As a beta tester, I saw many issues with the game that needed to be addressed but were not focused on or referred to as minimal importance at the time. Sure, no problem, I could understand that, it was beta, there was more tweaking to do than address the concerns of the "beta testers". I ignored most problems due to it being beta. I mean AION had glorious other things like eye candy graphics, cool races, elaborate battleground Fortress Claiming PVP, and wow .. oh my god, we got WINGS! But was that enough to satisfy the avid gamer?

Alas, release has been hell:

(1) GAME CRASHES - Yes, I know, all games crash, it happens! But it happens A LOT to quite a few people and I defintiely do not lack in computer equipment either. My system is very up to date and can handle quite a bit.

(2) GOLD SPAMMERS - Wow, need I say more. Korean based game is expected to have gold farmers I'm sure, but this is by far the WORST gold spamming in all the 12 years I have dealt with games. I literally have to open my BLOCK list to UNBLOCK old spammers so that I can add the daily new spammers!

(3) NCSOFT ANNOUCEMENTS EVERY 5 MINUTES - Yes we know and understand that you are not suppose to click on the links posted in the chat channels! NCSoft needs to stop spamming this announcement every 5 minutes as it goes across the middle of your screen. We suggested they put a private email to everyone (and I can deal with email everyday) once a day with this information instead of spamming it. This is just as bad as the gold spammers!

(4) REPEATABLE QUESTS - This gives the word "grinding" a totally new meaning! If you enjoy questing, this game is NOT for you. You gain new quests as you enter new areas, but then after you complete them, that's it! All that is left is repeatable quests doing the same thing you just did 10 more times!! This makes leveling extremely boring!

(5) CHAT CHANNELS BUGGED - This was the last straw for me. We had heard about it going around, but just recently got hit with it. This bug disables all of your chat channels except guildchat or say. This means the Looking For group Channel is out of your reach and now, those quests that ARE NOT repeatable and require groups to complete, are out of your reach as well. The most important channel is the LFG channel (because their LFG Window is completely useless already) and now we cannot even get a group.

(6) NO TECH SUPPORT FROM NCSOFT - A full forum dedicated to Technical Support is raided with bug reports, issues, pleeds of spam blocking, and endless posts from disappointed PAID subscribers and not a single technical support response. The admin's reasons for not responding?? Get this people, they said "We have issues from our system with admin posts on the forums so we cannot post until this is fixed ..." it's been how long now?? And why do you still have this forum up? Better yet ... why hasn't this been made a priority to get fixed NCSOFT can fix the other issues we are having?


So all that glory I focused on in beta, I have since pushed aside. In fact, all that positive I could find in other games WITHOUT all the negative.

In all out honesty, my complete recommendation is DO NOT PURCHASE AION! This advice will help you SAVE YOUR MONEY and your sanity!

... as for the Wings ... all can say is

"The Bounty Hunter can fly too ... here I come SW: TOR!"

Alex is a fan of Super Mario Brother's Wii games, so when asked what he wanted to be for Halloween, it was almost inevitible that he selected Luigi from Super Mario Brothers, but it was even better when daddy decided to join in on the fun and become Luigi's brother, Mario! Go, go Mario and Luigi! Wii want you to vote for us!

CLICK HERE to vote!

My husband is leaving again on another deployment this October and again me and my children salute him off to fight the war on terror. This video is our dedication to him as he journeys off without us with only our picture in his pocket to keep him going. Be safe baby, me and the kids will be here waiting when you return!

I made the above video in memory of those lost in 9-11 and Dedicated to my military husband who proudly serves in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I made a post the other day about how my 5yr old plays World of Warcraft with me and my husband. This adolescent proceeded to tell me:

I really don't care how you or anyone else feels. I still think you're a sh*** parent. - Krydon (GuildCafe.com)

First of all, I have to say that this person obviously doesn't 't have children. To judge me without knowing me is more than immature. To set the record straight, my children are military children moving from place to place, daddy deployed quite a bit, and they have to adjust to a lot of new places, schools, people throughout the year, making it difficult on a child. Yet they are straight A students, they are respectful, the teachers love them, they take karate 3 times a week for exercising and self-discipline, and we as a family take vacations every year together. How can one say I am a **** parent because I allow my 5yr old play World of Warcraft with me and my husband (in the same room!). You want to see what **** parenting is, go to the article [Couples Internet Obsession Leads To Child Neglect], I AM NOT in that category of **** parenting!

