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2009 Gamers Secret Santa

stargrace 1Comment

I’ve been pondering this idea for a while now, and I’ve decided it’s time. I’m going to host a “Gamer Secret Santa” – I have no idea if this idea will take off or not, but we’ll see. I’m hoping it will be a huge success.

What it is: Those who want to participate, are more then welcome to. You can be a gamer, blogger, a member of the game industry, whatever. As long as games are some how a part of your life. I will take names / addresses, and assign everyone a ‘secret’ person to buy a small less then $20 gift for, as well as give them the address required. Send out your gift and wait for one to head your way, and that’s it. Ok, let me explain it a bit better.

What is “Secret Santa?” here’s the definition!

How:

1. Send your full name and mailing address to me at stargrace@mmoquests.com, make sure it comes from a valid email address. If you happen to run a fansite or a blog, please mention which blog you write for. If you’re just a gamer mention that too. It doesn’t matter who you are or how involved in the gaming community you are, anyone can participate.

2. On December 7th I will email you back with someone else’ address.

3. The price limit is $20, don’t spend any more then that. Be creative, make something, have it be unique to your culture or your life, if you need suggestions then please don’t hesitate to let me know. Try to keep in mind that we’re all gamers, no matter where we come from.

4. Keep your person a secret! Don’t tell anyone who else you have. If you DO happen to run a fansite or blog, then when you receive your gift write about it and let everyone know.

5. If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to let me know below in comments, or email me.

Details: I understand that you may not be comfortable with me or one other person having your mailing address, so if you’re not please don’t feel pressured to participate. The idea is to share with one another and realize what a fantastic community we have, not make you feel on edge that you’re going to potentially run into issues.

If you’d like to participate but simply can not afford to no matter what, send me an email and let me know, I will do my best to help you out. I want anyone who’s interested to be able to participate in this event. I think some times we forget that these people we all talk to online are not just random pixels, but are actual people on the other end of those computers.

Please keep in mind that only myself, and ONE other person will have your address. It won’t become a mailing list or anything like that. If you’re only comfortable with me having it and no one else then let me know, and I’ll have your gift sent to me and then I’ll send it out to you. Anything to make sure people are comfortable and still able to participate.

YOU HAVE UNTIL DECEMBER 6th TO EMAIL ME YOUR ADDRESS – please take your time to think about whether or not this is something you really want to do. If it is, get me your address by December 6th so that I can give people some time to get their shopping done. If it’s a little late (the gift, not the address) that’s alright.

If you don’t celebrate christmas but still want to participate that’s alright too! This isn’t a religious thing, I just want to try it out and see how it works this year. There are some amazing gamers I have met from all over the world, and I think that we have a lot to share with one another.

I think that’s about it. If you can think of something I’ve missed then please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer it. If this is a completely horrible idea don’t feel shy to let me know. I just wanted to share some of the christmas joy that’s going to be flying around before too long and figured this would be a fantastic idea for people to experience it with one another.

Gaming Real Life

Weekend Gaming for Me

stargrace 3Comments

During the week I have very little choice in what games I play. I need to write about certain ones, or I need to prepare for an article, or I need to familiarize myself with it. Where I used to play video games for fun as a hobby, it turned into work, and thus I have been slightly less inclined to play on the weekends because of this. I am sure that would be true for anyone in my position. One thing I’ve done to ‘entice’ myself on weekends to still find the things I love in games is to make sure there are a few around that I play ‘only for me’ and not for work. Dragon Age, Sims 3, the Lord of the Rings Online, and a few other games I have fit into that category.

I spent pretty much all weekend playing Sims 3, and I had so much fun. The game is so involved compared to the older versions, and I giggled and laughed over their antics. I also went out to EBGames (after some groceries and other chores of course) and picked up the latest expansion, World Adventures. I installed it, and then barely touched it because I was still having so much fun completing the goals in the first game.

While I was at EBGames, I also found a collectors edition copy of the Lord of the Rings Online for $10! Wow, what a deal. This comes with the original game, the Mines of Moria expansion, a map, a small bag with ‘the one ring’ inside, a poster, a soundtrack CD, an art book, and a few other goodies. Even though I already have a LoTRO account, I’m tempted to start this second one up and close down my first one (my highest character is level 19, which I am fairly confident I could reach again). Maybe I can find a friend who would like the first account and they won’t have to purchase the game (or Mirkwood, as I’ve already bought that) and they can just take over the billing, who knows.

In any case, it was a great weekend, with lots of gaming but not the usual games I play. I did get some more EQ2 time in, and worked on a few achievements as well as finishing off the Chronomagic quest from Sunday which was Acadachism. I didn’t get the three final aa that I need, nor did I work on NaNoWriMo at all, which means today I’m well behind. Hoping to take care of that as soon as I post this entry.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming Real Life

Simply Not Enough Time

stargrace 3Comments

Ellithia is sporting the Shard of Love headgear that dropped for us earlier this week – and that’s been the extent of my time in EQ2, which hasn’t happened in literally, months. I haven’t logged in. It’s not that I don’t have things to do in game, because I certainly do but I just don’t have enough time lately to do everything I want to do. Isn’t that always the case?

EQ2 is always my home base, and I’ll always return there. Especially after I glanced through this HUGE list of patch notes that are currently on test. Wow. Some pretty amazing stuff is finally getting fixed. This has been a very long time coming. Earlier this week I also transferred my 80 swashbuckler over to Antonia Bayle, so I can get back into boxing. I had closed my second account for a little while but decided that 12 alts was simply not enough, so I’ve got both accounts once more.

Vanguard is my home away from home. It’s the game I play for pleasure with a few friends when we all happen to have time, and I really love the game. The problem is it’s not one of those duck in real quick for a minute or two games, so it looks like it gets a lot of back burner time.

