Ditto’s PAX East Roundup
PAX East, while an amazing and at times overwhelming show, definitely posed certain challenges to this intrepid Fabricated American blogger. For one it is HUGE and completely packed with people, and I have short furry legs, so getting around was a little tricky. Fortunately for me this was easily remedied by riding on Miss Narrator’s shoulders. That was going well until I jokingly said ‘Giddy-up’, of course, and then… Let’s just say that Miss Narrator has a line that should never be crossed.
PAX was gigantic!
Ditto’s Interview with Fred Howard of KingsIsle at Pax East
Once in a while in a monsters life, really really awesome things happen. For me, that was getting the opportunity to go to Pax East, an amazing gaming convention in Boston that was huge and really mind-blowing in so many ways!
Just going to Pax East would have certainly been enough for me, sure, but the thing that pushed my weekend completely over the top was an opportunity to sit down with none other than Fred Howard, the Vice President of Marketing from KingsIsle. And not just shaking hands for a quick photo op in the KI booth, either – no way! Fred actually took the time to sit down with Miss Narrator and myself and answer a number of questions, including some questions posted by you, my readers, about the game!
I was so nervous! I’m just a simple Fabricated American, it was a lot for me to take in, but Fred was great, and he even said he was nervous about meeting ME – can you believe it? I really appreciate him taking the time to sit with us!
Without further ado, here’s the interview!!
Ditto Meets Fred Howard from KingsIsle
Headed to PAX East!!
Hello Everybody! Ditto and Miss Narrator are on our way to PAX East in Boston right now!! (Well, as you’re reading this, not as I’m writing it, obviously…)
I just wanted to say hello to anyone who is coming here for the first time after meeting us at PAX – hi there!! I am Ditto Monster, I am a proud Fabricated American of the furry orange monster variety, and this is my bloggy thingy!
I love playing family-friendly online games, especially Wizard 101, and I like to talk a lot about staying safe online, because that’s really important, and that’s one of the things I will be doing at PAX East is asking other gaming companies and players more ways to stay safe and have fun online!!
I will be trying to update my YouTube channel and twitter with videos and pictures from PAX all day, so stay tuned, it’s going to be a lot of fun!!
Bound for PAX East!!!
So if my blog has been a little quiet this week, it’s because I’ve been in full blown PAX preparation mode! PAX East is my very first convention ever, and I honestly have no idea what to expect – I’m SO excited, but the more I read about it the more intimidating it seems! I’m pretty sure I’m all ready now; I’ve got my business cards, my cameras, interview questions, plus a few other surprises that I think people are going to enjoy! I can’t wait to get to Boston!
I’ve gotten some really great questions from my readers, it’s going to be hard choosing just five, but I’m not going to make my final choices until Friday, so if you wanted to ask KingsIsle a question you should send it to me today at dittowizard @ gmail.com and make the subject ‘Question for Kingsisle’ and I’ll pick my favorites before we head to the show!
So if you’re going to be at PAX East this weekend, especially Saturday, then keep an eye out for me – I’ll be the furry orange monster, I’m pretty sure you can’t miss me!
On my way to PAX East!!
Ditto’s Weekly Video Bloggy Thingy 3/7/2011
Yay, I’m actually posting on a Monday like I wanted to! So this is my new weekly video bloggy thingy – Apologies for Carl, he’s the new camera guy, he’s still learning. Anyway, this week I’m very excited for PAX East, I can’t believe it’s only days away! Also, I discuss the terrifying DragonSpyre , the AMAZING Celestian Observatory, and of course gardening. And a reminder, I’m taking questions for Kingsisle until the end of the week and I’ll choose the five I’ll try to ask them on Friday. Just email me at dittowizard at gmail dot com and make sure the subject says ‘Question for Kingsisle’ – thanks!!
More fan art!! I love fan art!
So I opened my email this morning and was greeted by the most wonderful picture from Patrick Hawktamer, who did a great scene of me in Mooshu – he even did my blue eyebrows! And even better, he knew not to send me any personal information like his phone number or address, which is great!
So THANK YOU Patrick Hawktamer, you made my day!
