Vickiepedia

Wow, this took long enough (with many months-long breaks, distracting Zaishen quests and racist encounters in between).

娜奧美[月影] My Guild Hall Smells of Rich Mahogany (5)

I didn’t give the free MMORPG Last Chaos much of a thought when an online friend first posted about it last year, because honestly, the screenshots weren’t particularly impressive and I was already busy with Guild Wars. When she posted again a few days ago about castle sieges (something I really enjoyed in Lineage II that Guild Wars didn’t give me) and marrying another character of the same sex in the game, however, I downloaded it right away!

[Brighter and glowy screenshots are ones with filtering turned on (max); darker and more jagged ones without.]

Game installed fine, ran fine, music and sound effects all zero by default but I immediately had the option to change everything on the character selection screen. So far so good! Until… character creation. (read more…)

If you’re the average Guild Wars gamer who’s English-speaking, white, male, straight, young, doesn’t have a disability and so on, the worst insults that get thrown at you are probably the N word, “fag” or “gay”, and you’d probably go, “Whatevs! I’m not even black / gay.” and move on with your day.

If you’re like the rest of us, particularly those of us who run around with a Chinese character name but are absolutely and obviously not a bot or gold farmer, it’s not uncommon to encounter personal attacks from racists, even in the supposed safety of our own PVE district (Asia – Traditional Chinese).

3 months ago, I had these two Warriors in the Traditional Chinese district of Leviathan Pits, that came doing the taunt, point, shoo and laugh emotes as soon as I mapped in. Bear in mind that players have the complete freedom and choice to travel between any districts of the same area — their intentions were clear.

(read more…)

In Pleasantview, Brandi Broke’s husband died drowning in a “suspicious pool ladder accident” in the family backyard. Dina Caliente is dating Mortimer Goth for his money. Womaniser Don Lothario is going to marry Cassandra Goth for hers, all the while being in multiple simultaneous romantic relationships. Daniel Pleasant is having an extramarital affair with the maid, Kaylynn Langerak, who is in turn one of Don Lothario’s lovers.

And that’s only part of the default story. I know.

Over in Strangetown, the Beaker couple allegedly performs strange experiments on a Sim handily named Nervous Subject. Pollination Technician 9, the Smith family father, is an extraterrestrial alien with green skin who has fathered more children than he cared to remember. Pascal Curious, a man, is in his third trimester with an alien baby. Olive Specter has an alarming number of dead ex-husbands and tombstones in her backyard, and an even more alarming memory of having sex with the Grim Reaper.

Oh yeah, the Grim Reaper. I know.

There’s also the easily accessible Criminal career; many, many ways to deliberately kill a Sim should we so feel like it; PlantSims, ghosts, vampires, robots, werewolves, witches, zombies… most of which exist by default whether we like or believe in them or not.

And that’s what makes this game extra fun. I know.

Now let me conveniently overlook the fact that Sims are either asexual or heterosexual by default; but they’d better not call gay marriage “marriage” and make it as fulfilling as straight marriages in The Sims 3, because oh no, that would be so wrong and unnatural, you know!

(Note: Entry originally written in March 2009, 3 months before The Sims 3 was released, when someone replied in the official forum saying that teh gheyz that is us should be satisfied with our getting “joined” / civil union option that rewards less aspiration points than male-female marriages in The Sims 2. I’m sure most of us applaud EA for at least giving us that possibility; but it’s simply not good enough!

The Sims 3 has now been out for 3 months. It acknowledges all marriages as “marriages”, and AI-controlled Sims would become partners with another AI-controlled Sim of the same sex if the players let them experience it.

Unrelated, but I’m disappointed that they took out the tickling interaction between adults, though.)

Aidan and Zho first met possibly in Kaineng Center, standing just within earshot of each other. There was no evidence of them interacting then and they went on separate ways later on, one off to befriend the Luxons and the other the Kurzicks.

A few years later, however, on our trips to various lands with tall folks who think we’re tiny, tiny folks who think we’re smelly, and smelly folks who are usually our enemies, Aidan and Zho got closer. (read more…)