Honor

I'm not going to do GP over it.
Lemme tell you this simply story:
I was WoW-ing (world of warcraft) today at this really sickening area with lousy background music that lasts only 15 seconds and it auto-loops every 5 minutes. I didn't want to switch on any music player because I don't want to be jacked from behind if I could hear it coming.
I managed to get to this small plot of land that is surrounded by mobs. I came here for a really good reason , 1) I had a task that needs me killing 20 of this stupid robots, and they're all picnic-ing happily here in pairs, and 2) if it's surrounded in the first place, no stupid horde guy (opposite faction) is going to get me without me knowing. I went about killing a few more robots until I saw Juack (obviously not his real name, no sane mother is cruel enough to name a son so) killing another robot not too far away. He's already down to half health, but heck so am I because I just finished killing one. He took one look at me, and charged right up while I was still sitting down. Ok I'm not going to describe what happened, but I managed to kill him barely. I started to worry. I needed to kill like 10+ more robots that would need at least 20 minutes maybe, and I needed to mug for econs. Yet there's no way I can kill in peace because ugly Juack is definitely going to come back to claim his corpse. Oh well.
I decided to move abit out further so that I can spot him coming from afar. The last thing I wanted was him mauling me while I'm trying to kill a robot (it is really taxing to do so). Anyway the second time we saw it each other, it was pretty fair since we were both at full health. I won again.
I've already wasted 10 minutes and I only killed 4 robots. GG to my schedule, and it's because I have to worry about someone jacking me from behind.
The third time it happened, I was killing another robot halfway when he came right for me (thankfully my back was facing a gorge, so he had to come from the front). I disposed of the mob quickly and killed him yet again with luck - I managed to chug a potion when I had a sliver of life left. The amount of honor points (gained from killing players of the opposing faction) from this encounter was pretty satisfying - twice the amount I collected ever since I first played (yes I've been killing lowbies that yield me nuts).
IS THERE GONNA BE A FOURTH TIME?? Oh darn I saw him again soon after. This time I'm pretty beaten already, since I didn't heal up in between kills. I was prepped anyway - my fingers hit a button and the casting time for a spell started to count down. I knew I was going to die anyway because I had no mana to cast much spells (my only arsenal).
Something caught my eye. I quickly jumped to cancel my cast with 0.2 seconds left. Apparently Juack has made an emote - he waved at me. Now that's kinda bizarre. I'm pretty much free honor points to boot within 2 swings max from his axe. And then I decided there wasn't much point in fighting. I happily waved back. Yes, no inverted commars for waving. It is done literally in the game.
I asked him foolishly : " Do you speak english?". Juack replied back in Orcish : "Mokk agathar!"
Like hell I understand what that means. Of course, how could I forget? The game designer created languages intentionally for difference factions to speak in - there's no way an illiterate gnome (me) could converse with an orc (Juack). I waved back once more. He left me in peace, and went about his own business. Several times later when we ran past each other, we simply waved at each other without even attacking. I guess it's understood that it would be more productive if we're left to do our own tasks.
It's pretty funny. It is intended for players of the opposite faction to kill each other should they meet. It applies through out all demographics, i.e a high level player can waltz into a town to kill several lowbies over and over again to tick them off. Henceforth the "hate" is sown yet again, when the lowbies get big, they repeat the cycle. Nevermind that it wasn't a hate game to begin with, where's the fun without some fighting? It just so happens that Juack and I had a mutual understanding, albeit not through linguistic means because I don't want to read more Orcish gibberish.
What happened was perhaps how people treated each other in the past - with this code of honor thing that isn't all too relevant today. You've probably watched movies of generals of opposing armies centuries ago walking to each other before the battle starts to discuss terms, when in fact it seems perfectly logical to me to kill the leader asap while he's alone. You've seen how certain people actually cease fighting in a duel when their enemy have fallen due to other means - obviously both desired a fair fight. Ok so maybe it's because I'm just cheapskate and not heroic one bit. Maybe it's because they're just really movies where stars do shine (the night sky in Singapore show that it is a fallacy).
Maybe I let Juack off because my econs is in need of dire attention as compared to killing him just for intangible satisfaction and honor points that I have no idea of how to redeem for better equipment.
Maybe I let Juack off because he helped me by clearing the harder mobs so that I could kill the easier ones (unintentionally, of course).
Maybe it's simply because we have all learned to conveniently forget.

