Winners of the Mr. Sparkles Mini contest!

Ok so the contest is now closed and it’s time to announce the winners!

I can’t stress enough that this was an incredibly difficult decision. There are not enough words to convey that because it was. If I had more codes, you would all be walking away with your own mini Mr. Sparkles.

I was not prepared for how creative everyone is and then some of you threw puns in there, and it was all over! Sneaky, sneaky, knowing puns are one of my weaknesses!

Ok here we go!

First winner: Kym In A Can with her lovely mooseface mashup and use of real moose antlers (or what look like real antlers anyway)! 

Second winner: Morten Jakobsen! Lovely composition of horse mask, gnome, GW1 Factions, aviators, and mooseface. Love it!

Third winner is: Andrew.4506 for his charming little video 😀 I really loved that.

I couldn’t choose the last one so I assigned the remaining contestants numbers and threw them into a random number generator and the result is:

Our final winner is: IronFrogMan!

Again, this was a ridiculously close contest and I do have some runners up so if I can’t get a hold of the winners right away, you might still get a code.

Thank you all SO MUCH!! I had an absolute blast and I wish I could give you all codes for this because I loved all of the submissions a lot.

Codes have been emailed to winners so check your email!!!!!

Also, I enjoyed this so much that I have created a mooseface Tumblr and would LOVE if you would all submit your submissions there so I could show others (or at least give me permission to submit them)!

http://peopledoingmooseface.tumblr.com/

Thank you all again!

 

Mr. Sparkles Mini Contests

So there are quite a few contests going around and no real “master list” for them all in one place. This post is to change that! The following are contests that are running from now until whenever the contests say they end.

Mooseface contest Runs from now until September 14th Winners have been chosen! New post up!

Dragon Season is having a competition but they don’t have a write up on their website, so here is the write up taken from their tweets (actually this one was taken from the Nerdy Bookah’s site run by Nadine and Bookahnerk):

The rules are simple. It’s Autumn, right? That means that we need a new banner for our front page over at http://DragonSeason.com. Design a background image (853 x 157 px) that is related to Autumn. The best design wins. Get creative people! You can email your entries at tilion.dragonseason@gmail.com. The contest ends in one week from now (Friday 13/9 – 3pm UK). You just need to design the background. Pro tip for the contest: Our Dragon logo is an autumn leaf. 😉 Dragon Season has found their winner! 😀

Congratulations to @HablaWS for designing our new banner called "The Fall of Ascalon": http://t.co/DAX85a2fpX ~Tilion

— Dragon Season (@DragonSeasonCom) September 13, 2013

GW2HUB is having  Mr. Sparkles Giveaway Competition. Details can be found here! This contest will end whenever they get the right answers to the entry. Good luck, all!  Contest has concluded and winners have been announced! Congratz to Sioul; @YTMagicalMike and @LiamJGallagher!

This is all for now, but I will add more when they pop up!

 

Guild Wars 2 Anniversary Bash Shenanigans

So last weekend was ArenaNet’s 1 year anniversary bash and they live streamed it. At first, I wasn’t going to watch it since it was late where I am and I planned to get to bed at a somewhat decent time (around 1 am).

Somehow, that didn’t work out and I ended up watching the livestream until around 2 am…ish. I got this weird obsession all of a sudden to have my friends make moose antlers on their head when the camera panned to them. I wasn’t very successful.

One of my friends did like half a moose antler. That’s the best I got haha.

I called it mooseface since that’s my name on Twitter (moosefaces, actually). I’m hoping it will catch on and we can start a meme. 😀

Anyway, some long suffering friends of mine did post pics of them doing mooseface and I totally love them for that. I just think it would have been awesome if someone had got up in front of the devs, put their hands on their head like antlers on the livestream in front of EVERYONE! And then after everyone was all “wtf” they could explain what was going on and maybe the devs would have joined in. Yeah..I have crazy fantasies about stuff like that happening and it never does. My imaginary life is so much more exciting than my real one.

I probably would have died laughing if that had actually happened, though. 🙂

Anyway, that got me to thinking (and sometimes that’s not a good thing), “Hey! we should turn this mooseface thing into a contest”. See what I mean about not being a good thing? Well it’s good for you, but contests aren’t always the best for me haha. They are interesting…let’s just leave it at that.

