———————————————
O R’LYEH? Ya R’lyeh!
———————————————

Well, I couldn’t believe it myself. After lurking on this site for several months, the idea grew in my mind that I should actually, ya’know, make a post or something? The internal argument went something like this.

Iepiat 1: Hmm, that MMOTales site is pretty cool.
Iepiat 1: Maybe I should actually contribute to the community.
Iepiat 2: Am I crazy? There’s nothing to gain by doing that.
Iepiat 1: Uh. Come on, it’ll be fun.
Iepiat 3: Yeah, really, I might learn something cool or improve my social confidence or self image.
Iepiat 2: Right. And there are no hackers on Bellocan.
Iepiat 4: Wow, I’m hungry. Do I have any leftover apple slices from yesterday?
Iepiat 5: My preciousssss!
Iepiat 2: CC plz.

I did say the conversation was something like that.

Something I had read on a forum long ago came to my mind yesterday, which was the seed for this idea, to stop lurking at MMOTales. Its main idea came across to me that the 3rd job advance was not the “endgame” of Maple Story; rather, it was the gateway towards even greater adventure and fun than ever experienced before. Pondering this, I connected it to my own situation on Maple Story. As I write this sentence, my character in Broa is at level 69.75 – that’s right, I’m only 25% of a level away from reaching the fabled 3rd job advance, and a long trip it has been. I decided that as level 70 was, to put it, a fresh new beginning in the game, this was a fitting time to have a new beginning in the website I had lurked at for half a year.

Actually, I hadn’t really been lurking that long; I created an account and submitted one blog around the beginning of July. However, an entire month of absence from anything MS-related dispelled inclination I had towards playing it or talking about it on websites. After I decided to re-continue playing in August, I visited MMOTales. The spam blogs and troll-ish posters which had invaded drove me away from the community, and I summarily deleted my earlier blog and put my account behind me (I can re-post this earlier blog if anyone requests it). Of course, the thoughts I had had prompted me to revisit the site, and I was glad to see that the junk content had gone down, and more importantly, not all of the great writers and kind personalities had left.

So, now that I’ve declared my joining of this great community, I should tell you all about myself, correct?

———————–

So like my first name is Allen, like right? And I was born on XX/XX/XXXX and there’s this girl at school that I like but my best friend also likes her and ohmyeffinggawd how do I tell her I like her and both of my parents just died and I’m really really (really) sad and I like waffles AND cookies and oh yeah watch this unrelated movie from Youtube. . .

. . .

Kidding.

———————–

Note: If you don’t like reading boring paragraphs about random strangers you come across on the internet, skip to the portion marked Friends/Ring Ring. It’s funnier.

Starting Out

I started playing Maple Story about a year ago, to the prompting of a good friend of mine, named Mark. He told me to join the world Broa, on which he was already playing a level 26 warrior, and so I did. [Screenshot 1] (Mark is Greydragons.) That same week, a mutual friend of ours, Vanya, also joined. Creating my character, I used the reasoning of most RPG’s, which interestingly do not apply in Maple Story: All stats are important; some are more important than others, because of their role in your character’s chosen vocation, background, or skills. Thus, I created an archer-to-be with 10 luk and 11 int. His name was 101iepiat, and due to my stubbornness, I have stayed faithful to my first character. Before some people shake their heads with distaste at my IGN, I would like to direct them to allaboutskyscrapers.com, created my one of my friends. To this site I have donated a few self-taken pictures, especially concerning a certain tallest building in the world (upon which I based my ign).

Training

Over the weeks, I became increasingly interested in this MMORPG, though I had to play with a dial-up connection from October through early February. This meant, every time I wanted to pick something up, I had to wait a second or two. Every time someone called, I would be disconnected. Every time I wanted to do the Kerning PQ, I would lag out. Some of these lags led to interestingly timed screenshots. [2]

My frugality led me to use cheap Hp potions [3] and not buy Mp potions; in fact, until seven levels ago, I had only ever spent 20k on Mp, which I had regretted at the time, because I almost never used my Double Shot. I never felt as if I was training slowly or inefficiently, however, as I had fun no matter what level I was. What was the reasoning for all of this saving? Firstly, I deplore any unnecessary expenditure of money, and secondly, I was saving up for an Asianic, which I knew cost tens of millions of mesos. At level 60, there were no Asianic auctions whatsoever on BasilMarket, which frustrated me to no end. This is about the time which I stopped playing Maple Story, from July to August. When I came back, I continued grimly on till level 64, when I bought an 86 attack Asi for 16 mil.

