Azaroth

It would seem as though any email sent to azaroth@azaroth.org since at least the beginning of 2009 has failed to end up in my inbox. I apologize to anyone attempting to reach me at an @azaroth.org email.

It should work now, and I can be reached alternatively at azaroth@gmail.com.

Currently laughing my face off at old logs of conversations plotting attacks against IPY. Pulling out the word “jealousy” is a funny thing, because people so often use the word to oversimplify a situation and place a weak carpet of blame across people attacking them. But some of this stuff… it’s funny that these guys never stepped back and looked at themselves.

After Casino Royale, I so very badly wanted Quantum of Solace to be epicx10.

That’s it. That’s what is bugging me at the moment. Welcome to twitter.azaroth.org.

Web filters to censor video games
June 25, 2009 - 5:05PM

The Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.

…

Of course, just because they would censor something as awful as video games doesn’t mean they’d…. oh, for fuck sakes.

Are people fucking retarded?

You know, you can boil a frog if you turn the heat up very slowly. The frog won’t really take note until it’s in a pot of boiling water and completely fucked.

…

Well, that’s what they say. I’ve never boiled a frog under any circumstances. So I wouldn’t know.

What I do know is that you could probably do it to a human.

Two videos.
I don’t really have any comments. You can just sorta.. watch.

I’ve been laughing my ass off for the last twenty minutes, though.

Video 1: Wow Freakout
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1915521

Video 2: Your raid leader thinks he’s cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXT3tI35f1M

Animated .GIF in the comments section. DON’T watch it until you see the first video.

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Yes, I love hockey and I’ve given much thought to moving to a country like Britain just so I could dominate an amateur league. Oh, to play with a bunch of guys who learned how to skate in 2007.

Anyway.

The NHL playoffs and NHL awards just ended, and I thought I’d share my opinions on just a few things. Nobody reading this blog on a regular basis cares, but there’s a thing called google these days and that’s good enough.

1) First thing would be first - Congrats to my Pittsburgh Penguins for winning the Stanley Cup. I’m still in shock that they won when I look at the pictures. Two years in the finals in a row and I’m beginning to wonder if they’re as good as anyone when they decide to turn it on. A hasty exit in the first round next year will likely be in order. Grats to Fleury for shutting everyone up.

2) Second. Detroit’s bitching. Man, I don’t mean just the fans. Or the media. Or the players. But all of that, plus the coach, and probably the fucking mascot. Fuck off, Whinertown. You have absolutely no right to call anyone else whiners. Ever. None. I’ve never seen anything like it on a person by person basis. I swear it’s something in the water.

Or just a sense of entitlement that got shattered.

I remember a baseball team I was on as a kid. We won every single game all season. In fact, we won so many games that when we lost one near the end of the season, a bunch of kids actually cried. Of course, we were like eight years old. Detroit probably has to fall back on the water theory.

Just one thing to finish that thought before I move on. Please keep in mind that this is par for the course, and not entirely that surprising. I didn’t even plan this subtopic of my post around it, afterall.

After the finals ended, quite a few posts popped up on one of the larger NHL forums on the internet. One of the main complaints was referee bias toward the Penguins. I, being the troll that I am, pointed out very kindly that the Red Wings had literally almost twice the amount of powerplays during that series.

Hi.

You had almost twice as many powerplays over the series.

Facts often get in the way of what we’d like to believe, though.

Reply was as such:

wings should of had triple the powerplays .. but the nhl won’t give them to us cause they know we would win games 12-0 every night

I laughed and laughed.

Moving on.

Two basic facts everyone needs to get straight:

3) Yes, the Ovechkin hit on Gonchar was dirty. Yes, because he stuck his knee out. Yes, there is proof. Yes, any other player doing that would have been suspended.

4) Yes, the Detroit Red Wings make interference a style of play. Yes, they trap. And yes, they get away with playing on the very edge of (and quite often, over) the line of legality. It’s simply cheating so often and so slightly that you rarely get caught, and when you do, nobody calls it for some reason.

Case in point would be this goal. Defender’s stick clearly held in range of the puck, goaltender clearly interfered with. Two penalties uncalled resulting in one Red Wing goal.

5) Cleary’s goal on Hiller was interference. Deal with it. Pushing a goaltender INTO THE NET is fucking interfering with his ability to save the puck.

66) Pens win, Pens win. Tears taste sweet.