He also stated:

I can maybe understand letting the kid sit on your knee sometimes and watch you play, but c'mon! This is disgusting and it is a sign or poor parenting. Some people just don't deserve to have kids.

Tell me, what is the difference between sitting that child on your lap and reading the chat on your screen than letting that child play with you and reading what's on his screen?

Second, there are many many gaming parents who would have words with this young adolescent: [See My 5yr old in PvP]. Please read that before you post anything, otherwise you are not getting your facts.

I want to lay this out on the table and defend the good gaming parents who game with their children.

Our society condemns parents when we read about teen girls who met some 45 yr old guy online and ran away with him. The first thing in posts are: "Poor parenting", yet when parents spend time with their children on video games, they are condemned for letting them play video games? The fact of the matter is, video games are here to stay, they will not go away and kids will play them. Because a parent allows their kid to play with them, and monitor the situations, there are still people who condemn the parents for this.

Computer games DO NOT ruin children's lives; in fact WIRED Magazine had an article about MMORPGs and how they are actually enhancing children's awareness in certain areas:

• Problem Solving
• Teamwork
• Critical Thinking
• Patience
• Hand-Eye Coordination
• Communication when vocals cannot be attributed

And if a parent is gaming with the child, s/he can monitor what is being said in whispers, eliminating some of the problems kids get when they are in chat rooms. Kids who game with their parents are more likely to be polite in game as well as know what is wrong and what is right in a conversation! THAT is good parenting! Why is it so hard for some people to understand that parents gaming with their kid is a GOOD THING?

In fact, there were some really good points given about parents gaming with their kids in mmorpgs from GuildCafe:

Roxianna:

There are always some people who fear new and foreign things. I think if you and your husband were skiing fanatics, you'd be out on the slopes with your kids and people would think that was nice. If you loved golf, you'd be buying tiny little clubs for your kids and taking them out to the driving range as soon as they could manage a swing. Same with tennis, baseball, soccer, gardening, cake decorating or any other pastime. Each one would use different set of mental and physical skills, but all would be considered healthy family fun.

Your kids are learning to enjoy what you enjoy and admire what you admire. The family that plays together, stays together.

Samhain

Ive recently taken up gaming with my 4 year old daughter. For a year she has sat on my lap watching me play eq2 (she loves the fairies). Last month, I went out and bought a PS2 for her and she loves Champions of Norrath. Together we pwn... We also play the disney games of course.

I intend of letting her play pirates of the caribbean MMORPG if it ever comes out.

Gaming with your kids is fun. Just as fun as doing other things.. in moderation.

My daughter is an active outdoors lover who plays soccer and does gymnastics and spends pretty much spends her summer at the park, beach or in the pool. Instead of sitting her down in front of Cartoon Network or Toon Disney, I think games are an excellent alternative.

Most parents don't even spend enough time with their kids. If you can sit together and game and have a great time its better than passive entertainment (movies, tv, etc).

Valeria

All the kids in our house are gamers just like us. Everything from FPS to MMO's I see nothing at all wrong with children enjoying agmes as long as they are taught ethics of playing online and safety. Kudos to you and give your son a thumbs up for being a wonderful player.

Venr

Thats outstanding, I don't understand why someone would go so far as to say you have bad parenting skills? Maybe they are just upset because your child beat them down? I wouldn't take anyone's advice on how to raise your own children (hence the "your own" part) He seems to be enjoying himself as do you.

MMORPGs are not going to go away, it is the way of the future, from cell phones, ipods, laptops, and internet, it is in our lives to stay and parents who sit down and game with their children should never be condemned. That is probably one of the most important times of a child's life, taking it as a LEARNING OPPORTUNITY to teach what is right and wrong in games. If a parent plays MMORPGs and their son/daughter wants play with them, they should not be condemned and called a '**** parent'. These are parents who can make our future generation more respectful of others and more involved with the family.

And one last word of advice to this young man:

I'm sorry my 5yr old owned you in pvp and you are angry at me for allowing him to play!

