I recently was inspired to start blogging about general topics; the majority of which will be focused on aspects of my studies, random research findings, life experiences and of course, gaming. My recent motivation to start posting is in part due to a lazy desire to share my thoughts but the encouragement to act upon this is credited to The Blog Initiative. I stumbled on it last week and thought it was really cool to see community members banding together in the name of improving the number of quality blogs on the site. I am not experienced in writing blogs but the idea of contributing to this movement as an "every man" appeals to me. I have posted on the forums a few times with moderate success. My first post was in response to a off-topic about "Relationships, in one? Want one?" And I was the first one to post a WALL OF TEXT consisting of my advice on this guy's natural feelings of loneliness. It was then that I realized the Giant Bomb community was more than just gamers. My first actual POST was about the music you listen to when reading. The number of quality responses not only helped improve my music library but solidified my positive attitude toward this awesome community. The reason I bring it up was to state some of my credentials of an ability to create decent content. If I hadn't have had such a good newb experience, I may have never been inclined to start this. So now begins my first try at becoming an Active Community Member.

The pictures that I have displayed in this post are logos I created for my marketing classes. These are my first ever attempts in pseudo-professional logo design and I think they turned out pretty great. The first is for my fake marketing firm "Pilot Marketing" The idea behind it was that the company is like a 'pilot light' to help businesses 'start up'. Its literal to the point of cheesiness but I still like how it turned out. The one thing that I didn't notice until after I finished it was that the color scheme is very similar to Firefox.

The next image is the logo I created for a website that a friend and I spent countless late nights conjuring the idea of. We would smoke packs of cigarets and fantasize about how awesome our site would be. A collaboration of story lines, artwork, home made music videos, synthesized music and game we developed; all original content of course. We thought we were so bad ass; but like all of our other attempts to finish a single story or game design, we just "never got around to it." Its was a fun idea and a great waste of time outside of the confines of our homes.

Besides being a student, I also am the GM of a local gift shop and that takes up a lot of my time. Between that, school and playing for the local university's rugby team; I had no free time. But this was solved this past Saturday; after standing on the sidelines for an entire game, I decided to quit the team. Not having play time wasn't the only reason for leaving, there were various political and regulatory reasons as well, but I figured that spending 6-7 hours a week practicing for no chance of playtime was bogus.

So now I have some extra free-time that I have decided I'm going to spend towards gaming and other responsibilities. I made a post on the forums to help get some insight on which game I should play. I know I want to play an MMO but I had two very different games in mind. The question I wanted answered was which of the two offered the most satisfaction. I also ran a quick poll between WOW and EVE to see which of the two the community most suggested for a new semi-serious player.

I was surprised to see the amount of response I got from one post, and it felt good to see that there were like-minded people within the Giant Bomb community that really just wanted to share their opinions for not only me but the rest of us as well. I think I will end up playing WoW even though EVE seems so intriguing to me. The reasons are one; my best friend plays wow. Even though he is top in the world for raiding and I would have no chance at catching up and playing at his level, its still nice to know somebody in the game to chat with while leveling. Second; EVE seems like it would take MONTHS to see any results. One day I would like to dedicate like 6 months to that game but I don't feel like doing that just yet. Lastly; I want to find a good guild to roll with and hang out with. Based on numbers alone, I have a better chance of finding a cool group in WoW than I would in EVE. Not only do I know someone in game that could hook me up with some decent people, but I know nobody in EVE and it would be like playing a Massively Multiplayer Game in Single Player mode.

So now that I have a chosen genre, picked up 6-7 hours of free time, and finally had the grand opening of my gift shop; I can start relaxing and enjoy my life a bit more than I have been for the past couple of years. Thanks for reading, critique plz!

dv