Dear Gaming World
Sep 12, 2008 Games
What the hell happened?
Did you outsource to thirteen year olds who are far more obsessed with pink shiny things than I am? Perhaps you’ve been trying to market to five year olds, because lately, everything that you’ve marketed to me has not been the stimulating, razor’s-edge-entertainment you’ve been promising.
Age of Conan: Ginormous fail boat
Age of Conan happily lead me on a long walk of false-awesomeness. At first, the beheading, the amazing textures, the voice overs–they helped pull the nerdling wool over my eyes. I was sold, or was I (dramatic music goes here)? I made my way through Tortage with stars in my eyes, giggling merrily whenever I had a fatality that would fill my screen with blood. Granted, the nay sayers started in on this game the moment it was open beta, which rankled me more than anything.
Alas, the dream soon turned to waking. At first, it was my disappointment in crafting. I knew that AoC didn’t want to focus on crafting, that it wasn’t as important as other game issues and I was willing to over look that. Then I reached 59 with my main, a priest of Mitra and the wool was crudely torn from my eyes. There was nothing for me to do, content wise, but grind three or four instances, with the same spawns, over and over again until–what? Until I hit mid 70’s?
No, thanks. Don’t misunderstand me. This game is gorgeous and amazingly well done. So long as you don’t go any higher in level than 50. (Or at least, it was this way at the time of me quitting.) There was literally levels and levels of content-gap where there were no quests and nothing for you to do. Sorry, but, no-can-do-thar, Funcom. Maybe we’ll talk again in a year, kay?
Spore and its lies
And Spore! Spore! You lied so hard to me! Oh, Spore, you looked like a game I could have sunk my teeth into. You were something different with countless thousands of ways I could make disturbingly cute pink monsters to evolve and take over planets.
And what did you turn into? A five hour marginally kind-of-cute waste of time. It was like ice cream instead of sex. Sweet, filling, but not exactly what I had been expecting. A friend of mine over at rulihe.com pretty much summed up Spore in her review of the game.
So seriously? What the hell happened? Why are you pushing increasingly less intelligent, half-finished, shitty games at us? You’re making it worse. In fact, all you are doing is creating a larger skeptical audience growing more leery to spend their money on another buck-eating waste of hard drive space.
So you want an uber guild, eh?
Jul 10, 2008 Games
In MMORPG’s, the guild is often a welcome addition to any game. Should you PVP, your guild generally has your back but that’s not the only plus in having an excellent guild! Here’s a chance to socialize with people like minded, often online when you are and generally available to group with, without the rigmarole of ‘you get what you LFG’ for as well as PUGS.
Running and maintaining a guild however can often suck the fun right out a game for guild leaders and officers. When they aren’t having fun the entire guild often picks up this emotion and echoes it back. Throughout my rather illustrious (read: geeky) career of MMORPG’s, being a guild leader and officer, there have been some really interesting opinions and things I have learned as to what I think makes or breaks a good guild and lucky for you, I’ve written them up and offered them here.
By no means am I saying that a guild has to be run this way. These are just a collection of my thoughts and opinions and I hope they help you!
DO NOT:
- Mock your members openly in public places. And I’m not talking the fun mock you do in guild chat when they slip up and mistype or misspell. Calling your members stupid, their issues or anything they wish to privately share with you stupid is a great way to alienate guild members from you.
- Allow your guild officers to do whatever they want because they’re officers. Nothing sends a clearer “You’re not important, we’re not really a group, you’re not as awesome as we are, poo on you” than this do as I say, not as I do behavior.
- Allow your fellow guild leaders to do whatever they want because they’re guild leaders.
- Allow yourself to do whatever you want because you created the guild and that somehow makes you moar speshul than everything else.
- Forget to make some place some where for fellow guild members to meet and chatter that is outside the game. A message board, a web site, a chat room–anything to help bring a sense of community to your members is a plus.
- Ignore what your members have to say, no matter how annoying and repetitive it is.
- Believe most guilds are a democracy. Few are.
- Have officer and guild leader drama spill publicly—be it in guild chat or boards. Present a united front whenever possible. If and when you lose an officer in a particularly nasty /guild leave, save face by staring down anything nasty they have to say by remaining calm and polite. Who do you think will come out looking like the better?
- Snap, treat discourteously, or be rude intentionally to your guild members. Even if you think they deserve it. Your members are your guild’s life. You don’t HAVE to like them, but as an officer or guild leader you do have to work with them.
- Be unavailable to members when online with your guild leader or officer character. When you signed up for this gig, you signed away your privacy in game for that officer/leader avatar/toon. Be prepared to be PM’ed and in-game mailed.
DO:
- Keep your gripes about members, rants, issues to a private place far away from member’s eyes. I don’t begrudge guild leaders or officers the right to blow off steam. Make sure it remains private, however.
- Expect and demand your guild officers to uphold and follow your guild’s rules and charter just like every other member must. If they break a rule, then they should be punished in the exact same manner you have deemed fit for a member.
- Listen to your guild members, even when it’s the fiftieth time George the Wizard has complained to you about the epics purple unicorn hat that has been bugged for weeks that everyone knows about. George probably just needs an ear to listen to him, and guess what? As guild leader or officer you unofficially signed up to do this. If listening to people gripe and complain gets on your nerves you might want to consider rethinking your position—because you will be doing this for your entire tenure as guild leader/officer.
