It’s been… how many months since I’ve touched this poor, neglected blog? Ah, well.
Gaming-wise not too much new, except for Warhammer Online. My view on it: it’s fun, it’s familiar, it’s new. The first is self-explanatory and yet the most complicated of all of them, the second is self-explanatory (you’ve played a recent MMO, you’ll have a good feel for WAR) and the third is too (it’s new, new things are cool). The fun bit comes in with the RvR and the PQ’s (public quests). Doing keep sieges/defense in the early teens is a definite change from the normal pace of MMOs, you’ll be doing lots of things reserved for end-game content early on. While I have not maxed a character yet (only half-way through, in fact) I have had the feeling that I *was* at the level cap. One big difference to note in WAR is that in RvR the classes are not balanced on a 1v1, if anything they’re balanced on a sort of rock-paper-scissors mechanic. Explanation: You have 4 archtypes; healer, tank, ranged DPS, melee DPS (and I’ll just refer to the DPS’ as DPS)–healers can hold their own against tanks, but tend to be weak against DPS, tanks can hold out against DPS–this isn’t always the case with every class though, the two ‘hybrid’ healers especially (Warrior Priest on Order, Disciple of Khaine on Destruction). These two can tank fairly well, and heal pretty well (spec’d, gear’d and played correctly, very well) and can take anyone 1v1 (usually). And while lots of people can complain about that, the fact is WAR is not a solo game, it’s a war between two sides and the fighting is done between armies.
Ok, so that’s gaming out of the way, on to the title of this post. November is coming, and that’s NaNoWriMo month. I missed it last year, so this year will be my first time. 50,000 words in 30 days is somewhat daunting, considering I’ve never written that much for a story–ever–but I think this is an excellent time and source for motivation. Work allowing, I hope to at least cover the minimum so I’ll start outlining a story this month and get all the background info I can muster together (which should be a ton or two worth).
Speaking of writing, I’ve swapped to a Mac since the last post (for everything but gaming, of course) and found Mariner Software’s Storymill, a creative writing word processor. I really love the program, it has loads of organization for all kinds of background info, a full screen writing mode, timeline, etc. One feature that I’ve really enjoyed is being able to add characters, settings, and such to an info bar on a particular scene (and writing by scene is great, instead of by chapter–the scenes automatically get added to a chapter that you choose) add some comments in the comment section to it and I can remember everything about the scene without having to keep up with loads of notes.
Think I might post some of the background info and outlines once I get some made, and once I get a story idea thought up, and once I make time from work, and… (by the way, this post comes up to over 560 words, and only took a bit of time to do–perhaps 1700ish a day isn’t too far a stretch.)