Atlanta, Ga. 9/17/2007 1:47 PM GMT (FINDITT)

Robert Jordan, the author of the fantasy literature series "Wheel of Time" died on Sunday afternoon at the age of 58. Jordan had been battling cardiac amyloidosis for the past year.

Born in Charleston, South Carolina Jordan served two tours in Vietnam before returning and earning a physics degree from The Citadel. He worked for the U.S. Navy after graduation and began writing in 1977. He found success as a writer of several Conan the Barbarian stories before turning his attention to the "Wheel of Time" series" that he began to publish in 1990.

Jordan published eleven books in the series and had been working on the final in the series "A Memory of Light" when he past away.

Here is the message that was left on Robert's blog.

"It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain."

Robert Jordan was a prominent voice in modern fantasy literature. The author's massive Wheel of Time series has long been a top seller, and with his death he leaves the series' twelfth book unfinished and his story painfully incomplete.

We send our condolences to the family and friends of Robert

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning filmspot by [Dark Sentinels] Destruction WAR Guild. [www.darksentinelsofwar.com] for adults, military, and parent gamers.

Parents Need to Understand Today's MMORPGs Rather Than Hate Them

In today's day and age, the Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) is the hottest trend in computer entertainment and they are only getting more interactive. Parents don't understand the extent of these games and instead of getting involved; they trash the whole idea and say that they ruining a child's life. As a gaming parent, I'm here to dismiss that myth.

By Kat @ [www.digitaldiva73.com]

I'm a 32 year old mother of a 4, 5 & 6 year old. I play computer games, but not just single player games, I am an MMORPG fanatic. I got involved with the MMORPG (Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game) community through my husband, even though I had played the pen & paper before, it was my husband who introduced me to Everquest, literally the first graphically enhanced online role playing game (RPG). I wasn't as bad as some of the other wives when Everquest was released because I had gamed RPGs with my husband since we were 19 and I knew that all relationships needed to give and receive, so instead of throwing a fit about his "addiction", I joined him. It wasn't until Dark Age of Camelot that I really became a serious MMORPG fan, and at the time, I had given birth to my first child. As time drew on and I had 2 more children, my balancing act between parenthood and gaming fanatic became almost a second nature. I learned to organize and compromise my time. Then one day, my 5 year old wanted to play and as he began to fascinate himself with the online surroundings, I knew my parenthood teachings did not stop in game, there was a lot of guidance I had to give to him online as much as I gave to him offline, guidance and advice that most parent who didn't game would never have known.

There was a recording I heard the other day with a kid on headset ready to group up with his guild mates in an MMORPG when his mother walked in and told him to get off the computer. There was a tremendous fuss and then the father intervened starting more of an argument. If you haven't heard it yet, you can hear it at: [karacry.ytmnd.com] I could literally picture the entire scenario in my mind since I am a parent myself, but as I listened to the parents voice their concerns, I became a little agitated with the reasoning behind their argument.

Son: Mom, please I want to finish this soooo bad.
Mom: You do not understand how much this computer is running the family!
Son: It's not the computer, it's your reaction!
Dad: You're crying about a game!
Son: No, please I want to finish this pleeeeeeeease!
Dad: Don't you get it at all? All you're doing is damaging yourself.
Son: I just got the group together, pleeeeeeeeeeeease!
Dad: I'm sick of this game

There is a lot more to this conversation, but this is why I think parents need to know what MMORPGs are and to GAME a bit with their children or watch a while. Computer games DO NOT ruin children's lives; in fact WIRED Magazine had an article about MMORPGs and how they are actually enhancing children's awareness in certain areas:

• Problem Solving
• Teamwork
• Critical Thinking
• Patience
• Hand-Eye Coordination
• Communication when vocals cannot be attributed

When I showed a [video] of my 5yr old playing World of Warcraft, I got more positive responses than negative, but there were some negative feedbacks that I should 'get my son out more' or that I was a 'terrible mother to allow my child to play those games'. How people can judge that from a 3 minute video is beyond me, but these are the parents who do not get involved with their children. I was also told by a Korean friend that in America, when a child is good in sports, everyone praises them, but in other countries, it is computers that a child is praised for when they are good at games. He also commented that Sports do not work as much with the intelligence than computer games do and that you have more of a chance at getting a successfully high paying career doing computer games than you do with sports. So why do parents still see computers as 'evil' and 'ruining a child's life?'. The answer is simple: The lack of knowledge. If parents KNOW and perhaps participate, or maybe just watch a bit, then there will be a wonderful communication between that child and the parent.

