A lazy fangirl’s summary of events.

Wow, I’ve been planning to post about a lot of stuff, but I kept putting everything off until I completely forgot about them, hahaha. I’ll just try to summarize everything that I’ve forgotten to post about here.

• I bought myself a few model kits: 1/144 Gundam Dynames, 1/144 Blitz Gundam, and an SD Gundam Sazabi. I managed to put Dynames and Sazabi together, but I’m still in the process of assembling Blitz.
• Have I mentioned that Dragon Age: Origins is awesome? Oh yeah, I have. I have a couple of screenshots uploaded at my GamerDNA page. In relation to that, I’m in love with Alistair. Then again, a lot of people are. Check out how many fan communities he already has, LOL. There’s also an Alistair fanlisting coming up over at TFL.org. And no, it’s not mine…but the fanlisting for Dragon Age: Origins itself is. Muahahaha.
• Now that I’ve withdrawn my money from the limbo of Paypal, I’ve been thinking about buying an Xbox 360. When I read some articles on the care and feeding of an Xbox, however, I started having second thoughts. I’ll think about it a little more. Maybe the games that I want to play (like Fable 2, @#%!$@%@#%) might be worth it.
• I’ve been playing Hatsune Miku: Project Diva and Warriors Orochi 2 on my PSP. Miku’s adorable, and Orochi is still crack-tastic.
• I watched Disney’s A Christmas Carol with the boyfriend last week. Like I said in one of my Tweets, the visuals were amazing, but it was still a pretty standard adaptation of the original story. I like how it was a bit creepier than the kiddie-fied versions of it that I’ve seen. Some parts involving the Ghost of Christmas Present were disturbing, and the way they depicted the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as a literal shadow was cool.

I think that’s about it– oh wait.

I quit World of Warcraft.

Yeah. I guess I got tired of my routine of doing dailies and farming Battlegrounds in between…that, and I found some other games to have fun with other than WoW. It’s only temporary though; I’ll most likely be back next year.

By Andraste’s Holy Knickers, Dragon Age is awesome.

Apart from my faulty internet connection, there is one big reason why I haven’t been online much and why my WoW characters have been gathering cobwebs this week: Dragon Age: Origins.

In Dragon Age: Origins, players can create a unique-looking character (details such as eye size and distance, jaw and chin width, and nose height can be customized) that they will play as throughout the game. Players can choose their character’s gender, class, and “origin” story. There are six different origin stories to choose from, each with their own separate settings and plots.

While the six origin stories differ, the main plot of the game remains the same. The main character is somehow drafted into the Grey Wardens, a group of warriors whose goal is to defeat demonic creatures called darkspawn.

There are three character classes in Dragon Age: Warrior, Mage, and Rogue. Each class has four different specializations (e.g. Templar and Berserker for Warriors, Duelist and Bard for Rogues, Blood Mage and Shapeshifter for Mage) that players will have to unlock by either finding trainer NPCs or purchasing the right item from a merchant.

In combat, players can pause the game to queue up their party members’ actions, and can also assign Tactics for each party member. Tactics work much like how Gambits in Final Fantasy XII work; you assign actions for each character that will be executed automatically if certain conditions are met (e.g. players can assign characters to use a healing item if their health drops below a certain percentage).

Plot-wise, Dragon Age is a typical BioWare fantasy epic; the protagonist gets dragged out of their normal life and winds up having to save the world while picking up some comrades along the way. The characters themselves are what, for me, make the game more fun. Though also falling under fantasy stereotypes (your party can include a sexy evil sorceress, an exotic male assassin, a big burly warrior, and a drunkard dwarf), the characters have depth and distinct personalities, plus the interactions/dialogues with them are well-written and often amusing.

Your character’s own personality isn’t measured by a morality gauge or by the usual Dungeons and Dragons alignment system; you are free to make your own choices when it comes to the various scenarios that involve a major decision. You can choose to save a clan of elves from cursed werewolves or aid the werewolves in slaughtering the elves. You can choose to help drive off a merchant who sells items to poor folk at outrageously opportunistic prices, or help him out to get your own share of profit. The closest thing to a moral compass you’ll have is your party’s approval. Certain actions and decisions will increase or decrease your approval rating with your party members. Things like murder and underhanded scheming will often amuse “evil” characters like Morrigan or Zevran, but will offend the “nice” characters like Alistair or Leliana.

I have quite  a few characters, but I’ve only finished the game twice using a City Elf rogue and a Human Noble rogue. The City Elf rogue was my first character, so her “personality” wasn’t well-planned out since I was seeing everything for the first time. My Human Noble rogue is a goody-two-shoes type who tries her best to do what’s best for everyone without having to resort to anything underhanded. Now I’m playing as a slightly psychotic Elf mage who seems to have a penchant for murdering people and making deals with demons to get what she wants. With all the various options and possible outcomes in the game, I have a feeling I’ll be playing this game for a long time just to see all the possibilities.

