Janelle Darkstone

(Shhh. We don't discuss the NSA fiber-optic beam splitter feedback thing in an unsecured public forum.)

Feed stalkers are nobody's friends. ...except Marigold. She's alright.

Hey, I spend a lot of L$ to look good. :smileywink: Getting crosshaired in a crowd for more than just a few seconds is something of a compliment.

I hear the caps lock industry is pretty lucrative.

rafaelmarie wrote: because you are not just sexting, you are also using anime pornography at the same time, which is a mortal sin. I agree with you -- that anime stuff is just creepy weird. Wait, what?

I think I know exactly which building you're referring to although I can't seem to find it on old LM's. Was it Body Language, Sweet Lovely Cute? http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Bon%20Voyage/113/93/301

I'm from the USA but I have spent time in Texas, which is kind of like its own country. Does that count? ( ...just kidding -- if I had spent more than six months in Texas I would have killed myself. )

Please no. Let them stay gone.

Un-freaking-rest. :smileytongue: Easily one of my all-time favorite zones in EQ. I didn't spend much time in Karnor's mainly because I wanted to maintain my VS faction, but I've heard the trains there were legendary. On leveling, absolutely. WoW was a breath of fresh air in that leveling and gear upgrades were so easy and dying did not carry anywhere near the penalty of that in EQ. And it's too bad that we can always go easier but never regress to harder and more challenging. I think it took me about two years to make level 45 back when I started (2002), and, while I look back with fond memories of that time I would never want to go through that again. On corpse art. :smileywink: First thought is "Why on earth would anyone spend so much time and effort on something like that?" And even with the video lag it creates, a mild annoyance at first and then a sneaking admiration for their work, if not for the art then at least their persistence. On beauty: I think the most fun I'd had in EQ were raids -- and not when everything was going along smoothly, but when things became *chaotic*... when the main tank went down and the next closest would step in, when the healers would scramble to target the new tank and resume the healing rotation, when everyone was getting low, very low on mana, when casters were dying left and right, when the raid leader calls out in channel to prepare to camp a cleric..... ...those were the BEST times. When you really began to see the mettle of your fellow guildies in how they poured in the extra reserves of courage and fighting spirit. Those rare times in which we'd recover the fight and be able to hold the battle long enough to succeed in bringing down the boss mob, which, as we became better as a team and better geared happened more often than not. ...but even if we were wiped out, I was always proud to be a corpse alongside the rest of my friends and comrades. There was no place I'd rather have been.

Czari Zenovka wrote: Shouts: Train to zone!!!!!! I feel the need to explain this particular tidbit to those forumites here who have never had the pleasure of playing EQ: Those of you who have played World of Warcraft and other MMORPG's know that, when you aggro any creature and decide to run away, that creature only follows you for a short distance and then "gives up" and walks back to its' spawn point. EverQuest doesn't do that. In EQ, if you decide to run away from a mob, it chases you and if there are any mobs along the way they will join in and chase you too. And, if you are reasonably skilled or just extremely unlucky, you can have an entire zone of angry sword-wielding, teeth-gnashing creatures chasing you. And one of the usual ways to escape this would be to run to the nearest zone line and enter the adjacent zone, clearing any aggro you might have had. There was a particular zone which had a large, multi-story mansion in the center. The courtyard was generally safe for lower-level characters but if you were too low level and you happened to enter the house? Well... any monster who happened to be in range got *very* angry -- which also aggroed monsters from the second floor, and sometimes the third floor. And the roundabout path in the mansion they took to reach you sometimes aggroed more creatures from the back room, the tower, the patio, the basement... The zone line of this zone happened to be quite far away, through a dark tunnel with a couple of unexpected turns. And it was usually here the "train" would catch up with the previously-intrepid hero and squish them. After the character had either zoned or died, the crowd of monsters would stand there, soullessly-eyed, for a few moments, and then turn and casually stroll back to take their places in the mansion. It was like a parade. It takes genuine skill and deftness to pull a good train, the best trains with a varied assortment of mobs from all different areas of the zone and preferably a few NPC's sprinkled in for good measure. A proper, epically awesome train is truly a thing of beauty.

