One day, in a forum, I read this thread title:

“Which one is more important in cosplay, passion or physical appearance.”

It’s gonna be a neverending debate.  Both are important.  But if you compare passionate cosplayer without “supporting” physical appearance, WITH a good physically looking cosplayer without passion, I believe the last one will get more digg or being downloaded when you upload them on the internet.

A member of the forum, is thinking that physical appearance is more important and he or she post this pic:

I don’t totally agree with him or her, because people with passion has the right to express their selves.

However, lately, I’ve seen some game events or exhibition are using some cosplayer to promote their games, but I have to say that they don’t have “supporting” physical appearance.  Some of my friends even give comments like, “How could they choose them as cosplayers?”.  Apparently, physical appearance DOES matter.  And if you combine it with passion and good photography technique, I am sure it will be attractive.

Appearance

As far as I know, the first Lineage 2 that implemented as F2P is Lineage 2 in my country.  And an interesting part of this implementation is the additional features of “fatigue system”.  While my first experience with Korean Lineage 2: it didn’t have anything like this system.

For any of you who doesn’t familiar with fatigue system, I will try to explain it briefly.  Fatigue system is a system where you will receive certain benefit if your fatigue bar is higher.  Your character will have an fatigue bar, while in full bar condition in this Lineage 2 case,  will receive 300% experience.  The bar will slowly dropping whenever you enter hunting area, but will filling up when you are in town, safety zone, or offline.  In my country they called it Vitality system.

So some players are feeling that this system is kinda handicapping their playing time.  But I think that it is not that bad.

1. More efficient playing time.

A 24/7 bot (yeah I wanna say players, but who can play a game with no rest unless he or she ends up resting in peace?) will eventually made the character only receive 50% experience (with as

I don’t mean to underestimate the power of women.  I truly understand how cesarsuki explained that at many points, women really overpowered man.  But if you want to compare MMORPG with military, and how women can influence decision of the “main actor” of the stage, I will have to say: men came first, my friend.

Why would I say that?

Let’s be realistic.  First, we are living in a world that has change in progress BUT hasn’t changed yet.  It is a patriarchal one, where men are considered dominant.  Most of the leader of nations are men.  Most of the wealthiest people in the world are men.  Most of the military generals are men.  MMORPG is about role, and it is not about how to live peacefully happily ever after in the game, because so far, the concept hasn’t changed from how to slay as much monster as possible, how to achieve highest level as fast as possible, how to conquer as much areas as possible.  It’s about aggression, and men response well for that areas (Coi & Dodge 1997, Maccoby & Jacklin 1974, Buss 2005).  And guess what, in my country the leader of strong guilds are mostly men

I don’t want to use the terms guild war because I don’t want people to misunderstand that this article is about Guild War, a great game from NCSoft.  I am talking about guild vs guild.  Some games called this guild with another terms, name it: faction, circle, order, etc.  But still, usually the have a feature to have a war between guild. 

Btw, this article is inspired by Hyuk’s article. 

So if you want to have a guild vs guild, here’s the best reason to do it in my opinion:

7. Game event

GMs announcing that a special event is being held and it’s a contest between guilds.  Or maybe the game is implementing this routine event, guild vs guild.  You have an active guild, so it’s no harm to participate in it, right?  It’s a very logic reason to have a guild war.  No further explanation needed, I think.

6. To show who’s better, who’s the best, who’s the strongest

Why would you form a strong guild if you never show it to other?  Show them who’s the biggest, who’s the strongest, who’s the best, just like what Muhammad Ali did.  It’s a good reas

I haven’t had a chance to read blogs in MMOSite lately.  So, during past few days, I spent some times to read them.  I have to say you guys really done great jobs writing articles.  I really enjoyed them.  I also discovered some articles regarding cyber love (and an article with that exact title from cesarsuki).

It will be really sweet to found your soulmate during your gameplay.  The one who understand your other life, your cyberlife.  It is a life that not all of your relatives and your closest ones would understand.  So if your spouse can be found in an online game, I have to admit IT IS very very ideal.  You can spend your time together, knowing that she or he will understand your passion in that “other” world, eliminating the boring grinding because you found an excitement slaying monster together, and still many more things to do together.

HOWEVER, all things in this world usually come in the form of 2 side of balance.  Dark and Light, Yin and Yang, Good and Bad, The Forces and Dark Forces, and so on.  That’s why, I also understand that game (online or not) will bring 2 effects too, good and bad.  I

I have this funny conversation during one of my gameplay, while L is me, and A is a player in that game:

A: (shouting) GM, where can I find NPC Z???

L: (whisper to A) You can find NPC X by reading the website guide for NPC.

A: (whisper to me) Which part of the website?

L: (whisper to A, after take a look at the website) Just go to coordinate x, y, u will find NPC Z.