So yes, I want to have a contest because I am clearly insane and didn’t learn my lesson the last few times I did contests.

Don’t get me wrong, I love holding them. I just don’t like having to track down people to give them their prizes since they don’t always leave correct information, etc. Plus, I am now making it 1000000% more difficult on myself by being in an entirely different timezone than most people I regularly interact with. So yeah, this should be interesting. Fun, but interesting. Woohoo!

So this contest, what are the prizes? I have 4 Mr. Sparkles mini codes to give out. They are EU codes, but I have been assured that if you are NA, you can just contact support and they will apply the code to your account. My information is completely accurate with this so don’t yell at me if it doesn’t work at first. (Special thanks to Tilion from Dragonseason.com for helping me acquire the codes. They are also having a contest as well, please go check it out!)

I want you to do mooseface. What is mooseface you ask? LET ME SHOW YOU THE FACE OF MY PEOPLE!!

This..this is mooseface. Adorable, right?

So yeah..do that and the cutest/best/most adorable/coolest/whatever I think is most awesome or makes me laugh picture will win. (Hint, making me laugh is almost a sure fire way to win)

Some rules: please keep your clothes on. As much as I might appreciate moose au naturel, you are not really a moose so please, please, PLEASE no nude mooseface pics. Your face can be nude, your head can be nude, your chest can be nude (guys only or girls with bikini tops), but you must wear pants!!(Sorry, Peter Fries, this rules you out, sadly). This is not only for me, but for anyone who might have kids or overly sensitive people around while viewing my website.  I just don’t want any moose peen pics, thanks. I have a boyfriend you don’t need to proposition me. That won’t win you more points, either.

No profanity…well okay, maybe a little. I swear at times so it’s okay if your shirt says something like “shit” or “fuck” but don’t over do it! Remember, children might be watching! Save the parents from having awkward conversations with their children and then blaming me or something.

Must not be an ArenaNet employee…uh..well I guess you can submit a pic anyway (would love to see some Anet mooseface, actually), but you are not eligible for prizes (but let’s face it, you probably have whatever it is I am giving away anyway, or better than what it is).

You don’t necessarily have to show your face. This is the internet and with privacy issues and cyberbullying or what have you, it’s a dangerous time to show your face at times. Also, people suck and I completely understand that. So for you creative types, draw me a picture or something. Set up a diorama. Whatever. As long as it has a moose (or moose like thing, reindeer or anything with antlers works), I will accept it. One catch: it must have something to do with Guild Wars 2. Regular pictures do not need this, though. If you want to add a GW2 element to your pictures, however, I highly encourage it. It might not get you closer to winning, but I really enjoy the passion the community has for this game.

ANYONE FROM ANY COUNTRY CAN SUBMIT SOMETHING! These are EU codes and they will work on NA accounts, but you have to contact support. Sorry, but that’s the only way to get around it right now until they find a better fix for it.

The contest will run from now until….hmm….11:59pm on September 14th. What timezone you ask? uh…I don’t know, pick one. I’m too lazy to convert timezones or whatever. As long as you get it to me by 11:59pm on September 14th before the day rolls over EVERYWHERE, we’ll be cool. I might even accept a few after that. We’ll see how I feel in 1 week

HOW TO SUBMIT: Leave a comment on this blog post with a link to the picture (imgur is my favorite to use, but use whatever) or if you are really technically savvy (and if WP allows it), post the pic here in the comments. As for contacting the winners….uh…don’t think you should leave your email in the comments, but I will figure out a good solution unless anyone else wants to suggest something. If you have Twitter or Facebook and don’t mind leaving those details, though, please do that as a temporary solution. I’ll figure out what to do with the rest of you. Also, you will need to follow me on Twitter if you win. I’m @moosefaces on there. If you win, I’ll follow you back and DM you the code. I might even follow you anyway since I clearly need more people to follow on there. (not really, but I like people so…)

We cool? We cool.

So that’s basically it. Have fun, enjoy, get creative! I want to see some good mooseface! 😀

UPDATE: I know it’s pointless to have an update when I didn’t even release the blog post yet, but whatever. This is an update and it’s going here and you’re going to like it!