Ditto in Mooshu - Fan Art by Patrick Hawktamer
Ditto enters DragonSpyre!!
So after more than a year of adventure and epic battles, including defeating the dreaded Jade Oni, Ditto and Madame Jasmine finally reach the dark halls of DragonSpyre. What dangers and treasures await them in the lava-filled streets and toppled buildings?
No, seriously, what dangers are there? This place is really scary!!
Ditto’s Video Bloggy thingy and CONTEST!
So here is my weekly video bloggy thingy – can you believe it’s already March? And with March, aside from hopefully the end of cold weather and snow in my fur, we also get PAX EAST!! That is right – PAX East is less than two weeks away, kicking off next Friday, and Ditto and Miss Narrator will be there! And I decided, since I will hopefully be talking to the folks at Kings Isle for a few minutes, it would be cool to find out what YOU want to know from them. So if you have questions for KingsIsle about Wizard 101 (or whatever) send them to me at dittowizard at gmail.com and use the subject ‘Question for KingsIsle’ so I can sort through them easily. I’ll choose five questions and I will do my best to ask the wonderful KingsIsle people at PAX East and get answers to them. My plan is to get it all on video too – we’ll see how that goes, right?
I’m getting so excited!!!! Woohoo!
Ditto versus…. Professor Drake?!?
So after my stunning defeat of the Jade Oni, I returned to Headmaster Ambrose to report back and hopefully get a report card or something. He sent me to see my least-favorite teacher, Professor Snape Drake, who decided that to help me face Malistaire, I would have to fight HIM! I know Malistaire is his brother and everything but I sure did not see this coming! The cool part – I had to face down a professor in a duel, and I beat him! I have a feeling he might have taken it easy on me though…
Facing the Jade Oni – Part 2
Here it is, the end of the battle against the Jade Oni! I hit him with two massive Helephants and got him down to just over two hundred health before he was taken out by Tanner Rubycatcher’s Ice Wyvern! We healed the emperor and saved Mooshu and I was granted the spiral key to get to Dragonspyre! Woohoo! so DragonSpyre here I come!
Facing the Jade Oni – part 1!
So this is the first part of my Jade Oni battle. I will say right up front that it was a tremendous fight against an impressive opponent! It was a LONG fight, too – almost twenty minutes total.
Because it was around twenty minutes and I did have a few technical glitches, I’m only going to post two clips – this clip is the first five minutes of the duel and shows my setup, as well as me deciding that the Jade Oni was way too scary to fight solo – I hired a life henchman to help out.
About mid fight – shortly after this clip ends – I’m joined by a fan who ports into the fight. Now while porting into a fight without asking is considered a breach of etiquette in Wizard 101, he did help me out and ended up getting the final blow in against Jade Oni, so it all worked out OK in the end…
My strategy for the fight was different from other boss fights for a couple reasons – first, Jade Oni fights solo, so I didn’t have to worry about a henchman, that meant Meteor Strike was a waste of pips. Second, he’s HUGE, starting with 7,500 health AND the ability to heal himself repeatedly, so I had to be able to do as much damage as I could as fast as I could – that meant extremely well buffed Helephants. My Life henchman proved to add a challenge since she did break my feint a few times, but overall it was her that kept me healed and fighting strong – I was at full health for most of the fight, I think. The fight would have been over more quickly if she hadn’t broken my first two feints with wand hits, true, but it would have been over MUCH more quickly if she hadn’t been healing me!
Again, this was an intense and awesome fight, I had a great time!
New MMO Crunch Article posted!
That’s right, it’s Wednesday and my newest MMOCrunch article, ‘Playing it Safe, part 2’ is now posted! Enjoy!
http://www.mmocrunch.com/2011/02/23/the-game-monster-playing-it-safe-part-2/
Video Bloggy Thingy 2/21/2011
Here is my video bloggy thingy for the week. This week I talk about lots of things, like PAX East, my 250th Twitter Follower, plus I have a great idea for KingsIsle related to gardening, and I take a twitter question. Yes, only one, because it’s early and I only got one – I’ll try to do better next time…
A heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to Leesha Darkeart
As most people who are fans of Ravenwood Radio know, as of this weeks’ show the beloved Leesha Darkheart has stepped out from behind the microphones as co-host of the show so that she may pursue other things, though she will still be staying on in a production-type capacity and I’m sure will still be around the Wizard 101 community, keeping us all in line!
