If you are friends with me on Facebook, you might have read my saga to buy the game. I visited no less than 10 stores multiple times asking if they had the game on PC (because my thoughts on anyone who buys an MMO for the console, let's just say their elevator doesn't go all the way to the top), and it was basically a string of "we don't have it" and "it's sold out."
Keep in mind, folks, this is the only game I need to complete my collection. I have every game for the series. I've copied the older games to emulators because I did give my money to SquareSoft and Square Enix. I've done this longer than some of you have been alive, and yes, as a kid, I actually liked these games better than Mario. I was given a Sega Genesis so I wouldn't climb cupboards in my house, and frequently claim I could have been a mountain climber by now if it were not for video games.
That aside, here's my character as a fresh level one. I inadvertently made my toon look like Tidus from FFX, according to a friend. He also forgot I also inadvertently made my toon also look like Vaan from FFXII:
Fun fact: I made this toon a Thaumaturge (a magic user), while Tidus and Vaan are more Thief-type characters, which makes my choice a bit more confusing than it should be.
Anyways, first hour in, I get hit by maintenance. No problem, I just go out and get some stuff from Safeway. I come back and play for a bit, and get hit by maintenance again for a total of three maintenance hours during a time when people are playing the most. Am I mad? Not really. I probably would have been more pissed off if I had bought the game on its original release date (August 27) and tried to play then.
The gameplay is somewhat good. Not bad, but good enough to keep me interested. The only games that I play on a regular basis have been reduced to multiplayer first person shooters and WoW, so this is a pretty big achievement on the game's part. My expectations weren't sky high to begin with, since the JRPGs are far better, but it exceeded them on some level.
Getting gear is pretty straightforward. You do quests, you get gear. A fun part of the game are the FATEs, which basically involve you killing enemies with a ton of other people, and you get rewards commensurate on how you did in the battle. Think of them as world bosses. They're not extremely hard, but if you're level 10 like me, you'll probably think they are.
I get a lot of bag space to begin with, which rules. I haven't actually done any instances yet, and I'm not even max level yet. I'll write a full review once I get to know the game a bit better.
People make death threats over seemingly inane things nowadays. I've actually gotten a death threat because of what I write, which is another testament to people overreacting to things I say or do. I actually took it seriously too, because the guy looks like he could have gone on a shooting rampage at any second, and poking crazy people with a virtual stick is generally not a good idea. Should people be making death threats? The answer is an obvious no, but people do it anyway without realizing their status in life and how seriously they will be taken. The consequences are a completely different thing altogether.
Pop music fans
In the past few weeks, I've seen death threats from fans of Taylor Swift, One Direction, and Blood on the Dance Floor. I did a few sweepings of the Internet and found out that the pop music fans' semi-empty threats of violence are not only harmless, but amusing. YouTube personality NateTalksToYou chronicled the insanity of One Direction fans in his video:
The majority of One Direction fans are preteen or teenage girls, making them only threatening in movies such as Mean Girls, or, in real life, not at all.
Risk of getting killed by a fan of pop music: Extremely Low Chances of being taken seriously if you're a fan of pop music and did make a death threat: Extremely Low
In fact, you could say they're more of a threat to themselves than to anyone else.
Gamers
Another group of people I notice making death threats are gamers. As a gamer myself, I've learned to laugh it off, namely because it's just a game, but there are people who take games quite seriously. Video games don't cause violence, because you'd have to be an idiot to want to kill someone over a few virtual pixels, right? Well, the news LOVES to fish for stories involving video games and real violence, even though psychologists and psychiatrists already have been saying for at least 20 years that there is no correlation between the two.
Here is a recent news article detailing some eight year old kid killing a 90 year old woman after playing Grand Theft Auto. Out of the millions and millions of people playing Grand Theft Auto doing things such as blowing up cars, shooting random people in the streets, shooting hookers and getting your money back, and vehicular homicide, you'd think there would be a drastic increase of actual crime, right?
Wrong.
