On July 21, 2006, a spastic sophomore in art college who liked video games a little too much started an online journal at LJ rip-off Greatest Journal to try and document her misadventures in Guild Wars. The first post consisted of mainly screen-shots with stupid captions.

Four years later, she’s doing pretty much the same thing, although trying to be considerably more articulate and less retarded.

It’s hard to believe I’ve actually been doing this for four years, even though the first two of those four boasted maybe 6 posts a year. Lately I’ve been trying to crank out at least six a month, if not more, and it seems to be working. For now at least.

Sometimes it’s really embarrassing to look back at all the bullshit I said. It’s a stark reminder of how much life before and after graduating college changes. That was also before a lot of major things in my life happened: my father passed away, I almost didn’t graduate, and a retarded guy or two were in the picture.

The good thing, though: it’s getting better and better. That’s part of the reason I’ve copied over all my old posts through every re-location: from greatest journal, to insane journal, to blogger, and finally wordpress. Sure they’re embarrassing, full of typos and lame leet-speak, lots of CAPSEXCLAIMATIONPOINTS!!!!! and offensive commentary. But it shows the evolution. And it’s good for a laugh.

I like to remind myself that it all starts small, and sometimes retarded, but continues to grow. And reminds everyone out there, as well. Back then nobody knew who the heck I was. Today I have a handful of regular readers / commentators. So who knows where this can go.

So here’s to perseverance, then. Good memories, good times with friends. That’s the most important part.

Anyways, as far as what I’ve got planned for the future with this thing. I’m going to try to get in the habit of updating more with less. I have a  habit of writing walls of text with lots of speculation / information, which is fine and dandy, but it presents a few problems.
• Walls of text take time to write, edit, and illustrate.
• They can be boring to read one after another.
• More likely to be typo-ridden.

I’ve got a handful of friends who read and send me corrections, which I’m extremely grateful for, but a lot of them slip by still.
So I’m going to start doing shorter, quick blurbs on more topics that are less intensive and throw my mini-novels in there more like once a week. That sounds pretty savvy.

Another goal: more illustrations and imagery. Photos help make things interesting and break up the text. I enjoy screenshots and captions, but I haven’t really gotten around to personally drawing for the articles, which makes me sad cause they can be pretty cute / funny / unique.

Update my about page, fix the navigation.

Lastly, I’m going to go back and start fixing a lot of the older entries where the formatting got messed up in the import. Especially ones that had survived four different moves, the html and images are so messed up it’s almost funny. Almost.

That’s that! Woot.

~Izzie

So here we are, making our way around the blogosphere once more and settling in on our new home.

I’ve been keeping this blog / journal for over five years at this point. It started with LiveJournal knock-off, GreatestJournal, as some of the older entries still reference post-cuts and the screenshots break my current layout. Moved to InsaneJournal which was a short-lived venture until it made its home on Blogspot. The blog survived the transition into Blogger and now finds itself re-rooting here on WordPress. Each move has been an interesting experience. Once upon a time I had to literally sit there and copy + paste every post and backdate them. Now I could click “import” and let the software do everything for me. Uncanny! Who knows what sort of madness the next re-location in a few years may bring?

I expect this to be a pretty long-term lease this time around, though. I have no intentions of moving the blog any time soon, unless, of course, WP becomes obsolete and some new crazy technology comes along. More likely I will simply settle into my own domain again. It’s been years and I deeply enjoyed it. That’s the thing about the internet. Gotta keep with the times. Having your own domain never goes out of style!

Anyway, WordPress is treating me well so far. I’m loving having so much more power over the organization of my site. The community is active and easy to cross reference. It’s helped me to plant the seeds for evolving the blog as I’ve been hoping to. No longer just a record of my online shenanigans (although they will still be here!), I plan on covering so much more of what it is to be a geek and a gamer in today’s world.

To everyone who’s been with me since the begining and sticking with me through all the hiatus’, moves, and confusing babble: thank you. And to everyone new who may find a kindred interest here? Welcome~

-Isa

Taking a break from the usual and bringing a blog-related post to the fray.

It’s been about a month or so since I’ve updated, and who knows how long since I’ve written anything of substance. Or, at least published. Incoming IRL is busy excuse, yada yada yada.