I have taught my son the good and bad parts of MMORPGs. For example, when you get done with your quest and you are in a group, it is polite to assist your group in finishing their quest and not just leave, not to jump in and kill something that someone else is fighting unless they ask for help, or that standing on a fire when it makes that annoying sound over and over again is not nice, and that those are REAL people playing their characters too so we have to treat them as if they were standing right next to you in real life. These are things that help evolve a child to become more polite online and offline because parents who do not game, do not KNOW a lot of times that these are REAL people that you are on the headset with or that you grouped with. As a gaming parent, I set examples by making a FAMILY day without computers and getting out of the house together, getting my duties done BEFORE gaming, and setting limits for myself and my kids.

When my husband and I DO sit down and game, my kids love to watch, or if we aren't doing a big raid, our 5yr old joins us on some quests and he loves spending time with us. When my husband is deployed, it is a great opportunity to be able to spend time with him as well.

My whole point is that if parents were to understand and get involved with computer games their children play, there would be a better parent-child relationship, respect, and less arguing. Technology is not going to go away, it is the way of the future, from cell phones, ipods, laptops, and internet, it is in our lives to stay and parents need to encourage computer and gaming hobbies more than withdrawal from it.

As one unknown Philosopher once stated:

"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing"

I take that saying to heart and will forever be a gaming parent supporting my child if s/he wants to go to those gaming tournaments! More power to them!

OMFG! AWESOME!

Went to see this movie last night with my husband and our kids. It's a 2hr movie and was freaking totally kick @ss! The graphics are phenomenal and the action keeps you on the edge of your seat! The whole theater was leaving trying to hold their chins up from the ground.

An amazing action packed, graphically stunning, and totally mind blowing movie that leaves you wanting more! I would highly recommend seeing this awesome movie!

I'll be honest, I hated games. In fact, when I was younger, the games my husband was into were the pen & paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Rifts, Palladium, etc. and the guys would come over to my house and game ALL NIGHT (before I had kids of course). I couldn't beat 'em, so ... I joined 'em! And it became an addiction! I LOVED IT! I couldn't wait for the next weekend to game with the boys and it made my husband and I grow closer. Then we moved onto MUDs and MOOs. For those of you who aren't familiar with those, MUDs were text-based games short for Multi-User Dungeons (or Dimensions). Yes, it was ALL text-based and we had to read and type things like:

S, W, E, open lock, search room, eat pie
/say "Hello"
/greet

[Text-based MUD example]

in order to interact. That was then, but this is now! Once Everquest came into play, things got really addicting. In fact, alot of divorces occured then HAHA, but mind you, I gamed just as much as my husband so we were like "two peas in a pod", but I must say, I had very little girl friends.

It is sad that many females do not participate in these games with their boyfriends or husbands because in order for a relationship to flourish, BOTH sides must give. So I find myself closer to my husband and I thank MY HUSBAND for inspiring me to game. If I didn't love him so much I would have left him after all those nights of endless D&D, but because of him, I was inspired to play.

Who inspired you and why?

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all you gaming moms out there!

 

I hope you find time to yourself for a few hours of kick @ss uninterrupted game play. What did you get for mother's day? What did you give your mother for mother's day? Remember, tech moms don't want flowers or diamond rings!

What did I get? My husband and my 3 beautiful children got me a Palm Pilot/mobile phone. I can use it as a video camera, regular camera, GPS system, cell phone, surf the internet, and connect the mobile phone to my laptop for broadband connection anywhere in the USA. Was the perfect gift for this techie-gadget geared momma. =)

 

[Treo 700wx Palm Pilot]

 

 

No way this girlgam3r is going without techie gear when she's away from the computer!

