The Anti-anti.

All the simple forms addiction takes.  Jonesing for drugs, gambling your savings away, sleeping with multiple partners (at the same time in some instances), and of course, alt-itis.  Alt-itis is a serious condition, one meriting the most serious attention.  If it goes untreated, it can develop into several mid-level characters of different classes taking up space on your home server.  In a real world situation, one would laugh at alt-itis.  What kind of illness is this?  Playing an online game too much?  Surely such madness is reserved to only the most self-absorbed of the world.  I would say you’re right, but then again, I’m not a psychologist.

I’m not trying to validate that my problem is my own enamoration with World of Warcraft and its ilk.  Rather, I seek to put on paper (err…whatever) my thoughts on a form of entertainment that seeks to actively destroy.  I don’t see myself quitting this anytime soon, I don’t see my life changing anytime soon.  Same job, same house, same addiction, same everything.  Staticity can be a good thing I suppose, balance is soothing in a Zen kind of way.  A pebble does not disturb the pond, and in turn the pond does not flood over the field.  Life goes on.  Life always goes on.

Anyway, its been…I don’t know how long since my last entry, things have changed…somewhat.  I don’t play The Matrix Online anymore, namely because of the alienation caused by the community.  The game was falling apart, we just left before the ship sank.  No playing of violins on the deck of the Titanic, no honor of playing as the old girl died quietly in her sleep, sloughing beneath the waves in a grand show of flash.  How we miss, those halcyon days of yore.  The days when the game meant something.  All that is that was and is no more.

I’m playing WoW again.  In fact I’ve leveled two Horde characters to 70, a shaman and a mage.  The shaman is currently raiding Black Temple on a semi-regular basis with our new guild Blackrock Cartel.  The mage is my fishing/cooking/bitch, so I don’t do much with him, but my afore mentioned alt-itis has spawned a plethora of characters on ol’ Kilrogg.  Keep an eye out for me.

Later bitches.
~22

It is 2am and I’m all sticky.

Not really….I am gonna be dinging my second level 70 in WoW this week though.  Draenei warrior on Dalaran, name is Tranna if you wanna help me grind.  If I had any innermost thoughts, I’d post them here, but then again…I don’t get paid to think.

MxO has been freaking out as of late, especially on Recursion.  Our LESIG liaisons have been missing for two months now…wait…I take that back, they logged in for a whole 2 HOURS the other day.  Not saying a word to Nighttrace (one of my factions guys) before jacking out.  I swear, sometimes I believe that they are trying to drive people away.  I can’t really complain though, I’ve not jacked in for over a month…I’m such a tool it isn’t even funny.

Debated buying LOTRO (Lord of the Rings: Online for the uninitiated) the other day.  Got some good faction buddies that play it, say it is pretty good.  I have my apprehensions though, I played in the beta and the combat was SLOW, when I say slow, think molasses, frozen in ice, in a glacier.  Perhaps work has been done, perhaps it is better, I withhold judgment until such time as I can try it again.  Buddy keys FTW.

Ow…my arm just started burning…must be my One Ring tattoo punishing me for doubting.  Meh, fuck you Sauron, fuck you and your Black Speech right in the ear.  I will kick you in your pointy metal head and you will fall down because you are very top heavy.  My…how stark everything is in the morning.  Work calls me at 5PM, late shift, I should sleep.

Later bitches.

~22

Temporal Dissonance is ma bitch.

MxO, my great catalyst. I’ve played MxO longer than ANY MMO I’ve been involved with. I love the Matrix universe, the philosophy, the action, the deep story. I love the game, the unique fighting dynamics, the people, the community. However, a rather recent development of the community has been malicious spite. To understand the Matrix online community, one must understand the genesis, which there is too much to go into here, and I can’t explain it all, so you’ll just have to put on your Imagi-cap and pretend for the sake of my own sanity.