Angel McCoy is one of the writers at ArenaNet and she is one of the sweetest people on the face of the planet. In my mooseface insanity, I tweeted to her and Rhonda (Barbie from GWEN) asking for a mooseface picture. It came today! I was bouncing up and down with excitement in anticipation and it finally got tweeted to me. Guys, it’s the most adorable thing ever.

A wild Angel mooseface appears! It uses “be adorable” It’s super effective!

Can that woman be any more adorable? I don’t think so.

UPDATE 2: Ok so I thought that was the end of ArenaNet mooseface. I was so wrong. Presenting, Rubi mooseface!

Killing me with the cute, Rubi.

Because this is my life. I sit at home, make silly faces at the internet (and ArenaNet) and then they make them back at me.

My life is awesome.

 

A song for Peter, part 2.

So way back in April of…uh…last year? I wrote a song for Peter Fries, which you can find here.

Today, I finally got around to recording it and, with a little help from one of my friends on Twitter, it has music! Thanks Celeste!

Here it is, in all it’s glory!

Peter the Lost’s theme song

 

Gamescom and my adventures in Germany

So this blog has now gone international! *Kermit flail* YAAAAY! I am studying abroad for 5 months in the Netherlands which means my neighbor is Germany. Hi Germans! *waves* On Thursday, the 22nd, I had the opportunity to go down to Germany and see some of my EU friends. Of course, I took this chance and quite the adventure ensued. What follows is the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absolutely fantastic! Read on, dear reader!

So on my way down to Germany, I sat next to a woman who reminded me of my grandmother. Made me sad I cannot speak German and she did not speak English well but we communicated well enough. She was very sweet and gave me candy. She also thought it was very funny I was a communications student and I could barely communicate with her. I actually find that very funny too. German is the language of my mother’s side of the family but my grandmother did not teach it to my mother for various reasons. This never made me more sad than on this trip. Although the one phrase I know in German, how to ask someone if they speak English, got a lot of use this trip haha.

I unfortunately did not make the meet up since my train ended up getting rerouted. I had to backtrack from Eindhoven where I took my train, then I had to wait an hour for a direct train and by then it was much too late. I could have still gone to the meetup, but it was between that and not having a place to sleep that night. I tend to like having a place to sleep haha. I ended up spending the night at Andreas’ flat. He was such a gentleman and very funny. I found him through my friend Angerina which was an amazing connection. It was either that or spend 89-100€ on a hotel room. It turned out quite well.

The next morning, I woke up at 5am when his alarms went off. He took longer to wake up haha. We talked while he got ready and then we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.

I went to Burger King to try to mooçh free WiFi but that plan failed. Finally found some and got in touch with Sam aka Tasha_darke and her husband. We went and did some touristy things like go to the cathedral near the train station and this really cool underground Roman excavation site. We ended up meeting their friend Andy for lunch and then we hung out until about 4pm when they had to catch a train to go home back to the UK. It was sad we didn’t get to spend a lot of time together, but they are all fantastic people and I hope to see them again sometime.

That’s when my trip got interesting. I was supposed to leave shortly after they did but Sam gave me her Gamescom pass and I had been in touch with Tilion about getting together with Aidan, the CM in England for GW2. I decided to miss the train to go meet him because I’m clearly crazy. So I snuck into GC with a pass that wasn’t mine. Luckily, they didn’t check my ID hehehe.

GC is HUGE! My only other experience with a gaming convention was PAX East earlier this year so this was quite a bit different from that. Also, everything is in German which I don’t speak. One thing that struck me is the energy of the convention. It was exactly the same as PAX East. It really proved that gaming is an international language. We might not all speak the same language, but we all understand and love gaming.  I could definitely see the passion that transcends spoken language. I could feel the energy and got excited with the crowds even though I didn’t understand what they were saying. I understood the love of the games and that was the best thing I took away from my Gamescom experience.

For @cynixy, who is a writer on this game.

While going toward my goal, I got lost a few times and finally found the NCSoft booth. I asked around and finally found someone to contact Aidan. So we met and hung out for a bit, talked a bit about the game and just general stuff. It was quite fun and he’s quite charming. Little did I know how wonderful a person he really is. More on that later.

Wildstar, anyone?