:smileywink: It's still kind of on-topic, sorta. Czari and I were part of an online community that was probably more tight-knit than most. Mostly because the game was such a PITA to play and you really had to team up and work together to succeed. And even though Czari and I played on different servers I know I could group with her in a heartbeat and trust her with my life (and to hit the wrong key and accidentally succor the group out of the raid at the most inopportune moment). The language, jargon and acronyms reflect the community as well. Rez, rebake, AO, BIAB, blingtard, gesturbator, camping, limo, furvert, poseballs...

(PoFear -- WEST wall, not north wall. :smileysurprised: ) The one thing I wanted to do so bad on FV was twink a lowbie plate class with a BoE, among many other things (I still have mine in the bank for sentimental reasons). I played on the Rathe and never had any reason to use languages except to max them out for the sake of my OCD, but I always wondered how useful they might be under different circumstances. WoW is awful, I'd guess, because the two factions are also separated by the language barrier so they choose to laugh cruelly, taunt and /spit on the opposing side in battlegrounds. Horrible behavior. Although meeting a member of the opposing side out in the wilds tends not to be so malevolent. It's nice to confront (and be confronted by) a PvP flagged character with a friendly wave and greeting instead of a kneejerk "OMG kill kill KILL KILL KILL!!!1!" ...most of the time. A common language contributes to a stable community. Language barriers make for bigger jerks? I saw an interesting challenge on the EQ forums not long ago which consisted of stripping naked, banking all your armor and weapons AND money and then venturing out into the world to re-equip yourself. That would definitely be a test of patience.

Ah, corpse runs. :smileytongue: I know I've probably mentioned this story before but I think it's relevant here, 'The Night Starsilver Accidently Zoned Into The Plane of Fear.' Starsilver was one of our human paladins, probably around level 50 at the time. On this particular night he was soloing Cyndreela and her pet at the Plane of Fear portal for xp and gems. On one pull she managed to cast a fear spell on his character and he involuntarily ran into the portal. Well, of course he died almost instantly because the zone was fully respawned. This was about 7 p.m. He asked for help in guild and about ten of us showed up to attempt to break into PoFear, grab his corpse and drag it to the north wall, allow him to loot it and hold the camp long enough to allow all of us to port out safely. On the second attempt there were a few more people who came and the rest of us all now naked and in need of recovering our own corpses. On the third attempt there were about twenty naked avatars and some magician had the bright idea to summon gear for us, so this time we had summoned swords and bits of armor to attempt the break-in. Sometime around 3 a.m. we made our fourth attempt with members from three other guilds and our force now numbering around 30-40 people, many with backup sets of armor they had in the bank. By this time the creatures' numbers on the other side of the entry had been whittled and zerged down sufficiently so that on that attempt we finally managed to break in, clear to the north wall camp, drag dozens of corpses to safety and manage as many rezzes as we could before finally mass porting out. Most of us then logged off and went to bed, worn out but with the satisfaction that we had succeeded. During this time there was no talk of payment, or favors, or "what's in it for me?". This was a tight-knit community of people all working together to help someone else. I very much doubt you'd see that in any current MMO.

In the early years of EverQuest there definitely was a "community". People helped each other, shared information and were always happy to group up to conquer the dungeons. I'll never forget the pair of higher level characters that approached me, at half health and recovering, inspected me (which at first seemed very rude) and then handed me several piece of bronze armor they had looted in a nearby dungeon. The kindness did not go unpaid when I became much higher level and capable of doing the same, many times over. Years later, with the practice of merging servers (and with WoW's cross-server grouping feature), the name and reputation you built for yourself no longer mattered. "Communities" were mashed together, jerk players soon had a new crowd of people who did not know them or their habits and the whole concept of good deeds and personal accountability was lost. Especially in WoW, where you might queue for a group and form with good players and bad players and, after the dungeon is finished, quite possibly never see their names again. In SL, where it's intentionally (and artificially) difficult to change one's name, reputation becomes important. In a community, I'd say that's a huge factor.

