The Mind Of A Summoner #2

I've been pretty sick and haven't gotten around to posting, what a bummer right? Well at least now I don't have to worry about being sick for a while. A few days off league has left me a lot of time to think about what exactly to talk about today.

The idea of lane calling

                  

          Team Chat is becoming a battlefield for summoners. Since the very beginning of my experience on League of Legends people have been calling lanes. What I mean by this is that when you are matched with a team and load in the first thing on team chat is everyone spamming which lane they would like. The choices being top lane, mid lane, bot lane, and a jungler if you do not have two players going to mid/top together. This seems like a good way to get people where they would want to be but consistently for months now all i've seen from this idea is people yelling and causing team problems before even beginning the game. My conclusion is that so many players have forgotten that this meta of lane calling is not required by players. League of Legends is a meta loving game. We go to lanes as certain characters because the other team is going to, it's what we leveled up learning to do and quite frankly that's all most people want to know how to do. They don't want Twisted Fate adcing bot lane with a Soraka top because "you don't go there". Lately all i've done is bluntly point out to people that calling a lane...does not get you it. I've been called a troll, been told i've been reported, you know all that good stuff. Now with my goal of pushing this idea out of the way of how everyone is playing I do see a bit of change in people after I get to play with them. They realise that switching things up does very well when the other team has no idea how to react. The only problem I come upon is when people do not want to adapt.

They yell, kick, and scream the whole game at how we are going to lose when in reality we have every advantage.

Advantages to changing up the meta:

• You can confuse your opponents. The element of surprise and them trying to figure out your plan can gain you early kills while seeing if your plan will work.
• Allows you more room to get people in places that they do better in. Let's say you have two people who do well mid...put them both in mid and see what happens.
• You have more room to create fun invade plans.
• It gives you more opportunities to explore how different champs can or can not work together.

Now these advantages only really work when you have a team comp that makes sense and people know what they are doing. That's all I have to rant about the meta for today but here's a sweet league play I found.

             How to feel like a pro:

"Dat flash" 

Outsmarting opponents always feels so good...

 

 

The Mind Of A Summoner #1

         Sometimes you just have to give in to that game that you've passed over and over. Maybe it's the graphics you don't like, the combat, or if you are like me- because you know you'd be hooked. That game I resisted for so long is League Of Legends.

 

Since I've constantly been heavily invested with MMORPG's for over ten years now it was hard for me to understand why my friends wanted to play the same character over and over in some realm that didn't have any permanent levels or achievements. I like to be instantly gratified each time I log in with my full gear sets, rare title and daily quests ready. That wasn't enough to fully keep me out of Riot's grasp though...League of Legends was something I pushed away mostly due to my e-buddies dropping our mmo's for it. Countless people pushed me towards it but I always managed to dodge away. My reasoning still "What's the fun in losing everything you get in an hour over and over? That's kind of stupid..." Losing raid members to some game you had never played was kind of a bummer and I just put a bad label on LoL. Then about two months ago I found myself downloading it because of the stale MMO atmosphere I've explored lately. A break from the constant consistency in the way MMORPG's work can't be too bad for me after all, right?

        I've been around for awhile and sometimes you just need a break from the dedication most MMORPG's take. Lately free to play models and new combat systems have kept my interest for short periods of time but haven't sold me the feeling of wanting to stick around. The question finally struck me...

What gaming can I do with a learning curve that won't require me to grind?

 I gave in. I'm admitting it! Woooah. For three(? more or less) months I've been playing LoL daily. The constant PvP is something I enjoy along with the following key points:

• Item building.
• Constantly new opponents.
• Mastering a champion.
• The interaction between you and the game- to think on the spot to counter situations/people, checking other players farm/build, map awareness, exc.
• The amount of champions and the different play styles available.
• The amount of knowledge you can gather is endless.

League of Legends has offered me a way to have short periods of time fighting, learning and interacting with many players at once.

I plan on starting to blog a bit more now. College has settled down, it's warm outside, my roommate and I just can't stop playing LoL. I shall continue blabbering about LoL in this series I have named "The Mind Of A Summoner"...why is each word capitalized? I like how it looks.

Oh, you can plan on getting a short blerb about Guild Wars 2 from me this week after i'm able to pick up from where I was a few months ago. Time to compare it to current releases! 

