L0g In @nd G@m3!

[Erin Hackett]

Tim had been Erin's roommate for a short amount of time but then things happened or something and now she was no longer roommates with the guy. not that she cared and it was not a big deal to her who she was rooming with since unless someone made the first move to talk to her or she actually needed their help for something then she was not going to really talk to her roommates. Either way, none of that was important because Tim had posted up wanting to assemble some kind of video game group and Erin was all kinds of for it. That was why she had showed up where Tim said they could meet to play on their computers so they could get to gaming. Erin showed up at the exact time Tim had set up, said her quick hellos, before she focused on just setting everything up and logging into her computer.

They had already discussed what game they were going to be playing and Erin had already agreed. She was just looking forward to the experience of actually playing a game with someone in the same room. She was already in the other world. Logged in with practically her mind one with the game. That was sort of what happened when you started to play a video game. You became a part of that world, that other world. Erin was already working on customizing her character while she thought up of a name for her character. Character customization was an important part of the game, but the game itself was what was really important. When she was all done she would appear in the world, looking around for Tim or who Tim would be now.

[Tim Tawfeek]

So far, Erin had been the only one to outright respond to Tim's ad. On the one hand, that was kind of cool, since Tim got on well enough with Erin and all that. On the other, he'd been hoping to snag a few new people. Of course, he planned on contacting the people who he'd met and befriend and all that. which, come to think of it, consisted mostly of nerdy girls. How was it he didn't have that kind of luck before he had a girlfriend?

Anyway, Tim figured that they'd play one of those that was a little more open. One that had skills and would let you develop your character based on which skills you used and all that good stuff. That way they could make their characters without being all authoritative and stuff and still end up with a balanced party that wouldn't get them all killed by the third dungeon.

His avatar happened to be black, because they never had enough dark-skinned characters in these anime games. He also happened to be fairly tall, because Tim could pull it off, and have ridiculous spiked hair, because Tim thought it was funny at the time. He'd opted for some basic fighter equipment already, figuring that they could always branch out, and he let his avatar wait in the hub.

Hey, lemme know when u get on he sent to Erin, using the hub. they were on the same internet system, after all, so it was pretty easy (and quick) to send messages and all that good stuff.

[Erin Hackett]

Erin could care less if other people joined because she honestly was fine play a video game by herself or with just one other person. She had skills so she often ended up playing a video game by herself unless people were smart and were nice to her in order to get her on their team so they had a higher chance of winning. She would be fine of course if Tim brought more people to their little group they had going on and she certainly would try to invite someone to join, but her luck would probably be dragging in guys since he luck with talking to girls was as down the tube as it always was. In all actually...Erin had never actually played a video game with another girl in the same room, would she be distracted? She shook that thought out of her head at the moment while she went to town on customizing her character. Making it look like her favorite character design she tried to have in all the games with customization.

Pale skin, long green hair that was pulled back into a pony tail while letting long strands fall down in the front. With the looks that Erin had selected she basically had a samurai; who did have a tendency to look either feminine or really machine in an anime. Since this game had an anime design, Erin was able to get all of the character designs that she wanted in her character and had the touch decision of picking what class to go with. She just went with a combat yet healing related class, knowing that she probably was going to have to be good at both because either the 'healer' or the 'tank' sucked. Funny how games tried to branch out from those views, but in the end Erin was stuck seeing classes like that until further notice. Having everything made she appeared in the hub, looking around for Tim.

I'm here. I'm guess you are the spiky hair guy? Erin message back right away as she moved over towards him and started to jump up and down to show him that it was her. She then started to test all her keyboard shortcuts to make sure she liked what they opened and if there were any setting that she wanted to change. The graphic are actually pretty good. Erin messaged again as she looked around the world they were now in with everything loading and starting to come into view in the distance.

[Tim Tawfeek]

Yep, that's me. Probly 1 of the only black guys around Tim messaged back. He moved his avatar about, looking to see if he could actually see Erin's avatar. They were supposed to port into the same hub and all, but things could've gotten messed up in the transfer. Eventually Tim figured they'd have a BA guild and they'd just log right into that from now on.

