Sharks, and 9 Wallpapers, and Car Crashes! Oh My!

Hi everybody.

I know you're already pretty freaked out just by the title. Let me explain what the heckhound happened.

On the way back home from the airport, my grandparents, my parents, and me got in a bad car crash. We took a turn on a green light, after it had been green for like 5 seconds. We're in the middle of the intersection and a black car speeds at over the limit and hits us in the back end of the left side of the car. She didn't even put the on the break. Just ran right into us at a high speed.

My mom was behind my dad, who was driving. I was in the middle of the back seat, with my Granny on my right. My Pa was in the passenger seat. I screamed the second before it hit. Thank god, we all had our seatbelts on. I went up into the air a little, my mom took most of the impact in her shoulder, and the air bag hit her hard in the ribs. My dad seemed ok other than a stiff neck.

I look into the front seat to see if Pa is ok. His head is resting limply on his shoulder. I immediately start sobbing uncontrollably. I scream "PA! PA! ARE YOU OK!" He weakly says, "yes, yes. I'm alright." Granny starts crying like nobody's business. (She worries a LOT. So she was really freaking out.)

We all got out of the car, and luckily a nurse who had just gotten home, and an off duty police officer were very nearby and the officer had us explain what happened and the nurse look at Pa and helped him breathe. See, Pa had open heart surgery a while ago and he has some heart problems. So he was in bad condition, because he was in shock. My mom, going into administration mode, called 911 and the police and ambulance came.

I was sitting on the curb, legs shaking like gobblers in a candy shop, crying hysterically. I love my grandparents SO much, and if anything happened to them I just don't know what I would do. My mom's ribs really hurt, but she seemed ok.

(I'm trying my best to remember everything but, it's all a big blur right now. The paramedics were helping Pa into a stretcher, then into an ambulance. Granny went with them. My mom went in another ambulance. I went with her. The nurse gave my dad a ride back home to drop off the luggage.

We're all perfectly fine now. David's parents picked my mom and me up and dropped us off at home, and picked up groceries and my mom's pain meds the doctor prescribed. My dad is there with my grandparents. Pa is doing fine. What happened was the seatbelt rests where the incision from the surgery was, which is very uncomofrtable for him. When we got jostled around, the seatbelt pulled and he lost his breath. But, thank Our Lady Judgement, we're all ok.

My shoulder and back hurt a lot right now, so I won't be blogging / playing a lot for maybe a few days. I can still see the car coming at us. I feel like none of it's real.

On a better note, KingsIsle has released a new Celestia reveal, and some concept art for ANOTHER new mount, a SHARK!

It looks so cool, huh? Celestia will definitely be EPIC. Turns out it's actually going to be a pet and an enemy also! And here's the artwork reveal

Looks like they've added a Marleybonian mechanic. Slowly, but surely we're getting there. Man, KI, you're just getting us so close to the edge of our seats, we'll fall off.

I hope you're all safe and sound. And PLEASE, for the safety of your family and friends, DO NOT drive on a cell phone, or with ANY sort of distraction. Please.

What I went through today will stay with me forever. Please just be careful for the sake of your loved ones.

Thank you.

Happy Gaming

Back So Soon?

Surprise! I'm back sooner than I thought. I had an awesome time on vacation. Yesterday Philly, Vanya (David's cousin that was adopted from Russia) and I, went to see The Sorcerer's Apprentice. All I can say is EPIC. I'd love to see some of the stuff in that movie in Wizard101. It'd be crazy.

Tomorrow I might make more than one post, so just be ready to be reading more than usual.

I'm really glad to be home again, and I'm heading through my Spiral Door as I post this.

Happy Gaming

Ahhhh I Can Relax...

Hey everyone. We got here about an hour ago. Man, I'm lying on the couch typing away on my ipod (I apologize in advance for the typos. ;D) and man do I feel great. It's so nice to be away from all the stress of daily life and just relax here with family and friends.


I can't guarantee that I'm going to post tomorrow and Sunday, but I will certainly try. Now, I don't have any of the pictures that I need(or the capability to post them) from my ipod, so expect just a big wall of text (head nod to Friendly on that [expect a link when I get home.)]


As for now, I just wanted to let you all know that we got here safely and I'm really enjoying myself.