Let's look at some contributing factors that will ultimately make people who go "VIDEO GAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE LOL" shut the fuck up, because they make my blood boil:
1. The gun was left loaded in an unsafe place, which is probably one of the most idiotic things you could do with a gun. If you're reading this and own a gun, store it away safely.
2. They lived in a trailer park, which is probably not the best place to be having a gun in the first place.
3. The kid was eight years old and thus, he shouldn't have been playing Grand Theft Auto in the first place. The real people who should be charged with a crime? His parents, for generally being shitty parents, child neglect, etc.
I don't know why they have to repeat this ad nauseam, namely because 20 years of studies done by people obviously qualified to make these statements are apparently not enough to convince idiots.
Risk of getting killed by a gamer: Medium Chances of being taken seriously if you're a gamer and did make a death threat: Low
It's happened, but not as frequently as the media wants you to think. In fact, lag upsets me more than violence in video games.
Religious zealots
Good old religious zealots never can catch a break. People kill an abortion doctor to save the lives of the unborn, which in and of itself is hypocritical because "Thou shalt not kill" is the fifth commandment of the Ten Commandments; Islamic fundamentalists decide to carry out 9/11 just because the people in America prefer to worship Jesus over Allah. It's really a mess, and a mess that probably won't end unless somehow people manage to practice their faith without proselytizing it. There are quotes in the Bible and the Koran stating that all followers of Christianity and Islam must spread the good news of their faith or else (which completely defeats the whole purpose of the free will we were given). An old teacher of mine runs a blog and it's probably the best sleep aid since televised golf. Not only has he managed to improperly practice Christianity (at least from my own experiences with him), but has also managed to make the Christian religion boring. How do you expect to follow the word of God if you make your religion appear boring? It's not intellectual charity if you're putting people to sleep (well, if your intended audience are insomniacs, it probably is).
Personal vendettas aside, religious zealots are pretty dangerous people. It's not because their religion is bad; it's that to them, violence is the answer, and you're going to die because you didn't accept their God for whatever reason.
Risk of getting killed by a religious zealot: Zero (Buddhist, Atheist/Agnostic), Medium to High (Christian, Hindu), Extreme (Muslim, Cult) Chances of being taken seriously if you're a religious zealot and did make a death threat: Zero (Buddhist, Atheist/Agnostic), Medium to High (Christian, Hindu), Extreme (Muslim, Cult)
I have never been heard of anyone dying from Buddhist or atheist/agnostic extremists; in fact, Buddhists set themselves on fire as a form of protest. Atheists/agnostics tend to keep their extremism to Reddit and are mildly annoying at best and have probably ruined atheism/agnosticism for everyone else.
Christian extremists would historically top the list (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition), but nowadays it's just some random guys who are out to kill abortion doctors and serial killers who just happened to be Christian. If you're from India or know Indian history, you might remember Hindu extremists killing Mahatma Gandhi, who was allegedly the least violent person on the planet, and therefore didn't have an actual reason as to why they would carry out such an act.
There are multiple verses in the Koran that espouse peace and understanding, and just as many that say to kill infidels and all that other stuff you hear on the news. Why do we take them seriously, then? Well, Islamic extremists gloat about death and destruction and actually have the resources to do such things.
Cult leaders are self-explanatory. They would kill you in a heartbeat for the weirdest and most bizarre reason possible.
So here's a short guide as to whether you should be making a death threat and how seriously you'll be taken. Think twice before you make that death threat.
Finding a girlfriend or boyfriend on the Internet is pretty commonplace nowadays. There are several websites built around it, and some "studies" have shown that couples who meet online are happier and are married longer than those who don't. Guess what? They're wrong. Every single online dating profile ever is pretty much this:
Upon seeing this photo, 100% of people who do online dating now have 100% of their time spent online dating free to allocate elsewhere.
Making fun of online dating is more fun than online dating. If you're female and on an online dating website (OkCupid, for example), I guarantee that 99.99% of the people who contact you have one (or all) of the following: a fedora, talk about how nice of a guy they are, or are downright creepy and go straight to the point (i.e. "let's fuck lol ur boobies are nice" or "i'd drag my balls through broken glass just to hear you fart" kind of bullshit). For the 0.01% who actually manage to find the love of their life on an online dating site, you're luckier than most, but chances are you're going to be going through the garbage pile for days, weeks, months, even years.