 

Okay, I love my husband, we've been married for 15 years this June and he deploys alot to Iraq so when he is home, we love being a family ... but there are days when I just want to slap him! Call it cruel love I suppose. Yes we fight and spat words of the "utmost elegance" at each other when we are mad, but then we make up (the fun part). However, today was a growl, spitter, spat, AAAARRRGGGGHHHH!! Day and so I need to vent .. and vent I did ... I literally BEAT HIS @SS! ... okay, in game at least ...

So with my husband being a real jerk today (must be male PMS) I got so seriously tired of him that I logged my character on and then his character on (duel-windowing it). I then had my character challenge his character to a duel. After accepting, I had his character sit down and proceeded to have my character kick his @ss several times over while macroing "JERK JERK JERK!" with each swing. It wasn't anything big, but felt good. Am I wrong? I needed to vent and boy was it a great "boxing" match!

 

... Ahhh true love!

 

Oh, btw ... I kissed him afterwards and told him it was my fault, I was grumpy!

As the guild leader and Chief Admin for [Dark Sentinels] the Destruction WARPortal of the highly anticipated Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMORPG, I find that many people are confusing the new EA Mythic MMORPG with the older (failed and dead) version. That was then, this is now, and EA Mythic will unveil itself in Q407 with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

 

 

 

I'm hoping to get people out of the old Warhammer Online focus and begin seeing the excitement surrounding the new EA Mythic MMORPG. If you haven't visited my WARPortal, be sure to take some time to swallow a few bits and pieces of the Destruction side at:                         [www.darksentinelsofwar.com]

 

And don't passup an opportunity to join my new WARHammer Online: Age of Reckoning Union focusing on the Destruction side of WAR, seeking qualified officers and charter members:

 

[Dark WAR] Destruction Union

Black Orcs, Orc Choppas, Goblin Shamans, Squig Herders, Dark Elves, Chaos Chosen ... an Army fit for the strong, a union to eliminate the weak. If you're a Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning fan hell-bent on Destruction and Chaos Armies, then [Dark WAR] is your union determined to see the growth and success of the Destruction side. Exchange your Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Destruction ideas, tactics, stories, and history with [Dark WAR].

Brought to you by [Dark Sentinels], the WAR Portal exclusively for Destruction Armies of the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMORPG. [www.darksentinelsofwar.com]

 

Interested candidated please message girlgam3r with experience in the WARhammer series, MMORPG tactics, and leadership abilities. Adults and/or mature individuals with a serious determination to succeed need only apply. Content will be on a weekly basis with the ability to become a Dark Author for [Dark Sentinels] WAR Portal.

 

I hope to see YOU amongst the Warhammer Online community or I'll see you on the battlefield, because this time ...

It's WAAAGH!

I have yet to see this movie, but the other night my husband and I were watching the History Channel aboutSpartan History and we were blown away by the dedication and the honor that the Spartans poured out for their city. Todays day and age we would call many of their ways 'brutal' and 'inhuman' and YES, I was horrified by the way it used to be with them, especially as a mother, but that is how they were raised, how they KNEW LIFE to be. Just a few facts that I found astonishing and/or gorrified about Spartans:

• Only The Strong Survive When a male child is born they are inspected from head to toe for ANY deformaties. If anything "unusual" is found, they are immediately taken from the mother and brought up into a secret place to be killed with little to no regard for the parents feelings.

• At Age Seven (7), A Boy Becomes A Man Up until the age of seven, a boy is with his family and raised just like any other child now adays, laughing, crying, playing, sharing stories with his family, but when he turns of the Seventh season, he is taken from his family to live in the House of War where they train them everyday in the art of war. They are taught every possible sides of war, from torture to assasination. They are beaten and whipped and sometimes if they are the first to fall, they are killed. When a Spartan boy becomes a teenager, he is sent on a mission to secretly assasinate a herder, in which he must succeed quietly or he will be killed none-the-less.

• Love Hurts When a man wanted a woman for his wife, he would try to "take" her with force and brutality, but because Spartan women were just as strong built and could hold their own, if she did not want him in return, she would fight back and literally beat him to death.

• You Are Not Worthy ... There were only two types of people who received tombstones on their grave when they died: (1) A Spartan Soldier and (2) A woman who died giving birth. This shows us that you lived FOR THE CITY because as a soldier, you died giving something to the city and as a woman, you died giving something to the city as well.

