Imagine this.

There’s a game.

That one game that I’ve been anticipating since 2007. The one I’ve poured the vast majority of my free time and creativity into. The sequel to the game that consumed thousands of hours of my time and defined a period of my social life, my digital life. It’s a game that I’ve created web sites for. I’ve neglected my education, my family and friends because I failed to maintain a balance between this mythical piece of software and the rest of my life. I’m not the only one that develops this behaviour; there’s a reason words like obsession, addiction and escapism exist; and I know for a fact that there are others in the echelons of the community that are very similar.

I buy the game. I finally get to play the game, and I join the hordes of players chewing through the newness of it all. What if I don’t like it? What if after all this time and energy, it isn’t the hallowed god of all games that I unrealistically expected it to be?

I’d give it a chance. Maybe a few weeks to soak it all in. The magic of the original game might be buried really deep. I’d be looking for the allure of tightly matched PvP battles where every action matters. If I couldn’t find that…

Well, there’s a simple solution.

I did it once. I actually ejected a game disc from my PC, got the scissors out and cut it to shreds. Looking back, that game was a mere fraction of what I am now mired in. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have gotten through high school. Unfortunately that’s how I am with most things in my life; the only way I control myself is by removing it as an option.

Why am I sharing this? 

Because I want you to know why I’m here, and why I would leave. It’s these contemplative, melodramatic posts that reveal how utterly unbalanced I am. Of course a gamer’s blog isn’t necessarily the best place to share these thoughts. Yet, being the way I am, this is the only place I have. What’s worse – you’re the only people I have. (That sounds like a horrible thing to say!)

So, if that moment arrives – when I log out and delete the game – what next?

I’m sure something would come along to fill the void. Or maybe (gasp) I’d have to make some real-life friends again. Maybe I finally go back to university and finish something for once, get a career started that doesn’t involve moving boxes of goods from a pallet to a trolley. Maybe the sun would shine brighter, and the birds would sing sweeter.

Perhaps it would be best, in recognition of all the above, if I broke free sooner, of my own doing. I’ve certainly painted it as the villain of my early adult life. It’s just a fucking game!

The rational part of my mind is telling me to give it up now. I could get a head start on getting my life back on track. That same part of me says: if the game does turn out to be awesome, then it will be too late to steer away. Unfortunately, logic is not king of this castle any more.

(The most rambling discovery blog post ever.)

In conclusion!

(A conclusion that I had to ponder for a long time, though I knew there could be only one outcome.)

I am all but done. I’m sorry to those that expected me to stick around. I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression; you must know that I do this because of a fault in the way I operate.

To one unnamed individual I must give solemn gratitude for accelerating this decision. My recent behaviour has made it abundantly clear that I am unable to maintain balance, even with the restrictions that were in place.

I must also thank Lewis for his contributions to MESMER.me. I’ve had a lot of fansites in the past, but always as a lone wolf. The day Lewis asked to be a writer was a highlight in my history of web mastering. Articles such as his deserve to be published somewhere with more exposure.

For those that remember, Quaggan.com was like a malignant freckle. I cut it free, but it took a year for me to realise that the problem lay much deeper. It’s not you. It’s not the game. It’s me. No shame or guilt. Hardly any emotions at all, actually… just a feeling of doing something right after considering all the options and consequences.

This time around I won’t just suddenly yank the cord on everything. I’ll do it right this time.  

An orderly retreat.

(Comments are closed. Contact me via nox@conjurephantasm.com if you must.)

I made a logo for the contest at Guild Wars 2 Guru. It strikes me as cheap that the winner is rewarded with something as meagre as a user title. A charr plushy seems more fitting considering that Guild Wars 2 Guru is owned by Curse, a corporation which owns many large community and resource sites across multiple gaming genres, and is “one of the largest gaming-information properties worldwide, attracting more than 14 million unique visitors a month” (according to their About page).

Nevertheless, I could not pass up the opportunity to play with logos and vectors in Photoshop. I’ll admit that this style of logo is one I keep returning to, though it hasn’t been adopted by anyone yet.

While I’m writing about logos, let’s review the others I’ve worked on for the Guild Wars community…

Oh, which reminds me… with beta around the corner it’s probably time to think about how I’ll support the Australian GW community. I let the domain expire because there was no release date in sight. It’s been nabbed by a domain stealer, so if it ever comes back, it will be under a different name. I’m not worried; I’ve had one in mind for a long time.

I won’t play thief because I’m not very good at skirmish-type combat.

I probably won’t play engineer because the kits would overload my brain.

I probably won’t play necromancer because I don’t like the green death vibe.

I probably will play guardian because I want to defend and control.

I probably will play warrior because I want to understand battle on the front line.

I probably will play elementalist because it is versatile.

I will play mesmer because I always have.

 - A short post in response to Hunter’s Insight.

Unfortunately this reality does not allow arcane bolts of energy, so instead I will burn your eyeballs with the new design of MESMER.me.

Now that it’s arrived I’m rather lost for words. Prior to a few days ago, the last time I worked on the website was 1.5 months ago. The enthusiasm I had has dissipated, and yet here I am at 2 AM. 

I’m happy with illusions. The build-em-up and tear-em-down play style reminds me of something, but I just can’t put my finger on it. Perhaps the early days of Factions when I thought that spirit-to-healing skill Life Feast (I think) was the epitome of support. Maybe it’s reminiscent of Team Fortress 2′s buildings. It can’t be the Guild Wars minion dismissal skills, since I hardly played it.

