Author: Zubon

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Bisexual Dragons and Slighted Straight Boys

Yes, this is week-old news, but it made a rather small splash in my portion of the blogosphere, so I hereby rule the topic still available for fresh discussion.

Quick background: there is a game named Dragon Age 2. It includes romantic options. These are not gender-limited. If someone is available as a romantic option, s/he is available as a romantic option, whether you are fe/male, whether s/he is fe/male. A message board thread ensued. There are a few interesting points here.

Continue reading Bisexual Dragons and Slighted Straight Boys

Cognitive Dissonance

If you leave a rat in a Skinner Box for long enough, it will begin to develop theories about the moral rightness of pressing levers and the personal failings of those with fewer pellets. It is somewhat less likely to develop theories that the box and levers are necessary or desirable, because the pragmatic importance of acquiring pellets is self-evident.

: Zubon

Issue 20

Coming soon to City of Heroes: the year 2000! I kid! City of Heroes is adding raid groups, as opposed to its even older school system of just having several groups fight a big target without the game’s caring that they are together. They are adding two raid trials. Even more of a throwback to 2000, City of Heroes is adding a guide/mentor/whatever-they-called-it-in-your-game system, such that you can flag yourself as a newb looking for guidance or as a guide willing to help newbs.

Continuing the alternate advancement system, four of the ten incarnate slots will be in the new update. I am particularly drawn to the notion of adding debuffs to all my damaging attacks, but the other three slots are occasional big AE attacks, big AE buffs/heals, and pets. Is it a backhanded line from marketing to say, “the long-awaited endgame arrives!”? Just seven years after launch…

In addition to the two trials, there will be two new lower-level task/strike forces. And, of course, quality of life additions. You can read about all of the new additions here.

: Zubon

Guild in Transition

I never fell into a guild that worked well for me in WoW, which is one of several reasons I played for only a few months. I have friends across many servers, which severely limited the network effect, and my refer-a-friend buddy had a busy semester, leaving me mostly alone.

I joined a guild with friendly people I met along the way, but that was just moments before they decided to transition from a family guild to a serious raiding guild. This is possibly the worst of all possible states to be in, neither here nor there. Events were scheduled and failed to happen. Guild leaders angrily reminded people to show up if you sign up (and RSVP “no” on the required plug-in if not). Raid organizers would angrily wonder why they were bothering if people were not going to sign up. And then there were the new people…

You need a certain number of raiders (more if casual, fewer if hardcore) to ensure that you will have your 10 or 25. Getting to that threshold involves recruitment. I recognize that if you are not growing, you’re dying, but rapid growth is not only disruptive but also involves delving deeper into the barrel. I could politely refer to some as jerks with delusions of grandeur. I recall one fellow in particular who immediately announced his intention to be server- or world-first on clearing ICC (said ICC having just been announced). He was the sort to go on at great length about his awesome DPS and how horrible everyone else in all his groups was. Will the copy-and-paste from the DPS meter come before or after the stream of profanity?

My current LotRO guild is flirting with transition. It has absorbed another couple of guilds. The guild raid corps is hardcore and just the right size, which makes it difficult to cycle in folks who are not serious raiders while vulnerable to having a couple of people unsubscribe. Having a core group of just the right size, any second group active in a week is worse than your average PUG, a casual mix of the undergeared and inexperienced. We lack a farm team, but everything is okay so long as nothing ever changes.

: Zubon

Bears, Bears, Bears

Tobold mentions the “bears, bears, bears” video promoting WAR: “Now that was a great video, and one could say that the enthusiastic hyping of a feature which then ultimately didn’t make it in that form into the game neatly summarizes people’s disappointment with WAR.” Yes! Exactly! I’ve never even watched the video (and why bother to go back and do so at this point?), but if anyone asks about WAR, I summarize it with three (one?) words. It is not so much the enthusiastic hyping as identifying the problem, summarizing it neatly, identifying a solution, and then willfully failing to implement it. Bitter, bitter venom every time I was sent back to kill a named enemy I just killed, and it spills over to other games that make me do the same thing.

: Zubon

Sinker

Lightning strikes twice! Less than twelve hours after mentioning last year’s pranks, the New York Times has actually published… You know what? I’m not going to spoil the punchline. I will just refer you to Ted Frank.

I mean, sure, he was involved in lawsuits about Grand Theft Auto (you read that right, 5 years over “Hot Coffee”) and NVIDIA, so he sounds like a guy who would be a good source. Ignore the date, cut-and-paste, it’s news!

: Zubon

Follow the links if you are having trouble getting past the paywall. Spoilers allowed in the comments.

Hook, Line

Tomorrow is one of the internet’s favorite holidays. I recall my first year in Asheron’s Call, when a fansite mentioned a bug granting a Darktide (FFA PvP server) character a GM flag that effectively gave him godmode. Last year, some friend sites were part of a small conspiracy that was re-blogged at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal after they made up a controversy that was “too good to check” before publishing. Curse that 24/7 news cycle. One hopes that a combination of caution and the new paywall will prevent embarrassment this year.

Read safely this Friday. Consider the comments on this post open for linking your favorite jokes and pranks of the year. Unfortunately, Poe’s Law applies generally: no matter how absurd your joke, we can find apparently sincere examples that are worse. Exaggeration is hard these days.

: Zubon

When Cheese Fails

On the non-MMO online gaming front, one of my friends is all about competitive StarCraft 2, to the degree of having his favorite commentators when he is watching replays. He recently introduced me to a StarCraft 2 replay comedy series, When Cheese Fails 101.

“Cheese” is a technical term in StarCraft, referring to an early, all-out offense that will secure either victory or failure in a few minutes. Successful cheese wipes out the enemy or so cripples his/her early economy that the rest of the game is clean-up. When cheese fails, the attacker’s economy is crippled, having thrown all his/her resources at an early attack instead of long-term investment.

When Cheese Fails is a series about games in which … yeah. We all love to see lamers lose, but the better games have something special. Sometimes the cheeser fails to execute or follow-through. Sometimes the other player engages in masterful micromanagement that counters the early rush at very low cost. And some of them have such great surprises that I will not spoil it by even suggesting (although you may use spoilers in the comments). The true hilarity may not be fully apparent until the commentary after the game.

I recommend Episode 8 as one of their better games. Come for the cheese, stay for the pleasant Canadian accents.

: Zubon