7) Ovechkin is a douchebag who runs around and has no respect for other players. He’s about himself, period.

#8) Shouldn’t have won the Hart. But he’s the current media darling due to his whacky quotes and frequent jumping.

Hell, at the NHL awards, Datsyuk was introduced as “Fourth in the league in scoring and second in takeaways” when he was handed the Selke. Well, Malkin was FIRST in the league in scoring and FIRST in takeaways. Why the fuck wasn’t he even nominated?

But nah, the league’s leading scorer must be a selfish puck hog who only plays in the offensive zone, right?

Nah, just the Hart winner.

Ovechkin won the Hart, by argument of any media voter I listened to, because he had the most goals and that’s more important. Well, that trophy is called the Rocket Richard and you already gave him that. But he also had nearly TWICE as many shots as Malkin, and Malkin beat him in the overall scoring race. Not to mention that people need to stop playing NHL ‘06 and realize that Ovechkin DOESN’T “do it all on his own”. He has an incredible supporting cast that took the Champions to seven games - whereas Malkin played with Petr Sykora (healthy scratch most of the playoffs) and Ruslan Fedotenko all season.

Here I thought that being able to count down days, then hours, and then minutes until the time a best friend dies was hard.

I suppose the only thing harder is the moment that they die in your arms.

Truly the hardest moment I’ve ever experienced in my life.

In what has been so far a rare moment of strength for me after this whole ordeal, I thought I’d get on the computer and just say a little something about my best friend.

In the end, he was the only friend who stuck with me through thick and thin. Who was always concerned about my wellbeing, and would be eternally beside me no matter what ever happened. When I went through hard times, he was always there for me. Whether I needed cheering up or calming down… or just someone to sit with and talk.

His smile lit up every room he was ever in, and he warmed the hearts of everyone he ever met. I was truly closer to no one during the last six years - and even though we only knew each other for eleven short years, I can safely say I loved him like a brother.

You deserved none of the problems, and all of the love.

I’m glad you’ll suffer no more. I’m glad your dad and I could be there for you up until the very end.

Nothing can possibly express my sadness. The world is a lonelier place without you.

Truly, my best friend.

I’ll always remember you, Ted.

Which was all fun and games.

At some point they got to the top of the hill and Jack fell down and broke his crown. Now, completely unfunny potential brain injuries aside - Why the fuck would jack just randomly fall down the hill?

Well, here’s my best guess.

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

At the beginning, Jack and Jill have no problems. The hill is an adventure, it’s exploration. They’ve got a common goal, and that goal is generally ‘having fun’. As long as it’s a pretty good hill. Too much of a chore - brambles, thorns, wolves and such - and Jill may not be going along in the first place.

But at the top, there was a minor problem somewhere. As best I can guess, the only thing to do at the top of that hill was to pull water from the well. I imagine Jeff and Jane, John and Julia AND Jacob and Jessica were up there pulling water from that very same well. Over and over and over.

While water is good to drink, that shit must get boring. The hill was fun - it was a journey. Sitting at the top all day fetching pale after pale of water (not to mention waiting your turn and having to deal with those other jerks) just isn’t after a while. Sure, when you’re thirsty. And even after that - water is great. But soon you’re bloated and want to get out of there so you can go to the bathroom. Still, to Joseph and Janet, still climbing the hill and quite thirsty, obviously pulling the water up looks pretty good.

As far as how Jack fell down - My best guess is that Jill either PUSHED Jack out of a combination of boredom and annoyance, or Jack threw himself to get away from Jill.

Leveling up in online games is a lot like the hill, whereas endgames are currently much like the well at the top. Looks great from a distance, it’s even fun getting there - but once you are, you quickly realize that eventually, you’re going to want off this hill one way or another. The goal that was so tantalizing is really just a repetitive waste of time.

Richard Bartle’s recent IMGDC keynote (which I intended to attend in person but wasn’t able to, unfortunately) revolved a lot around level games and endgames. Put very briefly, it explained how he believed sandboxes sucked for newbies but rocked for veterans whereas diku style games were just the opposite.

To put that in perspective.. what happens when you play a UO shard right now?

Initially, you set up an automated process to entirely skip the game and get straight to the endgame.

If you play WoW and have plenty of experience with it, endgame raiding gets boring and often people start rerolling characters. Not that veteran players won’t often look for every possible way to get to the end of that particular road as quickly as possible for one reason or another - but they also tend to forget that, quite often, they’re rerolling because they’re bored to tears with the endgame.

