As said in my last entry, I was going to work on my hp/mp gain per level page for the site. However, I am sad to inform that my laptop has crashed. When I start it up, I get an error message about an Unmountable_boot_volume. Ive taken it to Best Buy (I have 3-4 years of warranty on the laptop) and they’ve said that it might be a hard drive failure. They’re currently running an overnight analysis on it and they’ll get back to me. There IS a chance the hard drive is wiped, meaning, everything’ll be gone. The screenshots for data purposes, the training data itself, my videos, my music, and at the top of the list, the work Ive put into my commercial entry.

 I do believe God has a plan in everything though and I feel this is the case in this event as well. Without my laptop, Ive had more time off ms and Ive spent that time taking G4’s recommendation. Ive started watching Nodame Cantabile and have found it motivating. It has given me new ideas in music performance and whatnot and, I feel it will make me a better pianist.

I’ll probably update tomorrow with news on the laptop so wish me the best on getting everything back =X

 Jackk aka Retalion/ALastReprise.

Today’s Friday, meaning that its the day my English paper is due. As that’s off my hands now, I can get back to leveling and working on my commercial, lol. What’s happened since my last blog entry and now? Ive been insulted by retarded comments and lame, obvious scams. If any of you are in Scania, just listen to this word of advice: Don’t trust xtruewish.

As some of you might know from a previous entry, I bought a 33 dex 2 strength green pris for 190 mill. So there was this other bidder who tried lowballing (bidding 50 mill for the overall) so when he did try outbidding me with a 200 mill offer, I was still sold the overall instead.

So the next day, I get added on msn two times five minutes apart and in between that, I get whispered in game. The first msn was wishes @ dreams-fansubs.com, the 2nd was xxxviet_pridexxx @ hotmail.com and in between, xtruewish whispers me in game.

First off, I get a msg from wishes on msn and he tells me how he’s seen my video and loves it and so on so forth and then he tells me he has a 36 dex ades for sale for 190 mill (identical to the price I paid for the 33 dex pris). I simply tell him that if I had the money, I’d buy it but I’d already bought the overall. So he asks if I could sell my overall to buy his and I go I’ll think about it. So after that, I log onto maple and immeadiately get whispered by xtruewish, telling me he’d buy the overall from me for 190 mill. Instantly, my mind clicked and I had the impression something was wrong. The ign and the msn address seems too related that I could see someone pulling this off on me, so I merely told “the guy on msn” to msg xtruewish in game and sell the overall to him.

The next day, I see the other msn address that added me online, and I ask him “who are you?” and he proceeds to tell me that he’s xtruewish and tells me he doesnt need the overall anymore cause he’s bought the 36 dex one. A week pasts by and I wonder to myself, did I make the right choice? 36 dex overalls are rare and any damage boost I could get I’d welcome. This was when I get whispered by xtruewish again. He asks again if I’d sell him my overall so I merely ask him about the 36 dex overall, in which he replies that the other guy backed out. Here, I think to myself “this is a complete scam” and leave the situation as is. After all, I have no proof.

So about half a week ago, I decided to put up a PC thread on sleepywood.net regarding the overall as I was thinking about selling it to get money for a new bow. The next day, I get an msn msg from wishes @ dreams… saying that he was xtruewish and asking to buy the overall for 210 mill. I merely ask him “arent you the guy “trying” to sell a 36 dex overall? ” and he logs off (or blocks me, I couldnt care less, really).

 I dont know if xtruewish checks this blog, but if you do, Stop insulting my intelligence cause you’re degrading yours. Your “attempts” to buy my overall were obvious enough for me to see and work through without much effort. Dont bother trying harder cause it wont work. You wont buy my overall in ANY circumstance, even if you overpay. I’d rather sell it cheaper to an honest mapler rather than to a scamming loser like you.

To everyone else: If you were to buy/sell something to xtruewish, think about it twice and make sure you’re getting a fair deal out of him. Im not saying not to trade with him, Im merely saying do not get scammed or tricked by him.