This isn't a bad thing. Trust me, I've been to the adult areas and some truly awful things happen there. Horrible things.

1. What do you buy in SL? Clothes, shoes, and hair and to a lesser extent dance animations, vehicles, toys, devices, doodads and other shiny, blinky things. 2. Do you always buy products free of charge, have you purchased Linden Dollars (LD) or do you work and earn money in SL? When I first started I used a lot of freebies (some truly awful and cringeworthy). I occasionally do purchase L$. I'd never hold an SL job as a primary means for income as it wouldn't pay anywhere near as much as I consider my time to be worth. 3. If you have purchased LD: How much money do you spend in SL for two months? Why do you spend money in a virtual world? I would estimate $10-20 a month would be reasonable, perhaps more if also paying rent somewhere. And spending money anywhere would be for the entertainment value. 4. If you buy products free for charge: Why don't you spend LD when you're shopping? Those I see who can't or won't spend real life $ in SL are either newbies (perfectly okay) or don't wish their SL activities to show up on their bank statement (:smileywink:). 5. What is your favourite company in SL? Why this company? This constantly changes; one designer might fulfill my sense of style for a month before I feel like going in a different direction, but that's also what makes it fun, the variety and the possibilities. 6. Do you own shares in a SL company? No, and I'd never spend a cent in SL that I wasn't fully prepared to lose in an instant tomorrow. I'd like to think this is a commonly held attitude and indicative toward our confidence in LL.

More and better facial emotes -- poseable hands too. An intuitive, powerful, inworld tool for making animations. Mesh hair that also blows in the wind. A viewer that is stable, intuitive and well-documented. And lastly, an occasional 'World PvP Day' so we can gang up to clear out griefers and traffic bots.

On props; when doing this one, I quickly browsed MP for a cookie prop and the only free one available was that one, no modify and huge. Naturally I couldn't resize them down to half size for the characters' scale so I used those huge cookies and went with it. Knowing what I know now, though, I'd just find some on Google images and drop them in later. On sets and studios; once I got down to using a permanent set with off-camera props rezzed and ready to slide in as needed and a HUD that memorized and recalled cam locations, all I had to do was rez the AnyPose pads, bring in additional characters, flatten the cam a bit (usually ctrl+0 three times for a good cartoony look) and go nuts. Pose, shoot, pose, shoot, usually done very quickly. Knocking out a finished strip in 2-4 hours was very doable and fun. I'm a devout believer in greenscreening too.

I think the hardest part of it all is SL itself. Having to manage prims when you have a studio, adding props, finding props, making do with what you have although it falls far short of the image you had in mind when you started. Add to that random lag, random disconnects of other peoples' avatars, random crashes of your own that do nothing but mess up a good work groove. In a perfect world we'd have huge, grandiose, lifelike sets with thousands of little details added. We'd have a huge crowd of nicely dressed, skinned and haired character avatars, all wonderfully unique and quirky and ready to go. We'd have a selection of props at our fingertips and always the perfect lighting. We'd have more expressive faces and hands. Especially hands. Stories are easy. Jokes are easy. Pushing, hacking and making workarounds in SL aren't quite as simple.

"Outburst?" How strangely fitting.

Up until just now that mental image hadn't been formed, but now it has and in vivid detail. Thank you for that. :smileyindifferent:

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: SL itself is not a game but a virtual world. Does that mean I should stop killing newbies and looting them?

It's also Halloween. Zombie Janis Joplin might put on a good show.

Joining.

iCade wrote: Out of sheer curiousity, why is voice verification needed? It's a land rental, not a sex club? woof woof woof ruff grrrr woof barkbark woofwoof woof ... errr, I mean, Hi there! I saw your ad for the sales agent position and I wanted to let you know I'm interested. Thanks!