Argued, then, is that the answer happens to be an initial guided experience through the game and a sandbox endgame providing both something for new players and experienced ones.

Here are the slides of Richard’s presentation, if you’re interested.

Your thoughts are?

I’ve been on the local beer train for a while - but my last trip to Toronto truly produced a new love.
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Skimming forums, I came across this quote:

UO on release was thinking it was normal to take 30 minutes to run from Vesper inn to Vesper bank. Jamming a penny in your keyboard to fish all night. Killing slimes in Covetous only to have it split and kill you.

Hah.

Except I started in Moonglow. Those great harts were fucking treacherous. And imagine my surprise when my very first money making scheme of murdering NPCs for gold turned me red.

Now, I’ve proudly been a degenerate alcoholic for many years of my adult life. I had a strong year of sobriety, and now I consider myself a healthy partaker in alcoholic delights and a “sometimes binger”. Which of course gets less and less fun each time you do it, and is what put me off of alcohol for a year in the first place. I’ve seen a lot of warnings for alcohol, but never the “Warning: This Product May Cause You To Puke Copious Amount Of Blood And Wonder When Death Will Come” label. Or really, the “Never, Ever, Ever…. EVER… Ever, Ever, Not For Any Reason, NEVER Combine This Product With Pot But Nobody Knows Why” label.

So there it is. Especially for you. I don’t recommend these products, I just recommend them in moderation. Once in a while.

Now, once you’ve moved past your dollar-a-beer and two dollar magarita night days, you might seek out something of a bit more quality. Although, the jump from Budweiser to even something as mainstream as Guinness can be too much of a leap for some. I offer nothing to bridge that gap, but tonight I’ll suggest something for fans of two things: Porters and Coffee.

Strange? Not really. The Cherry Porter I had at Christmas was a bit odd, though.

Mill Street Coffee Porter is as black as toby’s ass, and it tastes twice as good. It tastes like a microbrew porter with a strong hint of dark roast coffee. The caffeine content is more than a hint, by the way. So don’t believe the bullshit from the brewery or the fact that there’s no listed caffeine on the label. It’s like drinking a cup of coffee, and that’s why I’m half drunk AND writing a post on my blog. I’m not sure where this buzz is going, but it’ll be a learning experience either way. I’m not sure I’ve combined six cups of coffee and six strong drinks before. Hopefully it’s not as “interesting” as pot and alcohol. I get the feeling that I may be abusing something to be taken in extreme moderation, however.

The taste, if you’ve ever had ANY Mill Street beer from Toronto, is familiar. You can tell where it came from, and I’m not that observant. Hand me two wines from the same winery and I’ve usually got no clue. I suggest it with a hearty meal in an english pub (and not on a stomach full of M&Ms, but they seemed tasty at the time).

<P>If you’ve ever had a porter and liked it, go out and try some. The coffee is fair trade, which is always a big plus. But most important, the fucking beer is good.
And this comes from a guy who has been hanging around bars since he was 17, associating the taste of regular beers with puke and ashtrays. If a beer is good, I’ll let you know it’s good.

Morning Edit:

Need to wake up in the morning, but also a raging alcoholic? Please note that this is also a fantastic breakfast beer.

Afternoon Edit:

Don’t get drunk at breakfast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRyj5cHIQA

Here are 15 quick tips to (hopefully) reduce your chances of having your human rights roundly violated at random in a police state when at the airport.

Highlights include

#1 - Shut Up

#6 - Be Super Submissive

#11 - Wear Boring Clothes

This isn’t even a joke. It should be, but it’s not.

Not making this a massive diatribe like I usually do. Just going to gloat a little.

That’s more entertaining, right?

Anyway, point being here and here, respectively.

From what I’ve heard, Darkfall uses volunteer GMs*. Now, from experience, I can tell you that this is a mistake. For emphasis, I’d like to swear about it. It’s a fucking mistake.

*I have no idea if this is true or not. It’s what I’ve read, and all evidence seems to lean toward it being true. I’ve asked, and have not been told otherwise.

Of course, even I knew that at the time that I did it. Even when close eyes were kept on everyone and powers were severely limited, with real privileges being restricted basically to people I had come to know and trust over an exaggeratedly long period of time - I still got F’ed in the proverbial A many, many times. All to be expected. Which is why I’d *never* use volunteer CS to ANY serious degree on a “real” game*.

