Well, recently I've been writing pretty long articles for this thing but I have one problem...
Lack of readers.
I don't want to come off as desperate, but I want to get a to a point were I'm doing 3 articles a day, but I don't feel like I'm getting much of an audience. I average around 3 comments per story, which is alright for now. I guess the more articles I write, the more people that will come back. Having more friends will also help, due to the friends blog column.
Anyways, for the main point of this article, if anyone that does read this and has any tips on how to gain readers beside the one mentioned above, please leave a comment or PM me. Check out my other blogs also.
To be blunt, I usually don't like JRPGS, in fact, it could be said that I strongly disliked most. But, today I found myself bored, and with nothing to do I decided to head down the Hollywood video to rent Battlefield: Bad Company, which everyone has been raving about. It wasn't there, which in hindsight may have been a blessing. Why? Because I've been playing too many damn FPS's lately, and I'm starting to get the thing were I don't finish them. So I decided instead of leaving the store empty handed, I should rent the game that had the awesome trialer with "White Rabbit" in it.
Back to my realationship with the JRPG genre, I think it all started back when I first got my gameboy. I loved Pokemon: Red, and that being a turn based got me to think that turn based RPG was the way to go. So I bought a few, finished them, none of them coming close to the greatest of Pokemon, but good non the less. And then I got some Dragon Quest game...>_>,
At that point in my life, I'd never not finished a game, since getting a game for me was a huge event. But this was a "textbook" JRPG, and I hated it with a passion, I however marched on through it. Then finally I found myself stuck. I spent hours trying to get past that point, until I gave up, and sold it one of my friends. I got a N64, discovered the wonders of FPS and Platformers, and never looked back at the JRPG genre...
I actually was supposed to play Eternal Sonta but I forgot about it, I probably should get back to that. Anyways, now I should probably start talking about the actual game..Lost Odyssey sets off with some silent immortal warrior kicking ass, and taking names. "Ugh" I thought, I don't like games when the main character feels he's to badass to talk. Right when I was about to deicede my 5 dollars renting this game had been wasted, I ran into the first of the dream sequences.
I had been dreading this part of the game, where you have to read some of the main character memories. I thought that ontop of the annoying main character, I had to deal with a even more annoying stories. HOWEVER, I was extremely surprised in the quality of the diaries. Which by the way are called A Thousand Years Dreams. The first thing I noticed was the brilliant presentation of the text, along with the soundtrack, the text scrolled on the screen in a very creative, yet readable manner. The background, the music, and the story being told all match perfectly. But of course the story is what made it great. The very first of these memories was about a termially ill child, a girl that spent of of her short life at hr parents inn asking travlers of their tales. In the end we realize the memory is a stark contrast between the main character(Yeah, I'm saying main character because I don't know his name), who is immortal and spends all of his time traveling around the world who seems to want nothing more than death, to this girl who's life is unfairly short and and wants nothing more to go out and have her own travels. Perhaps that's to how perfect the length of a regular humans life is.
Regardless, the fact that the part of the game I dreaded most is the part I now look forward to showed me this game is more than what I thought it was. I've been playing it for a few hours, and I just beat the first boss fight. I'm starting to get a hang of the battle system..it's hard though. I've only finished one JRPG on a console. Final Fanasty X.
I think this may be the first game I decided to review for Giant Bomb, I was thinking of re-playing Bioshock, but now I've decided this is what I'm going to be using my of my gaming time doing until school starts again. I haven't been gaming much ever since the site went up because I spent so much time on submissions, but I hope I'm not speaking to soon when I say I'm going to see this one until the end.
Below are some quotes from the memory that was mention above, just cause I'm bored..MILD SPOILER, and I mean very mild spoiler for Lost Odyssey.
"Hanna was unable to go anywhere, but the guests who stayed at her parent’s inn would tell her stories of the countries and towns and landscapes and people that she would never know.
Whenever new guests arrived at the inn, Hanna would ask them.
“Where are you from?” “Where are you going?”
“Can you tell me a story?”"
---- "And now, Kaim ends the last travel story he will share with her.
He can never see her again, can never tell her stories again.
Before dawn, when the darkness of night is at its deepest, long pauses enter into Hanna’s breathing.
The trail thread of her life is about to snap as Kaim and her parents watch over her.
The tiny light that has lodged in Kaim’s breast will be extinguished.
His lonely travels will begin again tomorrow---his long, long travels without end."
It's been my opinion for a while that Firefox is the best browser on the internet. In fact, I love Firefox so much, I've decided to make a blog about why it kick other browsers asses (Specifically IE)
5)Speed and stability
Firefox 2 had a problem with the browser randomly shutting down, annoying memory leaks, and it was a bit slower than IE. However, almost all of those problems have been fixed, or at least minimized in Firefox 3. Currently, Firefox is defiantly one of the faster browser around.