Though I never actually ‘met’ Leesha, we have gotten together a few times online and played in-game together, including our now infamous ‘A-Team’ assault on Big Ben, and she was always wonderful, funny, and of course had mad Necromancer skills that I still envy 🙂 and that’s hard for a Pyromnacer to admit, let me tell you!
Ditto and friends in Big Ben
Of all our contact, the most memorable for me was early last year, shortly after I opened my blog. I had been a fan of Ravenwood Radio for a few episodes and had even done a quick birthday shout-out for someone on the show as a favor. The chat room seemed to like it and I got some really nice feedback, and I was already a big fan of the show segments, so I sent Leesha an email to see if she would be interested in an idea I had, for an ‘old-time radio serial’ styled piece. She answered back right away and loved the idea, which meant a LOT to me!! You see, believe it or not, it’s often hard for Fabricated Americans to be taken seriously in entertainment unless they are teaching kids how to count to ten or learn the alphabet in some brightly colored playground. A Fabricated American doing a serious (ahem) radio drama was unheard of at the time, so Leesha really stepped out on a limb to give me the opportunity at Ravenwood Radio, and I’ve always deeply appreciated that!
Fallon will be an amazing and worthy successor, I’m certain, and I can’t wait to hear more of her insights into the worlds of Wizard 101 and beyond, especially with her prowess in PvP (A segment of the game that is still a complete mystery to me), but I just want to sincerely thank Leesha for giving a monster a chance!
Thank you Leesha, for all you did for this furry orange monster, and for the Wizard 101 community as a whole! You will be missed!
PLOX!
Ditto P. Monster
It’s Ditto’s Anniversary!!
So one year ago today, a furry orange monster started playing an online game called Wizard 101, and decided it would be fun to blog about it, because he really couldn’t find any other Fabricated American bloggers out there. He started playing around with his roommates’ video camera and writing and talking about the game, and something cool happened – people started reading his blog, and watching his videos, and they liked him! That is to say they liked me, because him is me. And them is you, too, right? I think I confused myself again…
In any case, in the last year my blog has grown a lot, I have branched out from Wizard 101 – still my favorite game – to discussing a bunch of other games and topics, I’ve done interviews with people, and I’ve started writing for another site as well, MMOCrunch. It’s been an amazing year with a lot more great stuff to come, and I thank each and every person out there who reads my posts or follows me on Twitter or enjoys my videos, your feedback and support are what keep me going, that’s the part I love the most about all of this! I couldn’t do it without all of you!
What’s in a year??
-
3 MMOCrunch Articles
20 episodes of ‘The Daring Adventures of Ditto’
43 Levels for my pyromancer, Digby Hexcrafter
142 videos posted
205 Facebook friends
217 Blog posts
241 Twitter Followers
1,160 Tweets
30,000+ Unique pageviews
New friends – priceless…
Best… Day… Ever… Thank you KingsIsle and Wizard101
There are some events and some days that will live with you forever. Your first MMO character, the first time you join a huge raid and beat the final boss, your wedding day, college graduation, or the first time you run out of your usual shampoo and find this strawberry scented shampoo plus conditioner that… Never mind, you get the point.
For me, today dwarfs all of those things. Today, I, Ditto P. Monster, humble furry orange monster, have hit ‘The Big Time’….
An icon of ME and a link to my latest MMOCrunch article are featured in the Wizard 101 Launcher!!
My article is in the launcher!!!
The best part of this is that the whole point of me taking the gig at MMOCrunch (which is a wonderful publication run by kind and dedicated gamers, by the way) and writing these articles was to help people, especially younger people, stay safe online. By posting my article on the launcher like this, KingsIsle and Wizard 101 are helping to get the word out that safety is important for everyone, and I REALLY appreciate that!! THANK YOU KINGSISLE!!
And to top it all off, there is a new live episode of Ravenwood Radio on tonight at 8pm CST, 9pm EST… check it out, it will be a great show (as always!)
