I want my Uber Dagger of Whiner Killing, now, now, NOW!
If you are at a restaurant and someone’s child falls to the industrial carpeted floor, wailing, screaming and crying loud enough to shatter crystal and turn beet red in the face–would you call that acceptable public behavior?
When you (if you do) watched that ridiculous sweet-sixteen “reality” t.v. show, especially the episode where the lady bought her daughter a brand new car and she started crying and yelling about how she wanted it AT her birthday party, now NOW, and OMG HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME!!11–did you barely restrain yourself from wanting to choke a brat?
If you answered no to the first and yes to the second and are a MMO/MMORPG player who often pitches a fit because you don’t get that dagger you always wanted, may I suggest you take your brow and beat it against your desk until the common sense is pounded in?
Honestly, in the past few weeks playing Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, a supposedly “mature” game, the amount of hissy fits, temper tantrums and all around screaming and crying has left me flabbergasted. Supposed adults turn into mewling, vicious sulky teenagers bandying insults about because they lost a roll for a piece of pretend equipment in a pretend world, twenty minute debates over who uses what weapon more, and thus, should have had said weapon they didn’t get until it deteriorates into a NO UR MOM argument. I am just about eye-lid twitching here ladies and gentlemen.
Protip: IF you lost a roll on an imaginary weapon in an imaginary world that doesn’t exist filled with people pretending to be half naked barbarians and IF you flip your wig over it? You are no better than the child laying on the floor with balled fists beating the carpet, screaming for the ice cream sundae denied him because he didn’t know how to be polite.
Games are meant as a means to get away from the stress of everyday life. Why in the world do some players forget this and seem to go out of their way to create ugly situations for themselves?
Stop playing games with your crotch.
A video plea to those female gamers in MMORPG’s. You know the ones; we’ve all passed them stripped naked in towns begging for gold.
I demand the most perfect game evar because I am special!
The Age of Conan forums are a complete war zone filled with the whiniest, most demanding people I have read in a long while.
Sadly, this sort of nay-saying, negative charged flood of posting seems to be the general trend in game forums. Especially when they first open or release.
I understand they paid money for a product, I understand they think they’re entitled to some things–but demanding a MMORPG game to work, and work perfectly without a hitch anywhere, immediately seems just plain ridiculous to me.
Hasn’t anyone beta tested any other game? Have those who beta tested and played a game for at least a year forgotten how bad it was at first? Every game has a bumpy launch. I remember almost two days of downtime for Ever Quest II and I hear horror stories of the first week of World of Warcraft being pretty much unplayable.
This trend in the last few years to demand perfection in an MMORPG is mind boggling. There’s no way a small group of people could test for all of the bugs or inconsistencies several thousand people would have a better chance of finding. Yes, there are closed betas and open betas–but they aren’t really the real numbers, are they? They aren’t the handful of thousands that flood the server all at once and all try to sign on at the same time during release.
MMORPG’s take time because they are an evolving game. To demand that it be perfect, run perfectly on your 1988 MAC, be completely smooth and bug free on release date is a lot like squatting down to give birth, pointing at your newborn and demanding that it walks itself to a doctor.
A masssively multi-player online game, surprisingly, shouldn’t be about rushing. Developers spent years of their lives perfecting a world far more expansive and sprawling to explore than your usual single player game. That means no matter how much sleep you lose or how many bottles you have near your computer desk–it’s going to take time to do anything or go anywhere. Why the rush?
The game isn’t going anywhere during it’s downtime for patches, updates and fixes–but if you can’t live through that, maybe you should go somewhere–outside and away from the computer preferably.
Think of the children…
I have spent a great amount of my life doing some sort of customer service. I’ve done it in person for retail, tech support and food service. I’ve rendered similar services over the phone for both computer tech support and for a financial institution. I’ve done so both as a front line agent and as a supervisor in both cases. Between all my various customer service jobs I’m guessing I have somewhere around 15 years of customer service experience and management. Based on the greeter who sat us at Chili’s today, I believe the time has come for me to share the three following tid-bits with any currently involved in customer service or thinking of it.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t use a voice that isn’t your own. We can tell. We can always tell. When your fake voice is roughly 5 octaves higher than normal, we can *really* tell. This also means trying to use a fake “Disney”-style voice when you’re 16 or 17. I pray you listen, Chili’s girl: whoever told you that ending every sentence higher than you started was
1. A complete idiot and
2. Likely hadn’t figured on you being so blindingly stupid that you’d let your voice steadily raise in pitch… forever. For all I know you’re still rising in pitch.
