As you grow older it seems close friends are harder and harder to find. I’m 27 now and since some years ago I’ve tried to connect with new people, searching for a deeper relationship than just gossip talk and shopping but it’s like a dead end most of the time. I’m a person who prefers a few very close friends rather than many friends you don’t really know that well. But when my best friends moved away I felt very lonely and thought for myself, there’s got to be more amazing people around the corner. Of course there are! But when I’ve tried to make new friends it often turns out that I’m the only one making an effort. Then screw it. I spoke to some friends about this and found out I’m far from alone having a hard time reaching out to new friends. As we grow older we tend to shut ourselves inside shells with thicker and thicker walls around. Maybe it’s because we’re afraid to get hurt. But you have to get hurt to win. You have to be brave too, to win the trust of others.

Now, I’m much more relaxed about it all. Maybe we should spend more time with ourselves instead of hunting friends, even if that’s so important too. But I mean, how often do you appreciate just being with You? If we get to know ourselves and becomes comfortable and secure we might more easily let strangers through our walls. :)

I went for a walk in the forest with my camera today. Sweden is so beautiful now with all the snow! I can stand the cold if it is like this more often during the winter instead of the rain and darkness.

People have angst before new year. Everybody’s wondering where they’re gonna be?!  what they’re gonna do?! Panic! And it just has to be a big fancy party with glittery people an expensive dresses. That’s not how I like it, I use to celebrate with just a few friends, eating together and freaking out happily as ever. Same this year, and instead of going on about how great it was I will show you how much I appreciate them. :) (Thanks Mikael for the great photos!)

Marcus and me trying to copy World of Warcraft dances, ha ha!

Yesterday I went to town with Elina and her adorable puppy Pixel. We we’re walking in a small park called Vasaparken and there was some really lovable outside art. I especially loved the lampshades, they made me think of Amelie from Montmartre, my favourite film. I like the feeling these art works brought to me and I’ve tried to make it show through the photos.

You can find my photos in  larger size at my Flickr.

When me and Christopher were riding the tram home on Friday night some foreign looking people got on as well. They looked like they were a family of mum, dad and some sisters age 14-20 maybe. They seemed to be having a good time together so nothing strange at first. But then the girls started to ask people for money, putting a Mc Donalds’ cup under their noses. The oldest looking girl came up to us and asked Christopher for money, not in a sad pleading way just “Can you give me money?!”. When he said no she asked “Why?”, said something in her own language and laughed at him. The man had a guitar but he didn’t play. Maybe if they actually did something creative people  would have given them money but they just kept being rude, putting the cups up in your face. What I first reacted on when they started to ask for money was that the girl’s jacket looked more expensive than mine. Ha ha. No one of them had trashy clothes.

Funny thing was that the next morning they got off from the same tram as us in the city. They had their cups and started to ask for money. But now with sad faces. The older girl even asked us again, we just laughed at her. What a theatre! I just wanted to slap them really hard.

Dear diary, I think I’m having a game crisis, not just any games but mmorpg’s (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game). Oh this is serious I tell you, because I can’t decide whether I shall play Aion or World of Warcraft. Can you imagine what I go through every evening when I sit down with my computer to play! Aion is new and fresh, looks beautiful and got some really cool features… but WoW is like a family where I can log in and relax playing with my already max level characters, knowing how almost everything works. I really want to like Aion the best because one of my best friends are there, I just joined the same legion as her and they seem like really nice people too (Thunderbirds thanks for letting me in guys!). Still I feel unsatisfied.

I guess  some of you are calling me pathetic and laughing at me right now. :) I feel silly so go ahead, but this is my hobby just like maybe golf or collecting stamps are yours. For me a hobby is something you really enjoy doing that makes you forget about the sometimes dull every day life, something that makes you smile and feel relaxed. Online games do that for me.

Anyway I will see what happens, which games hooks me up the most. Right now I really need a good game to keep my mind off the stressful paths. A good online game is like a really good book for me, it shall make me want to see what’s next. I love to read as well, I feel empty without a book when riding the tram or when I need a quiet moment. Maybe it’s an escape. I think so but I also believe you need small escapes from reality or you’ll fall apart when bad things happens in life. As a person I am a dreamer, it often helps me but I’ve also been accused of using it as a run away from all kinds of hard decisions, awkward situations etc. You got to find a good balance there.

I think my previous post came out a bit negative, but it was what I really thought. After last weekend’s mini LAN party and this weeks playing I found myself more and more into Aion. Unfortunately the levelling has been slow, at the LAN the actual partying took over the playing. <*_*> But we made it into the first instance.

