First Episode of TERA Podcast underway!

   Alright so here we go, I've been home from Afghanistan for a little under a week and I'm itching to get started on all these hobbies and fun again. Today Nathalie/ZodicalCandy and I record our first episode of the TERA Podcast. We plan to keep it around 20 minutes with tips for noobs from noobs, the latest from the TERA website and tips for various fights within the game. The kicker is, the fights we give tips for will be shown in our uploaded TERA Tips videos on Youtube. All of this should be uploaded and viewable by this weekend. Should be a fun ride, luckily I already have a idea how to do a Podcast and what it takes to keep one going. For those of you who don't know, before I deployed I ran a Podcast for about 8 months about in general MMORPG's. It was fun, and good practice for the one we're looking at doing now. So look for our first Podcast by this weekend!

   But the fun doesn't end there. Nathalie and I are looking to begin our Youtube channel this weekend also. We're coming up with names and working with the video editing software to gain at least a beginners level of understanding on it. So far we're thinking of calling our channel Couples Therapy, since basically she just takes out her frustration on me during the games.

   So she intends to begin recording all her gaming during Battlefield 3, Minecraft, Diablo 3 and of course us playing TERA. I plan on launching a channel with some insane runs on SSX. Its going to be a lot of fun. 

   So in short, a lot of big things coming from me and Nathalie real soon. I hope everyone gets to have fun with us during those times. I'll post again once I have something completed within a few days.

-BP

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Weekend, Packing for Home

   So currently I am a soldier located on deployment to Afghanistan. Its been a tough year over here being away from my wife, family, friends and my true love which is gaming. I have found a few people here to play some Xbox with and a group of guys who enjoyed Magic The Gathering cards. I have ordered about five hundred dollars worth of comic book back story to get caught up on and spent my days perusing all that YouTube has to offer while leveling a hunter in World of Warcraft to level 85. Oh I did some military based work at some point also in there. You see while I am proud of the work I do, unlike a good number of my co-workers I do not let the fact I am a soldier define me. I am a husband, a gamer, a geek and damn talented at everything I enjoy doing. So this blog will be my way of expressing my opinions on the gaming news at large. I may have to expand it to multiple blogs for multiple gaming topics in the future, especially once my TERA Online podcast kicks up, but for now I will just separate everything by breaks.

 TERA Online, A Good MMO Launch? Impossible...

   Does anyone else feel awkward with all the mostly naked woman in this game? Just saying.

   Anyway TERA appears to be off to a good start and this has me even more excited to get involved in this amazing looking MMO. I've been tracking this MMO for years, but didn't want to ruin the experience for myself by jumping in headstrong early on Korean TERA, or KTERA as its known by the community. Sadly my situation of being deployed has kept me from experiencing the betas and head start that have come with the American version though. Right now I spend my time reading their forums and from what Ive seen, they have a lot of the same issues most MMO's have at launch, but their moving quickly to fix them.
   The first issue I noticed is there is a major server queue to log into a PVP server. This is a very large problem when the queue is a 2 hour wait and some people only have 2 hours to spare in their evenings. But fear not, tracking Emass's twitter feed, they are tracking these issues and beginning free server transfers beginning on April 30th to allow people to move to less densely populated servers. A rather nice fix considering this is still a issue for some people on SWTOR and the transfers have yet to launch.
   The second major issue that seems to be cropping up yet being resolved quickly is server bugs. There have been multiple server restarts, but they have a handle on it keeping the downtime to a minimal.
   Overall so far the launch doesn't appear to be going too poorly, yet the rest of the world wont be joining the preorder people for a few more days, so we'll see how it handles.
   Not much else to say on the topic til I get some hands on time myself...
   Once I return home expect there to be a TERA Online Podcast hosted by my wife and myself within days of us getting the game up and running, along with recorded game play on the YouTube channel we intend to start soon.
   Current plan is to go to the Arachnea Server.

Xbox draught season has begun, luckily I've been out of the loop...

   Whats there to say about our favorite little console. There isn't much coming out or new on its way as is the normal situation presented every summer season for console gaming. Without any big holiday's there is no real incentive for the parents to buy the games for their children. Plus in the day and age of a video screen everywhere you turn, more and more parents want their children outside. So I might as well talk about the games I'm playing catch up since I was deployed and unable to enjoy when they launched.

   First off, I am insanely shocked that I'm enjoying Need For Speed the Run as much as I am. If you ever wanted to feel like Vin Deisel in a fast and furious movie, you need to play this game. The graphics are amazing and the story(yes the story in a racing game!) is right up there with plot behind Fast and the Furious. Now that means exactly how it sounds, don't expect anything insanely deep and meaningful from this game. Expect plenty of "I am amazing, look at my cars." Also the whole scene where you race down the mountain's in Colorado trying to stay ahead of the avalanche is simply stunning, yes something stunning in a racing game.

   Secondly there's Dark Souls, which is simply amazing, but I'll talk more about that in future post. The game has been out for close to half a year, a few more days before I say something wont matter. There will be YouTube videos of Dark Souls as soon as I get back home though.

In closing, I would like to thank Green Lantern

   In closing, I hope I can get more on track eventually and place a real goal to this blog, but as it stands I'll just rant about my adventures in gaming in general! Oh the new 52 is a awesome restart for most of the characters and yes there is milk in the fridge so I'm not picking some up on the way home from Afghanistan.

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Awkward Introductions

Hi I'm Ben and I'm a Gameaholic

      The first post of a new blog is always awkward, people come to your page through various means having no clue how they even go there. You try your hardest to accommodate them with explanations and guidelines, but it never gets the point across. So lets start at the beginning because I'm sure that no one reading this blog now has any idea who I am and in case you haven't read my title, I Game Therefore I Am.

     So the main reason I have created this is a place to rant and rave and go on about my many crazy ideas and projects my wife and I are creating and to rant about the gaming oriented news. I'm a very opinionated person and I like to speak my mind about pretty much all the gaming news I read up on while sitting at my desk in the US Military! If you enjoy reading a persons thoughts on random gaming news, or just want to see what t he latest podcast or video recording my wife and I do, check here!

     Now I typically intend to go on about some new news in the gaming world. Something that has been released recently, information or the such, but right now I'm just getting this blog kicking as I'm still in Afghanistan for a few more weeks and cant do much from here.

     First up on deck about mid may we will be launching a TERA Online Oriented Podcast, there seems to be a severe lack of Podcasts oriented to the newest MMO to hit the market and we both intend to hit this game at full force. We're also going to begin to record all our co-op sessions on Xbox games and post them on a Youtube channel! Someone should get a kick out of it, or at least enjoy the guides for what we're accomplishing. Either way we intend for this to be a fun ride for everyone!

As for right now I leave you with this screen I have been seeing a lot lately as I try and grind it for Xbox Achievements. Dark Souls....