Autumn reflections

It's quite ironic that in my last blog, I was celebrating the return of Nocturne, whereas here I'll be observing its closure on 11/11/10. Its owner, the ever-talented Nedria, is pulling back from SL significantly as she migrates toward InWorldz. She will likely recreate Nocturne there, as IW is now growing w/ SL ex-pats. I will probably not be joining the staff there, however.

There are many who love IW and are proclaiming it to be the successor state of SL as the pundits proclaim the approaching demise of Linden Labs's experimental little world we have here. I will admit I do have an IW account, and have had one for a while, and I will agree it's essentially SL 4 years ago. Kind of. It's actually less stable than I remember the old grid being, but it DOES feature the crappy graphics and crude blocky builds from back before I got a decent computer able to keep up w/ the demands of WindLight.

I have invested far too much in SL, not just in terms of inventory, but in the purchase of actual hardware to finally get to see the SL everyone else was raving about and taking those great pictures of. Besides, I flat don't get the appeal of going back to inferior performance. In my visits to IW, I did not recapture that sense of wonder that SL had back in the early days. All I found was frustration and annoyance.

Similarly, I have an account in Blue Mars, and for all the (empty) hype about how squee-tastically fabulous it was, frankly, I thought it sucked. I checked in on it a few wks ago. It still sucks. The only change is my utter loss of respect for the squee-ing bloggers who were raving about it (Iris, Hamlet, really? I thought you guys had taste). SL was my first experience w/ virtual reality worlds and was sort of my gateway drug to MMORPG's, but when, IF, Second Life does expire, well, I'll probably get busy reclaiming my First Life. I will still be active with Guild Wars, and the upcoming Guild Wars 2, but neither IW nor Blue Mars are interesting to me. There is, however, a great world just beyond the window to my study that probably deserves more of my time.

Fall is falling!

And so I suddenly find myself with a bit of free time (shockingly) to actually do a blog entry! I"m astonished. Lots of new clubs added to the mix, and I've been sold at auction for Bid4aCure to help fund new research into eliminating diabetes.

I'm looking at adding a calendar to the site so I can refer folks here to check my schedule. I've set up a Google calendar and hopefully by the time you've read this, I'll have figured out how to add it to the blog. I've been more active in world lately, but I've been horribly remiss in posting my misadventures there.

Lemme see...Nocturne's back up and running, so I"m DJ'ing there in my old slot 6-8 PM. It's hard building up the crowds at that time (It's a little early for most), but much later causes me trouble in RL the next morning, since that's 8-10 PM in my time zone and Friday involves a 100 mile commute each way as I hit my most distant locale. I've also assumed the Twisted Tuesdays show at IGBC, desperately trying to fill Cooper's shoes as she takes over Wicked Wednesdays. And of course, I'm still kicking around in Eternity, at least as a minstrel if not much in the RP anymore.

Eternity's moving to a RP hud that I personally don't care for, but to each his/her/its own. It has sort of left me on the sidelines of most of the RP, but if the greater good benefits from SpellFire, then so be it. And so I sink back into the role of Enigmatic Figure Who Moves Mysteriously About On the Fringes.

That's preferable to me over the constant eating that I find problematic in SpellFire. You have a constantly degrading nourishment score for eating and drinking, kind of like a fuel tank. In my case, I find that my first-level character's fuel tank is so tiny I can't do much more than cruise around the proverbial parking lot of the gas station while waiting to level up enough that I can actually go somewhere and do something. That's frustrating to me. I'd rather not mess with it, even if that means I'm disqualified from most of the RP. I tried it several times and gave up in disgust when I couldn't walk from my house to the nearest tavern to at least get some conversation in while I sat and ate. And I drowned at every sim crossing b/c I ended up stuck under the water. That didn't help either. I have 4 sims to cross to get to the tavern. Not gonna happen.

So anyway, that's the news from Arc-Land. Now, to see if I can attach that calendar...

June rolls on

I kinda have a tendency to be a workaholic. The beautiful irony is that my player started SL due to the fact that his RL job had pretty much eaten his soul. So, at the direction of others already in SL, he jumped in there to try to find the missing bits, which created me. Who has become a workaholic DJ who pretty much only logs in to perform gigs. Ya can't outrun yourself, I guess; no matter where you run to, there you are right in the middle of your hideout.

This has been a running battle for me from the beginning. I've been addressing this by tryin' to pull back a little on the 'jobs' in SL and leave myself more time to play, in both SL and RL. So, for those of you wondering where the heck I've been and why so few DJ group notices, well, I've been taking a break. I"m about ready to put the headphones back on now (there's only so much rest I can tolerate), so rest assured I'll be cluttering up your inbox again really soon, but for this second, I'm luxuriating in actually NOT being tied to the virtual DJ booth so much. Although if I stay Primal like this here, I might have some trouble fitting the headphones around the antlers.

Fun with arrows...

OK, yeah, my last post was really pretty bummed out. I still agree w/ it; banking on making it rich in SL is up there w/ telling your high school guidance counselor that your career goal is to win the lottery. However, that bugs me less today.

In the interim, I've increased my presence in Eternity, an 18-sim fantasy kingdom w/ some of my favorite people in SL occupying it. I've been a part of the kingdom for years, but always as simply a semi-ooc service provider as the regular DJ for recurrent events there, but I just never had much time to get more involved than that. Well, until recently. It started innocently enough; I was killing time after a gig and got invited to check out the archery pit.

Quick aside: I'm running nowadays on a much, much spiffier gamer system than I had for the first few years I was in SL. And in that span, I played in Toxian (which is a favorite hangout of the Lag Monster). I'm used to fighting through crushing lag (2 fps was normal, less than 1 was not uncommon. 10 was downright luxurious). And since getting the new system, oddly, I've NOT done any combat in SL.

Combat on a system that gets 30+ fps in High Graphics Mode is a LOT different from what I'm used to. I kicked the archery gallery's butt :D.

So, I introduce you now to the latest Elven Archer of the Rangers of Eternity. Not sure I'll have free time to RP there in every storyline that comes up, but then again, I've always been happiest w/ Arc as Entertaining Supporting Cast Member rather than Leading Man, so it all works for me. I haven't been in-world at all this week; lately I've been hitting the grid one day out of 5 due to an active RL, but if they can handle my absences, I'm thrilled to be a more regular recurrent character in the ongoing sagas of Eternity.