It gets even worse for men. You can't be anything less than perfect or no one will ever contact you, and even a simple hello can be considered creepy as fuck (see included picture for reference). Sure, the Internet is a place where we can all be inconsiderate assholes towards one another without any fear of retaliation, but being creepy online is just as bad as being creepy in real life. In fact, if you're creepy in real life, you're arrested, sent to jail and probably have to be on some sex offender list; if you're creepy online, everyone screen caps it and sends it around everywhere to everyone they know, meaning you'll be known as creepy forever to billions of people around the world. Heck, it's worse than being creepy in real life, if you think about it.
I once wrote a guide to online dating, and I even distributed it for free on the Internet, because I'm such a nice guy. Here's the guide in its entirety:
"Jose's Guide to Online Dating:
Step 1: Don't
Step 2: See Step 1"
Do yourselves (and everybody else) a favor and keep the "online" out of "online dating."
I see protests against wars, gay marriage, putting artificial stuff in our food, abortion, and other issues in society today. While that's all fine and I believe people should have the right to protest (one of the perks of living in America), there are a lot of bigger things lurking in the shadows that do quite a bit more damage than people think. Here are a few issues that actually deserve your attention, and the reasons why.
Shitty parenting
We never protest people being awful parents.People didn't protest against Casey Anthony despite all the overwhelming evidence that she was guilty of something. She was even acquitted. While you morons were off saying gay marriage would wreck society, people were getting away with being shitty parents, and nobody gave a flying fuck about it. Next time you see kids being a nuisance at Wal-Mart and their parents being oblivious to it, you should protest that, not Adam and Steve filing a joint tax return.
The worst thing is that shitty parenting is preventable. Don't know what the fuck you're doing? Don't become a parent. Some of the most incapable people out there all of a sudden believe that they can take responsibility for another human being's life while they don't have their shit together. It's not just a 'MERICA thing, it's pretty much a worldwide phenomenon, but that's for another blog post.
Divorce
Gay marriage opponents/cosmetic Christians (I'm going to call fake Christians "cosmetic Christians" from now on), take note: divorce is actually wrong as said in the Bible:
"I hate divorce" (Malachi 2:16)
"Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate" (Mark 10:9)
There's a lot more, but that would actually require reading the Bible, something that is inconvenient to these cosmetic Christians.
Stupidity
We protest for our schools to stop sucking, but we don't protest stupidity. In fact, we practically embrace stupidity like it was our best friend. We're here asking for our schools to improve, while at the same time watching reality television.
Spoilers on shitty cars
Self-explanatory.
Those are just a few things I can think of that need to be protested against just as much as gay marriage, abortion, war, etc. Add your own.
I have heard from a good amount of people that they hate rap/hip-hop without giving a really good reason other than "I don't like it." I've been listening to rap/hip-hop since I was a kid, namely because I grew up in an area that wasn't predominantly white. So that's my excuse.
As for the people who say they hate rap/hip-hop, this is what they really hate:
These people forgot to add an extremely vital word to their sentence: "I hate mainstream rap/hip-hop." That's really it. The rap/hip-hop they listen to are people rapping about being a stupid hoe or saying nigga eleven billion times. They don't really hate rap/hip-hop, they just hate what's being played on the radio, so they automatically paint the entire genre as just being Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj without doing research into what rap/hip-hop actually is.
I link good rap/hip-hop on my Facebook a lot, and it gets ignored because it's automatically been placed into the same camp as YMCMB. Why? They happen to be in the same genre as each other. There's a huge difference between someone rapping about issues in society (the original purpose of rap/hip-hop) and rapping about getting bitches and being a stupid hoe (what people have been deluded into thinking rap/hip-hop is nowadays).
