Azaroth

My blog has been totally bumslammed by spammers and hacks.

I have no idea if I’m going to take the time to fix this garbage. Clearly Wordpress has some serious vulnerabilities.

This is probably a sentence that should cross the mind of every customer service manager in the world when one of their employees starts treating customers like they don’t matter.

This applies to every situation in every business. Except maybe if you’re a dominatrix (hi call me).

The problem is that it all too often doesn’t seem to.

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As you may or may not notice, when searching for my website using Google, a funny little warning appears.

“This site may harm your computer”, it says.

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Maybe I’ll finish one of the…. 12? incomplete posts on here.

Maybe.

Although more traffic would come in if I just posted boobs.

Gotta get these up. Write ‘em down.

Clinton.

Britney (dies).

Stars.

Spurs.

Packers.

Nukes.

Downturn in population in WoW. Nobody else benefits. People are getting tired of being forcefully strapped to treadmills.

There. My predictions for ‘08. I had to get them up because the NFL playoffs are on.

He deserves some linkage at least.

Jeff Freeman recently made a post on How to Draw a Chicken.

Step three is the most important.

…….This shit is mean.

LONDON (Reuters) - More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe called on Thursday for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying “the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.”

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This new blog has actually become my favourite to read as of late. I can’t expand on that a whole lot except to say that if you’re interested MMO development, it might become yours too.

Congrats on actually keeping my interest, Eric and Sandra. This is something not easily accomplished. Now I just need to find time to read the two latest posts.

I’ve gone ahead and used the video without the logos.

The sad part is that retarded WoW players everywhere are already regurgitating lines from this ad like it’s the next Chuck Norris joke.

Thanks for Damion for turning me on to this. Or, maybe not thanks, but… whatever.

The Hour: Naomi Klein

“In times of crisis, you can either regress or grow up fast. This book is about helping you to grow up fast.”

I also recommend looking up the short film “The Shock Doctrine” by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein. I think the movie gets a little hypocritical with its use of shock to get its own point across, but when you throw a famous director at it and enter it in film festivals, that’s bound to happen.

In light of a recent article, Matt Mihaly has this to say about Second Life losing steam:

“It’s a niche product and it’s captured about as much of its niche as it looks likely to capture.”

That, and the fact that it’s painful to play.

I did, at one point, log on (admittedly, this was probably a few years ago) to see what it was all about. I felt like stabbing someone in the face while I attempted to maneuver my seemingly unwilling character around a landscape that’d make a blind man’s eyes bleed.

Just sayin’.

Plus, what is all of this press coverage really about? Virtual kiddy diddling, gay prostitution, extreme furry bondage, and Flying Cock Ships?

Come on. I don’t think the media coverage is doing them a whole world of good all of the time. Mainly because what’s going on in Second Life ISN’T good a whole lot of the time.

It boggles my mind a little bit that they let some of that stuff go on, really. I realize the concept of the world is freedom in general, and total freedom of expression is a great thing to strive toward. Utopia this, Government that, freedom is great. We can all agree on this.

However, when EVERY place you can go puts restrictions on your actions in various manners, the ONE place that doesn’t is just going to be inevitably flooded by a bunch of old guys diddling young boys played by other old guys while flying around in big red cockships named The Balls of Saint Mary. It’s like anything else. Restrict PvP in every game on the market. Open one with full PvP. Allez Shitfest! Secret ingredient: CSR Tears.

Hint: Bobby Flay will make ribs and corn bread, Mario Batali will make pasta and some meat sauces, Morimoto will make sushi and noodles, and Cat Cora will make something really bad. All from CSR Tears and gelatin. CSR Tears and gelatin.

Look. It’s a nice concept and worlds that fashion themselves, in some ways, after it down the road could end up being very interesting. Second Life itself has just become a trainwreck at this point, though. As much as I do respect the idea - People are broken, and that’s not about to change any time soon.

Apparently Ultima Online celebrated its tenth birthday on the 26th of September. I have to wait another month to mourn ten years since I first stepped foot into Britannia and went on an incredible, multiple-year-wasting journey that never actually saw me finish GMing any of the smiths I started. I did come pretty close once or twice, though.

But for better or worse, the game certainly changed my life.

They’re just lucky that the closest thing to an online game I had ever played to that point was Duke Nukem 3D on a LAN. I don’t think anyone with any expectations at all would have put up with 45 minutes waiting for the “verifying account…” screen, and 3 seconds of lag between each. and. every. step. But I loved every minute of it.

I did manage to win my first ever PvP fight only minutes into my UO life against a naked guy with a skull helm on. However, I was soon slain by a hind. But not before figuring out the hard way that going around killing NPCs for a living would make you red.

So unfortunately my first character was doomed to deletion. Note to designers ten years later: Dropping players in with no idea of what’s going on - probably not the best idea. Well, unless you’re UO in 1997.

You boys sure got away with a lot. And we all love you for it. And loved being a part of it.

Here’s to the original devs and the original players of the most innovative, immersive, groundbreaking video game of all time.

Happy Birthday Ultima Online.

One wonders certain things while endlessly grinding flying green whelplings in a zone called “The Swamp of Sorrows”.

In a way, it actually brings me back to a post I read on Brian Green’s blog a couple of weeks ago. The post itself was about alternatives to itemization, and I’ve intended to comment in my own unique way for some time.