Beyond this door lies infamy!!
Well, OK, beyond this door lies the Jade Oni, which I’m sure is going to be an insanely tough fight. The problem is, I haven’t tried to go through the door yet. You see, this is one of those epic fights that I feel I need to capture on video and share with everyone – the roaring triumph against the monster, or else the crushing defeat at his big green hand.
The Jade Palace and the dreaded Jade Oni fight...
As they say, however, life is what happens when you’re making other plans, so I haven’t had the time to properly devote to this monumental task. Fear not, however, because I have a plan! Yes – I’m going to attempt it this Thursday, February 17th, which is my ONE YEAR Wizardversary and, interestingly enough, the one year anniversary of this blog. So hold tight, friends – it is going to be epic, as they say.
The longest fight ever….
I was fighting evil in the Village of Sorrow and was doing a pretty amazing job – I had retrieved this crazy mystical cage and forged my very own soul chain, I was a one monster army, taking no prisoners! Finally, I’m talking to the adorable little lamb ghost Ken Shui and he says ‘Ditto, you’ve done an amazing job, thank you so much. Now, please go talk to my master in the village Dojo to finish your task, as he is wise in the ways of spirits’ or something like that. OK, maybe I didn’t catch every single syllable, as I was eating crab rangoons at the time, but I got the general meaning, you know?
Well, I walk into the dojo and see the spooky ghostly master, but as I go talk to him he disappears and is replaced by this huge fire boss named Usunoki, and a massive fight begins! At this point I QUICKLY realize that my deck is stacked for taking on wandering street mobs from Death and Myth school, NOT fire bosses, and I run away and hide.
I returned shorty afterward, however, with my deck stacked for Fire Boss, and the battle began! This turned into one of the longest and most epic battles of my life, since Usunoki keeps tossing up ice shields before I got my fire prisms up. It was such a hard fight, and there was more than one time I thought I wasn’t going to win, believe me! I was, however, victorious! I’ve got the video here, but it’s the longest I’ve ever posted – I think it’s almost as long as a standard season of Dr. Who on the BBC… It’s a good battle though!
In the future, against a fire boss I’m going to switch to my ice staff – that would have let me break his ice shields easily without using up my precious prisms. Still would have popped the feint spells, but that’s not as bad as burning my whole stack of fire buffs only to be blocked by -80% ice damage sheild.
New article is up on MMO Crunch!
I missed getting this post out yesterday (Crazy day for the Fabricated American here…) but I just wanted to post it and let people know that my latest article, ‘Finding Your Fun’ was just posted yesterday at MMO Crunch!
Thanks for all the support!
Dinner and a movie with Haru
After my initial defeat at the hands of Haru and his storm minion, Sparky McSharks-a-lot, I go back to his dojo and try to convince him to give me the key thingy I needed. Unfortunately he just wasn’t interested in chatting and had his minion toss yet another Storm Shark at me, so we had to once again battle. This time I was successful and bested Haru, the key falling from his hand as he fell before me.
Ditto’s Big News!!!
So I can finally reveal my big crazy exciting news! After much arranging and organizing, I, Ditto Monster, and my fearless assistant Miss Narrator, will be attending PAX East in Boston! We will be filming some video segments, rubbing elbows with gaming’s finest, and most importantly, we’ll be swinging by the KingsIsle booth to meet some of the wonderful people that make Wizard 101!! We’re really excited about all this and can’t wait for March!!!
How not to defeat Haru…
Questing through Mooshu, hot on the path of the Death Oni, I have to defeat a Myth boss named Haru and his annoying little storm minion. The fight was especially annoying in that it seems like they cast about a dozen storm sharks at me, and those really really hurt. I’m just glad they don’t have laser beams on their heads. That would truly be epic.
