So I read Saint's sticky post about applying, double checked
and triple checked it so I didn't sign up for some nasty responsibilities
if i got in (awesome post btw SaintK! :D

I've been thinking about applying for some time, but never got myself
to sit down and write the actual application. Seems I finally managed
to overcome my laziness.

I've been hanging around on the SpA servers from pretty much the
beginning of my TF2 career - when I (as previously stated) decided
to escape the Swedish tf2 servers infested with 13-year old kids - and
have found myself unable to play on any other servers since. Nice
people and good map cycles, as well as spa points, do you need
anything else?

Despite the time I've been around on the servers for a while, I haven't
really been active on the forums. The reason for that is simply that I'm
not very fond of forums in general. All the forums and communities I've
visited has ended the same, in the beginning I'm active, but as time
goes the activity gradually goes down. I guess i prefer more direct
ways for communicating. You'll have a higher chance of bumping into
me on mumble or IRC.
Anyway, the point is that nobody really knows me that good, and
while i'm not sure if an introduction is at place here, I'll just say
something about myself anyhow.

I was born 84 and is currently doing my thesis work in media-technology.
I'm rather restless and always need to keep myself occupied, and at
the same time also very laid back, and not very talkative.
I don't really have that many interests or hobbies. The one i burn
for the most being gaming, a natural effect after having grown up
alongside super Mario and NES, SNES and computers.
Some of my favorite games include, but are not limited to; Super
Mario World, Mario 64, Tribes 2, Natural Selection, the Metroid
Series, Starcraft & Broodwar, super smash bros, WoW, resident
evil 4 and of course; Team Fortress 2 :D
In class-based games or games in general where you somehow
get to choose your gameplay, I tend to go for the more indirect
or stealthy classes, which is why you will mostly see me (or not?) as a spy.
As most people, I also enjoy good movies and TV-shows, my
favorite western show being Dexter, and other favorites are
House MD, heroes and breaking bad.
Also as less than most people I enjoy anime, like Naruto, One Piece and Bleach.
My favorite beverages are coffee, milk and whiskey, and i eat
most edible things, and sometimes some less edible things.
Oh, and sometimes i draw stuff, mostly Starcraft stuff though :o

Hmm... can't come up with anything else at the moment. That
will have to do for now. Or wait, I got a bad memory as well :o

Kinda lost in my own writing by now, but the point is that SpA is
awesome, and I'd be happy to join :)

_________________
"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

WOW, wall of text crits mint...


GL

_________________
[SpA]Revenge "Wheres the element of surpise :/"

[SpA]Mint "IN.... MY....PANTS"

[SpA]Minimoose "Revenge is going to jump out of your pants?"

Awesome application.
Awesome dude.

Goodluck mate!

_________________
Comfortably Numb

"is that your way to say hello chad? ;P" <33

very nice app & i wish u the best of luck mah friend!

_________________
...:::~*We Can't Be Adults! We're Steadily Growing!!*~:::...

You said Starcraft! He said starcraft! We got a bunch of people who got the game, and we always say we're gonna play but we never do Please be angry at them o:

Gl with your application ^_^

TRIBES 2! Good luck with the app chad!

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Uiuiui!

Good luck Archlucker

_________________

you, sir, have an excellent taste in games. best of luck with your app man!

_________________
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

Wall of text, cant be arsed right now.
You've got my vote tho.
Edit: Now I read it.

How can you say that? Look \/


I rest my case!

WoW IS an excellent game. Just that it's trendy to either hate it or play it.

_________________
Comfortably Numb

It's supposed to be 'cool' to look down at the people who play it, who are all supposed to be 'nerds'. I don't like the game after playing it for a week or so, but It's silly that people think you're weird if you do play it

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

I've said it before and I'll say it again; alone, wow is horrible, with friends, it great fun.

but discussions about wow have sunk thread before, and we best not let it happen here methinks.

_________________
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

Exactly. Let's talk about lurker tactics in Starcraft. =D =D

_________________
Comfortably Numb

Thanks for your support folks :)

Seems I made a misstake by writing down wow.. allow me to try to address this concern...
I wrote wow in the list of games mostly because of the impact it had on me as a gamer, it was my first real rpg, as well as my first mmo. If it eases some of your worries (as well as restores some of my dignity :p ) I can say without lying, that I don't play it anymore, neither am i missing it :p It was simply my door into the mmorpg world. Though atm i don't play any mmorpgs at all due to lack of time. Looking back at wow, it's too simple for being a mmo, it should be more like EVE online, with player run economics and an open world and that kind of stuff. Hmm.. why didn't i write EVE online instead? >< Mah... nevermind.