Not sure if I have any non-GMS visitors onto this blog, but for those who dont know, Nexon made a huge blunder in which many people were rolled back, lost levels, taken off rankings, etc etc etc. for really no reason at all. Many of my friends were affected including my sister. So as compensation, Nexon is giving EVERYONE 2x exp and 2x drop everyday from 8 am to 8 pm PST till Sunday (if you didnt know, now’s the time to go training xP) and an EXTRA 24 hr 2x exp card lasting till Sunday for those who got rolled back, meaning those with the extra card get 4x exp for 12 hours a day and 2x exp the other 12.

 I personally did not get rolled back, but my sister did. She died at Lucidias cause of lag on Sunday so she got her 5% back and yesterday when we were going to put her mesos into storage, we found out her mesos got duped. Her 27 mill was now 54 mill as she originally had only 27 mill in her storage, but now she had 27 mill in her inventory as well. Not only that, but she has 2x exp that she’ll never use.

 Despite the English paper, Ive been somewhat taking advantage of 2x exp and Ive gotten to level 88 last night.

After leveling, I decided to do some scrolling… I personally am 1/16 with 30% scrolls so… Read the rest of this entry »

Well, cant say this came as a surprise, but the Maple Story Mob Commercial Contest deadline has been extended to December 31st. Why? Cause they can, and its free. Hey, that’s just like Maple Story!

No really, they dont have much choice, with the lack of quality entries so far. As well, is it really THAT hard to take 5 minutes to READ the contest guidelines?

Of the 39 videos submitted so far, 24 commercials dont fit the 20-30 second limit (some too long, some too short) given by the contest guidlines (61.5%)

Of the remaining 15, many use “copyrighted material” in either music or just remixing scenes from that animated maple series from a long time back and many of them, to bypass the copyright put no music/background noise.

This leaves all the real life commercials. It might be just me, but am I the only one to find the “Cause I can and its free” slogan highly defective, not funny and somewhat decieving? Just cause its free, that doesnt mean its good. You can go to your local park and pick up dog crap and that’s free. So would that be on the same scale as playing maple story? As well, its debatable if its free. You’re spending your time on it. One can say that time really doesnt cost anything, but if that’s the case, why do we pay counselors so much just so they’d sit there and listen to us talk? Are they actually interested in our lives and what’s troubling us? No, we’re paying for their time more often than not. This slogan is decieving in that only parts of the game are free. There are many aspects that arent such as apq, gachapon etc. Why is the pig wearing a top hat? Cause it can and its free? Its not free, you gotta pay real money to get the top hat from cs!

Iono, it might be just me, but I personally find that a horrible advertisement ploy that can be made up in 5 minutes, speaking of videos “made in 5 minutes cause I was bored”.

That leaves this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMPKfUIac08 and the one with the girl trying to imitate maple emoticons in real life. The girl needs a better camera while the boy needs to… learn to rap? And really, is eatting buns, congee and drinking apple juice really what make maple story attractive and worth trying? Granted, I got a good laugh out of that one, I dont want to see that on tv and I dont think it would work either.

 That all being said, what does this have to do with me? Well, Ive previously stated that I intend to enter this contest. This extension gives me more time. I have an English paper due this week amongst other things that keep me busy this week. Heck, Ive even stopped leveling cause I needa focus on other things. This allows me to actually spend time on my paper while working on the commercial. G4, this gives you time to work on your animations for the vid and plenty of time for you to change your mind and enter the contest =]

Till next post, I hope you all have a wonderful American thanksgiving (whenever that is, Im Canadian, my thanksgiving was last month).

Jackk aka Retalion

Well, Ive finally taken some time and started writing. The format I chose was a narrative, telling what I did and what I thought about it with recommendations at the bottom. So far, what Ive written is 1st job so… yeah, not much in terms of useful information =/

 Maple Story Mob Commercial Contest Status (MMCC Status): 80% idea down, 50% hard footage down, music to come after footage is complete.