Ditto’s Rules for Online Safety
I got an email last night – it was a really sweet email, from a really nice boy who said his name was Jordan (though I’m pretty sure that was his ‘game name’) and that Saturday was his birthday. He didn’t tell me how old he was, which is good, and he didn’t tell me where he lived, which was good, but it was pretty clear from the email that he wasn’t a ‘grown up’ type person. This was really nice, it really was, and it made me happy to hear from him, but it wasn’t all good. You see, what Jordan wanted for his birthday was a phone call from me, Ditto Monster, and he gave me his home phone number, area code and all, to call him. And yes, this really happened, this isn’t a metaphor or a made up situation to make a point, I wouldn’t actually do that. This boy sent me his home phone number and asked me to call him for his birthday. Now, for anyone who doesn’t really understand what I’m getting at, I’ll just spell it out – this is a BAD THING for any kid to do, ever.
Staying safe on the internet is a really important thing to me, and this isn’t the first time something like this has happened – I guess I have an honest face, or maybe it’s the fur, who knows. It probably happens to other popular internet people too – I’m willing to bet Justin Beiber could publish his own phone book with all the numbers he gets from people on twitter or through email. The point is that, no matter who it is, sending information like this to someone over the internet is very dangerous. Even if you’re sending information to a friend, even someone you know in real life, you have to be really careful.
I’ve put together some simple rules for internet safety – I didn’t invent them and there are lots of places to get the same, or similar rules, and they really should all be common sense, but I really want everyone who is a fan of mine, who reads my blogs or follows my daring adventures, to be safe, that’s really important to me. This is important for parents of ‘internet kids’ too, because being aware of potential dangers and problems can help you avoid them.
Rule #1 – Never give out any personal information online. Not just your phone number and address (though you should NEVER give information like that out, EVER) but also seemingly ‘innocent’ information like what school you go to, where your parents work, what sports team you play for, and things like that. While you might never even think about giving a stranger your home address, telling someone what school you go to and what sports team you play on could give them just as much information.
Rule #2 – Be really careful what you put online. Social networking, video, and picture sharing sites are great places to talk to friends and share pictures, music, and videos, but did you know that once you put something online it can be impossible to take it back? Take it from someone who knows – I posted a dumb video three years ago and it still pops up now and then…
The most important rule to remember here is NEVER assume anything you put online will ever be ‘private’, and never assume that if you send a picture or video to someone, even someone you really really trust, that they’re the only person who will ever see it.
Rule #3 – Not everyone is who they say they are online. Just ask Kanye West or any of the other celebrities who have impersonators on sites like twitter who cause them trouble. There have been waves of ‘celebrity impersonators’ in games too, and even Wizard 101 has had people saying they were Professor Falmea or Lydia Greyrose, who really weren’t.
Rule #4 – Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s true. And I’m not just talking about local gossip – major news organizations have been fooled by fake Twitter posts and blog posts. Once, major news organizations had reported that Will Smith died in a car accident – literally reported it out to millions of people, one of whom was Will Smith, sitting in his living room watching the news, very much not dead.
Rule #5 – Be Polite! One of my big pet peeves and certainly not the first time I’ve talked about it, but if you wouldn’t say something to someone in person, don’t say it online! It’s simple and it’s common courtesy. Just because you’re typing the words instead of speaking them doesn’t make it any less true!
So that’s it – five rules, common sense, very simple, but they can help you stay safe, and that’s the most important thing!!
I’m a writer!! I’m a writer!!
OK, I guess I’ve been a blog and podcast writer for a while, and I wrote all that ‘Harry Potter’ fan fiction before that… oops, I wasn’t supposed to mention that, was I? Anyway, I’ve been writing for my own amusement for a while now, but today I am officially writing for OTHER PEOPLE’S amusement! That’s right, I am now an official contributor to the fun and fabulous MMO magazine MMO Crunch!! My column is called ‘The Game Monster’ and today they posted my very first article, ‘By Way of Introduction‘! I’m very excited and really thank the staff at MMO Crunch for taking a chance with a furry orange monster like me! I hope everyone likes the articles I’ll be putting out – they won’t impact my normal posting schedule here, because try as I might I don’t really have much of a posting schedule here… but I’ll still be posting all the time, so don’t worry!
And don’t forget – an all new live Ravenwood Radio tonight, including the exciting climax of Ditto’s Marleybone adventures in another installment of ‘The Daring Adventures of Ditto’!!
Ditto Monster's Bloggy Thingy 