I finally started buying mana elixers at level 62 because of my training experience at Coolies. Ah, yes. Everyone has something to say about training at Coolies, some of which are not repeatable on a respectable site. You can see that at level 59, I thought that Coolies were good [4]; by level 67, I had already grown to dislike them. [5]

Friends

Okay, yeah, so every really awesome, cool, strong, attractive, protagonist archetype 1 superhero dude has to have amazingly awesome, cool, smart, not-as-attractive protagonist archetype 2 sidekick peoples, right? That’s where my friends come in. Two friends in real life which have played alongside me, ever since I started out, are the previously mentioned Mark and Vanya. These guys are very good pals. I believe they are much, much more intelligent than me. Mark constantly jumps onto a random rope and goes “afk” to work on a difficult math problem; Vanya has a way of making you feel just a bit inept. Just this week, some person was “boasting” about their “intelligence”, and they let slip that they were in a Geometry course. Hilarity ensued.

Greydragons: WHAT’S D/DX[2^x]?!?!?!
[Person]: but i dont know what job to become, in halotherapist or in pharmacy
HappyNazgul: if youre in geometry
HappyNazgul: whats the law of cosines
HappyNazgul: huh? huh?
[Person]: u mean cosinus
[Person]: well its true its cosines in english
101iepiat: In Soviet Russia, job picks YOU!!!
[Person]: coz im a french so XD
101iepiat: “I am the Lord thy God,
[Person]: its not the same word
101iepiat: who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
101iepiat: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”
Greydragons: law of cosines: a^2+b^2-2abcos(angle ACB)=c^2
HappyNazgul: c^2=a^2+b^2-2abcos(y)
Greydragons: vanya, what’s y?
Greydragons: huh?
Greydragons: huh?
HappyNazgul: uh
HappyNazgul: the angle opposite c
Greydragons: then it should be C

Of course, I didn’t contribute anything intelligent.

Guilds

When the guilds were released, Mark, Vanya, and I created our own guild, the name of which I particularly liked. I had to; we debated for like an hour about it, brainstorming different names and reasons why our own ideas rocked more, eventually agreeing on AgentSmiths. Yeah. The people we invited weren’t exactly the cream of the intellectual crop, and later on, we disbanded it to join the guild Kivera, led by CaranA. At that time, the guild emblem was white wings upon a purple background, a very good one indeed. The first three or four months were excellent, and we made lots of friends. However, after my four week week hiatus from Mapling, I logged on to see that most of my friends in the guild had left it, and the emblem had changed to some orange flame. When Vanya logged on, he told me in buddy chat that they had left due to some “disagreement” of some sort with CaranA, and had formed their own guild, MonkeyMafia. Of course, I joined up to be with Mark and Vanya. Interestingly enough, nine of the twenty-nine members currently in MonkeyMafia were in Kivera at one time, and it seems the quality of Kiverian members has taken a dive. Though it may seem like it, I feel no animosity towards Kivera or CaranA. I strongly believe that it was a fantastic guild back in the day, but it reached its peak and then started falling.

RING RING

In fact, good sir/ madam/ man of the house/ may-I-speak-to-your-mother-please, I’m calling you to tell you about this amazing new limited-time offer which I’m sure you’ll love. FREE!* Just visit link, for details, and — Hello? Hello?

Dang.

*Batteries not included. Offer void in the Northern Hemisphere.

Ya R’lyeh!

Yep. That’s me, and whether you like it or not, I’m here to stay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author’s Notes

Noticed that some portions of my blog are humorous or witty? That’s Iepiat 2! Other sections contain nothing but boring A happened, B happened? I like to blame that on Iepiat 4 and 5. They’re crazy. (””l(‘;…;’)l””) The positive, analytical Iepiat 3 is responsible for the rest. I just sit here and type it all up for them. ;D

Currently wondering why michael1590 (Mike, as if you couldn’t tell), W00sh (Tell-People-And-Die, srsly), and ChocoboRush (If-He-Told-Me-He’d-Have-To-Find-Someone-To-Pay-Him-To-Kill-Me) are never on. =(