Yesterday afternoon I was in a pretty bad mood. I had destroyed a part of my main character in Lord of the Rings Online. It wasn’t until later that evening when I could apply a salve to my character’s gaping wound that I felt better. It wasn’t my fault, but the change needed to happen. I had to switch crafting professions.Â
Month: January 2010
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Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.Fanspeak
Do you refer to nerds as “my people”? I know it’s not just me, since I have heard others of my tribe doing so. Here is a blast from 1999 about how our people speak: Fanspeak.
On those occasions when she showed up at a con to meet Elise, she saw lots of fans in groups talking. To her they seemed angry and rude. To Elise they seemed nothing of the sort. Observing them more closely, she realized that they were using different social cues, different body language, different eye contact, and even different ways of forming vowels than what she jokingly called “my people”, or what for convenience sake I’ll call mundanes. …
We also speak in larger word groupings between breaths. This does not necessarily mean that we speak faster; we just pause for a shorter time between words — except where there is punctuation. … We use punctuation in our spoken utterances. Sometimes we even footnote.
What we say in those large word groupings is also different. We tend to use complete sentences, and complex sentence structure. When we pause, or say “uh”, it tends to be towards the beginning of a statement, as we formulate the complete thought. The “idea” or “information” portion of a statement is paramount; emotional reassurance, the little social noises (mm-hmm) are reduced or omitted. …
We interrupt each other to finish sentences, and if the interrupter got it right, we know we’ve communicated and let them speak; if they get it wrong we talk right over them. This is not perceived as rude, or not very rude.
… We accept corrections on matters of fact and of pronunciation; when I asked her about whether fanspeak might be related to Asperger’s Syndrome, and mispronounced “Asperger’s”, I was corrected in mid-sentence by the man sitting next to me, corrected myself, thanked him, and finished the sentence. One Doesn’t Do That in Mundania. Fans understand that mispronouncing words one has only read is very common in fandom, and not mortally embarrassing. …
As they say, read the whole thing. I totally footnote when I speak, citing sources in case you want to follow up for more information. I’m not sure how much that helps or is caused by blogging with links in text.
: Zubon
An ode to the random stranger picker-upper tool
It was a triumph.
I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.
I pugged an instance.
I went as a tank
because I could.
After four years as a ‘lock.
But then the paladin left.
Now there’s no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of rage
And the killing gets done
And I’ll finish the run
With the people who stick by my side.
Continue reading An ode to the random stranger picker-upper tool
Facebook TD
I was rather pleased when the makers of Desktop Tower Defense sent me an e-mail notifying me of their new version. Hurray, sequel! Clicking the link, it took me to Facebook. Hurray, easier to share with/addict friends!
Sadly, it turns out to bring little new to the table. It is a simplified version of Desktop TD, stripped down for Facebook, with an item shop to let you buy back the assorted towers that start deactivated. You earn coins by playing, bringing friends, or spending money; the difficulty is low enough to beat everything (except the level you pay for) with a few moments’ worth of coins. It does add new cards, assorted powers that make it even easier. “Send next wave” is now a coin-bought ability, but you get a bonus for killing waves quickly (similar effect).
I do not recall if I donated to the makers of Desktop TD. It sounds like something I would have done, but the game has been out long enough for me to forget. You could treat the coin shop as that, but it feels more like paying for a bad deal. It would not cost much to buy back everything the original game had. There is a million coin option, and I wonder how many sales they get. There is no sane use for one million coins, although that would let you play the paid level indefinitely with no worries. Oh, and one more thing you can spend money on…
It now has a “Send Ninjas!” button. Every Facebook game needs a “Send Ninjas!” button. These are just the hopper creeps from previous editions, now as an extra wave on your victim/friend (I’m told they will not appear on the paid level) with a new graphic. Still, seriously, every game needs ninjas or something similar to send. That might make Farmville interesting enough to play.
: Zubon
The Old Comfortable
In Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood, my journey is over. I have a smattering of small quests left to do on the Eastern side of the zone, but for the most part my leveling and errand-boy running are done. Now my time with my main character has simplified drastically. Instead of pushing from quest hub to quest hub and through the epic story, not quite sure what’s next in store, I have set goals with planned steps. Signing on has become a comfortable chore that I was used to for months before the expansion jarred me from my oasis of calm with the rest of the herd.
