So I participated in the Aion beta this weekend. Overall I was happy with it. I started off with a scout->ranger, but when I got to level 11, they had only given me two ranged attacks and I wasn’t in the mood to switch my weapons to use my melee attacks or kite each mob for two minutes to kill it, so I leveled up my mage->spiritmaster, caught up (well pretty much) to Amber and enjoyed it much more even though we were both so squishy. Hopefully the characters get carried over to the next beta, when I’ll actually get my ranger to level 16 (lots of new abilities) and see if I like it a bit better. I also played a warrior for like an hour to level 5. She’ll eventually be a templar.

Character creation was tons of fun, and I wish I’d spent more time in there. I didn’t mess with any males or elyos. The only problem was that the eye color choice seemed to have disappeared from the pictures on the aionwiki. Hopefully that will be back for live.

Started leveling with millions of other people. I kept getting dced, but even with tons of people there were enough mobs in the starting area. The Angelica (a gatherable item needed for a quest) was a bit harder to find.

Died a lot, but apparently that’s par for the course in Ncsoft games. Even with both Amber and I, we had lots of deaths. More than seemed right, even for clothies. But then there’s nothing wrong with a little challenge. Ended at level 17.

A few suggestions (and gripes) about the gameplay:

Inventory system: Too small. Started with 24 slots (or about that) In 17 levels I was able to upgrade my “cube” twice giving me about 40 slots. There were 15-20 gatherable items, some of which had a ‘fresh’ version. Health and mana potions had instant and hot versions. Bandages, powder for health and mana, crystals to rez group members. Not to mention the millions on millions of manastones and the dropped crafting items. Most of the time I had maybe 16 slots free when I headed out of town.

Chat: Default colors are horrible. But since they’re easily changable it was not a huge deal. However, no shaded background behind the text made it hard to read at times. The profanity filter is stupid and lazy. My friends and I couldn’t even understand each other before we turned it off. No general chat channels made it feel very secluded. Even though people were running by all the time it didn’t really feel like they were there. The lack of some sort of way to ask questions to the general population was just a downside for me.

Crafting: While I find it fascinating the detail and complexity, let’s go back to the issue of inventory space. When I went to craft, I needed to put all my non-crafting things in the bank. Gatherables + extra crafting materials + resulting material + chance of special resulting material + patterns you can’t learn and extra materials from the crafting request quests. I NEED BAG SPACE. I also forgot to check if it’s possible to do any crafting when you’re not standing next to those complexly animated tables.

Gear: Everything is basically the same shape. Some of the helms were pretty ugly, but then I’ve always been one to hide my helm anyway, since I like actually seeing my character. Call items boe when they are. The whole “Can’t be put here, can’t be traded, can’t be put there” is too long and messy. Having space for two sets of weapons, however, is win.

Travel: Not being able to autorun is HORRIBLE. Point and click is NOT a worthy replacement. Also, there has to be a faster way to get places. Can’t fly, and most of the time going TO a place was uphill, so no gliding. (I can hearth back.) Plus as a SM, my spirit doesn’t move when I glide, nor can he get off cliffs, and barring all that he agros things I fly over and more often than not unsummons himself.

Also why don’t fps connect? If the teleport and flight systems are going to be separate, at least connect all the fps to each other, and all the teleports to each other. Also, when I say I want to go somewhere, I don’t want to have to THEN say that I want to spend the money. I saw how much it cost when I clicked on it. Just take the darn money.

Flying: Bit of a learning curve, but not bad. I don’t understand why there isn’t the ability to glide to the ground when your flight time is up. Seems unnecessarily annoying that your wings just disappear and you’re left for dead if you’re too high.

Fighting: There’s no indication of when you’re in battle or not. You can be in your fighting stance and not actually in battle, or out of your fighting stance and in battle. At least they added a little message when a mob chasing you gave up, but it doesn’t always seem to work. And again with the pet thing, there’s no passive mode. If something hits me, away my spirit goes even if I’m running away.

Mobs: Mau are OP. Nerf plz. Mobs spawn and immediately attack. So many deaths to things spawning on me, and hitting my squishy self before I knew they were there.

Gathering: Really? An equippable item to see gatherables? Guess you’re not big on people actually questing AND looking for things to gather. Plus the inability to even attempt to gather when you have no extra slots (even when you already have that gatherable in your bag) because of the chance of that “extra special” version is dumb. NEED MORE BAG SPACE FOR ALL THIS STUFF.

Asking if we want to pick up quest items when in a group is stupid and it wastes time. I have never pressed no, and I can think of no situation where I would. The point of a group is that everyone gets everything eventually.

Turning in place should not cancel casting/gathering/living.

Certain quest items that just sit out in the world need to respawn faster or not despawn when picked up. It’s a huge bottleneck and just annoys the heck out of groups.

Mana: There is no way of regaining mana that does not have a cooldown. Make it only usable out of battle, but mana should not be this annoying of an issue. It was an absolute nightmare until we actually got the ways to regen it at all (level 14?).

Really? DP only lasts for the duration of your log on and yet the game tells us to go take a break every hour? L-O-L

So Otakon was this past weekend. While we continued the tradition of going to an anime con and not watching any anime (AMVs don’t really count) we still had fun. We sort of see Otakon as just a big excuse to get friends together, which gives some sort of background event such that we don’t have to actually plan out the entirety of the weekend.