As far as stablity goes, it also surpasses most. When the submissions queue was in 20-thousands, and the site was moving slow, I had to use multiple tabs to get the job done fast. However, in I was having problems doing this in FF 2 and IE7, because I'd have extreme slow downs. In FF 3, I was constantly opening 50 tabs, which was one page in the Q, and it wasn't slowing down at all. I haven't had any random browser shutdowns either.
4)Customizable themes.
When people are told to upgrade to Firefox, one of the silliest complaints is "I don't like the way it looks" "Or I think X browser looks better" Guess what? You can make firefox looks like anything. Believe me, I had it looking like Internet Explorer for months (Dont' ask me why) Right now I just have the regular Firefox theme, but that may change. They're all sorts of theme, and almost none of them slow down or hinder your use of Firefox in anyway. I don't know if any other browser can do this. Though even if they could, they probably don't have the amount of themes that Firefox does.
3)IE tabs
Even thought Firefox is supported by many websites, and even optimized for some, there are those few webpages that will only support internet explorer. Bummer right? I mean, you just got used to using FF, and then you have go dig through your PC to try and find IE. Well there's an add on called IE tabs letting your render pages with the IE engine while staying with the FF browser. I have to use this a lot of Netflix, they have a feature to let me stream movies, sounds great right? Well only works in IE. So all I have to do is click the little icon in the bottom right hand corner with the FF logo on it and it lets me turn the tab into an IE rendered webpage . IE tabs alos keeps all your cookies from IE, so you're probably going to have tor re enter all your log in info. :(
2)No Script
No script is an amazing helpful addition to whatever firewalls or antivirus you have. It's saved me from numerous prank pages, that take control of your browser, and pages that automatically give your viruses. The only thing bad about it is that it can be annoying when it blocks pages that you don't want blocked, but that's not a huge price to pay for the security it adds to your browser.
1) Ad Block Plus with Filterset.G
The utlimate add blocking software, thank to this, I haven't seen ads on my favorite sites in years. It's saved me from having to pay or register to get Ad-less versions of websites, and if you get it with Filterset.G, you won't even have to tell it what to block. It's like someone created a switch to turn all ads of or on. And not only does it block adds, and re-arrganes the webpage to make it look like they were never even there. I've seen some ad blocking software where it blocks most of the ads, but then I'm left with a gray box where the ads should be, which is pretty lame by me. So, the simply break it down. Ad block kicks ad's asses.
Well I'm done for now, that's by far my longest blog post so my fingers are aching at this point. To download Firefox 3 visit this webpage. Thanks for reading.
-AP I just didn't want this part to say "caption".
1. Save articles you write in case something happens...
...nobody's perfect, and while we're going through your post, it may get declined by accident, or you may get live access, and not want to wait for it to go through moderation. In any case saving your articles is a good idea.
2.Don't copy from Wikipedia or another other sites
..it's obvious, it's annoying, and it waste people's time, I've been seeing less and less of this everyday, so you guys are doing pretty good. Like the crew said in the podcast, THIS IS YOUR SITE, we want your content.
3.Go through the advanced search before applying pages...
...helps everyone involved, you don't waste time writing something that will inevitably be denied. We don't waste time going through. It's a win-win situation
4.Please fill out comment box it really helps..
..if we're the before/after of the page looks identical, we have to read the whole article, and while we're doing that more subs are piling up. Tell is what you did and why you did.
Alright, well that's all I can think of. This is probably filled with spelling and grammatical errors since I'm writing it 3:07 a.m(thank god for edit button) If you have any questions you can leave a comment or PM me.
I've been a mod for a few days now, and I must say, you guys are very smart about video games. Almost everytime I see something questionable, and check it, it comes out correct. The queue currently is at....
That's great for us, usually when the America's are awake it's above 25K so we're finally taking down that number, and believe me, it feels great. For those of you that are having long pending submissions, hold on! We're going to get to yours, I believe early this morning we even got a it below 15,000.Oh, and just to let a few things be known
We are doing this in a first come, first serve style...
..However, to prevent mods from steeping on each others feet while working, we all have to work on different pages(the oldest pages though). So just because one of you subs got admitted quickly doesn't mean we're doing it completely random.
Just so you know, mods don't give out the points...
..just to clear up some confusion.
New features, such as a report option are on their way..
...This site has a better than average community, but this is the internet, so I understand there will be morons trying to ruin everyone's fun by being a dick, so a solution to this problem is being worked on. Other features are being added daily, not only to you guys, but to the mods, to allow us to go through your post faster
If you have any questions..
..you can comment in this blog, or PM me.Thanks for your patience guys. :)
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