Though I’m having fun with my mage, I seem to have developed quite a fondness for rogues. I’ve been thinking about drafting a Rogue guide since there aren’t a lot of Dragon Age guides around…but we’ll see.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my quest to defile Andraste’s ashes so that I can unlock the Reaver specialization.

Crusaders and pirates and dwarves! Oh my!

So many things happened in WoW this week that I don’t know what to talk about first, LOL.

Weeping for a Fallen Crusader

I never liked Crusader-type characters. You know, the Tirion Fordring type who believes in the goodness of all and the Light and whatever else the goody-two-shoes like. They just seem so…unbelievable to me. Like it was just a front, or they were brainwashed to be like that, or whatever.

Crusader Bridenbrad, a member of the Argent Crusade who chose to isolate himself from everyone upon learning that he was infected by the Plague, was…different somehow. He seemed more sincere, more noble, and more worth my trust and affection. Call me a shallow softie, but his quest chain had me in tears toward the end. I’m not the only one who shed tears for Bridenbrad though. RIP, noble Crusader.

Chain Heroics and learning the ropes of Survival

Earlier last week, I did some chain Heroics with my guildmates (that’s a few of them up there dressed up as dwarves and dancing with my Hunter). We were at it for a really long time, and it was around 7am my time when we were done. I forgot which dungeons we ran, but I do remember that we did Gun’drak and Trial of Champions. One of our guildmates, a more experienced Survival Hunter, helped me out by giving me tips on shot rotations and about my pet…and he even Enchanted my equipment, gave me some gems, and gave me half the gold I needed to learn Artisan Flying. Yes, my guildmates are generous like that, haha.

Pirate’s Day and Brewfest

Not much to do on Pirate’s Day, but it was fun to run around in a pirate costume for a while. I accidentally removed Captain Demeza’s buff though, so I didn’t get to run around in costume for very long.

I don’t drink in real life (I seriously don’t drink anything with alcohol in it…well, fine, I taste some of them, but I don’t down entire glasses), but Brewfest is an awful lot of fun. The music’s kind of catchy too, and the goblins’ chatter is kind of funny (“I can’t feel my legs!” “I can’t see!”). My only problems with Brewfest are random disconnections and horrible lag when I go to Orgrimmar’s Brewfest grounds.

That aside, I think the game somehow made it up to me by letting me win the roll when the Great Brewfest Kodo dropped while my guildmates and I were trying to complete the “Save Brewfest!” quest and the Direbrewfest achievement.

I really need to get me some more mounts.

We’ll continue farming Coren Direbrew throughout the remainder of Brewfest, so hopefully even more members of our guild will be riding on Brewfest mounts soon.

Dead or Alive Extra Figure: Kasumi Special feat. Yamashita Shunya (Sega Prize)

I just bought myself a Dead or Alive Extra Figure: Kasumi Special feat. Yamashita Shunya figure by Sega. This was originally a UFO catcher/claw machine prize, but I bought it in a local toy shop last weekend.

While this figure features Kasumi in one of her alternate costumes, another version of the figure, featuring Kasumi in her signature blue and white costume, was also produced. You can view the figure’s official product page here.

I’m not a fan of Dead or Alive at all; I actually hate the games, but I still think the girls are pretty. This figure is really nice for a “prize” figure, so I just went ahead and bought it.

Most of the other prize figures I’ve seen usually have poorly-made faces, but as you can see above, this figure’s face is quite pretty. Her having a nice face was part of the reason why I wanted to buy her in the first place.

More pictures (and comments) below!

Recent World of Warcraft shenanigans

Lots of amusing stuff happened when I played World of Warcraft over the past weeks. I think I should have posted separate entries for this, but I kept on forgetting to.

Dinging level 80 and pwning a guildmate in chat

My boyfriend and I were in the process of earning the last few XP points we needed to get to level 80 few weeks back. Just when one of our guildmates whispered me to ask “When are you guys going to get to 80?”, I leveled up.

A case of mistaken identity

I just logged in as my main character, Arinae, when I received a whisper from one of our newer guild members. I never spoke to him before, so I was confused as to why he actually whispered me. Turns out he mistook me for another guildmate’s alt, whose name was “Aernai”.

Going on my first raid

I went on my first ever raid last night with some of my guildmates. We were one man short of a 10-man raid party, but they figured we could still handle it. I died a few times thanks to my lack of experience and failure to understand some of the instructions my guildmates gave me over Ventrilo, but it was pretty fun. We started at around 1:00am and kept at it until around 3:30am though, so I had one heck of a headache afterward. I got lots of equipment upgrades though, so I’m not complaining!

We didn’t get to finish going through Naxx since a lot of us had to go AFK a few times and some of us had more important things to attend to (like sleep and having to leave for work), so we’re going to finish it tonight.