I want my Uber Dagger of Whiner Killing, now, now, NOW!
Jun 12, 2008 Games
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?
Tags: gamer rant, gamers, gaming, Rants
Mel’s Top Ten Ways to Seem like a Douche bag in any Game.
Apr 10, 2008 Geekery
Image via WikipediaHere 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?
I Want to Be the Hero Again
Apr 7, 2008 Games
As a computer gamer I’ve played a lot of role-playing games. I’ve virtually rolled-and-saved my way through sci-fi, fantasy, steam punk, post-apocalyptic and even a few modern ones. None of these games were perfect. Some of them, like Baldur’s Gate, Deus-Ex, System Shock and Fallout, were pretty dang close to it. Some of them were, at the very best, “challenged.” Yes, that’s right! I’m looking at you Battletech: Crescent Hawks Inception!
But regardless of whether or not the games were near perfect or nearly nausea-inducing, each of them did something that none the MMORPGs of today just can’t do: they made me the hero of an actual story.
I wasn’t the DPS of the group, or the Mezzer or the Nuker. I was the leader of the adventuring party destined by my mysterious past to make a band of strangers into living legends. I was the star-fighter pilot they could rely on to come through when the chips were down. I was the center-point around which the fate of a world revolved around. I was the kind of person that grandfathers told their grandkids about while sitting around the hearth. I was a hero. I wasn’t one of many, I was one of a kind.
Nor was this some simplistic story pieced together with little bits of quest descriptions. It wasn’t some flimsy construction of text boxes you clicked through in your hurry to go kill 10 more rats. No, these were stories. These were Stories about thousand-year destinies and prophecies. Stories of struggle and survival and betrayal. It wasn’t the game that held the filmy pieces of the story together. No, it was the story that game the game its life and that kept you playing over and over. The stories had their characters and so many of them had depth and life and really became alive as you progressed through the story. Minsc and Boo, Maniac and Angel and even HK-47 all became more than just pixels, they became part of a complex living, breathing universe.
When I look back on these games, some of them not so long ago, I realize how empty the games of today really are. No matter how many elves and dwarves I can kill giants along-side or how many comrades-in-arms I can stand beside under the onslaught of the enemy, they cannot take the place of a story that makes us want to play. We don’t play MMORPGs to find out how the story ends. We play them to level-up. We play them to get phat lewt. We play them for the social aspect. Some people use them as what basically boils down to cybersex for LARPers. No matter why we play now, it has nothing to do with the story.
Unfortunately, MMORPGs are pretty much all we have to look forward to these days. I’ll play them and I’ll definitely enjoy some of them but each time I play them I feel the goodness that used to be the CRPG slip just a little bit farther away.
Tags: computer, gaming, MMORPG, Role Playing Rants, RPG