So we hit up artist’s alley and the dealer’s room for much of the weekend, while spending a few hours just in the hotel room making fun of some ghost hunter show. Ah the human connection.

Loot:

Yet another Saber figure (How I love thee…) one of C.C. from Code Geass (She’s the one with green hair), Kaori from A Certain Magical Index (In the purple box). And those little pink boxes are figures from Shugo Chara!

Kinda self explanatory with the names on the side there. Didn’t get as much manga as I would’ve liked though.

Link x2 and Vincent! Along with a commission of my original character Tiffany and a Shugo Chara! art book.

So we do 10-man Ulduar on the off-nights of raiding. Meant to be Tuesday and Wednesday, it ends up stretching to Sunday and Monday on many occasions. So I still go. I work on the bosses, I wipe with everyone else. I spent the four straight weeks of wiping on Mimiron hard mode before the patch, and the almost full week after. Then I go to spend some time on Monday night with my husband, and they down him. Not only that but the one night I missed several weeks back is the night they down Freya hard mode. What am I supposed to take away from this? I try to take a little time for myself and end up missing credit for two of the hardest bosses in the instance.
Not that I think Tant won’t go back to try and get them for me, but it certainly won’t be until Algalon’s down. And very possibly not till after Yogg hard mode is down. I’m sure I’ll wipe on that for a month and then take a day off and miss the kill. In fact I’m almost positive that we’ll down Hodir hard mode this week on Saturday, which I’m taking off to go to a friend’s wedding.
At this point I’m really just sick of this. I mean what else am I working on this game for except to down bosses. If I miss that, then what is the point? Why even play the game?

One of my favorite series of all time is over. After a lousy two seasons that weren’t even proper seasons. The first season got cut short as the writer’s block ended it horribly off kilter. And then the show was canceled for who knows what reason?

Pushing Daisies was a show that didn’t take itself seriously and had a ball doing it. Ned, the Pie Maker and proprietor of The Pie Hold, had the power to bring the dead back to life with a touch, and then return them to death forever with another touch. The catch? If the ‘dead’ stays alive for more than a minute, another life of approximately equal wight will die in its place. (ie: person for person, crow for pigeon, cockroach for bee)

Enter Charlotte Charles, or Chuck to her friends, Ned’s childhood friend who died at sea. Ned brought her back to find out how she died, a lucretive business he is in with Emerson Cod, (More on him later.) and found himself unable to lose her again. But now, even though they’re in love, they can’t touch lest Chuck return to the dead.

Add Emerson Cod, a PI with a love of money, a secret daughter, Olive the waitress who is in love with Ned, horses, and breaking into song to express her feelings, Chuck’s two estranged aunts, the retired Darling Mermaid Darlings, who have social phobias and an obsession with cheese, along with a wonderful supporting cast of other ridiculously colorful characters and you have a show that…well just shouldn’t have been canceled.

Spoilers past this point!

So, while I don’t blame the writers for the ending of the show, and they did their best to wrap up as many of the dangling storylines in the last three episodes as they could, so much was left with no answer. Here is where I will list the questions and/or observations I have about the show that will forever be left unaddressed.

1) Digby, the golden retriever that Ned had when a child, who was with him through thick and thin, even after being run over by a car. Though the show tells us how old Digby was when he died, I don’t remember it, still he was fully grown when Ned was 10 and is still alive in present story not even looking old. This brings up my suspicion that whoever Ned brings back to life stops aging and/or is possibly unable to die. Most of the people Ned brings back have died of some condition that made living impossible, yet they are ‘alive’ for the minute he gives them. Are they immune to the damage inflicted before they’re ‘alive-again’? They are never in pain, just sometimes shocked. I was fully expecting an episode where Chuck got shot, or otherwise should’ve been dead, but ended up no worse for the wear.

2) Sewer smelling guy (I’m horrible with names) seemed like he was going to be important. He was able to tell something was wrong by the smell of Chuck and Digby, but with the writer’s strike I think the impact he was going to have on the series was cut short. How much does he really know?

3) Ned and Olive went off a cliff and it was reviled that it was Ned’s father who saved them. The same father who stuck his child in a boarding school after his mother’s death and then went off and got another family. Does he know anything about this power? Could it be inherited? Why would he abandon his child and just get another family, who he then in turn abandoned as well.

4) Chuck tricked Ned into keeping her 10 years dead father alive. More spunky than Chuck, he tries to convince her to leave Ned and eventually leaves the main cast to be on his own. (This adds to the suspicion about the no more aging thing, as 10-year-old corpses usually don’t just…stabilize?) It was clear he loved Chuck, so there’s no way he would just disappear forever.

5) Then of course are the cliff hangers they ended with on the last episode. Chuck reveling herself as alive to her mother and aunt. (Seriously, what is that going to do for their tour to Europe?) Emerson having his ‘daughter’? find him. Olive and her new relationship with the taxidermy guy. (Of whom I would not have minded seeing more.)

Either way, RIP to a fabulous show, the like of which we will probably never see again.