All in all those were just a few of the facts I found out watching, though distasteful to me, they also showed strong honor and devotion. To the Spartans, War WAS their way of life. To protect and defend what they believed in.

Share your discoveries of Sparta with us! And if you haven't seen the movie yet either, [click here ] for the movie preview!

So there I am leveling up and it hits me like a mac truck! Those BIG PURPLE LETTERS come flying across my chat screen like an invasion from hell!

"WTF?" I scream to myself. It's almost expected that you'll get spammed by a spambot in World of Warcraft these days and, like that Aunt you just can't stand, there is nothing you can do about it. Or is there?

The argument has been a topic of debate for many months over the security and control of these spammers, but is Blizzard listening? I think not. Many a MMORPG I have traveled through; Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Lineage II ... the list goes on and on, yet I have never felt as invaded in those games as I have in World of Warcraft. Security? Protection? Even my email gives me better control over this sh** and a company who makes 5 milion dollars can't take the effort into making these 'trial-based spam accounts' harder to track? Some suggestions may be:

• Credit card tracking when you sign up for trial account
  • This will prevent people from signing up using the same credit card to sign up again once you have been flagged as a spambot
  
  
• IP tracking when you sign up for a trial account
  • This will enable the account to be banned from even deleting the spambot name and re-creating a new name, as well as re-signing up with a new account.
  
  
• Phrase Triggering
  • Like in the military since my husband and I live on a military base, certain words you say over the phone lines or even emails sent to military servers, can be triggered to be tracked for suspision.
    
  
  
• Anonymous Profiles
  • Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest had the right idea in allowing people to go 'Anonymous'. When an individual is anonymous, s/he cannot be tracked online (same as allowing someone to see you are online or not via IM). Thus preventing personal invasion like I encountered in the shot above.

 

There are several other ideas that Blizzard Entertainment could be bringing out to the table. So why are they not even TRYING? What are some of your ideas that you think may be able to prevent or control these in-game spammers?

Is there ever such thing as finding a TRUE friend in an online game? You meet people, you befriend them, you game with them all day-everyday for months and sometimes years on end. You become close, as if you could read their minds, and you think they KNOW you by now, know how you are emotionally inside and out. But then one day you have a really really bad day, whether its at home or work or in game, but you have a bad day and many things come out, especially real life issues, and you snap. You do drastic things like 'quit the guild' or 'delete your character', etc. And then your "friends" blow up at you, get "angry" at you, saying things they shouldn't say. And all those months of "friendship" are gone in an instant. All because of miscommunication?

Is this how we perceive friendship in todays day and age of internet and wired relationships? Had someone "snapped" in real life, face to face, would we deliver the most hatred words and assume things that really are not true only because they are defined by the words you typed on the screen, yet never confronted in real life?

Is "friendship" really something you can find online or does a TRUE friendship need to be developed physically (not sexually) through hugs and face to face laughter?

Personally, I would have to say you can find a friend online, but never a complete TRUE friend until you are with each other in person, to share what life has to deliever in REAL LIFE, not just through a game, because even if you FEEL you know someone or they know you, you don't react certain ways in REAL LIFE as you would in a game when things happen. Why? Miscommunication.

I have yet to find a friend who has stuck by me in a game even if I am a fair game player or a loving person. I can go out of my way to do EVERYTHING I possibily can do to show I am a friend IN GAME (listening on ventrilo, sending ecards for emotional support, wishing birthday greetings, laughing and sharing stories, supporting someone, etc) and yet if I do something one day that seems odd, I am condemned, shunned, hated, and mistrusted. Things are said to me that, through all the months of gaming together and thinking you are friends, you think "how could my friends think I'm like that? Did they NOT know me??" Had it been a friendship in "REAL LIFE", a TRUE FRIEND would have called to ask if I was alright, stopped by to find out why I did what I did, and certainly TALKED TO ME! But no, in game friendships are easy to disban because there is always that internet distance that seperates us and it is too easy to walk away when things get bad and too easy to miscommunicate and not TRY to talk to the people you "love". It's too easy to say "keep in touch" and reroll a new character or move to a different game and change your email address and delete your Yahoo profiles. It's too easy to say "goodbye". To me, an online friendship can rarely be true because "friendship" is more than "assuming" you know the person, it is literally one big giant hug that can never be delivered through the wires.