 Nochsana Training Camp (NTC), where you can go between lvl 25-28, is just a training camp where the main goal seems to be practicing and getting a lot of xp! We didn’t get any loot at all from the bosses, some says you got to beat a time limit for it to drop. I’m not sure. At first we screwed up badly, simply because we rushed things and wasn’t careful. So stupid and unnecessary. But when we started to use our brains again it went very smooth. ^_^ Must say it was fun and enough challenging.

Besides instances there are open areas with elite mobs. Just as for an instance you need a group to go there, do quests and kill bosses if you’re lucky to find them. These bosses actually drops nice loot.

I’ve been working with my professions, alchemy and armorsmithing. It costs a lot and the actual crafting part is so boring! You have to do these work orders (repetitive quests) to skill up and it really sucks. I can’t see the fun in buying materials from the vendor and then watch my Cleric slooowly craft 12 items. Have the TV on or something else if you don’t want to drop dead from boredom! Too bad since I really enjoy messing around with professions and other non combat stuff in game. I’m sticking too it anyway since there’s money to make, gear to equip and pots to drink!

It’s been some hours of grinding. I noticed it got me more xp faster then doing solo questing. Though questing gives rewards of course. I’m tired but my brain’s high on sugar, think I will log my Emeline and join my friend Moonlit who just reactivated his account after a weeks absence! Such a betrayal from his side, he plays a Templar (the tanking class) so he’s needed like blood in our veins. Yesterday we were looking for a templar the whole day without luck. <-_-> He he back into the desert of Salintus!

Emeline, Asmodian Cleric at Castor server EU.

So I’ve reached level 24 and before I enter the first instance or even experience the pvp in The Abyss I shall do a very short review. Why? Because today I started to think about why I play Aion instead of World of Warcraft. Is it really an upgrade of game experience and of fun? Let’s see…

Graphics: Oh yes, do I have to talk about the obvious? The characters are gorgeous, the gear actually looks like the fabric they’re made of. Though I can’t say I love how the environment graphics looks like, some stuff are excellent work like plants you gather, but the ground and trees feels flat and stiff.

Servers: The queues are gone! At least at Castor-EU. The first week or two it was over an hour waiting time and up to seven at some servers.

Quests: Nothing new here! You kill, you gather… just because some NPC dude is too lazy to do it himself. Sometimes you get to see a short film sequence, yay!

Crafting: There’s six professions and so far that I know you can be a master in two of them but still learn all of them. But if you got a life beside Aion don’t even bother for more than two, or even one! Skilling up is a pain in the ass, it takes a lot of time, you have to do Work Orders (quests) over and over again. If you’re lucky you get one skill up for every six crafts or so and you can fail, which means you loose all the material used for that item. I really really don’t like the way they made this, the fun in crafting is no where to be found!

Gathering: For this you use a skill called Extracting. You extract vitality from ores, plants and aether in the sky. To keep your skill up to date with the area you’re questing in you gotta gather everything you see. It takes time and slows down the questing. A positive thing is that it yields experience.

Economy: The in game currency is called Kinah. This is already pretty fucked up I think due to the oh so high population of gold sellers. The first thing you do when you log into the game is to block all the gold sellers in general chat so you actually can read what normal players say. Then you have to block whispers, mail and they even use Private Store for commercial. I thought WoW had problems with them but this is insane.

Private Store: This thing I love! Wherever and whenever you can put up your own little shop and sell what’s in your inventory for a price you choose. Players can brows your wares and buy what they need on the spot. Awesome!

Play style: It’s ok but a little stiff. World of Warcraft got a smoother feeling. Maybe gets better when you have played more.

I must admit so far I haven’t found a lot that makes this an upgrade. Feel free to prove me wrong! :) I’m awfully tired now so can’t come up with anything more to say about Aion. This weekend me and two friends will be playing together, drinking Captain Morgan’s and exploring pvp and the first instance. I’ll tell you more after that!

Here’s some of my Aion screenshots.

So I’m in the middle of playing Aion Open Beta at the moment and will try to give you a summary of my first impressions. Aion is an online multiplayer game which takes place in a fantasy world. I wont say more about basic game facts, read for yourself at Aiononline.com.