Also, using the fake voice really loses its intended effect when as soon as you leave our table you turn to speak to one of your coworkers in a clearly audible and relatively pleasant alto. Your voice is fine. Use it. Don’t try to trick us into being happy because it won’t work with that voice… and not just because our ears bleeding really kills the dining experience. Be pleasant, not hypersonic.
Lastly, the fake smiling: you are required to stop it immediately. You simply cannot break into a face-shattering, teeth-clenched fake smile so painfully obvious the blind can see it the *exact second* you pass a customer and not expect them to notice. You also can not stop it the exact moment they are beside you. This technique isn’t just useless, it’s borderline insane. Firstly, in case you haven’t noticed, most people’s vision is not limited to 2 feet in front of them. Secondly, every person in the restaurant can see this and each one of us thinks you are suffering from a horrible, debilitating head injury.
Please, each of you, the next time you answer the phone at your job or greet-and-seat your table, think of the Chili’s girl and how she would change your dining experience. Please, think of the children… and their ears.
Dear DHL. Stop mouth breathing.
A video post from yours truly.
Mel’s Top Ten Ways to Seem like a Douche bag in any Game.
Image via Wikipedia
Here are ten excellent ways to seem like a douche bag in any game, whether you’re playing an MMORPG or anything else that requires you to mingle with your fellow humans.
1.) You help further any of the many gamer stereo types.
I just want to take this moment to personally thank all the guys playing females, or females playing females who are standing about some town right now, stripping off all their gear and begging for gold plz. Thanks guys, you make me feel warm and tingly inside.
2.) You sign up for the two week trial just to dis the game and advertise for another one.
Listen, douche bag, you’ve just been granted two weeks of free play. If you don’t like the game don’t play it. Flopping about the beginner town and lamenting over how this game sucks compared to yours doesn’t convince people to “come to the light.” It won’t inspire a mass exodus from this game to yours; in fact, most people will take a five second note of your behavior and think, “Wow. They behave like this, here; I can’t imagine what it’s like there.”
You aren’t part of the awesome team. You aren’t raging against the pixels. You’re just a whiner with a two week free key.
3.) You utter the most god forsaken words ever known to man: WoW is better.
I don’t want to hear about how it brought an MMORPG to the masses, about how easy it is to play, or how blah blah blah best game evar blah blah fan boi blah fan gurrrrl.
The truth is, compare WoW on a simple graphical scale to any game released this year and dare to tell me that WoW is better. WoW isn’t better, it’s old. If I had money growing in my backyard, I’d bet you hard cash nearly half of the people playing WoW right now are doing so because they are bored out of their god damned minds and cannot wait for someone to release something into the market that doesn’t suck.
WoW’s like your first girlfriend or boyfriend. They were hot, they were smokin’–then as the years went by you slowly started to wonder why the hell you began dating them to begin with. You just can’t quit them yet, however, because they were your first—and they have all your C.D’s.
4.) Your main goal in your entire illustrious gaming career is to harass newbies.
It was cool to pick on the new kid when we were in elementary school and mom still packed our lunches for us. Come on, people.
Besides that, there’s always the slight chance of getting your ass handed back to you in the future by that same newb you just tea-bagged.
5.) You spend most of your time online bragging about your uber leet purple gear.
By all means, compare your gear. Ask questions about what class should be wearing what, and what’s the best gear to have. The quest for uber gear is pretty much a major part of MO’s or MMORPG’s these days, anyway.
If this is all you do, all the time, in the same bat-channel, same bat-time—I hope you choke on your cheetos.
I don’t care. Chances are, the guy next to you doesn’t really care what chest-plate you’re wearing or what stats your bracelet has or how many purplz trinkets your toon is wearing after hearing it for the tenth millionth time.
6.) You take that game way, way, too seriously.
If someone making a wise crack at the color of your paladin’s armor, or a side comment about the style of your avatar (or toon’s) hair and you wig the hell out at them, filling the general chat or ventrilo server with vitriol that could strip wall paper?