My third foray into the world of Warcraft has inspired me to ask some questions and make some comments here on my blog.

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Jeff Freeman decided to reply to my post below. Apparently, replies come in the form of main page posts on your own blog these days, so I thought I’d be just as hip.

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Yeah, I know. But at one point, I had to blog about this. It was coming. I’ve just been pondering the posting of more important things.

I realize this happened weeks ago, but I watch a lot of sports and sports news. And honestly, the coverage has been pretty constant. It’s the biggest sports story in the world right now. And here’s why it shouldn’t be:

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You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

According to Damion’s blog, female characters in the upcoming Age of Conan start out as a sex slave.

I guess reaching a mass market wasn’t one of their goals. Forcibly disenfranchising half of the worlds population really isn’t a great start here. I suppose they’re hoping to REALLY nail down the “greasy 14-30 males” demographic by being “uber hardcore”. That’s probably a really bad idea. And not only has it proven to be a really bad idea in the past, but they’re creating one hell of a headache for themselves in the future.

Not only are these guys asking for a playerbase that’s going to destroy the will to live of every CS person they have on staff, and not only is it going to cannibalize itself by its very nature, but going so far as to DARE women to play the game by threat of forced cockslap?

Now, seriously guys.

And hell, what about all of those males out there who like to play females? I imagine *most* of them are going to forgo that particular habit, since any guy playing a female character in this game will get far more than the odd strange look for doing so. “So how’d you like that newbie experience, dude?” “It was aight, my guild totally helped me powerlevel”.

Update: Comments seem to imply that this particular aspect of the game is “tastefully done”. There are ways to do that, I suppose. But even being the heartless chauvinistic misogynist that I am, I think it’s probably just a little over the top regardless of how it’s ultimately presented. In any event, they’re seriously handicapping their potential audience - and that’s never a good thing.

“The Saturday Night Live alumnus was pulled over in part because of the unusual sight of a golf cart in Stockholm traffic.”

“Bill Murray nabbed by Swedish police at wheel of golf cart.”

Old actors never die, they just get drunk and drive drunk in golf carts down highways in Sweden.

It just struck me to write about it a little. I suppose I’m bored. But I’m kicking at this can on the move, so stay with me here. Even though I don’t think I ever plan out anything I write. It’s a blog people, come on.

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Now, this isn’t a shot at anyone who does this legitimately. I know for certain that several respectable companies run free games and/or simply sell items that exist only inside of those games as their main profit stream instead of using the old tried-and-tried monthly account method. That’s fine. But your game has to be built for quickness, and it can’t take itself too seriously. Exhibit A being something like Puzzle Pirates.

But, somewhere along the way we got greedy. Or, would it be called smart?

Regardless, at some point… people figured out that kids make their parents buy things. They then figured out that kids like cute things. Now comes a seemingly endless supply of cheaply made (and I’m not insinuating shoddy workmanship… I’m just saying we’re not talking AAA games here, and their break even point is going to be relatively low) children’s “MMOs”. Virtual worlds? I don’t know.

Point being, there’s a lot, they’re targeted at children, and they’re pretty fucking smart if you ask me. Smart in an.. “we’ve figured out how to use this new type of product to exploit children into getting their parents to hand them a credit card” way. Which I suppose can be called smart. If not terribly difficult.

But it starts out with things like Webkinz, then you have Barbie World. Where people, apparently (and by people I mean kids.. and by kids I mean their parents) buy real life toys in order to collect certain in-game items. Including very expensive toys, like Barbie MP3 players. I’m sure they have several other methods of punishing parents for ever having a girl post-1980. But it’s all deadly.

Now of course comes another game, which is labled MyePets. That’s My “e” Pets, not some kind of clever phonetical play on words. Just incase you were wondering why the fuck they spelled My with an E.

Now, as if we haven’t gone through enough examples of totally bastardizing any original vision that anyone ever had for Virtual Worlds by not only using and abusing the idea of RMT, but wholly designing entire games around it to exploit children (I’m sure Richard Bartle and Raph Koster are currently rolling around in their communal grave that we MMO players made them after PKing them for various system changes), a new example arises. As I’m sure one would every day when it’s this profitable and easy.

However, as seen over on Matt Mihaly’s blog, this one has an amusing twist.

Apparently, this game plans to have children spend more time with (and buying things for) their E Pets by killing their real pets.

Yes that’s right, they’re encouraging children to buy chocolate snacks and feed them to their E Dogs (which are the only kind of E Pets, so it can’t be argued that this was really intended as a kitty cat treat).

Well, when designing serious virtual worlds, one must struggle with the balance between kewl loot and more practical equipment. Maybe this is the equivalent of dropping big, glowing red swords from rats. It’s exciting. It’ sexy. It’s a hell of a lot more likely to sell than 80% ash content Senior Formula Canine Biscuits.

Except the kids have to buy it. And it kills their dogs.

And you wouldn’t want to kill your MyePets dog too, right kids? STOP BUYING IT TREATS AND IT DIES.

Video of it being slaughtered available for $9.99.

The last two comments do not reflect actual game features. That I know of. In this game. Yet.

Now where’s that fucking graphic artist… I need a cute animal with big eyes to say that so it doesn’t sound so bad.