I don't know that many people that want to look for good music, or many radio stations that want to look for good rap/hip-hop to play on the radio, so garbage like Nicki Minaj is rolled out for everyone to listen to and thus perpetuate the cycle of people hating rap/hip-hop. It's not that they actually hate rap/hip-hop, it's that they hate shitty rap/hip-hop. The sign that humanity as a whole is deteriorating is that Nicki Minaj was made a judge on American Idol, and it's a bit depressing that someone who has abused the fuck out of auto-tune gets to decide whether or not you have talent as a singer.
So if you say you hate rap/hip-hop, at least add "mainstream" before rap/hip-hop because I know that's what you're really saying. It also helps if you don't paint the entire genre as being similar to Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj, because that is so far from the truth.
I haven't done too much personal blogging lately because I have to blog about other things to receive a paycheck—so here's a few things that have happened lately:
I got a new YouTube channel (I'm uploading mostly game videos but I'll have other stuff soon): http://www.youtube.com/TheAWPFactor
Anyways, onto the whole restaurants with the best free bread.
1. Red Lobster
Red Lobster has the best free bread, in this case, biscuits. Cheddar bay biscuits are the shit. I could eat them every single day if I wanted to. I used to take home a lot of the bread and eat it at home. They're one of the best reasons to ever go to Red Lobster, and I don't even like the majority of seafood. Red Lobster's biscuits are one of the greatest gifts to humanity.
2. Olive Garden
I haven't been to Olive Garden in a while, but it's still a great place to eat. The difference between Red Lobster and Olive Garden is that I actually like most of the items on Olive Garden's menu (I don't think I've eaten more than four things off of the menu at Red Lobster). Their breadsticks take the cake, the plate it came on, the utensils, and the next cake when it comes to taste. The garlic butter taste is second to none. If you haven't had Olive Garden's breadsticks, you better go and get them because you're missing out big time.
3. Outback Steakhouse
I despise wheat bread, but for some reason, Outback Steakhouse's bread makes me like it. It hits my taste buds in a different way, much like new flavors of Arizona Iced Tea or whatever. The thing is you'll need melted butter to make it taste a lot better. I went through at least two baskets before we got to the Bloomin' Onion.
4. Cheesecake Factory
It makes my list because the white bread is awesome. The other types of bread are kinda meh, namely because I have a personal aversion to wheat bread as I mentioned before. My big problem with this is that the butter isn't slightly melted, so you'll have to spread it on and not be lazy. The bread is really average and nothing super special, but it's the Cheesecake Factory, so it serves as a good appetizer to a good meal.
Lent is supposed to be a season of sacrifice and reconciliation in the Catholic Church. For forty days and nights, we reflect on the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, by dying so that we can be free from sin and death. You go to church every Sunday, confess your sins, and, by tradition, you give something up that you really like, such as candy, soda, Facebook, etc. Doesn't sound so bad, does it?
As human beings usually do, they find something wrong with everything. I immediately saw what was wrong with Lent the second I started attempting to give something up: to these people, it really wasn't about Jesus or the sacrifices he made so that we could be free from sin. It was basically a circus event of people trying to outdo each other through their Lenten sacrifices, all in the name of self-control, something that should be done all of the time rather than some of the time. I'm sure to this very day, some of those people still do it; they brag about what they're going to give up and how awesome of a person they are because of it. If you don't, then good for you; you've learned how to stop throwing dirt on a good message.
For years, I stayed extremely bitter at this time of the year because of that. However, I'm changing my stance on it in 2013, thanks to a good friend of mine who reminded me on how it should be done. Instead of giving things up, we should start reaching out to one another in the spirit of reconciliation, and that's what I intend to do throughout Lent. Sounds shocking, doesn't it? Returning to what the original message of Lent is, what Jesus intended it all to be, right? It might be a bit alarming to those who believe that giving things up temporarily (and thus temporarily practicing self-control) is a good idea. It's good practice, but self-control is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year virtue, you know, like all the other virtues?
Here's the kicker (something that may shock plenty of you): I'm going to start sending messages to those who I despise and those who despise me and reach out to them in the spirit of Lenten forgiveness. This is not a one-time, Lent-only deal—it's something that will be done all the time from now on, the way Jesus intended it to be, the correct way. No conditions, no ulterior motives, no bullshit, this is a genuine reaching out. I'm ready to take action immediately.
