Must be nice to be so rich, people don’t matter

Good news: I secured tickets to Worlds, the League of Legends world championship, this year in Los Angeles

Bad news: They’re nosebleed seats, because I among hundreds and thousands of other aspiring ticket purchasers were unable to get luck of the draw through AXS’s convoluted “randomizing” ticket queue system

Naturally, thousands of people are livid at the system used by Riot Games to sell Worlds tickets this year.  Personally, I’m not pleased with it either, considering the planning, preparation and execution of my own pursuit to get the best possible seats, and still barely eked through to get shitty nosebleeds.  I mean, at least I managed to acquire tickets, but I’m not satisfied with the system in which they were acquired.

Basically, AXS is a company that somehow makes people wish Worlds tickets went on sale through Ticketmaster.  This is the equivalent of preferring Playstation 4s being sold at Walmart on Black Friday as opposed to buying them from AXS.  Never mind the bullshit fees that pretty much equate to a whole third ticket, because most people expect ticket sellers to rape people with their bullshit fees.

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League of Payforachievements

Since not all of my six readers are League of Legends players, much less gamers at all, I’ll try to kind of start with an analogy that those who have gamed at all within the better part of the last decade might understand.

Achievements, have become a pretty normal thing in today’s gaming landscape, with players getting little pop-up notifications in-game from their systems themselves, when they accomplish particular tasks in the games they are playing.  Ultimately, they’re utterly useless in the grand spectrum of most games, but their existence has created somewhat of a collecting hobby for those who game.

Some achievements are justly achieved by accomplishing monumental feats, like beating Mass Effect 2 on the hardest difficulty without dying once.  Others are as systematically simple as proceeding through the story, and getting an achievement for each notable storyline break point.  There are achievements of insanity, such as completing an entire Left 4 Dead 2 campaign only using a melee weapon.   There are achievements of futility, such as deliberately getting every single question wrong in a round of 1 vs. 100, and then there are achievements of everyone gets a trophy, such as simply starting a game.

The point is, achievements have become somewhat of a point of bragging among gamers, and one of the greatest accomplishments is getting a 100% of achievements earned in games, because usually every game has a good variety of achievements from layups to Hail Marys.  As in the case of XBOX Live, players’ stats have a running tally of how many games they get 100% success rate on, and for players like me, it’s something to be prideful of, to be able to prove just how little of a life I can sometimes have, when I obsess over trying to Boomer Bile over all four survivors in one hurl.

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Catching up with stories

During my weekend alone, I think I made it kind of clear that I wasn’t feeling too great, emotionally.  Catching up on writing about things kind of helped, but along the way, in between posts written, I found myself getting distracted.  I would check Facebook or play a League of Legends match, and then I’d chastise myself for squandering the opportunity of time that I had, and that I shouldn’t be wasting time doing what I could do at other times.

This was Saturday afternoon.  Since then, I haven’t played any League, and I closed Facebook everywhere; my browser, the tabs on both my iPhone and iPad, and on my other laptop.  More than anything, I think not looking at social media has been something cathartic and the forced separation something of a good thing.  What started as an evening became a day, and then it’s become several days, and at the time I’m writing this, I still haven’t checked Facebook.

The funny thing is how many times I’ve had to stop myself from almost doing so, especially over my phone, while I’m at work, in between assignments, or those fleeting moments where I want to not be doing work, catch my breath and see what’s going on elsewhere in the world.  I’ve frantically forced quit the app numerous times since then.  Eventually, I’ll check again, once routine settles back down.

But the time not spent playing League or looking at social media and thinking about either, I’ve actually, not surprisingly, been somewhat productive, in a manner of speaking; by catching up with stories.  And not “stories” as in hicks talking about television shows per say, although I am talking about some television shows; but if it weren’t for the fact that I finished reading one book, then I’d basically have entitled this whole thing “catching up on movies and shows.”

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Probably not a very smart decision

Impetus: three popular League of Legends commentators declare refusal to work the Mid-Season Invitational event, citing poor freelance rates.

These guys realize they get paid to talk about video games, right?

Honestly though, I see both sides of the argument here.  Ultimately, I understand the concept of a labor dispute, and it’s good on the part of Monte, DoA and PapaSmithy, that they’ve done their homework, and learned what other casters are making, and it’s only fair that the penultimate game representatives of the eSports scene, should probably be paying competitive rates.

But at the same time, these are guys that make a living talking about video games.  These are not underpaid doctors, teachers, construction workers, civil servants or any other occupation that actually makes a difference in the world we all live in.  These are guys that watch teenagers play video games at a highly-competitive level, and talk about it.

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I’m critical because I CARE

Meet Cupid Twitch.  Cupid Twitch is a skin concept for League of Legends character Twitch, the Plague Rat.  The impetus behind this design is that Twitch is the last bow-and-arrow wielding character on the roster, and with Valentine’s Day approaching, adding him to the Heartseeker family of skins.  The idea works two-fold, as it provides an opportunity to present a character known for filth and pungent odor in an ironic manner to be suddenly a romance-spreading Cupid, firing his arrows upon champions on Summoner’s Rift, as well as holding true to Heartseeker trends of utilizing bows and arrows.

The basis for the idea was taking a hairless rat, which are already all pink and cherub-like colored, and giving it Twitch’s weapon, modified to at least have a Heartseeker theme.  Add wings, and superfluous hearts, and voila, it’s Cupid Twitch, ready to spread love in surprise double and triple kills.

However, Cupid Twitch does not actually exist.

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Locked perspectives and player satisfaction

I’ve been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic over the last few months, playing on a PvE server, having a grand old time leisurely questing and amusing myself over how I can take a Sith Warrior and be as Dark Side as possible, and currently, taking a Jedi Consular, and, being as Dark Side as possible.

I made a “joking” remark that as a result of playing SWTOR instead of League of Legends as much, I’ve been generally a calmer, more relaxed and less stressed out person over this span of time.

Well, all that’s recently come a crashing end, because I’m like 4-8 in my recent history of matches, and with each tragic loss on account of my own shortcomings and/or someone else’s, I’m left feeling dejected, disappointed and wondering why I even love this game so much in the first place.

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How to build an Academy Darius axe in a week

Something I never did in a timely fashion that I remembered that I wanted to write about, was a post about the construction of the Academy Darius axe I had made for my corresponding costume, that I wore to Worlds.

Two key challenges were in play when constructing this prop: time, despite the fact that I had the idea to make this costume for quite some time, I’m stupid and waited until later in the game to start, everything, including the axe.

Additionally, there were size limitations to the axe; because I was transporting this prop in my luggage to Europe, it had to be able to fit inside of a standard full-size piece of luggage. My solution to the size limitations was to modify the scale of the axe in general, as well as creating the axe in components, fit inside of luggage in pieces, and be somewhat easy to re-construct and break down in Brussels and Berlin.

Ultimately, I would say the size of the axe isn’t 100% scale, but when it comes to League props, 100% scale isn’t always realistically feasible; otherwise, I would’ve had a 56” Riot Graves gun that probably would have weighed 30 lbs, and my pink Taric hammer would’ve been taller than me and more than 60” hammerhead.

But anyway, here’s a fairly quick run down of what I used, how I did it, and the general process of how I made an Academy Darius axe in a week.

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