Hey guys! I know it’s been awhile. Although I’ve been up to date with my usual bi-weekly column at MMORPG, I will 100% admit that I’ve been slacking here. You see, even though I’ve been pretty light on the school load lately, I’ve been pretty heavy on the life load. I know it’s hard to believe (for me at least), but I’m a senior guys! I graduate in May! As a result, I’ve been chatting with people about my future, looking into apartments, coordinating move-in plans with my parents (they’ll be helping me transfer everything from NJ to Texas!). As the clock continues to tick, it’s all starting to become more and more real.

Sometimes I like to think about life as a video game. With that in mind, education is really just a SUPER long tutorial. Now that I have the tools to be a young (and hopefully successful) professional, it’s time to move onto the first official level: reality. Thankfully, I know that I have a lot of support moving forward and I’m hoping that all the puzzle pieces fall where I want them to.

Vanessa ProfessionalDust at your service.

That’s not to say I haven’t had time for some fun though! I’ll catch you all up on my progress and some of the cool things coming up!

SXSW Gaming Convention

I’ll be attending the SXSW Gaming Convention again this year. Sadly, KingsIsle will not have a booth or be going in any official capacity in 2019. However, Leah Ruben (Professor Falmea) will be speaking at a panel titled “How to Build and Maintain Online Game Communities” on Friday, March 15th. I’ll definitely be in the room somewhere, so feel free to come and say hello if you plan on going! The only day I know for sure I’ll be there is Friday. Saturday and Sunday are still up in the air, but I bought a 3-day pass just in case. I’ll keep you guys posted when it gets closer!

Jackbox Party

If you want to witness fun shenanigans with KingsIsle devs, TheArtOfWarlord, DearlyDoodles, Zanzidia, and myself, be sure to tune in next week to our Jackbox Party stream! It’ll be completely Wizard101 themed and should result in numerous clever puns (and maybe some dad jokes). The audience gets to play along too, so don’t miss out!

DnD

I’m SUPER stoked to be a part of a new DnD campaign being run by the one and only Jeff Toney himself. I’ve been told to expect death. Lots and lots of death. Rolling the stats went off without a hitch, but naming my characters turned out to be quite the task. Everyone knows that you grow emotionally attached to things you name! How does one decide on nicknames when you know you’re thrusting these poor fictional souls into the dangerous depths of the Barrowmaze? I ended up going with names that reflected either their race or background.

• Rockdust: a wizardly rock gnome. The dust part was just a homage to my wizard’s last name (Mythdust).
• Candlewax: a human who happens to be a candlemaker.
• Death Bycolor: a half-elf who was a dyer (think paint dye). I just couldn’t resist the play on words.
• Wingin’ It: an aarakocra (half human, half bird thing) who happens to be a healer. This is actually the only race with the ability to fly, so I went with a name that seemed to match my approach in most of my DnD adventures.

Really curious to see who’ll be the last one standing … or if anyone will be left standing.

Wizard101

Most of my Wizard101 time has been dedicated to getting back to Pet Warlord. With how busy I was last year, I never had the opportunity to get that achievement in the current PvP age. I’m slowly but surely trying to remedy that though. The biggest challenge is actually finding a good timeframe to get a race relatively quickly! Come on people, join the derby community. :)

Pirate101

My pirate, Virtuous Vanessa, is currently questing through the vast world of Aquila. I’ve always been a fan of Greek mythology, so the storylines have been really interesting and fun to me. Forget a trojan horse …. trojan mouse is where it’s at! I’ve also been working on improving my nautical level. Sending a few of my companions “sailin'” has definitely helped me with that. Hopefully, ship battles get a bit less tedious moving forward.

Enough about me though. What have you guys been up to lately?