I came across the Dinkies cat avatar last year at Fantasy Faire.  It was so adorable, I dropped a lot of cash collecting different breeds.  At the time, there weren't a lot of clothing and accessories for them. But at this year's faire, there were clothes galore for them.  It made me take out my avatar for a spin.



I never thought to look for videos on youtube for the avatar but they are there, quite a few.  The one I linked to on this post is fantastic.

Scenes from Warhammer

I'm still in WAR and trying to work my main to RR80.  Which is hard for me because my interest waxes and wanes.  I'm always in awe of people who have multiple high level characters.

Jade Dynasty

Through my Crossover Games program, I decided to try out "Jade Dynasty".  This would be my first exploration of the Asian mmorpg genre.

What Asian mmorpgs have in their favor is a mythology that is fresh, centered in asian folktales.  This is enjoyable because I feel the european medieval myths used frequently in US/European based mmorpgs are played out.  I mean there are only so many times one can be a stalwart knight.

Jade Dynasty begins straight forwardly with a simple character creation page.  A new player will only decide what their avatar will look like when entering the game.  Choosing a class for the avatar will only occur later in the game (Lvl 15).  The opening area is lovely, it consists of a beautiful city called Sunstream surrounded by fields, temples and mansions.  Each game area has wonderful graphics and design.

The opening quests are simple basically consisting of talking to another character, finding items or killing so many of these enemies.  Your avatar is given a variety of different weapons to use.  It really doesn't matter which weapon is chosen because gameplay will change once you choose a character class.

The hook in the game mythology is about a hero called Shaw Danon.  At some point in time, he fell from grace and it is up to the player to find out why and perhaps redeem him.  Players also discover that a thwarted love is also a part of Shaw Danon's history.

The game interface is simple with icons for attack moves.  However there is also an extra bar for a special attack called the Esper.  The Esper attack bar also allows a bot function in which the user can go AFK while still essentially playing.  Believe me, you will need that function.  Another bot function to gain experience is called Meditation.  Essentially the player is able to go AFK in a home city, click on the meditation button (a small Buddha icon at the top of the screen) and then gain experience.  Average experience gained from meditation is about 200 points a minute.  I've read as characters gain levels, the experience for these bot functions will lessen in value.

The bot functions are extremely necessary because what you have read about asian grinders is true.  Jade Dynasty has an extremely large number of levels to master.  And leveling is slow...very slow.  What is worse is that the storyline quests are used in cliffhanger fashion.  Each area consists of 15 levels each avatar must grind before moving on to the next.  Usually the major quest lines end about 5 levels into an area before advising the character to move on.  However your character will need to level up 10 more levels before being able to follow the story into the next game area.  Which means the game crashes into a wall with the story on hold while your character will be forced to do dailies in order to catch up to the next part of the story.  I gamely tried to work with this mechanic but truthfully its worn me down after only hitting level 35.  

The game is free to play with a cash shop that has numerous interesting items.  But unlike other free to play games that give you a lot of bang for your buck, Jade Dynasty cash is on par to the dollar.  1 dollar equals 1 gold piece in the Jade Dynasty cash shop.  So most items are extremely expensive.  Interestingly the game does not allow you to supplement your in game money with real money.  I don't understand this, because the cash shop in other F2P games allow this essential function.  In Jade Dynasty you must grind for your money as you grind for more levels.  There is also a strange player to player sell mechanic.  In the major city, Sunstream, players put their items for sale in cute little cat treasure boxes.  But there are no rules about where to put these boxes so they are laid out willy nilly.  Many times there are so many of these player boxes that it is hard to see NPCs or even your own character toon.  I've looked into these boxes and they are filled with things that were of no value to my low level character.  And it would take a day or so running to each box to find something I could use.  This game needs an auction house in the worst way.

Despite the many things Jade Dynasty has going for it, it is killed by the grinding mechanic.  Which I've read is a standard in many Asian mmorpgs.  Apparently Asian audiences don't mind being forced to do hard time in their games.  Honestly, I wouldn't make real felons play this game or others like it.  Its soul killing.  I don't believe that I will be going back to Jade Dynasty with any regularity.  But if you have the patience to keep with it, it will pay off with a lovely high level character, beautiful fight graphics and other goodies.

These are not photographs

The screenshots taken above are not photographs.  They are screenshots of proprietary material, each and every one.  If I were to put these forth as an example of artistic effort, I would be laughed out of any art institution open today.  What these are...are souvenirs of different mmo worlds.  Again, the artwork does not belong to me.  Unlike taking photos in public places in RL, these mmo worlds are not public.  They all require some fee to access their content.

Somewhere in the process of mmo creation, Second Life has put forth the idea that people who take screenshots are artists.  I suppose it can be possible.  But for that to be true, they should be the creators of anything contained in the screenshot plus the screenshot itself.  Otherwise taking an mmo screenshot is the equivalent of taking a screenshot of a film.  No matter how much you crop it, edit it and put fancy effects on it via photoshop, the screenshot will never belong to you.

I too once thought that Second Life was different.  But it isn't.  It merely pushes forth it's underlying ethos of creative commons, info wants to be free meme.  Which means it subtly denudes creators of their copyright rights.  Recently, as I wrote before, Second Life has changed their TOS to decree practically all of SL to be a public zone.  Which means everyone has the "right" to go around and take screenshots. It cuts off creators from the right to control whether or not they want screenshots to be taken.  Its also worse since some landscape designers use creations from others and can not give permission for the items they only use not create.

What LL is attempting to do is blur the lines, to use it's customers as proxies to scrape data (much in the way CC zealots like to push forth music downloads), to take value from the creators.  In the process transferring the value from the creator to the screenshot taker.  Why is it so hard to understand the difference between say Renderosity (that sells material with some commercial rights attached), to the totally proprietary material in Second Life?  All the screenshots above are the same.  I don't own them.

Many SL users have had this smoke blown up their asses for so long, that they feel they have rights to sell their screenshots or claim artistic titles.  NO, no, no, no.  These are not photographs.  These are not the same as going into the RL street and taking photos with a theme in mind, with technique or inspiration.  This is more like RPing a photographer.  Which is why this article from New World Notes is so wrong headed.

If you have any talent or interest in photography, go out and take photos.  Those photos will be yours.  Those photos will have room to grow and open up to artistic efforts.  Screenshots are a dead end.  They are merely just a past time.  If computer art is your thing, then learn to create computer images that you own totally.

Just don't be a party to the big data scrape that ethics free Silicon Valley loves to support and make easy money on.