Maybe it just seems like a really advanced magical technique, that makes sense in some way, so now that I see it it’s not an alien concept. 

The shatters are cool. I don’t know if any of the fans in the forums put the two – spammy illusions and shatter effects – together.

Glad to see my blog name is still relevant. 

My predictions… well, there’s manifest illusions, but no shape shifting. The punishment condition exists. My guesses for weapons are way off. I’ll be honest, I think my wallpaper has cooler text than the real thing. Mantras seem like a little bonus, nothing to rave about. Many of us expected hexes to translate into AoE effects, which isn’t the case.

I am worried… if the majority of a mesmer’s damage centers around illusions, what happens when you’re facing a strong/multiple foes? I get a split second to press F1-F4 and hope it hits something?

I just realised I haven’t actually checked the weapons thouroughly. All I saw was NO OFFHAND SCEPTER and TWO SWORDS and GREATSWORD and I shoved it into a corner of my mind. Let’s take a look…

I go against the grain when it comes to swords. I don’t like em. Neither do I like staves. Since my favourite combo isn’t an option I guess I’ll just leave it in the air until we see what skills they come with.

The minstrel thing had me for half a second. For realz. I left his terrible singing on loop while I got ready for work (the reveal was at 5AM) and I had it stuck in my head all day! You’ll be happy to know I’ve saved the SWF file, and I’m hoping I’ll find a use for it in a video :P

Speaking of multimedia, I am of a mind to plug in that expensive microphone I bought many months ago, and ramble. Unfortunately it’s that time of year when 24 hours in a day is not enough.

I wish I had access to the closed beta.

I want my own clone army – and then – BAM! shit explodes.

Autoptimize and Quick Cache work together to speed up your site and ease the load on the server. I tried a few other plugins, including some that optimized and cached at the same time, but found them too complex to comprehend; these two work just fine.

BackUpWordpress and WP-DBManager do similar things, so why would I use both? WP-DBManager is excellent at scheduling database optimizing, repairs and backups, but it doesn’t backup the file system. I’d hate to lose invaluable themes and image uploads. So I installed BackUpWordpress, which schedules backups of the whole system, database and files. WP-DBManager keeps the database tidy, and BackUpWordpress saves it for me. Together they should keep me from running into any issues.

FD Feedburner Plugin - up until now, I’d heard of Feedburner, understood the advantages of tracking feed usage, but never went any further. Now I know how many people read via RSS. Feedburner also has an email subscription service which I encourage RSS-illiterate users to use (and it saves me from implementing yet another plugin).

Fluency Admin changes the administration side-menu into a hover-flyout, instead of a click-to-dropdown. It also improves other parts of the admin section, including making the All Posts screen easier to understand.

I hate seeing stuff I don’t want or need to see. WP Total Hacks lets me get rid of administration elements entirely and change the login logo, amongst many other things. It also lets me restrict the number of post Revisions saved, and configure Auto-Save. This plugin is all about removing built-in WordPress stuff.

There are tons of social bookmarking plugins out there. I went with Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share because it’s simple and gets the job done with minimal fuss.

WordPress Editorial Calendar gives me an overview of recent and scheduled posts, lets me re-schedule and easily select a date. It’s dovetailing with my goal of producing an article every day.

Investment: 3 days and $10. 

Inspired by the logos on Logo Pond and the previously mentioned mesmer t-shirt. Motivated by all the chatter on the mesmer discussion thread and the necromancer, guardian and thief fansites.

I’m just now realising that, if the mesmer is suddenly revealed, the fansite ought to be ready-to-go. The traffic and loyalty built in those first few days will never occur again.

And so… I begin a website that may be rendered pointless within weeks. In which case, I can wave my hand and say “There was no MESMER.me”. I’m kinda good at that.

Samster from Deviant Art designed and printed a t-shirt with the above design on it, and wore it to the Eurogamer Expo, where she got this happy photograph with the ArenaNet staff!

The full text is “Give us the mesmer and nobody gets dominated.”

Go check out her full Deviant Art gallery, there’s heaps of great stuff in there.

How could I miss the opportunity to add more pink to this pink and purple blog?! Pink Day in LA was a lot of fun last year, and I’ll try to make it to this one too. To quote Gaming World Entertainment Network and Gamers Giving Back:

For one day, gamers from around the globe can show just how powerful an online gaming community really is.

Back for another year of fighting Breast Cancer, Gamer’s Giving Back and the Gaming World Entertainment Network is proud to once again host Pink Day in LA, an online event bringing the Guild Wars community together to raise Breast Cancer awareness and donations for the Canadian Cancer Society.

October 15th 12pm – 6pm CDT

 Get involved and learn more at http://pinkday.gw-en.com/

Now’s your chance to get in early and help construct the site from scratch. I am looking for a couple of people with oodles of creativity and enthusiasm. The sky is the limit; writing, graphics, audio and video are the media I would like to explore.

We can’t let those creepy necromancers and sneaky thieves outdo us, can we?!

If you’re the dude or dudette I need: contact me.

To the podcast people: the idea is on hold for now. I’m waiting til I at least play the game before investing in a new podcast. A profession-specific website is one thing; a regular audio production is another.