Leave a comment about what you think about this “update” of sorts as ideas are always welcomed for improvement.

Ps. Ive changed the title thingy from “the Threshold of music and archerism” to “A threshold of thresholds”. Dont know if that makes sense but I kinda like it xP Comment on that as well if you want.

 Upcoming to do list: Make to do list.

Edit: For those who cant find it, scroll down on the far right and look for the link titled “untitled archer information”

While G4 and Josh (Bowjob) are busy exchanging filler posts, I’ll try and post something useful here I guess.

As seen in the previous post, I am currently working on my entry for the maple story commercial contest or whatever you want to call it, and it has brought up some interesting questions for me. What am I really in this game? What do I represent? How does it relate to this blog?

 Recently, though G4 and Josh have not stated it, this blog has been clogged with more “filler” posts than their blogs combined. All its shown are level updates and equipment updates, which is basically an update for a blog visitor to see, “how much longer do I have to wait for the next video?”. This brings me to the first question: What am I and what do I represent? Naturally, the answer that most would expect is a musician who brings his talents and incorporates it into this game, someone who makes “good”, motivating videos (though after reading G4’s review on my 70 video, I would consider myself closer to mediocre). However, as I think about it more, the time Ive spent on this game on and off over the last 2 and a half years, I see something: This game has really changed. Its gone from a one island game (Victoria Island) with 2 jobs to a 3 island adventure with many add ons and 3 jobs and a 4th one looming.

 To put it crudely, there are 2 groups of people, the old generation of players and the new generation. The old generation, that has played in the early stages of official and the latter stages of beta, these players remember the game and how “hard” it was to level. I’ll focus on the archer class as that’s what Ive been all my life in this game: an archer. Back in the day, it was zombies till forever until ludi came, in which it was death teddies till 88, then vikings/grims to infinity, where 15%/hr was considered amazingly fast and whatnot and money was constantly lost until a decent drop was found. Then there’s the current generation, players who are on, what I call “Maple Steroids”, 2x exp cards galore, 2x drop cards galore, the era of selling z-helms, etc etc etc. This new generation laughs at the old generation and how they keep talking of how hard it is to get to a certain point in the game and those marks which were once “sacred”, are now looked on as an everday event (such as hitting 120). I am brought to this reality looking at comments on my 120 video. When it was released almost a year ago, the equips were top of the line, the damage was amazing, and many people saw it as that, whereas now, I occasionally get replies saying “why are you so weak?” This newer generation fails to see what the old generation has gone through and how can they? Would one really choose a harder path just to experience what the past has seen?

Retalion was part of that old generation and now as ALastReprise, Ive experienced the new generation. I tried to struggle through doing things the old ways (such as training at lusters at 50) but seeing the faster options out there (Dummies in Mu Long), I couldnt resist and saw it the new way.

That being said, I feel that Im in a unique position (as unique as something in a game can be anyways). I’ve been part of the old and now Ive been part of the new. Back on Retalion, 1 mill seemed A LOT to me, now I make 1 mill in 1.5 hours at Herb Town pirates without counting drops (meso drops alone) and 1 mill is around 1/6th of an average zakum split I get (when I zak occasionally that is).

 All that being said, what am I leading up to? The fillers are over. I have constantly been asked about “where to train” or “where do I put my skill points” or what equips do I have”, 3 questions that nothing on this blog answers. I have finally found a power outlet to plug into my laptop at school (to think I spent so much time in the music library without a power outlet…), meaning I have more time on my laptop. This will give me time to update my blog to fulfill and answer those 3 questions. As it says in the title, this is “The threshold where instrumental music and maple archerism meet~”, what I am now aiming at is to make this the threshold of old school archer and new generation of archer philosophy, strategy and ideas meet.

Any other suggestions for improvements? Any suggestions on this idea Im coming up with? Post. I’d love to hear from whoever does visit this blog. Till next time,

 Jackk/Retalion.