Maybe it’s time to take a nice, long, quiet break from gaming for a bit, hmm? Did you know about the Realm of Outside, buddy? I hear it’s got a lot of quests, like Find A Job, Pay The Bills, Interact with Fellow Humans and even Date Somebody.
The last one is an Epic Quest, though. You’ll need to grind the Find A Job quest first.
7.) You use Bots.
This is the ultimate douche baggery. If you can’t invest the time to play the game, why have it in the first place? What’s the point? You aren’t even playing it, you’re running programs to play it for you.
If you’re one of those bots, standing in the main town and spamming the chat for cheap gold/credits and rare loot, there’s a special place reserved for you in gaming hell. I hear its E.T. for the Atari 2600 alllll the time down there.
8.) When you use voice chat programs, “Push to Talk,” and “Turn the mic off when you’re away from keyboard,” are foreign concepts to you. Also, you think it’s really cool to share your favorite song.
There’s nothing more relaxing then the sound of some toon’s mount clopping away at ten thousand decibels in my ears. The sweet harmonious siren’s call of swords clashing or guns firing at a noise level which makes my ear drums bleed. It is just lovely.
The best. ever. sounds however, are the tinny little strains of your favorite current song played from your computer desk mic. You know, the music that sounds like it’s being delivered out of the puckering end of a very angry weasel. You have to share it with everyone!
No. No you don’t have to share it with everyone. No one wants to hear your death metal, your gansta rap, your country, your dance nor any other genre of your music. We’re in the channel to shoot the shit or save ourselves some time in having to type while we play. Stuff it, DJ McNerdles and let’s get back to the quiet murmurs of geekery.
9.) You turn Guild chat/General chat/Vicinity Chat/Any Chat into your very own episode of Jerry Springer.
“OMG, Becky. You stay away from mah man! Stop sending him whispers!”
Suddenly, guild chat is a flurry of drama llamas bleating, accusations of cyber, ganking and douche baggery abounds.
Public chat is not for your airing of dirty laundry. All you’re doing is making yourself look like an ass and giving me five minutes of entertainment from killing these ten vorpal bunnies I need in order to get that necklace I wanted. Funny, in a very sad-car-crash-sort of way.
10.) Keep real life the hell out of my game.
I’m playing a game. I’m playing this game to get away from everyday life and have an hour or few to myself and relax. I’m playing this game because I’m getting away from real life—so why the hell are you filling my chat screen, or yammering my ear off in vent about your kids and bills?
I don’t care and I don’t want to see it. I don’t care what your daughter did this weekend, what trophy your son won, how lonely you are, whether or not your girlfriend is cheating on you…I just want to play and have fun, don’t you?
Now it’s your turn. I challenge you to share with me your tales of the Ultimate Douche Baggery! What would you have added to the list?
The Penguin Thanks You All
Well Hey thar, interwebs! We just wanted to thank all of you that visited us yesterday on what became the busiest day at 2PhatGeeks. Between the Diggers and Stumblers and Reddit-ers, in a single day we doubled the traffic we’ve had since the site officially opened in March. As we’re both (obviously) new to this real blog thing-a-ma-bob, this is pretty big news for us.
A special shout out to the Reddit folks out there. Between some meaningful discussion about the topic at hand and some inferences that I have just never read a book before, the story was actually the number 1 in the gaming category on Reddit for a while.
Finally, I want to put out a very special thank you to the Reddit reader ColdSnickersBar that had this to offer.
And indeed I do…. waaaaaak waaak! Thanks, internet! You all made our day!
What’s in our spam queue? Brian shares his happy.
Image by wickedrice via Flickr
Brain, from madeupemail@something.com commented on my Boobs and Cake post to let me know that:
you’re a fucking whore.
Obviously, Brian, I am. I’m a cake whore, I admit it. All that triple fudge super moist cake has to do is look at me twice and that’s it–I’ll do anything for it. I’m not ashamed, Brian. The cake? He treats me well.
Obviously, Brian, I had to hide your comment. It was beyond precious to me and I just want to keep it as a private little reminder of us connecting. Thanks so much for that!
But, do I sense a touch of bitter jealousy? Do you not have cake or boobs in your life? Don’t be envious, Brian! Why, someday with your charming repartee and zany internet quips (such as your delightful and meaningful comments!) you’ll no doubt seduce a set of boobs on your own.
Maybe she’ll even make you a cake.
