Month: May 2009

Categories
Entertainment Technology

Everquest Online Adventure

Six years after its 2003 debut, Everquest Online Adventure is experiencing an historical resurgence in popularity. Old gamers spent endless zombie-like hours auto-running across crudely textured fields and sparsely treed forests. Everquest Online Adventures barely taxed the graphics capabilities of the Playstation 2, emphasizing repetitive unsatisfying gameplay. Spam circle when you see the monsters. Most of these players have gone on to play World of Warcraft and Everquest II which offers the same gameplay with more detailed environments. Everquest Online Adventures is finally free to play, and offers the exact same gameplay. A larger and larger number of players are switching back, finding the world is still there and in fact better than ever. By removing griefs like training (a complicated procedure where huge groups of monsters could be herded) and adding a few new areas, Everquest Online Adventures is the best choice for the millions of newly unemployed MMORPG player. In the midst of the financial melt-down, the trance-like escape that Everquest provides prevents many suicides every day. SoW please. There are stables everywhere, but never a horse in sight, dammit.

Until Everquest Online went free, the next best thing was a game called MUME, created in 1992. Mume provides all the functions of Everquest, and probably has a more detailed world. MUME has no graphics whatsoever, and emphasizes pointless repetitive monster slaying more than any other game in history.

Everquest Online Adventures boast a dynamic repertoire of character models. However, they mostly go unappreciated as the PlayStation2 does not render them fast enough and at times won’t render them at all. This happens most when running through a dense, crowded area like Freeport, a desert city where all races can congregate together without violence. The game system attempts to load thirty five avatars at once and as a result, loads none of them, creating the effect of running through a ghost town when in actuality, the Freeport market has a higher population density than the Twin Towers on a Tuesday morning.

Standing still doesn’t help either, for the characters only load within a circumference the equivalent of twenty real life feet, so even after everybody warps in, one barely has a general idea of who is around him/her within a sneeze’s reach. Similarly, you don’t know what is lurking in your colon.

Lose the addiction, lose the weight. EverCleanse yourself of EverQuest! Warning: Preceding link is Not Safe For Viewing whatsoever.

Categories
Editorial Religion Society Special Interest Status Quo

Religion 101

There is nothing wrong with religion. I have no problem with religion. Religious people, on the other hand, are a different story.

Why can’t someone go to church, rejoice, pray, go home, and keep their beliefs to themselves?

Why can’t religious people simply enjoy their religion, without trying to force it on other people, or judging other people according to their religious beliefs?

Case in point; the current situation at Heritage Christian School in northwest Ohio. For those of you not familiar with this situation, I will give you a brief summary:

17 year old Tyler Frost is a senior at Heritage Christian School, and is planning on going with his girlfriend to the prom at her school, Findlay High School (a public high school). Findlay High School requires students from other schools to get a signature from the principal at their school before they can attend the Findlay High School prom. Tyler went to the Heritage Christian School principal (Tim England) to get permission to go to the Findlay High School prom with his girlfriend. Principal England signed the permission form for Tyler to attend the prom. The school committee, which is made up of church members, issued a statement informing Tyler that if he attends the Findlay High School prom, he will be suspended, and will not be allowed to graduate, and will have to re-take his senior year at another high school the following school year. Their justification for doing this was because there would be rock music at the Findlay prom, and that “rock music is part of the counterculture which seeks to implant seeds of rebellion in young people’s hearts and minds”.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Now, do these people really believe that God would want them to ruin the future of a young man for going to a prom at a public school? Apparently they do, because they are steadfast in their position, and refuse to change.

What happens to these people when they discover religion? How does going to church make them feel like they are somehow in a position of authority over other people? Why do these people feel the need to ram their beliefs down the throats of other people?

What about the muslims, who are so consumed by their religious beliefs, that they blow themselves up just to kill a few people who don’t agree with their religious beliefs?

Wow…….is all I can say to that.

I believe the problem here, is that some people are just not mentally strong enough to be exposed to religion.

Categories
Entertainment Local News Society Status Quo

Area man visually defines lost concept through ironic failure to do so

Springfield, U.S.–Dignity found a face when local cracker factory worker Kirk Van Houten attempted to draw it during a game of Pictionary Saturday night, twelve years ago. Ordained with failure after his wife, Luann, could not guess the image, he challenged her to draw a better one in front of the party. What resulted was the iconic definition of a human concept so complexly intangible, it should have never been included in an ice-breaking party game.
Kirk Van Houten: It’s dignity, Luann.
 

Van Houten’s visualization of dignity was largely rejected by his wife, whose own portrayal was subsequently confirmed by the party’s attendees to accurately depict dignity in all of its possible variants, definitions, and contexts, even as it had been comparatively stripped from her husband in the act.

Unfortunately, the piece was never released to the public and experts say statistics indicate the drawing probably arrived in a Virginia landfill in or around Gloucester County. “This estimation is given on the grounds that Waste Management buys trash from twenty-six other states, including New York and New Jersey, to dump in Va. landfills as a means of protecting its citizens from encroaching swamps, wetlands, and bothersome natural habitats,” said Virginia governor Timothy Kaine.

Waste Management is a friendly neighborhood conglomeration of Wall Street businessmen and the mafia between whom your trash is a commodity.

Dr. Hibbert, Ph.D., commented on Mr. Van Houten’s piece after the Simpsons’ party, saying, “It lacked any distinctive characteristics whatsoever,” as he released an untimely chuckle.

After frantic weeks of phone calls, strongly-worded letters, and death threats, Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was made available for comment. After reviewing the scene between the now-divorced Van Houtens, he said, “The dispute is inconsequential and with the exception of their resulting divorce, most likely will not change anything, ever.” He then followed this up with a question for reporters, asking, “Is this really why you needed me so badly? Do you even know who I am?”

Noam Chomsky, powering a small
village with his cognitive prowess

Indeed, after more than a decade the ripples of rejection can still be felt for miles around Springfield, where reporters say the veins of failure running through Kirk Van Houten’s shrinking intellectual circle of neighboring low-rent apartment tenants in their mid-20’s are still being smoothed out similar to air-bubbles under a sticker.

One neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, said the man is by this point so unfamiliar with dignity that he may never be loved again, and is most certainly not currently respected by his peers, colleagues, or even the American Gladiator his ex-wife married shortly following their divorce.

In other news, Elf Wax reporter Stan Crumb was arrested outside the Elf Wax office building for harassment and attempted kidnapping following an unscheduled, unrelated, and mostly unwanted interview with Mr. Chomsky about quote, “the 9/11 conspiracy, man.”