Happy Gaming

Vacation Once Again

Hey everyone, today I'm going to be going on vacation with David's family and my parents. I can't say where because well, who likes stalkers? ;D

All I can say is that I know I'll have a great time with David, Philly and the rest of the family that will be there.

It's only going to be for the weeked, and I have quite a few post ideas for when I get back. So be prepared to be reading and playing a lot when I return. (You'll wanna try some of this stuff out ;D)

Happy Gaming

4th of July With Some Friend Issues Still

First of all, I'd like to wish you all a very happy 4th of July. I'm over at my aunt's house right now, on her laptop.

Of course the holiday isn't why I'm making this post. I'm making it to let you all know that I believe everything is worked out between me and Alex (just read the comments.)

When I get home today, I'm going to finish the post that I started, about what happened online yesterday. It was quite a conversation, and leaded to two "removes" of mine. (Alyssa and Kyle.) Now, you're all probably wondering why I removed two of my best friends in the entire Spiral.

Well, you'll have to read my next post to find out. As soon as I go on Wizard101 when I get home, I will try to add them both back. (Of course if they want to. They don't seem to happy with me in the comments.)

Last night, David's sister, Tiffany, took me out to see Twilight: Eclipse. That movie is just fantastic! I don't know why it got such poor reviews. I was very happy with it, and hope to get it on dvd for my birthday. I would highly recommend it if you've seen the first two.

That's all for now. Have a great day.

Happy Gaming

Seriously?: A Little Rant

Ok, first of all I'd like to say that last night I went out with my Mom, Dad, David, his parents, his aunt and uncle, and Philly, and his dad and grandparents. We had a wonderful time at a very nice restaurant. Later we all went back over to David's and jc'd. (jc = "Just Chilling" for all those noobs out there. ;D)

But, none of that is the point of this post. Today I am having a little rant because of the comments I received on the previous post. In the post I clearly stated that everyone who entered the contest had guessed correctly and won. I received two comments (it may not seem like a lot but it's enough to make me upset.) asking "lol did I win?" and saying "I feel sad that I didn't win. :( It's not my fault that I don't have a membership. AND I WAS FIRST TO POST A COMMENT! :( x sigh x I hate not being a member." Seriously? Here's the comment I was going to post, but decided making a new post would have a better impact.

@Alyssa and everyone else who is reading this:
EVERYONE WHO POSTED A COMMENT WON! IF YOU READ THE WHOLE POST YOU WOULD KNOW THAT! IT BOTHERS ME THAT YOU GUYS ARE ASKING ME SOMETHING THAT I TOLD YOU IN THE POST. SERIOUSLY. I MEAN, WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT MY BLOG? THAT IT'S TOO BORING TO READ THE WHOLE POST? COME ON GUYS.

This isn't even the first time it's happened. Go back through my comments sections and see.

I hope from now on I don't have to explain to someone that if they read the whole post, they would know what's going on.

Happy Gaming

Enchanted Trading R.I.P.

Hey, as amost of you know, I wasn't able to make it to the Ravenwood Ball last night. I had a great time with Philly, etc yesterday though. (I'm going over David's to chill with just him and Philly tonight.) But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

I want to discuss the loss of our ability to trade enchanted cards. I'm sure many of you are very dissapointed in this collosus-sized event in the history of the Spiral. But is it really such a bad thing?

Let me start with a quote from via Friendly's blog:

"The trading of enchanted cards was never intended; it was an error on our part that players were able to use this system to gain access to spells they were never suppose to receive. Yes, this has been an issue in PvP, but that's really a minor part of the overall problem (as PvP is a relatively minor part of the overall W101 experience.)

Please understand that we went to great lengths to craft and balance the difficulty and "fun factor" of our game. We spent thousands of hours pouring over spreadsheets, implementing, testing, and then repeating that process until we got it right. We planned for players to have "easy" fights and "hard" fights. We planned on solo areas, and areas where we wanted them to ask other players for assistance, fostering social connections. As part of this process -- and to make each class feel special -- we created a handful of custom, unique spell that were restricted to each class. We wanted each player to feel like they could do something that other players could not. Each class was engineered to have areas of strength and weakness, so that the style of game play (and strategy) would different from one player to the next. We wanted to foster a sense of identity, to make the game interesting (and different) based on the path that the player chose to follow, and (of course) to make the game balanced across 300+ hours of gameplay.