Let me set the stage for you folks if I may do so. I play on the Recursion instance, I play as…Trikraft, one of the leaders of the faction The Mega City Department of Energy. We are a pro-Truce Machinist faction dedicated to preserving the tenuous peace that has been brittly forged by Neo with the Machines. Our antithesis is a far flung sect of the group E Pluribus Neo (which grammatically make no sense, but I’m not going there). I say far flung group because there is a faction or set of factions based on player made ideas of what the organization was going to be about before it was launched. You see there was a leak, and that leak was really just a name, and that name spawned this retarded bukkake of ideas that the E Pluribus Neo as was going to be set forth in the story were gonna be a group of terrorist bombers intent on bringing the world of the Machines crashing down into the dirt and dust. Unfortunately, this was not to be, and well, some people didn’t get the memo.

Pluribus Neo, Zionist EPN faction of Recursion, once exiled from the Organization by their own leader Kid (yes, the same one from the movies) has returned to spew forth the continued asshattery it was founded upon. The truth of the matter is that they completely stray from any canonical idea of what their own organization is about, and try to blaze their own path. More power to em, but this makes their force comparatively small in relation to Zionist and Machinist factions. They can’t claim victory through strength of arms alone, so instead they used whatever means they can to try and “win” events. This included…enlisting the help of their former liasion TaeCross (played by a sympathetic player named HymirWolf) leaking them information from private story forums, having other factions flip alliances so they can attack enemy factions in PvP, using god modded role playing techniques to bar other players from participating in story lines, griefing people to the point of making them want to quit the game.

I know what you may be saying at this point, “Waah, they do things you don’t like, waah.” Yeah, it sounds like bitching, but the best is when they have some little hollow victory and plaster it all over the forums as if they had overthrown the czar and committed the Bolshevik Revolution. It is believing your own propaganda at its finest, at least we Machinists don’t believe our own propaganda, instead we put it on other people. E Pluribus Neo’s propaganda isn’t even clever, its tired, dated, and frankly quite pedantic in nature. Since this is my blog, I will say these things, like them or not? Kiss my ass, I could care less.

Until next time……

Ciao bitches.

Smed has room to talk.

I saw a post today, a blog by the Smed. In case you don’t know, Smed is John Smedley, El Capitan Gran Poopoo of the Sony Online Entertainment good ship Lollipop. Basically, he’s the guy who makes your game his bitch. Oh yeah, before I forget, here that be the linky.

Basically he’s touching on an article that I have personally read about a man who quit World of Warcraft because he came to the realization that it was destroying his life, which I can see, I can totally see it because my life is currently being eaten alive by said games. That is beside the point however. Now, Smed may not be to blame for the Everquest addicts of the world, but mind you at one point, Everquest was the biggest MMO in the land. For the sake of holiness, they called it Evercrack. There were people who DIED playing Everquest, more than one. WoW does have the same dubious honor, but it all comes down to cycles. Every game goes in cycles, addiction is a very strong thing, a very, very strong thing. To compare an MMO to something as nasty as say….heroin, would be remiss, rather you take it in the same vein as anything that has an addictive side. The continuing, everlasting nature of such games brings about dependance, dependance on the feeling of being the best. Human nature.

Continual improvement is a base portion of human nature, we strive to be better than best, it is in our primitive brain to be the best at what we do. When we can’t be, we become obsessed to the point of being unhealthy. It isn’t just with the invention of MMO’s that we had this urge, MMO’s just took it to a new place, a somewhat dark and unhealthy place, but I think that possibly we will work beyond this, and if not, well….there are always support groups eh?

Oh, and that whole business about video games affecting people’s real lives, at least in the form of turning little Timmy into a mass murderer, isn’t wholly realistic. The only people who blame deaths via kids on music, video games, television, and movies are politicians looking to further their own agenda, and irresponsible parents who don’t parent, they set the box and leave the child to absorb. Parenting by proxy is your fault mom and dad. Stop giving your kids entertainment, start giving them attention. Oh, and let them experiment with pot, they’ll be better for it later…..but thats up to you mom and dad, at least I gotcha thinking.

World of No Sleep Beta Hypermax Gold Edition 2.0

I will be the first to admit, I was the among the biggest detractors of World of Warcraft (to be further known from here on out as WoW for the sake of my sanity). When I played City of Heroes the first time, I heard murmurings about it. Then when I play The Matrix Online, it became reality. I must say, first and foremost, I played WoW for a short time during open beta. I didn’t like it much to be quite honest with you, I found the interface clunky and the combat quite boring. This was of course in the early stages, and they say not to judge books by thier covers, but I don’t go to the library that much so I don’t listen to those people.