I then got this crazy idea to stay later to go to the Wildstar party and meet Elizabeth Cardy aka Elixabethclaire and Martin Kerstein. We met and I hung out with Liz the entire night. Holy crap, she’s awesome! We are very alike and got along great. If you ever get a chance to hang out with her, DO IT! You will not regret it. She’s just as amazing in person as she is online. Martin as well. Martin is one of the CM’s at ArenaNet that actually inspired me to get into Community Management. I had my little fangirl moment meeting him, but I feel like I handled myself well. He was quite flattered and happy to hear that I appreciated his style of community management. We all had a bit of a conversation about community management and one thing Martin said really stuck out. He said that there are just some things that cannot be taught with community management and one of them is empathy for people. I found that this was so true with what happened to me next.

I am a little too excited about this, can you tell?

By that time, I had missed all the trains and the next one didn’t come til 3am. I hung out with Aidan after Liz and Martin went to bed. Then about 2am, I started to fade. I didn’t think I could make it to 3am let alone navigate my way back to den Haag through two foreign countries on 3 hours of sleep. It was not going to happen.

This is where Aidan came to my rescue. He truly lived up to the title Community Manager and he truly exemplified what Martin was saying about empathy. He tried to find me a place to stay, going as far to look for hotels. He finally found a guy, Kevin, who had a spare bed in his room that I could sleep in. I couldn’t believe it. It was amazing. I had never have someone bend over backwards like that in such an extreme manner, especially not someone who worked for a super popular gaming company. I often say that Guild Wars 2 has the best community, I can now say they have the best Community Managers as well. Not enough words to describe how wonderful it was and how grateful I am.

I got a really good night’s sleep and woke up at 11:30am. Best sleep I’ve gotten since I’ve been here.

I went downstairs intending to leave and saw Kevin who introduced me to a bunch of gamers. I hung out with them for quite a while and finally got a hold of Aidan to say goodbye. I got into a discussion of politics which I actually enjoyed for once. It was very enlightening and I came out feeling better than I ever have discussing politics in my own country.

Then it started raining and we all parted ways. It was an amazing time and an awesome experience. It had it’s ups and downs, but overall, I feel like the experience came out on a high note.

I am so grateful for the gaming community and all of the people I met who helped this bumbling Californian find her way through two foreign countries, even though she put herself in those situations to begin with. Sometimes we do stupid things, but there are always people out there who won’t judge us for our stupidity and help us regardless of it. Those people are wonderful and some of them even work at one of my favorite gaming companies ever.

 

Guild Wars 2, One Year Later

Ok, so I had always planned to do an initial post of GW2 when it first launched but my life got in the way and I got lazy and a million other excuses. I have let this blog lapse horribly. I hope to not do that again, though. We shall see. Anyway, on to the real blog stuff.

I remember around this time last year, I was incredibly excited for the release of GW2. I was early access so I was playing the 25th. I remember the excitement well. I had been in the betas, but this was it, this was the real deal! I’m sure I made many high-pitched squeaking noises as I waited to be allowed to log in. I’d never admit it in person though. 🙂

I quickly made all the characters I wanted to grab the names I wanted. I got all names but one, but I did get my backup name which was really awesome. Naming aside, my boyfriend and I jumped into the game and I don’t remember how long we played for, but it was quite a while. We were both incredibly excited.

The first few months flew by with all the events and in game goodies. At first, the freebies were really spectacular. As the game progressed, they didn’t give as much away and made you work for a lot of the good things.

There’s been a bit of controversy over some things and there have been things and changes I didn’t like.

All of that aside, I am still really enjoying the game. At this time, I have 5 level 80’s and I’m working on my 6th. I have finished the personal story and I have just over 7k Achievement points. I have mastered all crafting disciplines and gained 100% world exploration on one character. I have not gotten as far as others, but I tend to be a little more casual than them. I am happy where I am overall.

The game could always use improvements, but I still have a hard time liking any other MMO out there enough to leave GW2 for good. The game isn’t perfect, but they must be doing something right to keep me coming back.

