ask that new people try to make their posts sounds less generic, maybe making an effort to at least say "this isn't a bot!" that I can edit out if you want.

Forget beginning... It's already upon us!

Remember when I posted that Wii games are starting to pick up speed and caliber? All the typical internet kiddies who think they know how the world works have been whining constantly about how terrible the selection of Wii games has been, and how Nintendo should have learned from the GameCube, and how they're going to fail again. (While, I might add, they don't even consider selling their Wii console... Got some double-standards there, whining and complaining about the lack of games and how worthless the console is, when it's still sold out nearly an entire year later, and you could see the thing on eBay and make all your money back.)

I would like to point you all to an article at Joystiq. Whiners and fans alike... This list of games being released or both the Wii and the DS should give you heart! Mind you, this is only a list of games being released between right now and March 2008. That leaves the rest of 2008 to keep propelling Nintendo to the clear and obvious winners of this chapter of the console war. And this, I might add, fits into what I've been projecting this entire time.

Let me break it down for you all once again:

GameCube considered a failure, despite the fact that Nintendo always, always, always made a profit off of every sale. Marketshare was low, perhaps, but they clearly won the race when it came to money. People conveniently ignore that, predicting the withdraw of Nintendo from future races.

Nintendo announces the Wii with the motion sensitive remote control that Sony shamelessly copies after denouncing it as a gimmick along with the rest of the internet. Honestly, how could something that stupid ever win against the sheer graphical power and popularity of the Playstation and Xbox console lines? Clearly, the winner was going to be Sony, if the PS2 was any indication.

Publishers and developers shy away from the Wii after hearing everyone's negative press. Some are still enlightened and smart enough to realize the ultimate potential of the Wii, but not a whole lot, and most continue to focus on the Xbox 360, after learning that the PS3 isn't really all it's cracked up to be.

Wii and PS3 are released more or less at the same time and the Wii lurches ahead, carrying the title of fastest selling console in the history of video games. Publishers and developers who were afraid of developing for the Wii suddenly wake up to their terrible mistake and rush to make SOMETHING for it. Anything! Just get a game out there on what's clearly the most popular console! They're losing money... Hurry, hurry, hurry!

This results in some pretty boring, hastily released games by third parties. Consumers are irate at this fact and declare that Nintendo is doomed to follow in the footsteps of their former glory, overhyping the console and failing to deliver. Some threaten to sell their Wii and spread the word of its failure, but none ultimately seems to sell it in the end.

One year rolls around, the amount of time that new console games start rearing their heads. The start of the amount of time it takes to make a game actually worth playing. Behold, a whole parcel of games by Nintendo is scheduled for release during the holidays. The masses rejoice, for finally, Nintendo has learned from their mistakes! (Actually, the masses just can't see the larger picture.) But sadly, some people are upset that there are no major third party games coming out.

No, see, this is because Nintendo clearly knew ahead of time that they would be making games for their own console, and started making games earlier than the third party developers. The third party developers jumped on the bandwagon only after it was such a hit, and thusly, they're still not quite finished. Happily, they're beginning to announce the new games and they're nearing completion, and the anti-Nintendo sentiment is slowly fading as people do complete 180-degree turns and conveniently forget that they were anti-Nintendo in the first place.

And all this time, we've had an example of exactly what the Wii would become in front of us. The Nintendo DS. Take a look at the Joystiq list again. The DS list of games is clearly longer than the list of Wii games. In the same time frame. The DS got started exactly the same way the Wii did, and nobody in their right mind can say the DS is a failure, can they?

If you want to know how the DS got started, just re-read the recap and replaced "Wii" with "DS" and "PS3" with "PSP" and drop references to the Xbox wherever they may be. Seriously. The DS was stamped as a gimmick because of the touch screen, and the PSP was heralded as the end-all handheld and nobody jumped on the DS bandwagon until AFTER it became popular. Now look at it!

Anyway, there you have it. The list of games scheduled for release for both platforms between now and March 2008, which I must stress does NOT include the REST of 2008. That makes the list of games they have right now HUGE. I can't wait to see what the rest of 2008 has to offer, if not only to use as ammo against the Nintendo haters who just can't seem to come to terms with the fact that the company that created the modern gaming industry is back on top and shows no signs of defeat.

Okay, so the E:FC post is down...

I've kind of fallen behind in posting things. I have E:FC, Monk, Halo 3, Penumbra Overture, National Novel Writing Month, and several other things I've forgotten about, but thought of when I made a list earlier tonight. Actually, next is Halo 3. Then NaNoWriMo, then Penumbra, then Monk, which I managed to finish today. I'll get to them, don't worry... Or, at least I hope I get to them.

I haven't been posting because it didn't seem I had a whole lot of readers, but Capella bugged me about it a couple days ago so I thought I'd better get cracking again... You hear that, Cap? I'm posting again, okay? Stop bugging me, sheesh...

(Okay, so she only asked once...)