Aion is what I’m playing a lot of lately, mostly for work. I play during the day, when it’s quieter then normal and I can’t say I’m hating it. Leveling is slow, quests are grindy but it’s beautiful and still new, and I’ll be sticking with it.

Torchlight and Dragon Age are still on my play list as well, but I’ll probably be playing those more on the weekend when I’m not busy with other things. The weather is getting much colder and it’s almost time to hibernate for the winter. No doubt my adventures there will be fun as always.

NaNoWriMo is eating up a lot of time. I’m just over 12k words right now (although I completely slacked yesterday and didn’t do any writing – today I should be making up for it) and I’m excited about my story. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to write for a very long time, but simply never got around to. Now that the motivation is there I just need to stick with it for the month of November. I’ve also been very excited watching all my friends work on their stories, and the inspiration and motivation that bounces off of one another is fantastic.

There are five games that are on my “dang I wish I had more time” list currently. These are the Lord of the Rings Online, Fallen Earth, Wizard 101, EverQuest and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Thankfully DDO is free to play, so I don’t exactly feel like I’m missing out by NOT playing right now. The Lord of the Rings Online recently extended their special Mirkwood promotions until mid November, so I’ve been debating whether or not I want to get in on that and plurge on a life time just because. It’s one of those games I’ve really enjoyed playing but just can’t seem to find the time. Fallen Earth I managed to score a 15 day trial for, and never logged in – sighs. Wizard 101 is something I should be playing a lot more of next week, fingers crossed. EverQuest currently has their closed beta ongoing for Underfoot – and if I could convince a few of my friends to play with me, I’d probably be there a lot more. I really love EverQuest, always have, even 10 years later. It’s just not fun for me to play alone.

After the list of “I wish I had more time” games, there are a few games that I wish I could simply afford to take a peek into every so often, even if I don’t have the time. These include Warhammer (I loved the game, but lacked friends to play with), Free Realms, and Champions Online (which I played a few times but honestly never got into it, I was right about it simply not being the genre for me). Of course there’s those games I’ve tried but never stuck with (and I’ve tried them multiple times), EVE and World of Warcraft. I even bought the latest EVE game and never actually installed it (it went on sale for $5 if I recall) because I just don’t have the time right now to learn another game. I’ve played WoW off and on since release, and I just think it would have been neat to make it to the level cap at least once. My highest level is 50.

Don’t get me started on all the free to play games out there that tickle my fancy.

There really is just not enough time for everything.

Gaming Real Life

Dragon Age Ramblings

stargrace 10Comments

Today was one of those horrible days where I barely got anything done, real life kicked me around and so for most of the evening I decided to just do absolutely nothing and sat down with some great story telling from Dragon Age, and a little Torchlight – that’s right, I didn’t even play an MMO (brr, feel that? Hell just froze over). I am absolutely LOVING Dragon Age – which is a giant surprise to me, because while I do like RPGs I’ve never really been a HUGE fan. I’ve never played another Bioware game before, and discovering how much of a fan I am now is a lot of fun for me. I’ve heard a few people complain about the graphics, but the stories are SO interesting and so involved that I can easily look past the flaws in graphics and lose myself in the story line.

The one issue I have is when I play in 3rd person (scrolled in) I wish the camera followed my character instead of me having to right click to rotate it. I’m getting used to exploring in the furthest view, and then scrolling inwards for combat or if a specific item requires me to, or simply to look around a little at the scenery. It’s just something I’m personally not used to, nothing game breaking.

I won’t give any spoilers, but I wish I had started playing this at the beginning of NaNoWriMo – the story I am currently writing would have probably been a LOT different then. It’s so easy to get involved with your character based on the decisions and actions you make throughout the game, and I’m just having a lot of fun with it. For those who use the Bioware social network you can find me on there as Stargrace and add me to your friends lists. I’m currently playing a Dalish elf, rogue, and I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone else is playing!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Real Life

NaNoWriMo – Almost here again!

stargrace 3Comments

Not gamer related, I know how dare I. It’s rare I make these types of posts though, and it’s important. Well, to me it is.

It’s almost November, which means almost a year has gone by already since I participated in my very first NaNoWriMo – wow. Time really does fly. If you’ve never heard of NaNoWriMo before, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and it runs world wide for the month of November. The challenge is for people to write a 50,000 word story within the month. That is a LOT of writing, compacted by real life that won’t stand still. It’s an amazing challenge, and it also helps raise money to inspire kids and adults to continue with their creative endeavors.

Last year thanks to some very generous donations I managed to raise $200 and this year I’m looking to break that goal and up it by $50, bringing the grand total to $250. It is a huge goal for me I realize what with all of the economic issues going on right now – but I’m still going to try, even if I don’t make it.

Why?

Well, that’s the easy part. First of all I absolutely love to write, and I really love the creativity that I see from other people. It inspires me, and motivates me. November will be a trying month, and what better way to convince myself to sit down and finish my novel then to actually have people who believe in me and sponsor me, donating money for a fantastic cause. These donations will spur me on, and inspire me to complete my novel.

If you’d like to please help me out and donate, then head over to my donations page here. Everything is tax deductible, and you can also get soem goodies from donating. I’m going to be writing about my progress here on my personal web site, and when the story is completed I’ll be sending it out to anyone who would like a copy.

If NaNoWriMo is something you think you may want to take part in then be sure to register over on the official site, and let me know! I’m always interested in seeing who is giving it a go, and reading their work if I can by the end of it. You can also check my word count progress at the end of the month by searching for me on the NaNoWriMo web page, my user name is MorrowS.

I’m so excited about this year, it’s going to be fantastic, I can already tell.

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