* The meaning of “real” here is left to debate. Fact is that you weren’t paying me 12.95 monthly and I took zero profit from the server, so I had no money to hire anyone. In hindsight, probably caused more problems than would have been had by collecting dollars and doing a few very crucial things on the up and up.

It’s an extremely volatile no-win situation. Developer who doesn’t play their own game? Not interested enough to eat your own dog food, how can we ever take your word on a game you admittedly don’t play? Developer who plays and has a known identity in the game?

Your sandbox has gods. Ally with them, lol. Worship them if you want their favor.

Just sayin’ that there were lessons to be learned before you launched an MMO, and apparently even I had learned them better at age 20. And I hadn’t learned them well.

Not sure what else should even be said about that.

A: Until you cancel your ticket.

From the Stratics forums:

So I have to wait 16 hours for a GM?

Been waiting 2 hours so far and have gone from 8 to 7 in the queue.

Is this really going to take almost a whole day for someone to look at my report? Seriously?

This is just stupid.

Over recent months (at least five), it’s clear we have no dedicated GM team. You can go as high as 6 in the queue, not due to players receiving responses, but because they cancel or log/ time out. You will get an email response, whether you wait 30 minutes or 15 hours. I guess two things bother me personally. Foremost, why do we not have at least one dedicated GM? OK, I can accept they were consolidated and prioritized toward a different Mythic game due to resource restraints - I blame no one on our team for this (but do blame Mythic). Second, since we do not have a dedicated support team/ individual, why leave the queue in place - integrity should require that it be removed as it is meaningless? Again, not the fault of our dev team, rather an extension of poor communications and deception dating back to the EA decision to structure UO beneath the Mythic studio. I suppose I’m not really angry with Mythic either, it does appear they’ve had a role in ensuring UO’s survival, and do understand UO was never their product. But really, make the queue work or take it out - please! Make the announcement and be done with it.

How they must long for the days of “I cannot help thee.”

Of course, soon they’ll be longing for the days of UO actually being alive.

Match, World of Warcraft.

A list of 40 Warhammer Online servers closing down was released late yesterday. To put that number in perspective, there are apparently 15 North American and 2 Australian servers left.

In a way, this is unfortunate to see. It doesn’t seem like anything can challenge WoW for the MMO throne (if you bring up Darkfall, I’ll virtually strangle you).

I actually tried this one on release.

I am not surprised by this announcement.

With both EA and Mythic going through hard times at the moment, what might this mean for UO after the failure of UO:KR?

EA was convinced not to shut UO down once, and convinced again to invest more money in it with the Kingdom Reborn client. Well, that didn’t work out so well. Is our old favourite going to be on the block again?

In a debate of merits comparing class based and class free systems, it’s inevitably hard for me to defend classes. This is because, at heart, I’m an old school UO guy.

However, from the perspective of a person running a business, it becomes hard to defend classless systems. Everything you do ends up being a workaround or a compromise. How do I reward players without experience, how do I introduce meaningful PvE content without items. So on and so forth.

Aside from that, you lose the hook of levels and classes. Players introduced to your world for the first time, whether that’s on your webpage or elsewhere, gravitate initially to the “What I can do” section. For most, this means “What class can I be”. A huge, mundane list of skills like “Carpentry” and “Swordsmanship” or “Pottery” isn’t as clear, concise, and immediately rewarding to the imagination of most players.

Most people want to see big graphics, big screenshots of big, bright spell animations, and the words “POWERMAGE” written over top. They don’t want to dream about carpentry, and opening up a quiet shop on a little road outside town. Skills like that are for crafting items to use, and they’re secondary to their character’s main purpose. And that main purpose, by the way, isn’t “Swordsmanship”. Or, not if you want to sell a game anyway.

Classes are a built in solution to nearly every problem that not having classes brings up. This will be a problem until we start over with full virtual reality MMOs.

And then classes will be added.

Even PvP benefits from the implementation of classes. Heresy, I realize. But it’s true.

Think of it this way:

In Ultima Online, everyone has the same skills and the same abilities - for the most part. There’s a template or two, and you roll with that. You win and you lose based on whether you outplay the other guy (ideally — we’ll put aside various methods of cheating for now).

Now what you’ve created is a scenario that the upper echelon and the uber competitive love. My skill determines that I own 90% of people on contact, they have no options to change that. Aside from ganking me with superior numbers. But that doesn’t matter. I’m not angry at myself for not being able to compete in this circumstances. If I lose, it’s okay. If I win, it’s extra great.