A: (whisper to me) R u a GM?

L: (whisper to A) No I am not.

A: (shouting) GM, where can I find NPC Z???

L: … SWT!!!

I thought to myself: OMG, just because I am not a GM and you don’t believe my information?  And it is only some click away for you to find it by yourself at the website, but you need GM just to find an NPC???  So, I try to “enlighten” him about the usual GM function.  I never become a GM in an online game, but I am sure that one of their job is not to help a newbie to find an NPC.

L: Have u tried the coordinate?  It’s there, u don’t need a GM to find it.  Contact GM if you find bug.

A: R u a GM?

L: I told you before, I am not, just try to help u find the NPC.  Besides GM will only respond to you for bug or special report like when you try to repo

In 2004, I had a chance to visit Korea.  During my visitation, I also met with some people from several game publisher such as Paha Schultz from NCSoft (half Germany half Korean), Luke Byung Ho Park from Neowiz, Michael Lim from Softmax (now he owns an online game publisher in Germany), and Min Kim from Wizet (yes, maybe you noticed him in North America as a person from Nexon, but he is actually from Wizet).  Their explanation about Korean gaming world really amazed me.  And although I knew there are professional gamers in Korea, but that’s the first time I knew about Lee Yun Yeol and Lim Yo Hwan (please do not misunderstand me, I didn’t meet them), 2 top professional starcraft players.  Celebrity in Korean gaming world.  Lee Yun Yeol earned a 3 years contract from sponsor worth US $ 830,000 while Lim Yo Hwan is known as the highest paid professional gamers in the gaming world history.  His annual earnings exceed US $ 300,000 with additional US $ 90,000 annually endorsement contract.  The starcraft league is aired in 2 major games dedicated channel TV, MBCGame and Ongamenet.  And those 2 guys really had a huge fans because of these conjunction.  Game became a serious industry that

Why people are so attached to the virtual world?

Couple weeks ago, a “friend” of mine met me in a dungeon.  And the conversation was went like this:

H             : Hi…

L              : Hi, long time no c man…

H             : How r u?

L              : Fine man, how bout u?

H             : So so… hey btw, do u have a pistol for lv 44?

L              : Yeah, the one I’m using is lv 44.  It’s unique ^^.

H             : Aah, it’s shining!  Is it +5 or +6?

L              : It’s just +5.

H             : Can I borrow it?  I just need another pistol to kill that captain more quickly.

L              : Oh, sure.

And there goes the transaction with my “friend”.  And “he” went to kill the mini boss of that area… if what ‘he’ said was true,… which I doubt.  Because: half an hour later, the real friend of mine login, and whisp me telling me that his older account has been hacked (or keylogged, whatever the terms is), and warn me about it and also not to trust ‘him’.  And it was too late.  OMG, I’ve been hacked.  I repeteadly say to myself that I should have noticed it from the beginning.  Because ‘he’ spoke in English, while usually, we rather use our mother language.  But since we play in International se

Couple weeks ago, I watch David Archuleta from American Idols show singing Imagine from John Lennon.  And I really get touched by the way he sing.  Couple days after that, I have my own version of that song in this lyric:

Imagine there’s no scammers

Everyone just playing

No spammers among us

Just enjoy the gaming

Imagine all the people

Playing just for fun

Imagine there’s no phishing

Everyone is so nice too

No worries when playing

And no beggars too

Imagine all the people

Playing in harmony

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the game world will be as one

Imagine there’s no killing

Just because of a game

No need for stupid slaying

Instead a friendship in game

Imagine all the people

Sharing joy in game

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the game players will live as one

(This lyric is made just for non commercial discussion, Imagine song copyright own by John Lennon)

I can still remember, my first day entering the world of Ragnarok Online, and an assassin was coming to me asking if I am new in there.   And I say yes.  He was then, giving me some red potions, giving advice on how to level up, and remind me

Hell yeah, grinding is BORING!  But I have seen and getting amazed on how people ACTUALLY REALLY can handle it!  There’s time when I felt, “Nobody can stand this!” during my hunting on certain level.  But the next day I login to the game, my fellow guildmate is already pass the same level when the day before we were at the same level!  What really more amazed me is a few days later, he is way beyond my current level!  That left me with a really big question: how the hell did he handle that grinding???

One of my friend did a little research.  Although it’s just for fun (not for published research), but he really test it statistically.  For those of you who don’t need any scientific facts, just skip to the next paragraph.  My friend did this to his friends as a sample for his non parametrical Factor Analysis method.  The dependent variable is grinding durability, while the independent variables are shown in the order below according to their factor load.  He used a 10% alpha.  So the result displayed here is not in random order but rather in hierarchical order.  For those of you who want to discuss the statistic fact, please PM me.  It’s not my research and this is just for fun, but