One thing that I have also found is that this community is probably the best gaming community I have ever been a part of. I have met friends from all over the world (thanks, in large part, to Twitter), been offered places to stay, been helped out of tight situations, and just made some really good connections. Regardless of gameplay quality, etc, you cannot deny that the good parts of this community are really good. There are bad parts, too, but I feel like the good parts outweigh the bad exponentially. I have had an overall positive experience with this community and I can’t wait to see what happens with it in the future.

I am eager to see where the next year takes us. Bring it on, ArenaNet! 🙂

 

What a day.

I woke up this morning thinking it was just going to be another Monday. I was going to go to school and while I generally dislike Mondays, I was ambivalent about this one since it didn’t seem as bad as others (especially since I woke up to news that I had won some tea!). I could not have been more wrong.

I drove to my weight loss place as usual and while I was waiting there to be weighed, I decided to check out  Twitter. What I saw changed the mood of my day.

If you aren’t aware, about 2:50pm Eastern Time, there were a few explosions at the Boston Marathon’s finish line as well as other places around Boston. I’ve read some news but  I don’t want to say anything for sure since there’s still investigations going on. I am not sure if we will know for sure what happened today. All I know is there were explosions, people were hurt and 2 or 3 people were killed.

This rocked me to my core today. The biggest reason was that I have many friends there and I was there about 3 weeks ago for PAX. However, once my friends assured me that they and their friends were safe, I still couldn’t relax. I was (and still am) really upset about this. It took me a little while to put my finger on but I finally figured out why. It wasn’t just that I had an emotional attachment to the place (I had an awesome time, but I’ll blog about that later), it was the fact that if this had happened 3 weeks earlier, I would have been there. My friends would have been there. Many others from the geek/gaming/etc community would have been there. I was not the only one who thought this way, either. A couple of my friends expressed this as well..

The point is, this could have happened at any time. It could have happened anywhere. I don’t mean to trivialize the bombing today. Absolutely not. I also felt a bit guilty for thinking along these lines and felt like I was turning this into something about me and my friends. I feel like it’s so much bigger than that, though.

I won’t go into it too much (although I imagined writing a lot about my feelings on it). Maybe I’ll save that for another time.

Two other things that weren’t as bad as Boston getting bombed, but still were not good things, happened today. I found out my counselor at the weight loss place is leaving (she’s the one I bought Wonder Woman socks for when in Boston) and one of my friend’s dad’s died suddenly today (not in Boston, in CA). My heart goes out to my friend because while I never met her dad, I had interacted with him on Facebook and I had hoped to meet him one day.  He was a really wonderful individual and the world is a darker place without him. Such an inspiring man.

The counselor thing I will get over but I’m still bummed since I get along with her so well. I gave her my email and cell number so she can keep in touch and maybe now we can actually  hang out together since she isn’t working for that place.

So yeah, today was pretty awful but tomorrow should be better, right? Right. I’m going to make the most of my life and not let this get me down too much. It’s just hard when it all compounds on you a t once.

Hopefully, I will have another blog post soon. I’m sorry they are so few and far between. I have been  rather busy as of late with school and other things (some of which some know about but I want to make an announcement about something else as well). Hopefully this will pick up a bit more in the summer when I’m a little less busy.

Until then, hug someone and tell them you love them, even if it’s a random person. I think today we could all  use a little random act of kindness like that.

 

PAX East!

Yes, I will be at PAX East this March. Not sure what I’ll be wearing yet so you can’t stalk me. I’m probably going to be hanging out with people from the Twitter guild mostly. It’s not all set in stone, though.

I’m really looking forward to this since I’ve never been to any kind of convention before (unless you count Stitches West haha). I can’t wait to be with my people 😀 I don’t get to hang out with a lot of truly geeky people very often so this is going to be quite an awesome experience for me.

Also, cosplay. Holy crap, the cosplay. I will have to remember to empty the pics on my phone because I’m going to get A LOT of pictures of  the cosplay. It’s such an(a) obsession addiction love of mine. I can’t wait to see some in person and get to talk to cosplayers. I’ve always wanted to do my own cosplay, but I have no money to do it or to go to the conventions usually.

Anyway, that’s where I’ll be for a weekend in March. I’m super excited about getting to meet some of my internet buddies! It’s going to be a blast! Hope to see some of you other guys there too!

 

It’s ALIIIIIVEEEE!

I’m still here. I’ve just been busy…playing. Heh. 