-Z

Google: Glasses, Android and the Niantic Project

A lot of buzz has been spreading throughout espace lately about this android game called Niantic Project. Doing my own research I have actually fallen into wanting to play and explore this game. The game is all about augmented reality, gps tracking and fighting each other for portals that appear on your phone at certain locations in your city. Personally I am obsessed with researching source of virtual reality but this...has caught my eye. Do you remember the viral Google glasses? (Project Glass to be released before the end of 2013) The combination of the glasses and your android phone is coming sooner then most think. Maybe this game launch is to start the quick adaptation of the multiple perspectives we will have coming to us soon. Maybe this is just a way to get their Field Trip app to get more attention since it's launch this summer. Nobody really knows at this point and all I know is that Google has done a great job to grab my attention....and many other people who wouldn't normally be interested.

Currently android keys for the game are being handed out through email very slowly and the quickest way to do it is to create a form of art. Hopefully I will get my hands on a key soon to start my war and recruit my friends to dominate our city. Who the hell doesn't want to take over the area they live without having consequences. So far i've heard the bad guy side is winning...fuck yeah!

As for what people are doing for keys check out their art works here.
 

Can't wait anymore...!

"NANA is the story of two young women, both named Nana, who meet on the train to Tokyo and, through a series of coincidences, end up becoming roommates in an old seventh-floor walkup. In many ways that apartment, number 707 (“Nana” in Japanese means “seven” by the way), is nearly as important a character as the two Nanas themselves.
Written and drawn by Ai Yazawa (author of Paradise Kiss, among others), NANA contains some of the most authentic human beings I have so far encountered in manga. Yazawa’s characters are rich and complex, each just a little bit (or more than a little bit) broken as most of us humans are, and because of this, their relationships with each other and their choices, both good and bad, feel so real, they could come straight out of the reader’s own life. It would be so easy for a story like this, which focuses mainly on relationships, to fall into soap opera-like melodrama but the intensely real characters save it from doing so, time and time again. This is especially surprising in a manga where a good portion of the characters are rock stars." -Melinda Beasi

---

I've fallen back into that hole where I want more NANA manga. After finding the anime steaming on Netflix  and finishing it I found where the anime left off in the manga then started reading again. The first time I ever got the glimpse of the manga was in Shojo Beat in 2005 but now compared to back then the punk clothes and crazy story is just as addicting. The drama in the love relationships, friendships and the struggling to be something big is now a part of my own life. I can relate to both Nana's in more ways then one so it's really made a difference re-reading it now.

The thing is...it never ended. After reading till I couldn't find anymore chapters I quickly researched and found out what had happened. The mangaka Ai Yazawa had fallen ill in 2009 and had never picked it back up.So... I was put through a emotional roller coaster.......and don't get any closure! It's crazy because Yazawa totally had the whole story planned out because while reading the manga we often get to see the future which seems to revolve around Nana Osaki being missing but hint towards finding her, while Hackiko has her daughter and the remaining BLAST members at apartment 707. It's a teaser that haunts me because the story is left with a gap of "What the hell happened?!"

Some of those teasers I mentioned the flashbacks that hint towards this story being told by the future Hackiko through scenes where she voices over (in the anime) or  where there are reflective drawings. These heart breaking "Dear Nana" scenes in both the anime and manga have a big impact on me. Hackiko is trying to get her feelings out but it's always on such a sad, forgotten note which leaves me with chills....why is she saying "Dear Nana"?! Where is Nana?! What..?  

What if the plan for the manga was that only one of them can find happiness while the other disappears?

It really kills me to know that all that wonderful character development and the understanding I started to get with each member of the story is wasted. The sense of an unclosed world drives me crazy about NANA. There are so many arcs and issues that need to be resolved to get the story done, what I really want to know is....does anyone end up finding that happiness?

~ 

On a better note?

Since the story revolves around rock bands the anime actually features their songs played by real life artists. Anna Tsuchiya sings BLAST's (stands for Blackstones which is the band the main character Nana is in) hit, Rose which is sung by Nana in the manga and now in the anime! It's the first opening and is just perfect. I really wish they would have created more NANA albums of songs that they would have wrote. It's pretty cool to sit around and listen to BLAST when you are reading. Ohhh...! There are NANA live action movies...I should go watch those and try to see if there are any major differences. Soon Nana live action...soon. Plus there actually are a lot of NANA merchandise out there so I'm going to fill this void by buying things for my unrequited fandom.

To hopes for the perfect ending one day...