Get your avatar on over here. I want to test out the voice chat and I don't want some creepazoid to b all lurking sent Tim. He took a few steps, working out the kinks. the graphics were pretty darn pretty. Distracting to some extent, as Tim found himself actively looking around for a bit. He'd still kill to get one of those headset things, maybe an Oculus Rift or whatever. Actually, he was betting that he could get one of his tech friends to whip something like that up. They had the tech, right?

You think we could talk a techie into whipping us up some, like, VR headsets? he sent, figuring he might as well include Erin in his thought process.

[Erin Hackett]

Probably. The shading for any skin tone besides pale don’t always look so good, but you seemed to have landed a nice one. Erin messaged back as she looked at Tim’s avatar, smirking a little to herself at the fact that he went with spiky hair. They were both in the right hub and could see each other so everything had loaded correctly. Erin chuckled a little again at Tim’s words on wanting to test out the voice chat and didn’t want someone lurking in on their conversation. There was always someone who would be a troll or just a stupid player on a game such as this. You could always hope that people would just grow up and just play the game, but some people seemed to get off to messing with others. Pathetic is how Erin saw them.

Erin moved over to where Tim wanted her, already having checked out how to move and all of that as soon as her screen loaded up. The world around them was beautiful and she already wanted to run off and explore and slay things. She wanted to slay things mainly but with the anesthetics of the games she figured she would get distracted with the world around her so just included the desire of wanting to explore. She actually had still on the fence about the whole wearing a headset that fully put your vision into the game. She already got so absorbed in the game without actually having something over her eyes. Plus the whole fact that someone could sneak up on her and she not even see them if she was looking at them did not sit well with her, even if that was sort of like her power.

We probably could or I could just but a set of Oculus Rift if you really want to play with them. Last time I tested one out they improved upon the whole motion sickness issue. Erin messaged Tim back because she had the money and the connections to get a hold of pretty much any gear that Tim wanted or desired. All he had to do was ask. Erin already had a whole mouse, keypad, mouse pad, and headset that she was given by one of her many video game sponsors. The biggest thing that Erin was currently noticing was the fact that the internet here was a lot slower then what she was used to, but she was no longer in Japan.

[Tim Tawfeek]

Tim made his character nod as Erin mentioned the whole skin-tone thing and stuff. he'd actually spent a fair bit of time on creating his character, like you did for such games, and he'd been pleased enough with the results. Wasn't ever enough characters of color in games and worlds like this as it was. He just hoped that nobody made stupid jokes about him dying first or anything like that.

Since Erin had approached though, Tim knew he could start using his voice chat. He adjusted his headset and stuff, making sure it was all in place. He'd actually gotten the thing for sound editing for his blog, which meant that Trevor's money had gone into it, which worked out pretty well. A sort of muffled sound came.

"Testing, one two," he said, before puffing into the mic. "This thing should work. brand new. Easier then sending messages and stuff. But yeah, we should look into modding some Occulus Rift headsets sometime. I know a guy," Tim made his avatar nod again, before turning to look around. "Okay, so, we should be looking for the first quest giver and stuff. Probably got rats to beat up or something inane like that." Tim scanned the area, looking to see if there was anyone with the tell-tale symbols above their heads.

[Erin Hackett]

Erin spent a good amount of time making her character as well; she always enjoyed having an aspect of customization in a game. It not only allowed you to feel like the story was more personalized, but it also allowed you to not look like everyone else around you. Imagine how confusing it would be if every person on an online game looked the same? It would probably end up having less appeal and not to mention is would get super confusing when you got into a dungeon or what have you. Erin personally believed that if a game had a story line to it where you could potentially play a game with another person, then you had to be able to customize your character.