I have a lot of stuff drafted and 90% done, several walls of text about PvP in WoW and some predictions and responses to recent Guild Wars 2 info. Those will get posted soon, I just wanna get some visuals done to try to break up the huge posts. They are really, really big.
Like, huge.
Yes, that -IS- what she said.

I’ve been messing around with the layout, trying to come up with something cleaner. I’ve been feeling kind of limited by the new blogger design tools, although it is really helpful just to get started with. It’s lead me to think, though, that I might actually want to make a move over to my own site powered by WordPress.

As I mentioned in my “About Us” page, I do have hopes of breaking into the gaming publishing industry at some point in time. With absolutely no background in writing, however, like millions of other hopefuls I will start with a blog to at least get a portfolio of stuff to show that I have a decent grasp of the English language. I have a great opportunity here, especially with writing for Fan mags and blogging on other sites. I just have to re-hash, simplify, polish and promote in a better way that I have thus far.

The new site / blog will be much cleaner, more professional, and have much more varied content. The gaming industry continues to thrive and become a central part of modern entertainment, and I want to cover more than just the bullshit I do in games. I wanna document the gaming lifestyle, communities, events, and more that comes with the territory.  Technology will also have a big part in the content as well. Big plans, I know, but I have a knack for conquering things I really put myself into.

I may keep / maintain this one to continue to document my crazy exploits across the MMO universes as I traverse them. I may simply move everything to the new site and have a separate section for the craziness apart from the more professional. Not sure yet.

How it all pans out is still up in the air, and it’s going to be a while coming. I’m pretty excited, though, and I have a lot of great ideas and a huge hope for the future. Until then I’ll continue to update this guy  here for my small group of fellows who have been awesome in reading and commenting on my madness.

Anyway, that’s it for now, just wanted to give you guys the skivvy.
~Izzie

Well, as I said a few weeks back, there is a re-vamp planned for the blog and some changes.

First off I added a new writer to the roster, Lizzie. She’ll be doing actual game reviews (which is a++) and other fun additions to the blog. Excited about that.

I’ve been meaning to post a ton of new content, including a review Lizzie did weeks ago, and I have them all half-written…but this month has been particularly busy / tiring. Lots of traveling, strange fluctuations in work load, tons of other crap nobody cares about. Soon I should have a lot of stuff coming out, scheduled over a few days so they don’t just end up bombarding the front page with random crap.

I’m going to try to do some more humorous posts as well with drawings, got some positive feedback on that. so keep an eye out for those.

Right now I’m in the process of re-organizing all my photos and moving them to a shorter address. Then I have to go back and replace links, resize some images that have been breaking my layout, etc. Haha.
Keeping the basic layout of the blog, but gonna update the graphics and colors to make it a little less blah.

I moved the live stream to it’s own page. It was an annoying thing to load on the fron page with ads when I’m not streaming 90% of the time, so I’ll just announce any planned streams on the front page.

Content coming up:
Bayonetta Review, PAXEast Coverage and photos, Team Fortress 2, Starcraft 2, a huge rant on PvP in WoW, a much overdue Guild wars post, and a bunch of other stuff.

Hoping to get this all down before May.
~Izzie

So I’ve moved over to blogspot for a lot of reasons, the main of which is simply that it’s a much better run place. A lot more options, control of layout, cleaner, etc.

I’ll be messing around with the template/layout here. I’m still toying with whether or not to make this stay predominately WoW or start posting my misadventures in other games (with things like SC2, GW2, and DIII and yes…even Sims 3 on their way… well, my attention will definitely be spread out).
Until then, though, WoW is my main game and with the new Xpac coming, there’ll be a lot of buzz to go over.

Either way, I haven’t updated my wow blog cause for the most part, I haven’t done much in game. I stopped raiding months ago, and focused on leveling my lock and getting her PvP gear. All of which may have been a waste (get to that later…), which makes me severely sad.

My live account expired this morning (sadness!), but I have the PTR as well as BETA, so I’m far from not having things to talk about. As soon as I’m done getting this place set up, there’ll be a lot of posts INC regarding the upcoming pre-xpac patch and beta.

Woot. Ciao
~Isa