Patience Xie

It's...it's like looking at my relatives. :o

Don't count on anything until they've released it. They've been talking this up for years, and it has yet to manifest.

Kinda? I'm hoping that my biggest problems with it (mostly the mouse-based movement) are fixed--closed beta is for giving feedback about these kinds of things, after all--and then it's waiting to watch the community that develops around it.

I'm hoping that the nature of the game fosters a strong group of roleplayers. It seems like it'd be good for that. If so, I've found a new home and I will snuggle it and kiss it and hug it and call it George.

It's...I can't decide whether I like it or not. The character models seem clunky when compared to the backgrounds, and motion is mouse-driven rather than keyboard driven. I'm hoping that this changes later on, as it's difficult to do anything with a laptop's touchpad.

It's got me hooked enough that I want to continue playing. The dungeons remind me of D&D for some reason (tabletop, not online) and that makes me feel all nostalgic.

I wish that the hair moved, though. Holic's got me all addicted to watching ponytails bounce.

The closed beta ends on the 5th, so if anyone wants to take a looksee, they need to do it now.

Exclusion! Exclusion! Gah, teach me not to re-read.

With one example that I do simply out of derision for the individual in question, I refer to a person by the gender of the avatar in SL. Elsewhere, I don't find it as important.

When I was playing FFXI, though, it was pretty funny--I had one of those catgirl things and I swear, I was the only girl who had one. (Which I found out once I started complaining that I wanted real pants.)

There were experiments with flexiboobs when flexi first came out, too, but nobody went through the trouble of actually putting clothes on them. IIRC, they looked great if the lighting was right. If it wasn't, well...they looked like prims stuck on someone's chest, and you had to make sure they matched your skin in the first place. I wonder if she's fixed that problem?

Between this and the S*P strip, my interest was piqued. I made an account. I really liked the character generation system, which is more like Second Life or The Sims 2 than other MMORPGs I'm familiar with, and the graphics are simple but cute.

The criticism about the name is pretty accurate, though--I was okay with the surname that I got generated, but none of the first names did anything for me. So I submitted Maisy Stormsbane as a name.

Which is...well, the last name is close to, if not exactly what it randomly threw at me in the auto-pick, and Maisy is a perfectly fine period name. It took 26 hours (yes, I kept the time) to get that name through the system. I spent the first four levels of the game named "Swashbuckler".

I'd suggest the Otherland series by Tad Williams. (Iris, I was on them too!)