Erin snickered a little at the fact that Tim went with the standard testing thing everyone said when they were testing a mic. It was actually the best way to test a make because it was using sounds that a mic would often have a hard time picking up on, but really just going with saying anything worked just as well when testing a mic. Erin was pretty confident her mic would work; she had tested it on another game before she showed up to play games with Tim. She pretty much tested everything and brought a few spars just in case because there was nothing she hated more than when her tec would fail to work when she needed it the most. “Sounds like a plan, and I find it funny that you know all of these guys. Making me wonder which of the two of us have more connections to people who can help us out.” Erin responded back, her mic working fine as she expected.

Being able to talk instead of having to type everything up was always wonderful in a multiplayer game because your fingers could focus on gaming while you were still able to speak and communicate with others. Erin’s avatar nodded and she had them point off in the direction of where the quest giver was, since they were appearing on her map, tons of new people entering the game where headed that way, and she had spotted them when she had first started to test the movement of the game. “Right over there. I’m interested to see how the combat works in this game.” Erin said as she moved over towards the quest giver, making sure Tim was following. When she was in a group she liked to remain close to who was in her group, unless they could split up to make a quest go faster.

[Tim Tawfeek]

"Most of the time it's just the same guy, which is why I never give a name," replied Tim airily. He would've waved a hand, but he hadn't quite figured out all the little motion controls for the game. He figured that he'd get things more in line with time. Plus, they'd probably be changing to a better setup soon. He'd wager that Karl could build them something really VR, get this stuff going as good as one of those anime games or something.

Well, it seemed like Erin had located the right guy. Tim directed his avatar over, initiating the conversation bit. The guy began speaking and Tim had to fight against rolling his eyes. "Sounds like we need to... fight off a swarm of deadly rabbits attacking a vegetable patch?"

Tim paused for a moment, pulling up the logs. "Yeah, he actually said that," he turned his avatar toward Erin's. "I swear, the advertisements all said this game was all kinds of awesome. Maybe they're killer rabbits with vicious teeth?"

Because surely Erin would get a Monty Python reference, right?

[Erin Hackett]

“This is true. I like when they make the mistake of accepting my friend request and then watching as they just disappear from the game.” Erin responded back with a small and slightly evil chuckle as she thought about it. She sadly needed her second computer to pull such a feat off because if she did it with her current computer then she would have to take a moment to stop playing the game. Erin just hoped that they would not have to deal with a buzz kill right away and mess up with Erin and Tim’s fun. No one was going to get in the way of their experience as far as Erin was concerned. Not even someone playing a good looking female characters asking for money or help and acting like they would do a favor for you would get in the way of that. Who still fell for such a ploy still?

Erin found the quest giver and Erin practically skipped through all of the dialog because in most games you never even really needed to read or listen to what was said to you because on the side you pop up your mission objective. For those games that really wanted to baby its players they would even have the area where they needed to do the mission at. Even if most smart player who had been playing video games for a while tended to already know that what you needed to do tended to be in the same area as the quest giver. Erin started to chuckle at the mission as Tim summed it up as well. Here I was hoping to kill spiders or something. Erin thought to herself as she still snickered. “Rabbits are pretty deadly when they are eating your food source.” Erin responded as she looked through what she could do in the way of attacks.

Erin did catch the reference that Tim made, have watched a few Monty Python ‘movies’ here and there but not too many. She never fully got through that specific one, knowing that she just could not handle a cute little bunny ripping the throats out of Knights. “If they are all white, have red eyes, and go for the throat then I might have to leave the mission to you.” Erin teased as she headed over to the vegetable patch already spotting a few rabbits but didn’t go for the attack yet. She first wanted to watch any other players taking them on or for Tim to go ahead and get the mission going.

[Tim Tawfeek]

"Yeah, I don't know if they're going for the whole environment impact thing or not," said Tim, shrugging. Well, he shrugged in real life, then seemed to realize that his avatar hadn't. So then he added the command for that to happen, watching his avatar move in the appropriate fashion.

At least she picked up on his reference, which had him chuckling again. He waved for her to follow and headed that way. "Oh, yeah," he said, clicking at his keyboard for a bit, "I'm going to make sure to send you the friend request and get you into my party and all that fun stuff. Want to make sure we've got all that situated before we do anything too stupid."