Before reading on you should know I’ve only reached lvl 11 with my Elyos Chanter so far and tested a mage to lvl 5. I will also compare alot with World of Warcraft (WoW) since that’s been my main game for a couple of years now. I’m not a hardcore player now so I’m not gonna inspect every detail through a magnifier, if you want that move along! Here comes some plus and minus about Aion so far:

+ There’s alot of options when choosing the look of your character, almost every feature can be customized in detail.
+ You can customize your gear to look like you want it. That’s awesome! One thing I hate about WoW is that everybody looks the same. Their gear designers are amazingly lazy, or uninspired.
+ They actually pronounce their spells as they cast them.
+ Many quest mobs with pretty fast respawn, I found it easy to get my quests done even with lots of players in the same area. In WoW you often have to fight over the mobs you want when it’s crowded.
+ You don’t get interrupted so easily (if all?) when casting a spell and fighting as you do in WoW.
+ The emotes are vivid and fun, if you want you can buy more emotes from a vendor in the city.
+ The steering of the character are smooth and easy to get used to, it’s much like in WoW.
+ Both the world and the characters are beautiful! Very good work there.

It’s easy to go blind by beauty, but let’s not…
- It takes too long to start up the game. I’m an unpatient girl!
- Throughout the open beta it’s been trouble connecting to the server at login, when it fails it shuts down the game so you have go through the start up again! The same thing if you’re afk for too long. Why not just send you to login page? Hope they fix this.
- When talking to an NPC to recieve or return a quest it’s alot of clicking through dialogue. In WoW you click two times and it’s done. In Aion you click like three or four times. I know this might not be like a huge issue, but as I said I’m unpatient! I want the work done without all the small talk. Hehe…
- As in many other mmo’s I’ve tried the spell icons are much alike each other and in a stressfull moment kinda hard to tell apart. With this WoW is great, the icons are so colourfull and rich with contrasts and clear motives.
- When looting items that binds on pick up a confirm box pops up and asks if you really want to loot that. That’s a good thing when you’re in a group but it even does so when single playing! It’s retarded and annoying, haven’t found a way to disable it. Grrr!
- I almost drowned the other day, apparently you can’t swim! I find it a bit odd. Maybe you learn it later or something?

Summary of my feelings about the game:
I adore the characters and the game is fun so far. I feel more connected with my character in Aion than I do in WoW. The NPC’s have more of a personality here. Through playing WoW for such a long time I’ve developed a laziness when it comes to questing, I’m used to know everything or at least have a guide that does the boring work for me. I need a slap and a wake up! Aion here I come!

(If you wonder about anything special about Aion feel free to post a comment and ask, I will try to check it out in game.)

As some might know I work at the amusement park Liseberg in Gothenburg, and tonight Maia Hirasawa was playing at the big scene. I’ve never really heard her so I went to listen. What a beautiful voice she has! I liked the music, don’t know what genre I should put it in but I decided to call it fairy tale pop. :)

Anyway, it’s not the music I wanted to write about so much but what happened when about five teens ran to the front and started to dance happily to the song… That’s a good thing on a concert don’t you think? Well, the security guard didn’t think dancing was very appropriate so he quickly walked up to them and raised his hand against them, making them move back and sit down. What the hell?! Okey the rest of the audience was sitting down or standing calmly but what damage did this teens really do?

When the song was over Maia Hirasawa thanked those who danced and told them it was beautiful. She also asked if there was some new strange religion going on that forbid people to dance, or simply some mysterious rule of Liseberg? Way to go! She was so straight forward but still charming, I really hope that guard was ashamed! It felt very Swedish… like “sit down and behave yourself”.

Maia Hirasawa Official Website
Maia Hirasawa on Myspace

Christopher bought Playstation 3 Slim today, so now we’ve spent the evening playing ‘Little Big Planet’. I must say I’m impressed and amazed! It feels very “alive” and you just gotta love those little sack people! The textures are made of natural materials like fabrics, wood, paper and sponge. That gives the environment a soft feeling.

As you play your way through the world you find items such as clothes, stickers and other rewards which you can use to e g dress yourself up as a zebra (as I did of course)! You can also decorate your home with the stickers. We made ours into a jungle flower house. Very cozy, he he.

Playing together really got me laughing out loud. Me and Christopher cooperated through some games and it wasn’t easy! First, you gotta stick together because if someone is left behind that poor little sack people will die shortly after it leaves the visible area of the screen. Then, you gotta cooperate e g to drag and push items, hold something down until your partner gets up and so on. Sometimes you have a time limit and then it’s really tricky to run fast forward and still stick together when jumping and grabbing things all the time. But oh so much fun! I’m much more into PC games normally so the controls got me jumping around like a maniac, dying many many times. Frustrating! But once you get used to that, and it’s not hard, it’s one of the funniest games I ever played. We’ll see if it stays that way when I’ve played it some more.