This is not a bad thing, and for many MMO players this is how we actually play. We sign on to craft a few items, check the auction house, do a few daily quests, and that’s about it. These gaming chores are interrupted on busy or event nights by grouping up for a group instance. The braver choose to make random connections through pick up groupings. The best part is that everybody at this level is right there with me. When I was journeying geographically and leveling, I was for all intents alone. Sure there were clearings in the forest where my journey would intersect another’s, but for the most part everybody was either at the end or somewhere in the middle.
Is this another diseased symptom of MMOs following the DIKU/Everquest based ancestors? Or is this a benefit of allowing so many gameplaying styles in MMOs? For a “true” solo player, couple, or static group, the journey together can easily be the whole game. Whatever sticky content exists at the end like being drunk for 10,000 minutes for a title or killing 10,000 rats for achievement points is irrelevant. For those whose social groups are guild or alliance-based, the broader social net means a more heterogeneous place in the journey. The so-called “end game” merely provides a place in the journey where broad social groups (like an entire server) are all on the same page. It’s an old comfortable place to be in the herd until the devs tell the us to move to another watering hole.
–Ravious
crackalackin’
Wonders of the Internet
While looking for a Penny Arcade strip after a friend announced that he was planning to marry a mermaid, I discovered the Wikipedia page on the “mermaid problem,” said problem being the difficulties that human men have having sex with them. It mentions two solutions to the problem without noting the main difficulty men have in this, which is that mermaids do not exist. It also goes on to mention H.P. Lovecraft and Starbucks in the same sentence, which is always a winner.
I note this because the internet decided there needed to be an encyclopedia page on the subject, with more than 100 people contributing to it over the past 5 years. And you can’t get your own Wikipedia page because you are not notable enough.
: Zubon
Massive Delays
Gamers love when Blizzard says that a game will be “released when it’s ready” because they believe it indicates the final product will be of high quality. However, we don’t really react well to news of a delay, do we? When Bioware announced that Star Wars – The Old Republic was being pushed back an extra year into 2011, the community on their forums went into a nerd-rage.
At the Library Conference
One of the exhibitors is showcasing Battle Royale. It is a Japanese novel from 10 years ago, now in manga and movie form, about a bunch of teenagers armed then left on an island until there is one survivor. The Hunger Games came out in the US 2 years ago, it being a novel about a group of teens enclosed and forced to fight until one remains (sequel is out, movie planned). If I can find a few more of these, I must just read them all in a row.
Knowing a bit about each book, I am reminded of how different our gamer tactics are because of respawning and chat. People set up great ambushes and backstabs in FPS games, and you might warn your friends while dead or spawn as a countering class to go back for the guy. I know one character from those books who does very well with a “feign death and ambush” tactic, until he meets someone who knows rule 2: the double tap. And it only needs to fail once.
I have also been offered five teen vampire romance novels. I can tell that others lie in wait behind the less prominent promotions.
: Zubon
Names I Miss
One thing I miss from City of Heroes is that absurd names made sense. Back in generic fantasy world, the characters theoretically have the names their parents gave them. You might be able to justify Goblinslaya as a self-given name/title, but people like Roflcopter or Moocow are wandering immersion-breakers, implying either that we accept Theme Park YAFMMORPG as a game rather than a world or that this one idiot does not while the rest of us are pretending to take the setting seriously. WoW seems more conducive to silly names than The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, but I maintain my persecution of names like Analfist or xXxShadowAssassinxXx.
Actually, I’d still hate those people in City of Heroes or Team Fortress 2. Seriously, “Analfist”? It’s not like I’m making up any of these names.
In City of Heroes, the names are intended to be self-given titles. Comic book characters get funky names; it is part of the genre. King Waffles is a perfectly cromulent hero name. Statyk Shok? Hey, I’ve seen worse alternate-spelling names in real comic books. People who use upper-case Is to look like lower-case Ls? Okay, they need to die.
: Zubon
STO Reviews: Short and Long Form
Conveniently, you do not need to think about Star Trek Online, because the blogosphere has already done it for you. Keen has the quick version that about matches the consensus. If you want all the details, West Karana is the place to be:
Sente has the middle-length version.
: Zubon