Tim nodded and then waited on the outskirts of the village, looking at the pretty scenery again. sure enough, there was a garden all organized and so forth. With what looked like normal rabbits hopping around. And sure enough, said rabbits all had health bars: lines of green showing above them all. Tim stared for a while longer, still not quite believing it. Well, and waiting for all the requests to go through, since the last thing they'd want to do is kill the rabbits twice.

[Erin Hackett]

Erin shrugged back, but her character didn't do it like she had expected but she would worry about it later. All the emotes were not supper import other than being able to sit down, wave, and dance seemed to be the overall mostly used one. Erin knew her personal favorite was sit down since she did that a lot in a video games, especially if she was AFK. What better way to show that you were currently not playing the game then having your character sitting there and doing nothing. "You picked the game; I'll trust that you know more. For now." Erin responded back. Tim was the one to pick the game after all and Erin had not gotten around to looking much up on the game. She was just excited to play the online game with someone else in the same room for once or at least being able to talk to them while knowing them in real life. Too many people that she played with she didn't really actually know in real life but that was what happened when you played online video games.

Erin followed after Tim when he gave the wave, mostly along for the ride until she could feel herself really getting into the game. Once she got a hang of the combat system and the different things they would be capable of doing in the video game when she would be a lot more gun-ho about it all. "Smart, it will make sure that we stay at the same level for the most part and not have to wait for each other to complete a quest." Erin responded back finding that if you were going to play a game with someone then it was best to play with them in a group. That way EXP was shared and you pretty much were able to get things done a lot faster in a way. That very reason was why Erin wished she had a twin or a best friend who would always play video games with her so she could fully get the whole multiplayer experience in a MMO.

Erin waited for Tim to send her a request, ready to accept him as her friend on the game so she could always keep contact with him in case they happened to both get on the game when they had not talked about playing it together. She also made sure to accept him as her group member and enjoyed how their colors changed now that they were in a group. The simple things in a video games were sometimes enough to please Erin. "Alright, got everything. Ready to kill some rascally wabbits?" Erin asked, making her own Loony Toons joke there.

[Tim Tawfeek]

"The reviews were good," replied Tim. He would've added another shrug,but you could pretty much hear it in his voice. He took a deep breath, trying to be patient while Erin worked her way through the menus and what have you. Tim looked through his own, double-checking his equipment and making sure that he had weapons and stuff equipped. While he was willing to bet that his character could probably pummel the bunnies to death, given how much he'd put into strength and all, he didn't really want to test it.

At least they were on the same page regarding how this was gonna work, more or less. "Yeah, though we can always do some grinding or whatnot if we want. Hopefully we get a few more people," Tim replied, shrugging. He wasn't entirely sure they could do a whole lot with two, especially if neither of them took up a mage class. He'd have to see if he could get someone else. Maybe he could talk Lux into it? Would she get into it though?

A ding drew Tim out of his thoughts and he nodded, making his char do the same. "Right, let's get our bunny murder on," said Tim. "And you'd better equip some weapons and join me in this, 'cuz if I get murdered and you laugh, I'm gonna be ticked," Tim directed his char toward Erin and swung in her general direction, just to demonstrate. He then turned back, stepping into the horde and swinging his "wood sword."

[Erin Hackett]

"I actually didn't get around to looking anything up on the game so I'm going to have to take your word for it." Erin responded since she again had been busy with other things and didn't get around to looking up the game Tim had suggested they play. She made a mental note to check it out later on but for now she was just going by the natural standard of how she played online MMOs. She didn't know the story line, the plot of the world, or even much about the role of her character in the game. She only knew the stats she gave herself, how to move around the world, and of course what she and Tim looked like. There were also the basic of an MMO that she knew of so didn't think she was going to have a hard time at the game at all.

They both had gone for fighting style it seemed, with Erin still having it open if she was going to do long range or close combat fighting. Dissensions for later of course when she got a better handle on the different classes you could be in the game. “True...I'll leave the getting more players to you." Erin said, agreeing that it would be easy enough to do some grinding. In terms of getting more players that was going to have to be all on Tim until Erin either got some more friends or at least until she was actually able to invite someone to come play with them. More than likely she would end up brining guys since asking girls questions proved difficult when it was inviting them out somewhere. It was like asking them out for a date almost, even if it was all for just for fun.