Lets skip to the lurker tactics instead... I enjoy lurker rushing and burrow my lurkers at the enemy mineral fields! it's instant win... at least vs computers :)

_________________
"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

Archlurker Chad receives two thumbs up from me already!

1. Active on the servers
2. Active on the forums
3. Active on Mumble
4. Epic application thread

P.S. I have a love-hate relationship with WoW - I played it only during the beta and reached level 40-something with two characters. I appreciate it for the usual Blizzard polish (Polish - get it? Ha, ha! :-P) but hate it for the McDonaldization of the MMORPG genre where everybody thinks about how to get a slice of the WoW player base instead of designing a truly good game. Also, WoW is actually quite unoriginal in its MMORPG concepts with Blizzard taking over the market with their Blizzard and WarCraft brand power while not really introducing that much new to the genre which existed long before the game. I would never play a MMORPG that requires huge amounts of time investment (it's not about the subscription) nowadays anyway (that's why I only spent 3 months on Dofus which is actually quite cool in several regards) - I'll occasionally fire up Guild Wars to pwn some n00bs in PvP who use flavor of the month character builds while I surprise them with my long forgotten creations. ^^

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

Lycka till, Chad.

You forget that most of the uber builds have been nerfed to smouldering piles of crap by the Guildwars devs... and they broke everyway of actually making money

_________________
a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

House MD

oh jeah uh good luck

_________________
I miss my pownie

gl

lycka till...

_________________
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

Very true words indeed Lim-Dul. The fact that Blizzards made wow a "McDonalds-mmo" as opposed to a more sophisticated rpg, makes me real curious what they are planning to do with their yet unrevealed mmo. Supposedly it's gonna be a new franchise, with no relation to either starcraft, warcraft or diablo. They will have an ideal opportunity to do something wicked sick, not limited by previous lore or anything like that. God... I'd trade my left appendix for that info...

On the other side, I did try out guild wars for a bit, and I kinda liked it. But as I had been playing wow for a bit, the instanced world really annoyed me. Kinda like world pvp. The other bad thing was that there was only one race, humans. The most boring race there is in any given game, bound to be the all around race and jack of all trades with few or no special advantages or disadvantages. As there was no other races in GW this wasn't really a problem, but still, they're very boring to look at (yes, i wish I'd been born a protoss (no, not a zerg lurker, as they're brainless (no, i'm not brainless despite my nick, I just don't like to think :P ))).
I really did like the way your character grew in GW though, and the fact that you could dual-class as opposed to wow. It was great fun to plan your skill set and get out there and hunt down you're skills... argh, you made me long for GW2! :O
They're gonna skip the instanced world and there's gonna be 5 races in it as well, the two reasons I didn't like GW :D
Indeed, really like House, his lack of people skills makes him a very interesting character :)

_________________
"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

Well - I am really concerned about GW2 because the instanced world and lack of classes was precisely what I like in GW and the reason why it was so different from mainstream MMORPGs (going as far as the devs not labeling the game as a MMORPG).
I mean - if you want non-instanced worlds and many races you have dozens of quality MMORPGs to choose from. In my experience non-instanced worlds, while fun to have around because of the ability to meet players "in the field", come with loads of problems... Boss/location camping, ganking and whatnot... Not my cup of tea.

The lack of races didn't bother me because of GWs completely different approach to character progression. Basically you could switch your skills and stats (which weren't affecting much except the effectiveness of certain lines of skills - apart from the primary attribute) at leisure, the level cap was very low and you could find items with maximum stats at every corner - that meant that everybody had (theoretically) the same chances - both the guy who played for a month and the guy who played for a year and the true distinction between the characters came from choosing different looking, albeit identical stats-wise equipment.

I loved that concept because it completely took away grinding unless you wanted to grind for titles or nicer looking equipment which I didn't care about - I focused on honing my skill timing and thinking up cool builds (the skill bar limited to just 8 skills while the total number of available skills spanned many hundreds was an ingenious idea), which gave me great satisfaction. To me all my characters were simply "tools", not my alter-egos. Basically I wasn't attached to any character more than e.g. to the M4A1 in Counter-Strike. I have two accounts and exactly one character of each primary class at max level and with several sets of non-fancy max level equipment. Plus my ever-changing cast of PvP-only characters. That's how I roll...