After all that effort, we made a mistake, one which allowed player to use 50 gold enchantment cards to circumvent these class restriction. Oops! I wish this mistake had never been made in the first place; had the class restrictions been properly enforced from the beginning, players would have thought "well, that makes sense" and not given it another thought.

The problem is, this may seem like a minor issue, but it is not. This one oversight fundamentally dilutes the unique nature of each class. Replicating these spells creates a huge imbalance in our system, not just in PvP, but in the overall play cycle and in the experience of the game we spent so much time and energy crafting. If everyone can cast everything, what's the point of having classes at all? To borrow a phrase from The Incredibles, "When everyone's Super, then no one is." In my eyes, being able to mass produce a collection of class-restricted, high level spells for a trivial amount of gold falls pretty clearly into the category of stuff we should fix. And so, we are fixing it.

I certainly realize that you may not agree with this decision. Much
like a parent sometimes the "right" decision is not necessarily the most popular one. In this case, I recognize that some people will be unhappy with this fix. But as the director of the game, I have to look out for the health of the game as a whole. It's my call to make, and I stand by my decision. You may not agree, but I do hope you will understand."

~J. Todd Coleman

Ok, let me try and sum up what you just read: They didn't originally intend for us to be able to trade crafted cards because they wanted some spells to be school only spells. Thats why there are cards that don't drop from enemies. KI wanted there to be something special about each school, but if everyone can cast every spell, then what's the point in the different schools?

That's right, Syndrome. When everyone is super, no one is.

The special spells that were meant to be school-specific were really cool ones, like the lvl48's, Judgement, Satyr, Earthquake, Wildbolt (<--PvP will be better now), all the buffs, etc. PvP will be much better now, because only diviners will cast wild bolt, (we won't be beaten by n00bs with orthrus anymore ;D) and only life will be able to heal.

And once again, Balance will be brought back into the Spiral.

Because of this huge part of the update, about a week before it went live, I gave Emily some cards:

• 1 Cyclops
• 1 Humungofrog
• 1 Orthrus
• 1 Death Trap
• 1 Ghoul
• 1 Vampire
• 4 Skeletal Pirate
• 2 Wraith
• 1 Scarecrow
• 1 Strom Trap
• 4 Wild Bolt
• 1 Kraken
• 4 Stormzilla
• 9 Triton
• 7 Storm Lord
• 10 Judgement
• 6 Krokotillian
• 1 Locust Swarm
• 8 Hydra
• 25 Power Nova

Now, you're alll probably wondering, "Blaze, what the heckhound were you thinking, giving away all those cool cards?" Well, one of my very first posts was about how much I care about Emily, and how important our friendship is to me. Now, I'm almost a grandmaster (I dinged 49 the other day. I'll post some screenshots later.) I'm very confident in my casting abilities, I don't need any of those cards. My dad won't give me money for them in the bazaar. (He says it's against the rules. Otherwise he would take them, but Professor Drake would be very angry I:) So, why not give them to someone that can use them.

Now, I know Emily isn't a n00b (she knows a lot about the game) but she is at a low level still. I'm positive these cards will be of use to her, and I'm sure she'll save a Judgement as a sentimental thing. My last gift to her, you know? (I remember when I gifted her that bandit suit. And I'll be sure to gift her more items that she'd like, once I get more crowns.)

Again, I apologize for making such a lengthy post, but oh well.

I'm going to head over to the Spiral (I finished my science project finally.) until I have to head over to my 2nd house. ;D

Happy Gaming

Pool Party

Hey everyone, the month is almost over so make sure you've voted on the poll! I'm heading over to Emily, Erica, Aunt Debbie, and Uncle Mike's house with David and Philly. We're having a BBQ and pool party. Most likely James and Jillian will be there too, so the whole crew will be there. ;D

No, I haven't set up an e-mail for TAS (The Awesome Sauce-erer) yet. But, I promise the next time that I post, I will tell you about the gift that I gave Emily, before the trading ability left (well enchanted cards anyway.)