Your thoughts?

As a professional marketing executive and girlgamer extraordinaire, I found that failed games were not uncommon in our competetive Internet-driven society. After several discussions on public marketing with both aspiring and veteran game developers, I found that many lacked sufficiant knowledge in the marketing aspects and left alot to be said to the publishers directly. Thus, games became dependent on publishers and much of a developers input was not enough to hold a profit. I took it upon myself to develop a short, yet rather useful guideline to assist new game developers with the preliminary stages of game development, that which should include the marketing aspects. Why do games fail and how does the creator prepare him/herself in preventing another dreaded statistic? Better yet, how does a developer recover from a failed effort? [Read my documentation] and then post your thoughts as a gamer or a developer yourself.

Just wanted to share with you a special day.
Today is my daughter's 4th birthday!



She's almost an expert at telling us what characters are pretty and which ones are ugly. I think the International Game Developers Associations need to take lessons from her on how to make attractive female characters!

I know this is old news, but it was worth me venting ...


Korean press picks up tale of tragedy when couple plays World of Warcraft to excess, infant perishes from neglect.

In a story out of Korea, which is just now surfacing in the Western press, a couple in Incheon, South Korea, were arrested last week when their 4-month-old daughter died after being left alone by the couple for hours. The mother and father reportedly had gone to a nearby Internet cafe, lost themselves in playing Blizzard's massively multiplayer online PC game World of Warcraft, and returned to their home only to find the infant dead from suffocation. "We booked the pair on criminal charges, judging that when you consider the situation, they were responsible for their daughter's death," a policeman told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper. The couple reportedly told police, "We were thinking of playing for just an hour or two and returning home like usual, but the game took longer that day." The infant was the couple's only child. By Staff -- GameSpot


Let me just gather myself for a minute. I'm basically at a loss for words and I'm terribly angered. As a mother of a 4, 5 & 6 yr old and an avid World of Warcraft gamer myself, I find this to be the MOST irresponsible and utterly UNEXCUSABLE means of parenting EVER ! I tell everyone I game with that I am a gaming parent and my children come first, so if they don't like the fact I have to AFK a lot or leave suddenly in the mist of battle, then don't group with me PERIOD! I could  NEVER NEVER NEVER place something like a game before my children, let alone FORGET them while engrossed in a virtual reality!! 4months old??? and they were quoted saying "We were thinking of playing for just an hour or two and returning home like usual, but the game took longer that day." First of all ... who the f*** leaves their 4 month old even for "just an HOUR or two" alone?? I was afraid to leave my children for 5 minutes to take a shower when they were 4 months old! This isn't about gaming ... its about poor parenting and people like that don't deserve beautiful children!

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Technology is my work and my hobby. I enjoy anything that has to do with technology, Internet, Gamez, and Gadgets. The Wired World is always growing and tossing out new and intellectually stimulating ware for the human brain to absorb beyond its limitation. It's amazing and it will never get old or boring or tiring. So, I thought I'd share with you how I get those awesome screenshots, those quick PvP kills, and more:

Cleo-SLI
This is my computer gaming system.

• MEMBER: SLI-10569 digitaldiva73 
• CPU: AMD 64x 2.813 GHz 
• MEMORY: 4.047 GB 
• MOTHERBOARDS: ASUSTeK Computer INC. M2N32-SLI DELUXE
  
• DUAL NVIDIA GPUs: 4 NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 with SLI 
• SOUND: Creative Labs X-Fi Pro SoundCard 
• HARD DRIVE(s): 277.0 GB, 37.3 GB 

She comes complete with SATA-Raid Vault of 1000gb of storage and Dell 30' flatscreen monitor! Everything a girlgam3r needs!

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Recently I trialed the Lord of the Rings Online Stress Test and I have to say that the graphics are wonderful and brilliantly put together for a fantastic storyline, but I'm a PvP fanatic and with the lack of such luster, it won't attract as much audience as the bigger MMORPGs like Warhammer Online or World of Warcraft. However, for the casual PvE'r, it is an astonishing game.

Below are a few Screenshots I took while playing: