MirthBlog - Day 14

Thanks to my friend Kelsaka - The greatest Tailor that was ever known on Infinity,
My interest has been piqued once more towards Dark and Light. This new MMO is now due to launch at the end of May and i must say that for those with an inerest in crafting professions then things are finally looking up.

http://www.darkandlight.net/article.php3?id_article=2336

i played the Beta for a bit - Settlers of Ganarath - but got bored very quickly. The scenery was breathtaking, especially whilst flying above the world on dragonback. The downfall of SoG tho was that the gameplay consisted of hit this monster then the next and the next and the next, etc,etc.......and thats all there was to it if you wanted to level.

I will definately try Dnl now tho, in the hope that the tailoring profession is as enticing as it was in the Star Wars Galaxies of old.
Which reminds me that I must soon recount to you my tales of Infinity and Old Denobia.
but that's a story for another day.

MirthBlog - Day 11 - Raising my game

I've been playing a lot of Eve Online in my spare time, and am doing quite nicely thank you.
The trouble is tho, that for me that's just not enough. So after a lot of forum trolling i have made this fishing post:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=328959

What they don't know, is that soon I intend to take over the universe !
BWAHAHAHAHA

MirthBlog - Day 10

Ok, today a rant !

Comic companies, more precisely the big 2. Marvel and DC.
Why do they insist on constantly publishing these multi-title epics. The "Infinite Crisis" "House of M" and now this " Civil War " thingy.
Can't they see that the events are no longer special or memorable, when they happen every other month.
Also, the writers on the individual titles cannot build proper ongoing storylines with sub-plots to draw in the readers, when they are constantly being interrupted.
I truly believe that in these jaded times , the adventure seeking public would just like the dust to settle for a couple of years, so they can actually define which characters and creators have the true talent and staying power in this new millenium.
You big publishers really ought to give your readers a bit of credit to appreciate great story telling, instead of just seeing how many heroes you can cram into every single panel on every single page.
'nuff said.

MirthBlog - Day 9

Ooops, I missed a day.
Didn't mean to. Haven't really got an excuse either.
I went into Eve Online early in the day to set up skill training, but then after doing RL things for a few hours, I found myself getting totally absorbed by the new Elder Scrolls : Oblivion.

The only thing I don't like about it so far, is "my computer"
I am suffering badly from lag at times , and will actually have to see if I can persevere with the game or not at this time. I have a feeling that if there is a big multi-mob conflict I am going to literally be "left standing" and then be dead on the floor in the next frame. We'll see....

MirthBlog - Day 7 - Origins ( part 5 )

So, I guess that brings us up to date.
Now in 2006, I have Windows XP, 10Mb Broadband and a hard drive that is exponentially bigger than it was 10 years ago.
I am heavily involved in the online roleplaying scene, teaching myself graphics and animation using Photoshop and Imageready, and the Comic collection continues to grow.

MirthBlog - Day 6 - Interlude

Just to be a bit different today, here is a list of my favourite computer games in the last 10 or so years :

3D Monster Maze
Scramble
Little Computer People
Elite
Sim City
Syndicate
Command & Conquer : Red Alert
Eye of the Beholder
Duke Nukem 3D
Dungeon Master
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Age of Empires
Caesar II
Star Trek:TNG- A Final Unity
Mechwarrior
X-com Apocolypse
Age of Empires II + The Conquerors Expansion
Caesar III
Pharoah
Age of Sail
Zeus – Master of Olympus
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Broken Sword
Escape from Monkey Island
Age of Mythology
Baldur’s Gate
Icewind Dale
Warhammer 40k : Final Liberation
Baldur’s Gate 2
The Sims ( Yes , I admit it – even tho the kids did play it more than me ! )
Morrowind
Half-Life
Neverwinter Nights + Hordes of Underdark + Shadow of Undrentide
Black & White
Stronghold
Star Trek : Away Team
Freelancer
Dungeon Siege
Dungeon Siege: Legends of
Dungeon Siege 2
Star Wars : Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars Galaxies
The Saga of Ryzom
Everquest 2
The Dark Age of Camelot
City of Heroes
Savage
Final Fantasy VII
Dark & Light : Settler of Ganareth ( Beta)
World of Warcraft
Eve Online
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I'm sure there a a few i forgot, but....

MirthBlog - Day 5 - Origins ( Part 4 )

Around about the time of my 2nd PC about 1998 I suppose, there was another exponential leap in my lifestyle.
I had a dial-up modem and discovered how to surf the net .
I was still ahead of the game and taught many a colleague about connecting , what DNS settings were and how to send an e-mail. Most in truth didn’t care about the settings, as long as I got the thing hooked up for them.
I however am one of those people who likes to have an inkling as to why something is happening ( and why it keeps going wrong, hehe )
I was lucky enough to live in a city area that was already hooked up for cable. Any parent will tell you that if you want to play on your PC, then the best thing you can invest in is cable TV with Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel. Peace at last !
And the cable company did a great triple deal of dial-up internet, phone and the TV package for reasonable rates.

Jump ahead to the millennium. You can probably tell by now that I generally buy a new PC when a new version of Windows comes out. With my Windows ME pc, came the next great technological leap. Broadband. 512k at first, but the cable company were ahead of the competition, most of whom were offering 128.Now it was finally viable for proper online gaming !

MirthBlog - Day 4 - Origins ( Part 3 )

“It’s boring being a grown-up !”

This is one of my personal motto’s that I came to realize as I went through life.
The other one that I try to live by is:

“ Nearly doesn’t count ! “

So after a few years of domestic bliss in Suburbia, when life settles down, you have time to look for hobbies once more.
Whilst by no means a millionaire, I had a few hours spare after works and household chores, and just enough credit limit left on the card to buy myself a PC.
And life began again !!!Yay !!

I refound some of the fun that I had lost . Just because I was an adult now did not mean I couldn’t play !
I invested in a variety of games.
Today, everybody has a home computer, but at this time 1995 ( I know because my new PC ran Windows 95 at the time of its launch) I was still well ahead of the masses.
There were word processors at work, but not many of our friends had a “proper” computer before me.
It was an adventure every day. You had to understand DOS to get games to play, and the older versions of Windows were reassuringly temperamental. One game would install and play without a hitch, whilst the next just didn’t want to know. There were also numerous times when the machine would lock up and crash.

There may have been an occasional appearance by Mirth during this Era, but I don’t think so. He was there in spirit tho, and our technical skills were growing together.

MirthBlog - Day 3 - Origins ( Part 2 )

So , I think it was about 1986 or 87 that “Mirth Dragonfire “ first made an appearance.
I am fairly sure that the first “ Mirth Dragonfire” was an American Indian Shaman in the Palladium Role-Playing Game. I cannot fully remember where the surname came from, but I think it was along the lines of an in-game religion called the Dragonwrights. And as during character creation Mirth became a priest of this cult the Dragonfire name evolved from there.
I actually never played this game an awful lot, but the deed was done !

He next appeared as a “Shifter” in the RIFTS Game which was a type of spellcaster who specialized in travelling through, and summoning demons/creatures through dimensional portals. I liked this incarnation of Mirth, and during college years he and his travelling companions became old friends over the course of about a year.

After college there was a bit of a break for a couple of years. I was still collecting comics, but our college “gang” dispersed to the 4 ends of the country and this was in the dark days before we would have been able to stay in contact online.

Society tells you that you must grow up at this point. Go get a “proper” job. Find a companion. Buy a house. Have Kids.
Was this the end for Mirth Dragonfire ?

MirthBlog - Day 2 - Origins ( Part 1)

“Mirth” as a name, first came to my attention in 1984.
Not the book by George Orwell, but the year.
I am now and always have been a comic book geek. Even before I was a computer nerd. I hide it well though. Married with kids and living in middle class suburbia with a sensible job. You wouldn’t be able to spot me in a crowd as the geek I am unless you entered my Inner Sanctum at home.
But I digress….
Back in 1984, and still in my teens, I was reading a comic-book called “Mage” published by Comico and written and drawn by Matt Wagner.
It was/is a modern retelling of the King Arthur myth, and the character that exemplified Merlin had been renamed MIRTH.
This was one of my favourite comic storylines at the time with beautiful art, and although it centred on the hero Kevin Matchstick/King Arthur , the look of the Mirth character and the name especially stuck in my mind.

Over the next couple of years I attended college, dabbled with pen-and-paper RPGs, made early forays into the computing world ( ZX-Spectrums or Commodore 64, at that time I guess ) and by 1986 I was earning cash working in the local comic shop to provide beer money for college. That was the theory anyway. I originally figured that if I read comics in the shop while at work I could save money. What actually happened though , was that I had time to read more diverse titles than I normally would and ended up collecting even more with less spending cash than ever.
To be continued……..

Mirth Blog - Day 1

I shall start off gently, and just tell you where Mirth can be found at the moment:

Eve Online - Mirth Dragonfire
Dark & Light/Settlers of Ganareth ( Beta) - Mirth Dragonfire
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Mirth Dragonfire
World of Warcraft - Terenas Server - Murf

Tomorrow, I shall tell you where I came from.