I have been playing The Matrix Online (which shall also have an anagram, MxO, to compete with the other anagram in a fight to the death on pay per view) for over a year. I’ve accomplished a lot in that game. Though in a game set in a persistent online world, it becomes hard for accomplishment to mean little more than a pat on the back and a trinket taking up valuable inventory space. I helped start a faction that became one of the primeirs of our server. I trained several people in the arts of PvP and missioning. I, and so many others, became forces in our own right, on the battlefields of RP and PvP, however, like all things, the road stops short right before you can hit the brakes.

I would like to take a moment to rant on Sony Online Entertainment (another anagram, SOE, I smell Triple Threat Match! Yus!). SOE, for those you don’t know, is a branch of Sony Pictures Entertainment that specializes in online gaming. What a movie company has to do with games, I don’t know, and frankly could care less. However, the brass that run SOE are beyond incompetent, when I say that, I point to recent travesties in the SOE gaming community, namely 3 catalystic, galvanizing moments in SOE gaming history. I’ll recant them for the challenged kids in the back of the room.

Catalyst number 1: The NGE – The Star Wars Galaxies new game experience. A fundamental change in the way that SWG (‘nother acronym) is played. Basically, before the NGE, SWG was more like a classic style RPG. You lock on one target, auto-attack, and queue up actions and special moves to be executed in order. The NGE changed it into some slightly retarded amalgam of FPS style fire modes and half-working special moves. While I can enjoy the NGE, I can see where the vets of SWG are so infuriated at the changes. After all, it had only been working successfully on a large scale without the NGE for an excess of 4 years, why change it? I don’t know.

Catalyst number 2 : SOE acquires MxO – Now, this one is a hum-dinger. The Matrix Online was developed by Monolith Software out of Texas, and published and ran by Warner Brothers Entertainment. It boasted a whole host of innovative features. Integrated AIM chat so you could talk to people out of game without needing a seperate client. A full time Live Events Team that acted out the storyline and included players in the works. Interlock combat and wire-fu action. All kinds of nifty buzzwords. Under Monolith, life was ok in the Matrix. We had the occasional live event, the player base was relatively happy on 9 servers (including 2 EU servers for our friends across the pond). Then came the news. It didn’t sell as well as intended. Critics thought MxO was mediocre and not very polished. MxO managed to stick around for another 4-5 months with WB before they decided to cut thier losses, because you see, in secret, WB was forging a Master Ring, one Ring to Rule Them All. This one ring was a DC Comics MMO, also being developed by Monolith, and SOE saw the Precious and they wants it.

With that in mind, WB makes a deal, they’ll give SOE the DC Comics MMO, on one condition, they take this mewling bastard child called MxO off their hands. SOE takes the bait. MxO comes under SOE control in July of 2005. First thing, they axe 75% of the original development team, they retain the key players of course, and some database, art, modeling, and coding guys to teach their new staff, and they keep on the well known, well-liked community manager Walrus as the familiar face of customer service. Then, they axe the live events team. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, except one thing, MxO has no static content whatsoever. By axing the LET (anagram number…..bah…I forgot) they have eliminated almost 90% of the game content in one fell swoop. SOE is left with a gutted shell of a game, in the sake of saving a couple thousand bucks a year.

The player base is fuming, there is nothing to do at level 50 but PvP and grind lowbies. There are people on servers with so much money that it breaks the economy because they have nothing to spend it on. Then comes the third bombshell. The player base isn’t large enough to support 9 servers. So all the servers are going to be merged. You think to yourself, “Oh, maybe into 5 servers, 2 normal, 2 hostile, 1 EU maybe.” *SMACK* That is what you get for thinking nubcake. 3 servers. Total. Yeah, I thought the same thing at first as well. So now you have 9 seperate servers with their own stars, thier own stories, and thier own environments being compressed into the space of a small apartment building. Problems abound.

I know you kids are getting a headache from all this reading, so I shall continue this sad story at another time. Until then, get some sleep, you’re gonna need it.

Database, shmetabase.

My blog has been moved here, since my web hosting company is starting to hit me with the ol’ Database is too big stick.  I’ll be reposting old blogs here shortly.