Woof [7.0/10]

http://www.acornrack.com/up2nogood/

Greetings and salutations to all! As I promised here is the review that is LONG overdue, I suppose you'll have to forgive me for being a little rusty as I've been thrown into the lovely world of college and school work once again. BUT FEAR NOT! I shall move forward on with this little blog of mine and rate where no Jello Emperor has rated before!

... And now with that little thing out of the way... WOOF! No, I mean the site Woof! This site is probably the first werewolf site I've rated, yes I said werewolf. Wolves and horses are aplenty but werewolves I haven't seen much of personally so this will be a good venture for us all.

So the AD here, is fairly basic which is fine and I see they have site stats and such and overall I have no problems with a basic AD. It seems though that there are parts where it looks like a new paragraph and I'm a stickler for indenting those paragraphs but I think that it would just make it look a little nicer.

But toss your garlic necklaces into the trash bin because this is Werewolf county, punk! Grab your silver coins for good luck and walk softly and carry a large silver sword right into the review! (Jello points to anyone who gets that reference...)

First Impression:
Quick little personality test! Take a look at the wolf picture, is he looking away from you or looking at you? Post in the comments and let me know!

Anyway, the layout looks nice and neat and I have no problems with anything. The site it self makes good use of screen real estate while still framing it to look nice.

The Public Area:
Rules page is overall fine, I do have a nitpick though. I'm not a fan of curse words in the public area, as it is public. Do whatever you want in the private parts but when you're creating an image for yourself keep it acceptable for a parent to peek at.

(Also, there are various spelling errors: Ralphie in rule one, lightning in rule two.)

Ranks page is fine.

Dynamics page is overall fine, just various spelling and grammar errors strewn about the page.

The Application:
Your standard application, so not much to say about it.


The Private Area:
Layout Chaaaange! Well, actually it's more like an expansion but nonetheless the layout is still simple and provides everything you need on initial screen load. The space is used again efficiently so I have no problems.

There is very little information that's new in the private area, site setting and pack meetings and such so most of the info you need is in the public area.

Forums:
Good amount of forums and nice descriptions and of course I love the hot links, overall I have no problems with the forums. I do like how the forum posts look like speech bubbles though.

Other:
The member list looks nice, divided by user level and avatar pictures for both the human and wolf counterparts along with general user stats.

The member profiles look nice and organized, are all the fields are generally filled out with the ones that I looked at.

Roleplaying:
From what I read on the forums I categorize the roleplaying on this site to be Intermediate to High Intermediate.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10 Points

Overall it looks to be a good site, takes advantage of the site layout well but even though I haven't rated many werewolf sites I didn't really see much innovation or something that would pull me into joining and fleshing out a character.

So concludes my foray back into the reviewing world, hopefully many more will be showing up!

Reviewed by: The Jello Emperor

Blood & Iron [7.0/10]

http://www.acornrack.com/ohmercy/

(Any of you pick up that the image is widescreen!?!)

Alright my subjects it's time for another review on this fine day! I'm going to be taking a look at Blood & Iron a dark, vampire, wolf, werewolf RP based on the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. A quick note that the person who submitted the site gave me the link to their AD which of course is always beneficial to me so I don't have to track it down. So if any of you are keeping notes before you submit your site, something to write down there...

Anyway! I've not heard of this series so I'm taking this site at face value so you can whine all you want about how it's not true to certain details and it will simply fly over my head. The AD for the most part is written decent, maybe it's just because I've seen so many of these sites now that I'm over the "You find more of your kind..." approach, but since it's based on a book series I guess I can't fault them there for it.

I've no funny or witty comment here to segway into the actual review... so, WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA!!!!

First Impression:
Someone better get rid of that 5 o'clock shadow! (Get it... there's a clock...) I have no real problems with the layout aside from one small nitpick. There is a link back to the index page however you have to click the main image. Maybe it's just because it's 12 AM now but I'd generally like to not have to search for the link back home.

The Public Area:
The index page is portion of the AD and as you all know (hopefully...) this is perfectly fine!

Werewolves page is overall fine though some places look like they might need some spacing in between certain paragraphs. But I suppose that's just a stylistic preference on my account.

(Grammar: Last note on the Vampire page. "...excepting AIDS and Cancer" )

I'm a bit confused on the Fae's... are they humanoids or ogres or what now? You name all these things and names but I don't know what the true form of these people are... or I missed it. In either case it probably needs to be more prominent.

(Grammar: Walker's page "... ability to scent out emotions.")

The Application:
The application is rather basic and it's my preference to be able to weed out those mary-sues before they're on the site rather than afterwards due to this. RP SAMPLE REQUIRED.



The Private Area:
Layout Change! There aren't any new information pages that I see but the new layout is nice and fits in with the old one as well. Since there isn't any pages to comment on, it's a good time to point out at the time I was looking over the site there was chatter in the cbox and members online.

Forums:
Good amount of forums and nice descriptions here however it's time to play my old record that there should be hotlinks to each section. Again here also has where I think the forum descriptions should be spaced out more from each other but another stylistic choice I assume. Also the layout of the name, poster and description will take some time to getting used to as they are scrunched together.

Other:
Member list looks nice and give you a link directly to their history application link but otherwise you get the normal info and avatar.

Member profiles are generally nicely filled out and well organized, with multiple picture slots and other fun stuff.

Roleplaying:
From what I read on the forums I categorize the roleplaying on this site to be Intermediate to Advanced.

Rating: 7 out of 10 Points.

Overall a good site, just little things here and there that took things away. Also with the boom of vampire sites and other dark RPs probably on the rise with Twilight and the like the Fae's and Walkers gave a small sense of individuality but for me even that wasn't enough.

Reviewed by: The Jello Emperor