Because it gives me an excuse.

Let’s look at excuses.

Any time I have an excuse as to why I lost, the loss stings much less. I can justify the loss. The better and more widely accepted the excuse, the more quickly the loss rolls off my shoulders.

In a setting like oldschool UO or an FPS, losses are more rarely easily excusable than in an MMO with classes and levels. This means that in a game with classes, while PvP can exist, as long as there are no serious game related consequences to losing (such as full loot, xp penalties, etc), my psyche can handle the loss much easier.

Why.

Well, classes breed rock/paper/scissors gameplay. Everyone has unique abilities, and they’re usually specifically built to counter the abilities of a select group of other classes. For the masses, this helps bring home the easy win bacon. Even if you’re awful, there isn’t a lot to learn to be able to beat those classes. It’s not only easy, but it’s accessible to those it’s not easy for.

Now, when you lose, easy excuses come into play.

If rock loses to paper, not that big of a deal. Rock always loses to paper. The game is designed that way, it’s not really your fault. But when your rock beats someone’s paper, it’ll induce a nice feeling of superiority.

As such, losing, instead of being entirely discouraging, drives adaptive behaviour which requires more playing and fuels more dedication to the game. This is rewarded quickly and easily by learning the three buttons you need to press, and when to press them, for a nearly assured victory.

Add in an ever inflating power level of gear, and the ease of winning goes up by simply investing more time. Conversely, the hope of adapting and competing revolves around investing more time getting gear as well.

Put everyone on an equal playing field, and losses are much more discouraging. Catching up with hope of starting to win is much more difficult. That’s why a few people loved PvP in UO, and smart business dictates that you make games like WoW and EQ.

PvE is an even longer discussion, and much more simple to fathom. Everything you do needs to be a (hopefully not) halfassed workaround because you have no classes and no levels. Because nobody has really figured out how to not halfass this, PvE in games like that generally sucks. Now you’ve compounded your problems because you’ve attracted a crowd that is either PvP elite, or wanting to be. Those wanting to be have little or no excuse for their mounting loss tallies, and will be driven off. No players will stream in to replace the sheep because your PvE game is halfassed at best, and now you have an ever worsening cycle of negative account churn.

That means you lose. And there’s no excuse.

Losses like that hurt the most.

“Conservative anti-gang bill gets Opposition support”

The title caught my eye.

An anti-crime bill being universally supported by the Conservatives in power AND the opposition Liberals?

Immediately, my spider sense was tingling.

So I launched my own personal investigation, determined to get to the meaning of this if it took days, weeks.. months.

Would I need to send a carefully crafted letter to my member of Parliament, slyly prying away to find hints at true motives? Would I have to sit in a candlelit library for nights on end, looking through clues and anonymously searching the internet for reference material and news stories that connected the dots to some heinous, hidden scheme?

I knew something was up. They couldn’t fool me. I just hoped the pursuit didn’t drive me to the edges of madness. Long nights of untwisting the byzantine spiderweb of hidden illuminati symbolism and piecing together obscure clues surely lay ahead of me.

First, I suppose I should read the article.

The Harper government’s new bill to toughen punishment for gang-related crimes should have no trouble sailing through the minority Parliament after the opposition parties said Thursday they will support the proposals, and even called on the government to do more to fight organized crime.

As I suspected. The words ’sail through Parliament’ sent chills down my spine. The intricate workings of…

The NDP and the Liberals also called for additional police investigative powers to intercept online and cellphone communications, as well as the authority to wiretap more easily.

Oh for fuck sakes. I’m going to bed.

I’m not even sure what you can say at this point.

Hell, how you find yourself “overwhelmed” by the amount of pre-orders when you yourself set the limited number of pre-orders that you would take is beyond fucking baffling.

So, the website remains unchanged, advertising beta. The game servers are down, the forums are locked, and nobody is allowed to speak in IRC. There is currently absolutely no avenue of communication for people who have already paid money.

I feel like someone is queueing up the getaway music. I’m not sure how you could possibly appear shadier.

“So why don’t we announce a date already? It’s because there’s no way we’ll miss a release date and we’re not going to just set a date as a goal, and either postpone or be forced to release something unfinished.”

– Tasos Flambouras, Darkfall producer, from a dev diary.