In other news, Friendly made a list of all his pets and their talents today. So I'll be posting that link in the post where I talked about all his pets (as soon as I find it.) Kevin Battleblood (The Chillanthropologist) has set up a wonderful website where we can enter our pets talents. This will eventually be turned into a guide (like Ironhawk's guides over at the central) So, his blog is in my blogroll, be sure to check out the site and please enter the talent information of all your pets. Make sure you're accurate about the info (so our guide is 100% perfect.)

Thanks guys

Happy Gaming

Power Nova

Yeeeha! I did the last spell quest in the game (At least until Celestia... I'll make my new spell list tomorrow ;D) Two days ago I leveled up thanks to the Fabulous:

LILI MA!!!!

x hold for applause x

w00t! "I LOVE YOU LILI... x mumbles x even though your a dirty good for nothing traitor..."

So here's my current stats:

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about 50% Power Pip!

So, I ported home and got the Tutorial Tip (Everytime I say "tutorial tip" I hear it in Gamma's voice, per the tip for n00bs. If you said that in Gamma's Voice you get +25 Brownie Points!)

I'm not going to post all my screenshot of the questline, but along the way I met what looks like what a death troll spell would look like:

You can't tell from this picture, but he had glowing read eyes...spooky!

Of course, I easily pulled the rug from under him!

(You can see the red eyes there^)

So I got the Harmonious Crystal from the Necropolis, and moved on to fight the Plague Oni, and put his essence into the crystal because he can have a deadly disease, but not die. (PERFECT BALANCE! [yes, that is a flash game...])

I had some intense help from my good buddy, Eric Hawkdreamer, and Talon SpiritThief (Angel DragonGem [not the one from YouTube] is his life wizard, which is where I met him. So, I still call him Angel ;D)

Of course we pulled the rug from under Ideyoshi, as well.

Then, with a bruised tailbone, he turned into the Plague Oni.

Of course, we got a picture together before the battle.

So, Eric and I "Oni Vs Oni" 'ed this guy:

ONI WINS!

I filled up my crystal with the plague,

and then stopped over at Jared's to have it set. (He did a fabulous job btw!)

Oh Blaze, you shouldn't have...

Then, Good Ol' Alhazred made me smash the "One In A Million" piece of jewlery in front of the Krokosphinx because I "have to give something to get something of equal value" or something along those lines.

Then, Our Lady Judgement came and granted me the Power Nova spell. Alhazred rewarded me with the "Master of Balance" badge and a nifty Hydra pet, Princess Roxy.

Here's a nice picture of me with my new badge and Roxy equipped:

Sorry this is such a lengthy post, but I'm just really excited about finally becoming a Master of Balance. Yeah, the n00bs will be flooding me with friend requests, but that's why it's a privacy option.

I have to go now, we're going out with David's family for Mother's Day.

Happy Gaming

Surprise Tomorrow

Hi everyone, I just got home from David's tonight. I'm going to make a very exciting awesomesauce post tomorrow which will leave you with your jaw dropped. (As I was when it happened to me.) I really need to go to bed right now. I'll talk to you as soon as I can tomorrow.

Happy Gaming

Apologies & Party

Hi guys, sorry I didn't get to post yesterday. I have two projects that I have to do for school, (Science, and History, in case you were wondering,) and I really need to work on those. History is due next Friday, and Science is due in the middle of next month, but it's a big project, that requires a lot of work. My mind is just bestuffed (word courtesy of Friendly here) with all the things that I need to do.

So, tonight my Mom, David's mom, and his Aunt Debbie, are going ou tshopping together, while Aunt Debbie's two girls, Emily and Erica, and niece and nephew, James and Jillian, Aunt Debbie's parents, her husband, Uncle Mike, David, his dad, my dad, and myself, party over at Aunt Debbie's parent's house.

I always have fun being with them, so I'm pretty excited. David's dad is picking my dad and me up in a few minutes, so I have to go right now.

Happy Gaming

How To Train Your Dragon

Hey, so today at 12:00, Philly and I went to the movie theater with my mom to go see How To Train Your Dragon. It was a great movie. I'm over at David's house right now, trying to explain to Philly what the "plot" of my blog is. Rofl. Such a n00b.

He, like David, finds Wizard101 stupid. He even tried it. He was a fire wizard, and apparently after 5 minutes he got "bored."

x sigh x

Ten year-olds. You can never please them.

x shrug x

So anyway, the movie was fantastic! I really enjoyed it. If you haven't seen it yet, you definitely should right away.