Echo

Before:
There were 11. Well, it could be a few more, but they were a ton older so I never got to know them well. Inevitably, they broke off eventually, one by one, and drifted away. New seeds were already being sown then.
Now:
There is... hmph I needn't count. They're noisy enough. Everything seems so surreal. I never tried imagining, but it wasn't that surprising for things to be the way they are now.
It was my grandfather's birthday. Everyone's pretty much there.
Time flies.

Tiger

I went to Games Convention Asia 07 with Kaisheng and Xuandao yesterday.
I wasn't awaiting this event - I didn't even know it existed until that morning, and it is thanks to the most unlikely source ever =D
One reason why I wanted to go so badly was because I thought there was free SC2 available. It was so dissappointing to see that the Blizzard booth had ZERO signs of SC2 present, save for one 2 big TV screens, one showing the Burning Crusade opening vid (DUDE THATS EARLY THIS YEAR) and cinematic trailer on WoTLK (OK THATS AVAILABLE ONLINE LA). Pfft. I'm your biggest fan stupid blizz, I've played WC 1 like since 10 years back!
It was funny seeing how does Nintendo Wii works. It is funny as how a video I watched on Youtube places it: "shaking some stupid thing". Kaisheng and Xuandao went to try this game (no idea what the name is) that involves slaying humans by using a gun or a knife - that's when the shaking comes in. Somehow headshots don't cut it, because you need at least 3 bullets in the head to see it getting blasted off. The knife's way more gosu. Just swing it like opening champagne bottles and you'll get to slash mobs at one go provided they are close enough. Unfortunately, the game designer is kinda short sighted. While there were many ways in which enemies can be beheaded, there wasn't any way to show guts flying out =/
Asiasoft with their whole load of cartoonish games came with full force. I guess this is some gross miscalculation on Blizzard's part, didn't they notice the sick number of sales of BC early this year on its opening date? I'll spend my whole day trying out SC2 if I don't have to look at kiddie games or poser games. There's this gay stupid RTS game called Darkness and Light coming out by Asiasoft. THE MAP LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE DOTA ROFL. How stupid can you get? You have hero portraits on the top left hand corner, similiar interfaces, even retarded creep waves exist! Then there was this other game that was called Warhammer Online that is an exact replica of WoW with graphics plugged in from 5 years back. Had Blizzard been wise enough to patent their game models, they needn't even make anymore games in the future to make money. They are that groundbreaking.
The Razer booth was the most exciting one. They invited "Rocketboy" from China to play Quake 3 1 on 1 with any member of the public in a 15 frag match. Should anyone be able to get 2 frags, they would be able to walk away with a Death Adder mouse. That's the catch though - out of the 20+ people that went up to try, only one guy managed to get 1 kill, and it's only because Rocketbuy spent almost all of his health blasting himself to spots using his rocket launcher. His play truly redefines what WTF means. Besides bunny hopping across sections that seem so far away, he travels across the map so insanely to get all the pickups, leaving the opponent with only one to play at most. He even humiliated several players by gauntlet-ing them all 15 frags. The most sick parts was railing them in mid air. Ontop of this, one truly surprising fact was that a girl managed to take 2 frags off him the day before oO. Thats like so WOW...
Played this cool Tekken 5 game on PS3 and I picked all the hot and sexy chicks. Yes I love their long, long legs. To think that Tse Mei thought I was referring to her when I placed it as my msn nick - HAH!.
It's about time more gaming stuff takes place on Singapore - like ALOT more.