I had to planned to write a ton but school tends to suck the life out of me (and all my writing motivation). 

Also, I’m completely addicted to Guild Wars 2. The game is phenomenal. It does have bugs and there are things I don’t agree with or things that could be improved, but overall, I feel like this game is absolutely fantastic. Bugs and all. It’s the best MMO I have ever played. 

A small recap of what I’ve accomplished in the past 6 months:

• Three level 80 characters: Ranger, Warrior, Necromancer
• One level 47 elementalist (SO much fun!!!)
• 6/8 crafting professions maxed (working on a 7th, I’m at 300 something, need more mithril ore!)
• 99% world completion (I just need a little more in Eternal Battlegrounds)

 

Yeah…I have no life. Also, totally addicted. I’m having a blast! 

I’m going to rethink what I’m going to do with this blog. I was planning on doing some guides but I’ve actually found better guides out there that I could ever write, especially for crafting. 

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do yet, but I’ll figure it out eventually. I’ll try to keep up on this blog a little more, but I can’t make any promises. I’ve actually started another blog since I am trying to lose weight. I’m starting to think I’m slightly insane hahaha. 

So that’s an update with me. I hope you all are fine and enjoying the game. I do have a couple of exciting announcements so stay tuned for those when they come up. 

 

And the world keeps turning…

Hey everyone! Sorry I’ve gone on hiatus unexpectedly. School started, GW2 launched, and I got lost in both! Plus, I had something rather unexpected happen to me.

It’s going to be a little bit serious, so if you’re not into the seriousness and want to preserve the fun, enthusiastic image you have of me, feel free to skip this post.

So I’ve recently had a bout of depression that lasted a little longer than I wanted it to and went a little darker than it has in the past. A lot of times we don’t think that there are real people behind the avatars so it’s odd for us to talk so freely about stuff like this. I understand this subject can be a little touchy, but I’m going to tackle it head on, like I always do.

My depression went to some pretty dark places, darker than I’m really used to and I’m rather surprised it went there. The only thing that really kept me from going completely under was Guild Wars 2. All I have been doing for the past week or so is playing GW2 and going to school (when I’m not sick enough where I can’t drive). I’ve done some stuff like watch TV and go online, but I haven’t felt the motivation to do much more than that. Blogging, moderating, etc. has all been out of the question.

Until Tuesday. What changed? I went to my intercultural class with my blue haired, gay instructor. At first, I wasn’t going to go. Then, I wasn’t going to participate. By the end of the class, it felt like a huge fog had lifted from me and I felt a lot better. I already sent him an email about it.

Anyway, I feel 100% better! I feel like my old self again and I went to class with no problems today. I’ve been more active on Twitter, and I think I’m ready to jump right back into moderating as well as writing.

I’d like to take the time, though, to encourage anyone who is dealing with depression to reach out to someone. Me, someone in Guild Wars, anyone. You don’t have to do this alone. I know it’s hard. I was just about to reach out to someone yesterday (tues) when I went to class and that did the trick. If that hadn’t, one of my friends on Twitter would have gotten a DM from me.

Please, please, please don’t fight alone. You don’t have to. Sometimes it feels like you are all alone and no one could possibly care about you or love you. There is at least one person that cares and will listen to you and that’s me. Heck, I’d even give you a hug if I could. Just don’t go it alone. As one of my favorite bloggers, The Bloggess says, “Depression is a lying bastard”. I know it’s hard to believe this when you are going through it, but it will get better. If you need someone to talk to, I’m definitely here for you.

All that being said, I am much better now. I will get back to my regularly scheduled posts. Hopefully I will have one this weekend. I have kind of a lot to cover since the launch. Forgive me for not being on top of all of it, but I don’t ever intend this to be a news site. I figure there are enough of those out there. This is strictly my experiences. I also have a ton of screenshots to go through.

I’m not even joking about that. I’ve filled up my screenshot folder 3 times now. I’m about 700 screenshots into 4 times. If you know how many screenshots you can hold in one folder, it’s 999. Yup. I have around 3700 screenshots. Granted, the first folder is all from the beta weekends and stress tests (for the most part). It’s a tad bit overwhelming. I’ll slog through them, though, because I love you that much. Expect a post this weekend!