Starting afresh

What do I do when the going gets tough?

I freak out and start over from scratch.

Rather than trying to make new friends and find a new faction for Meirizhu and Siloam, I just made a new character: Idumea the Blademaster, a cliche feisty redhead.

I've been enjoying playing as Idumea so far. Already made a couple of friends. Joined a faction, which died the next day.

I had expected people to shorten the name, but I wasn't expecting meadea, which is what one guy calls me. It's kind of adorable, though.

By no means am I going to retire Meiri and Sil. I'm too attached to them. But they're probably going to be on the bench for a little while.

Fears: confirmed.

My faction is dead. Utterly moribund. Over the summer it went from around 60 members to around 8. Of those, 4 are either my characters or characters I was building for a friend.

I don't know what happened. There wasn't a change of leadership. Maybe there was just a mass migration to another faction. I don't know.

All I know is that I'm sad.

My triumphant return

Well, I'm back in Savannah, typing this from my awesomely fast computer on my awesomely fast internet. Life is good.

I think I've already established that I'm super weird, but here's even more evidence:

All this summer I've been looking forward to being able to play Perfect World again. Well, I've been in Savannah three days and I still haven't touched the PWI icon on my desktop.

It's not that I haven't thought about it or don't want to. I'm just... scared. I don't know why. Maybe I'm afraid everything will be different, or my faction will have kicked me out, or everyone will be 60 levels higher than me and not want anything to do with me.

I'm being silly. I can make new friends. I can figure this out.

Being shy and paranoid in real life is bad enough... being shy and paranoid in a game is worse.

Shout outs, thank yous, and going afk

Well, guys, it's been a good run.

But now my Writing for the Web class has come to an end, and so I'm no longer required by the injunction of my professor to maintain this blog.

I've gained a lot experience points, learned some new skills, and leveled up a few times. And here are some people I'd like to thank for that:

• My class and professor, for sticking with me whether they wanted to or not and giving great constructive criticism.
• Rod, Kristei, and Tokada, for all the random comments. You guys rock.
• My faction, for their patience and humor. *Salutes King, bows to Ling, pokes Kit and Teh, and shakes Thug's hand... err, paw*
  
• Ero, for introducing me to sharks.
• Tamar, for taking me seriously.
• All those idiots in world chat who brighten my day.
• and lastly, you, anyone who has ever read this blog. Especially those of you who leave comments. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

This is not the end!

I have decided that I love blogging way too much to give it up just because I'm no longer getting a grade on it. So I'll keep playing Perfect World and keep updating this blog as often as I can!

Unfortunately, I'm going to be spending the next 3 months sojourning in the Land of Dial-Up Internet, with brief visits to the Wireless Embassy whenever I can. So I can't guarantee regular posts.

But I can guarantee that I will never forget you guys . . . so please don't forget me!

And, speaking of marriage...

I have a sneaking suspicion that two members of my faction are thinking about tying the knot. They should. They work really well together.

This prospect makes me want to go "SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!" with cute girlish delight.

Also make dirty jokes about "grinding." Faction chat was a mess of it last night, and I found it highly entertaining.

Here's another weird thing about marriage in PWI: many players have more than one character. So you could conceivably have two characters... or more... married to different people. I don't think my brain could handle doing that.

Everybody else has one!

I don't need one. I don't particularly want one. I don't even know what they're good for.

But everybody else has a genie, and I feel left out.

What is a genie, you ask? I'm not sure, myself. I only know that it's a small, cute, colorful little thing that circles around your character and sucks your experience points.

The addition of genies seems to be the extent of the long-awaited "expansion pack." Not to knock the fine folks who design Perfect World, because I obviously adore this game . . . but you pretty much already had genies, except they were called angels and you had to buy them.

Genies are free, though; you just have to ask an NPC for them. So, of course, EVERYONE has a genie now. Even though nobody is really sure what they do. As a dear faction mate said in his lovely Engrish, "Not yet discover the beauty usefulness of it yet."

Well, I'm trying to wait until someone discovers the beauty usefulness of genies and tells me what it is. I don't like getting things that don't have a point, especially if they're going to suck my experience.



In the meantime, I'm going to just feel left out. Like in this picture. You can see Kay's purple genie hovering over her shoulder, and OrangeElf's green genie just behind him. And my cute flying thing, Nugget. Not really the same effect.

Excuse me for liking men.

Let me just start by saying that I really enjoy the faction that my characters Meirizhu and Siloam belong to. It's full of fun, talkative people, and a good handful of them are women near my age who share some of my interests.

Perhaps it's not too surprising that we spend a lot of time in faction chat discussing--and arguing about--the sexiness of Johnny Depp, Vin Diesel, Viggo Mortensen, and other men. And we are quite honest and specific about how we feel about them.

Usually other faction members are amused, indifferent, or just weirded out by these discussions.

Today, though, someone in the faction was offended, and asked us that if we were going to "trash talk" we should do it in private chat rather than faction chat.

Well, whether she was being oversensitive or not, we agreed to keep our discussions private. I think it was silly, but I'd rather not cause offense and drama within the faction. Or get kicked out for starting trouble.