Creative Entry #1: Stay Young

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this, or at least I think I have a vague idea of what's expected of me. Each week for ten weeks I'm supposed to do something I consider creative, and then record it here and talk about it. Right; I can do that.

Those of you who know me will be more than familiar with my tendency to be found drawing almost all the time, so it's fairly easy to assume I'd write my first creative entry about art, or maybe even post of one my sketches. However, inspiration struck me during tutorial today, and I decided to write instead about what I do when not drawing: playing online games.

This may not sound very creative in itself. After all, all you have to do to play a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplay Game (or MMORPG) is sit down, log in, create a character, and then run around killing things to get experience and go up in levels. I've played a good slew of MMORPGs already: Ryzom (http://www.ryzom.com/), Everquest II (http://www.everquest2.com/), Age of Conan (http://www.ageofconan.com/) and, currently, Aion (European servers) (http://www.aiononline.com)and/ while each follows the linear requirements of an MMO (kill things, earn levels) there is usually another very important factor present that makes or breaks my interest in the game.

The roleplay community. This, to me, is fundamental in whether or not I'll be choosing or staying long with any particular MMORPG. What this entails is not only creating a character to run around this 3D world with, but giving them a personality, or a background to play off of. Prior to playing MMOs I was part of websites like Neopets (http://www.neopets.com/), childish websites where I'd make a cute little animal, and then spend days slaving over drawings of them, dressing them up, making them tangible, and then laboring over a website where I'd post their stories up. I'd then get letters from others on the website who also had original characters like this, and we'd roleplay with each other back and forth through letters. One person would write a paragraph, then I'd add another, and so on and so forth until our little adventure was over. In fact long after I left Neopets I was so proud of what I'd achieved with my pets I made a small little site to archive their "petpages", where their stories had been posted, and the odd comic or continued story I'd gotten published in the Neopian Times, the official Neopets online newspaper. These can be found here: www.freewebs.com/scarab-works/x-marks-the-spot.htm

But I digress; the purpose of this blog was to talk about the roleplay I partake in now. Currently I play the MMORPG Aion on the European servers, and just about every day, whenever I can sneak in a few hours, I log on to my account and play Jaris, my original character (see the screenshot above). That's right, I roleplay a male character, which takes a little bit more creativity than if I were to roleplay a female, being female myself, if I may be so bold as to stake that claim. Not only that, but my boyfriend and I, whome I roleplay with, started our own guild (or Legion, as it's called in Aion) with the help of a few friends to bring together other roleplayers like us, and even made a forum accessable here: http://tof.foroomy.com/ (graphics courtesy of yours truly). This was yet another creative activity that took quite a few weeks to put together, getting the forum threads organized, a banner up, and even customized avatars for the members in it, most of which I drew (more creativity). Later on I even wrote a short character background in the form of a letter of recommendation, to fit with the roleplay of our Legion being ... well, a military regiment, as per the lore in Aion. (I may upload this story here later, as it is a creative process, albeit a little out of date, but is otherwise inaccessable unless you have an account on our forum).

So yes, this is my creative entry for the 12th of January, although it is something I partake in most regularly: Roleplay, on the MMORPG Aion.

--Sak