MAKAIPUNK - building a netherworld travel diary

so first week of the new year went pretty well so far. managed to grab a couple obscure ps2 games, been working on getting my sleep schedule back on track, been helping out with quest writeups and design for that WoW private server i mentioned in my last non-jukebox post, and even got back to practicing my hand at pencil drawing. alongside a variety of other things. one of which was getting a cold last week and having to suffer through that.

been cleaning up a bit of my room a while back; my drawers and cabinets, mainly. stumbled upon a handful of drawing pads and various notebooks i had shoved in there when i moved into my new bedroom. they're a bit worn with age, but a majority of the pages of them are unmarked, so i'll use them for drawing instead of using a lot of printer paper for it.

the book before and after the new cover. art by airana@DA

that aside, stumbled upon a hardcover notebook with the title of "Forum for Excellence" and "The Warren Conference Center 2002" on it. so yeah, seemed pretty old, but the pages were all in perfect condition, oddly enough. from what my dad told me, he got it at a meeting way back when but never seemed to had used it. as for why i shoved it in my own cabinets when i got my own room... okay, to be honest, i'm not even sure why i had it there to begin with.

so now that i've rediscovered this little gem, i figured i'd make use of it and get started on a project i've been meaning to do for a while: making a "journal" of sorts centered around the world of Nippon Ichi Studio's Disgaea game series.

might seem like an odd project to write about on here, but it's been a while since i did a MAKAIPUNK thing anyway, so have a bit of a warmup on my end before i get back to bigger things. like hopefully chapter 3 of the Disgaea 1 manga readthrough thing. or maybe some game reviews or something. i don't know.

gen's thoughts (and also recs) - a Legacy in the making

been a bit since i last posted something here. this was going to be a post on my thoughts about this server, but i figured it might as well double as a recommendation post since it's p rad as well.

ah, private servers. quite a bit of a polarizing topic amongst many, especially amongst World of Warcraft players. for some people, it's a way to experience past versions of Azeroth. for others, it's a way to experience the joys of questing, player-vs-player combat, and raiding without having to pay a subscription fee. and sometimes there's others who think private servers are gimmicky buggy distortions of blizzard's milestone MMO that don't deliver a legitimate experience like retail.

whatever your opinion, there's no denying that WoW private servers are interesting in concept as well as development. while a lot of servers mostly seem to lean towards PvP and raiding with custom content, some other servers seek to emulate older versions of WoW without any fancy bells or whistles. some other ambitious people heavily modify Azeroth's terrain and add new races and quests, creating an entirely new experience that sets it apart from the crowd.

and oh boy, is Legacy quite the experience in those parts and more.

as someone who's been a WoW player since the Burning Crusade era and a roleplayer from the days of when MSN Messenger was still a thing, roleplaying in World of Warcraft is still a learning experience for me. i'm savvy with most of the lore, but making and roleplaying a character in the game has been a bit awkward for me, especially with how things in retail are handled as far as ingame events go which makes roleplay events a bit tricky despite the inclusion of roleplay servers.

another factor is that zones in the world have a certain level range, so a lv10 player might have quite a way to go before venturing to the lv60-70 Outland area. certain areas of the world would be more populated than others, and from my observations, outside of ingame guilds there didn't seem to be a cohesive forum to keep up to date on events that would happen, though considering there's a site for retail's Wyrmrest Accord server, i guess it's my fault for not poking around long enough for it. game mechanics and progression also put a hamper on things as far as roleplay is concerned.

Legacy is one of the few WoW private servers exclusively dedicated to roleplaying in the Warcraft setting. in 2009, the project was initially conceived under the name of Epilogue by a dude named S, who was upset at "the almost non-existent role playing support from Blizzard". what started as a small community eventually boomed in popularity, but real-life commitments and other pressures would eventually spell the end of the server. luckily, popular demand soon revived the project, now under the name of Prologue. Legacy eventually came to be after the loss of Prologue's game and forum data, as well as a meeting with S.

while i could go on with the history of the server, i still don't know much considering i've only recently heard of this server, and i've only been a part of the Legacy community for around two weeks as of the time of this writing.

so from the perspective of a Warcraft fan, longtime RPer, gamedev lover, and Legacy newbie, what makes Legacy so great for its concept, and what sort of experience can someone expect?