So, the pet of the day is good ol' Flappy. (The lightning bat, for all those who don't follow Friendly's blog. x grumble grumble x) Yeah, poor Friendly doesn't have any lightning bats. I wish I had one that I could let him BS (Bazaar Snipe XD.)

So, I probably won't be able to go on Wiz101 today. As, I'll probably be staying at David's till 11:00 once again. So much for getting a good sleep tonight. Oh, well.

My mom says I should get one because she says that I sound really sick, but I feel perfectly fine.

Also, this morning, while getting ready to go pick up Philly, from David's house, this song from Alice In Wonderland, was stuck in my head. It's called "How D'ye Do And Shake Hands." You can fast foreward to around 00:38. That's where the song begins. The video also include the story of The Walrus and The Carpenter. (That's my favorite part of the entire movie.)



Cause that's manners. Maybe tomorrow I can play Button Button Who's Got The Button with Alyssa, and Emily. That would be fun! :D

Yeah, this song was stuck in my head because yesterday I was playing on my other wizards (I'll introdce them tomorrow ;D) and one of them, Samantha, is very nice, and Alyssa was introducing me to some of her friends, so I started singing this wonderful song. XD

Have a nice day and:

Happy Gaming

Level 47

Yuppers, I finally hit lvl 47. I was in Chelsea Court, or maybe it was Newgate Prison...No, it was Chelsea Court. I don't know what exactly did it for me. I was questing, and I just did one for David Beeman. (I then needed to defeat 8 gearheads.) Then while I was fighting the gearheads, I looked down at my quest bar and BAM! It was only a half a section full! I had done it! I finally made it one level higher! No, I wasn't able to get a screenshot. (Remember, I didn't even notice until it was already a half section in?) Thanks Mr. Beeman!

Super sorry I didn't make a post yesterday. I was, you could say babysitting, but that would be inaccurate. You see, David (That's the friend that I've talked about countless times. Our families are very close. His relatives are my relatives too. It's a great connection that our families have. As a matter of fact, we're going bowling tonight with his cousins.)

Anyway, David's family was going to a cousin's club meeting yesterday, and David's cousin, Philly, is staying for the week. (He came down on Friday night for the big birthday party [I know, again, a LOT of birthdays in David's family] on Saturday.) He's allergic to dogs, so he couldn't go to the meeting. So, being the nice guy I am, I stayed over at David's house for the day, to be with Philly, so he wasn't by himself. (He's 10. Think what could happen O. o)

I know, David has a ton of computers, but honestly my blog wasn't even on my mind yesterday. Ridiculous, I know. Shame shame, I know your name. (That's from The Goonies. I say that a lot, when someone does something wrong XD)

Have a great day!

Oh, before I forget, Friendly wrote a very motivational post today, about how we should stand up for ourselves when people say Wizard101 is a "kid's game." Check it out!
http://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2010/04/playing-kids-game-is-awesome.html

Happy Gaming

Celestia Artwork

Hey, I'm at my friend's house. It's his uncle's birthday today. :D I love birthdays. They're so exciting.

So, I'm on my friend's mac-book (sp?) It's pretty awesomesauce, I mean, I love my desktop, but this is pretty awesome, even for a laptop. ;D

Anyway, Friendly got some pretty sweet concept art for Celestia from the folks over at KingsIsle. Gosh, you gotta love those guys. They didn't give us any of the actual people in the picture. They're gave silohuettes of the creatures. The humanoids look like they might be Marleybonians. Also the machinery in the background looks like the stuff in MB. So, I'm guessing the Marleybonians are exploring Celestia and we'll need to help them out, like in Krokatopia.



I'll upload the picture he gave us, tomorrow, because it's obviously not saved on my friend's computer. (He thinks W101 is stupid. O: Yeah I know, it's ridiculous. How can you hate a game as awesome as this?)

For now, just click on the look over in the good ol' sidebar and check out his post on it.

I'll talk to you guys probably late late night tomorrow. As I have piano lessons on Thursdays and we'll definitely have a lot of homework, as usual on Thursdays. (That's why I call it "Poopy Thursday.")

Happy Gaming