hoorai!

MY LIFE FOR THE HORDE!

Shaman is the most depressing class in the World of Warcraft, and people who play as a shaman will constantly ask a philosophy question: "What the hell am i supposed to do?"

My character in WOW:

world of warcraft trading card game tournament

I am not a huge fun of trading card game. Trading card games are strategy "duel" card games when two players use their own monster cards, spell cards, trap cards, etc to fight against each other. If you spend more money, you can buy more cards and build more powerful deck and win. That's the part of the game I don't like, you have to invest more money to be able to win a card game, which totally misses the purpose of card games: for fun. The only trading card game I have played is two years ago on my computer, a Japanese trading card game called "Yu-ki-wo".

That been said, I am a huge fun of warcraft and its mother company Blizzard Entertainment Inc.. Speaking of loyalty, I started to play Blizzard's game since junior high in China. It was "Warcraft I" and "Warcraft II", and it was the time when Blizzard and warcraft wasn't huge, but I was like "this game was so different that it had real stories behind it" when even now most games are still mainly killing and fighting. Blizzard's games have a culture, which is the key for their company culture and binds the players and employees together. "They will be huge" I thought like a farseer back to the days. A little bit more history, in 1997 they published a game that changes their company's fate, "Starcraft" which wasn't surprised to me. I wasn't addicted thought, after entering college I have tons of schoolwork to do. I only played with friends in pubs once per week. What totally got me addicted are the "Diablo" franchise series they published. They are the first ever real-time role playing games, they are so new and huge. Then the warcraft III in 2001, then they realized they can do a lot more in warcaft. Then the World of warcraft, a game that change the game industry and create a genre called "massively multiple online" role playing game (MMORPG), that has 50 millions active subscribers and that Blizzard's mother company, Vivendi Inc. wrote in their business plan to ask Blizzard "to make games in type of World of Warcraft".

Well that's way off, I am getting there. Now warcraft has come to trading card game, and it has worldwide tornuments very often. $20 dollars for a starting deck and fun is not too bad. If there is one in MS and within 2 hours drive I will certainly attend.
here is the information:
http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/default.aspx

second life

Today I have a feeling that I actually growed up, at the age of almost 26. Today TV CNBC has news about a computer game "second life", which caught my interest since not my computer games go into news section of a big TV channel. 

Check this out secondlife.com

It's a 3D cyber-world which you actually live there: you buy clothes, pay bill and can actually get a full-time job in the game. You are paid by $L which you can cash out into US dollars, that means you can open your business and make money. Indeed, a lot of people has done that. Many big real companies have settled "branches" in the game, like Nissan has put their new Sentra in the game. You can buy land, build home and sell it like real business. Besides all these jazz, to be honest a big part of people join the game for cyber-sex related stuff.

Wait, I still don't get it. Why people spend so much time in a fake world for fun? Is the real world really this boring? I believe I have spent too much time fucking my computer, so I just walk away from this game. 

If I have a second life, I want to be a trader who make trades of future commodity, stocks and forex, while playing poker. That would be fun.   

The Sims 2

My wife Ying comes back from CA for a week and helps me pack and move. We played a very popular computer game "The Sims 2" together for a few hours before she got bored. Then I kept playing, trying to master and beat the game. Unlike other games which are so addictive when they starts and become repetitive after a few hours of playing, "The Sims 2" is the opposite: it does not look exciting at first, but you know there is a long way before you can master it.

The characters in the game are called the sims, who have six stages throughout the whole life-span: baby, toddler, child, teen, adult and elder. Their lives are driven by their "aspiration", and their performance is determined by their "mood". There are seven types of "aspiration" which the player needs to choose when creating a sims: Family, Fortune, Knowledge, Popularity, Romance, Pleasure and Grilled Cheese (Eating many grilled cheese sandwiches). Mood is determined by how well their daily need is filled. It can be interesting when a sims has to go to school when he is full of urine; or a sims needs to sleep so bad that he passes out on a couch in a night club.

You can have babies, with human or,.., err aliens. You can choose the action "try for babies" with another person of opposite sex who is in a love relationship with you, or you can use a telescope and get "abduct" by an alien so that you can have a weird-acting alien baby. Unlike other games in which fun comes automatically to you, "The Sims 2" asks you to explore fun by yourself, which you may or may not like.

Another fun part of the game is that you can open your own business, but that needs other tweaks. There are many videos on youtube about many interesting life stories about different sims. This game is the second best seller of computer games of all time, only next to the original "The Sims".

Even though this game is interesting in all aspects, it lacks one characteristic of an exciting game: addictiveness. But since I will start work soon, I can not get addicted to computer games any more, "The Sims 2" might become a casual fun for me.