"If you get murdered even if I'm helping I'll still laugh. Getting killed by bunnies would have to be like some kind of achievement." Erin said with a laugh as she equipped her weapon as well, a wooden sword that pretty much was the same as Tim's. She didn't have as much strength as Tim did in her states but she didn't think it was going to be all that big of a deal. She had made sure to go for mostly balanced with a focus on having a lot of health and stealth. She would probably have to put money in or something in order to change things around once she got a better idea of everything in the game. She didn't even hesitate as she ran in and went to do a slash at a rabbit, knocking its health down.

[Tim Tawfeek]

"Seriously? I spend, like, some of my very little free time trolling the internet and looking for this stuff," said Tim. What he didn't mention was that he'd done quite a bit of legwork to get things set up for this particular grouping and all. He'd wanted to make sure that there was a game that would have some wider appeal. This one had the pretty graphics, didn't cost much to play, had an intuitive control system, and was supposed to have a sort of balance between nature type thing going on. Sounded awesome to Tim.

Unlike killing rabbits. Tim tactfully ignored the bit about getting more players, though he frowned in real life at it. The laughter didn't help: just made him laugh dryly into his own headset. "Let's just kill some bunnies," he said. Soon his avatar was hacking away, demonstrating that Tim had put quite a bit into sheer brute force, outright pummeling them. "I was going for a tank build myself, but we're still low leveled enough to tweak if-- alright, got my first one!" Tim's avatar did a fist pump.

The rabbits weren't actually fighting back, mind, and it only took three hits to kill them. Nice and easy control, and Tim was picking up pretty fast, moving through. "And they called him Tawfeek, slaughterer of lupines," intoned Tim in a deep voice, chuckling darkly as he hacked down a few more.

[Erin Hackett]

“You need to set up a computer to do all of your research for you if you have so little time. Literally program it to look up a certain video game key words." Erin said, since that was what she did when it came to her research. Who had time to actually look through all that a search engine had to offer from sites from around the world when you could have a computer do it for you. It made things go a lot faster and a lot less work on your part. Less work meant your time was not waster and you could do other things with your time, like play a video games or play with your collection of plush poke dolls. Erin didn't know the work that Tim had put into all of this, her level of care was not high enough to look into it yet.

She was still just testing this all out and testing the kind of person Tim was since they still were not super close or anything like that. Time seemed like a cool guy, he played video games, and she got along with him. There was still more digging that she needed to do before she was fully okay with this guy. Yet again, there was the game to focus on so that was all that mattered to Erin at the moment and she would figure out all the little details on Tim and the game later. Tim gave a dry chuckle to what Erin said about getting more players, but she didn't think too deeply on that. Perhaps Tim really didn't want to play with anyone else. Wait, what if he wants to just have alone time to play a video games with me? But I'm gay...and he has a girlfriend...but he could be curious. Erin thought to herself as her mind began to wonder for a little while until Tim started talking.

He was off and attacking the rabbits so Erin moved to do the same, slashing at a rabbit and while she was not doing as much damage as Tim was, the rabbits were super easy to kill. It was like going against an opponent that was not even tries, but the rabbits were just normal rabbits and not monster rabbits. "Then I'll go damage since I don't play healing classes well." Erin said back as she made her avatar give Tim a clap when he killed his first rabbit. Of course that was after she got rid of her first rabbit as well and then moved on to the next one. Chuckling at Tim's words. He is getting into it. Erin thought to herself as she hacked away at another innocent farm land eating bunny. "I hope they have that as a title, or at least I might have to call you that from now on." Erin said, practically in the form of a warning because she really would call him that from now on if he was not careful.

"Are there rare spawns in this game...because this rabbits bar looks different then all the other ones?" Erin asked as she pointed to a rabbit not too far from where they were standing. It could have been a glitch or something, or they were lucky and possibly going to get something special off of a rabbit.