Yes, that's not a concept for a subscription-based game since they are ALL about drawing the player in to spend as much time as possible in the game world and rewarding him periodically solely for the time investment whether he's any good at the game or not...

I think the main problem with GW, if there ever was a problem considering it has the second most largest player base after WoW, was that it wasn't a game targeted at traditional MMORPG players and many people didn't understand that and felt cheated when they found out about those instance, lack of races etc. - you confirm that Archlurker_Chad. It was hard for many people to just accept GW on its own merit, not as a fully featured traditional MMORPG but as a very good tactical multiplayer game with RPG elements.

However, by breaking the rigid genre boundaries it filled a niche no other game filled before and that's why the announced plans for GW2 break my heart - if they go with them all the way they will basically make another same-y MMORPG and all the changes are CLEARLY targeted at the criticisms traditional MMORPG players, WoW fans among them, have been rolling out. It's basically another attempt at getting another slice of the WoW pie with features that would attractive to the WoW (et al) audience. If that's what happens the only choice players will be getting is between apples and oranges while I want to have a nice steak instead - I don't care about the whole GW backstory enough (I skipped absolutely ALL quest descriptions etc. ;-) to be drawn to a game that works kinda like WoW but is set in a different universe. I don't have a problem with the WarCraft universe - it's the gameplay mechanics that put me off WoW and basically all other MMORPGs with time.

Well, I'll have to wait and see - I was a Guild Wars alpha tester, so perhaps I'll get invited into the GW2 alpha test as well? :-D

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

You have a point there as well. I'm stuck on wow and the other rpgs, at least when it comes to playable races and hmm.. the instanced worlds as well I suppose. Though yea, world pvp isn't always fun an joy with ganking and whatnot, but I still missed some of the action when I tried out wow on a PvE server with no world pvp.
But about GW2, will thet succumb completely and make it truly a "mmorpg" with a montly fee and all, or will it still remain like GW1 in all the other aspects except the instanced worlds and races? I hope for the latter, since I didn't mind the lower lvl cap and the non existing item-grind at all :)

_________________
"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

Why is every thread turning into a WoW discussion? With walls of texts, and "NO YOU" and stuff.

I hope - they will have BOTH instanced and "open areas" with the open areas designed to NOT be crucial enough for players to grief each other but at the same time allowing them to interact.

A bit like the current city system but where cities aren't only lobbies and places to advertise your stuff twice a minute. ;-)

The races might be fun too if they don't make them too different gameplay-wise. Perhaps make the races have a "primary attribute" like the classes that will change some things but not too much? It'd be a horror to balance it all if they were very unique and you have unique looks to make up for that anyway. Also, I'd have to buy like THREE accounts then to have every possible race/primary class combo (secondary classes can be changed after all).

As to subscription fees - GW2 won't have one. This much is clear. ArenaNet announced that long ago and confirmed that they will never ever have subscription fees in GW. Yes, I presume they will have lots of micro-transaction stuff like the current option to buy new slots or PvP packs etc. but that way you're not bound by time limits and actually feel like you immediately receive something for the money.

P.S. I'm looking forward to playing as a Charr in GW2. ^^
The Asura and Sylvari both look like some kind of Pokemon races - especially the former. Well - they have this Pokemon like dueling game after all. What is it called again? Polymock?
No idea - different people start the discussions and now I felt it's my turn to jump into the fray. ^^
And there isn't any "NO YOU" stuff here - I feel like this one is actually interesting on a factual level, especially since both Archlurker and I seem to be agreeing on more stuff than not.
Also, it's Archulrker's thread - if he wants to discuss WoW and MMORPGs, then nobody forces you to read through or even visit it, the freedom of the Internet - it does wonders! ;-)

P.S. Walls of text sure give a greater insight into somebody's opinion on something - it's certainly better than the "WoW sucks!" "No it doesn't!" "Yes it does!" type of exchange. ;-)

_________________
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

i had a deja vu

Good job!!! I hope you make it
xxx

OK, I'm gonna stop reading this thread now as I can see a couple of Lim-Dul posts that look way too long for my liking.

Nice application though mate, you certainly went above and beyond the usual applications we get.

Good luck.