- Be courteous, kind, and polite. Whether you know it or not, part of the job guild leader/officer is customer service. You signed up to be the ears and eyes for either the guild leader as officer, or the head/boss of a group of people. Therefore, not only are they all going to look at you as well as to you for examples being lead, they’re going to want to talk to you and bring their issues or problems to you. Officers will either be expected to bring such issues to the guild leader, while working to keep any ruffled feathers smooth. If you are a jerk to your members, the only message you’re getting through is that your guild doesn’t care and you might find yourself out of a few dozen members. Quickly.
- Know the difference between being honest and just being crass and rude. Honesty is a hard pill to swallow, but you can still be bluntly, brutally honest with someone without calling them names, resorting to swearing, mocking or dragging their name through the mud. For example: “Well you can’t get that piece of epix gear because, quite frankly, you suck.” Or“Well, I think that you might not be able to get that piece of epix gear because you might be doing something wrong. Here’s what I think: …” See the difference?
- Put your foot down and don’t be afraid to do so. There is no reason for any guild leader or officer to put up with really nasty crap for a long period of time. Despite all your best efforts of being polite and reasonable, some members or people just won’t get it. Don’t be afraid to cut these members loose. Deal with continuously problematic members without hesitation or fear, courteous does not mean you need to be a welcome mat. You can be a nice hard-ass and you will no doubt learn how to do so as a guild leader or officer.
- Have as much fun as possible with your members and fellow officers, leaders. If you aren’t having fun in a game you’re paying to play—well—what are you doing playing it?
- Try and keep your officer and fellow guild leader roster full. No one can run a guild by themselves, no matter what they say. Burn out happens, real life happens, computer trouble happens. Eventually the inevitable might come to pass, and if the guild only has one leader, where does that leave the guild?
- Take breaks. When you find that you just want to throttle someone, find yourself yelling at the monitor or disliking the game that’s a good sign that you might want to take a break. It’s also a great way to avoid burn out which happens a lot in officer/leader positions. Tell your leader or fellow officers that you need some time away and go do other things to refuel and recharge.
There are no doubt hundreds of other little things you, as a member, officer, or leader can do to ensure a kick-ass guild experience, but these to me are the most important. Hope these have helped you in some way and happy gaming!
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
Without a community, a game is nothing.
Feb 28, 2008 Games
I’ve found my game-screen shots folder on my computer. Star wars, Ever Quest II and World of Warcraft.
I’m not sure if there are a few who’ll understand the emotion, but going through the Star Wars screen shots was a lot like going through images of someone near and dear that had long passed on. I remembered the community, the spirit, I remembered the wide-eyed way I approached the game and the hours of wonderful role play that, as months flew by and the game aged, helped me see past out-dated graphics as well as the things the developers had done to the game. And then I remembered that, for me, it’s pretty much passed on into the great Geek memory of has-beens.
As is usual with many MMORPG’s, the game changed, the community drifted. Time passed, people stopped playing and moved on to other, newer games with shinier graphics–leaving empty servers and a plethora of idiots using their two week free trial.
But I honestly think that I will not find another community in a game quite like the community of role players and players I found in Star Wars galaxies. Here was a game in a genre that just didn’t appeal to the young just discovering the internet or a certain genre–no–here was a game that appealed to all ages. You could be playing beside a sixty year old or a fifteen year old–bridging an age gap few games today, in my opinion, have been able to do or recreate. Never have I come across a group of ‘well spoken’ people, nor such (at the time of its hay day) a large group of role players in a game that actually role played well.
City wide story lines propelled by player and game made props, hundreds of people showing up to events, several hundreds, if not thousands of objects such as clothing, homes and home decor to appease those obsessed–or simply concerned–with creating a good setting and character environment. Buildings and vehicles, customization that, while limited, mixed and matched together could at least, create a few bumps in the mundane of cut-out character avatars.
And I’ve yet to come across a game that has remotely touched upon such things.
Without a large portion of the original community that once backed the game, it has become a smaller galaxy. New characters (when I picked the game up again) were not as welcomed nor accepted. Role play was more difficult or as rare as legible typing. Leveling up and PVP seemed more interesting to newer players than fiddling with the ten thousand things that made the game encompassing.
SWG lost something vital when it lost the community, and I am done being bitter toward SOE over its decisions in handling the game–because I’m done with the game. But, as I said, going through the screen shots today aroused some of that old longing–for a game that could do the same thing SWG did in its hayday. To draw me in and keep me playing well past when I should have gone to bed. To make me feel like my spent money was worth it. To entertain me and give me a few moments out of the mundane to feel extraordinary.
Many of the new games I am beta testing today would do well to look at Star Wars: Galaxies during its height of popularity. Many games should also take a moment to learn as well as understand SOE’s mistakes that brought down a game that should have been legendary. I hope that the new games I am looking at will take note; fancy graphics, smooth play, in dept story line and originality is all fine and good–but without your community, a game is nothing.
Yes. I did just ramble on about a massively multi player role playing game. Tune in next week, when I waste another of your precious life’s moments going on about drow. Or lolcats. Or loldrow.
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Tags: MMORPG
