I HAS PC

I am enjoying WAR. It hasn’t quite turned out the way I had supposed originally (or even beta tested) but it has enough good to stick around for a while to see how it all turns out. This little piece is going to comment on where I think WAR went wrong, but not in any micro or specific ways. More of the general attitude and design decisions from the top down which has put the game in a precarious position. A position they put themselves in but am glad to see they are making the move. MMO developers have a giant elephant in the room that they ‘don’t want to compete with’, but rather expand on the space that WoW has made mainstream. The MMO development cycle isn’t much of a mystery – see who is in the market, see what they do, and build from both their successes and mistakes. The mistake that WAR made was confusing what made WoW a success and what makes WoW a failure. They got it all backwards. They developed WAR with the good of WoW for the players, and the good of WoW for the company. These two things are competing resources and a delicate balance is much needed. What is often good for the company isn’t always good for the players – players want change with their new MMO’s. Let me further explain, after the break.

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 People love their Macs. Obviously I love my PC. I do have one Apple product I absolutely adore, and that is my iPhone. I used to have a Blackberry but find the full web functionality just superb in comparison. I drive a lot for work (for example, yesterday I drove 3 hours to have a 2 hour business meeting, than drove 3 hours home) and I did the arduous task of ripping all of my purchased CD’s and loading out a cool 1000 songs on my iPhone to make those long drives more enjoyable. I recently relocated my home office from spare room to basement, and going through my random box of computer junk and I came along a couple of beacons of shining light – not one – but TWO iTunes gift cards! I received them at a wedding a long time ago (one for myself, one for my wife) and was pumped. I haven’t updated my playlist in quite some time so here is the chance to download some new tunes before my big drive.

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Damn you, YOU, who sent me the Blizzard scroll of Resurrection. Did you do it because you missed me? Did you do it to get phat xp rewards? (they still giving those out?) because I am a cynical blogger now, surely, it must be to taunt me. Taunt me after reading my last near brush with WoW death (erm.. life?) and sure enough in my inbox, sitting right now, is 10 free days waiting for me. No Paypal fiasco, no hobo-sleep-interrupting wallet retrieval, just 10, free, painful/glorious days of WoW return. When I first  received it in my inbox I smiled, then groaned, then smirked, then hrmpf? followwed by a mmmhmmmmm. I wish I had the video of it to share with you. I haven’t cashed in that chip yet but it did remind me of the other few times I tried to “go home again”. I wouldn’t classify them as successful.

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Going to write a BIG fat disclaimer here as it involves the current American Presidential campaign. I have American friends who are the staunchiest Rebpublicans and diehard Democrats alike – and I have been a part of how any sort of political discussion can anger one or both camps. Bless you for your beliefs, and I just found this extradordinarily funny and wanted to share. Group hug and good luck on the election.

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By “cow”, I mean “wallet”. I know, I know, it was very obvious to you all from the get go but I have at least 2.2 readers that wouldn’t have understood it so clarification was necessary.

I have rambled a lot about WoW lately and what I dislike about it and how I don’t want to give them my money. Like a two bit crack whore I almost broke down yesterday and resubscribed. I mean, my characters have been dormant for months and I had thousands of gold on my bank alt – what if my account was hacked? What alts DID I have when I left? So many important things crossed my mind and I actually went into my account page, hit the gigantic neon flashing “resubscribe NOW! NOW DAMN YOU!! “banner at the top of the page, and as fate would have it – my wallet was outside in my car. (I can leave it there. With my keys in the ignition. And the windows down. I live in Canada). Wow, that was a CLOSE one! OOOH wait, whats this? PAYPAL option? I have a PAYPAL account! Certainly my Paypal account is much easier for me to access RIGHT NOW instead of walking up the stairs out of my basement office, putting on my slippers, walking out to my car, disturbing the poor homeless guy who lives there (nights only, and he pees on my front lawn out of respect instead of the back seat), retrieve my wallet, and walk ALL THE WAY back inside. Wait – then I have to punch in 16 digits AND an expiry date. Pay Pal it is.

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There is an urban legend in the restaurant industry that often quotes a study with the following conclusion:

“Over 90% of Employees surveyed said they would steal if they were guaranteed they wouldn’t get caught”

I don’t know of the study, and can’t google-find it, and if you know if it is true or a lie please chime in. Regardless of the factuality of that statement it seems reasonable in its truthfulness. While we all pretend to be good little people (and many of us wouldn’t do it) if you picture the poor little employee who hates his job and his employer who makes bajillions of dollars, I can see how it would be hard for a lot of people not to under those circumstances.

This analogy easily transposes into the gamer and the big bad developer relationship. Gamers don’t want to spend money to support million dollar developers, because they are evil. Because they are evil it is okay to pirate their games. You can pirate, easily, and you won’t get caught. If you do somehow get caught nothing bad will happen to you. So why not pirate? Rhetorical question, before the morality arguments ensue. Developers use piracy as an excuse for lost revenues and the validaty of those arguments range from rediculous to maybe-somewhat-truthful. The counter arguments have been hashed, rehashed, re-rehashed, and re-re-re-rehashed that it isn’t even worth discussing anymore. We are at a stalemate as consumers with our entertainment partners. They want more, stronger DRM, to which (vocally, at least)  we tell them legitimate consumers won’t play. Developers are in a no win situation. Develop a game with DRM and lose consumers. Develop a game without it and lose sales. I discussed the possibility of a new purchase model that would only work on PC games sometime ago, somewhere, and want to discuss it again. Maybe we can design a program that will save PC gaming. If it really needs it.

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Just a big tester-ola. Move along. Nothing to see here.

I haven’t written much on WoW here because I don’t play the game anymore. I recently patched it again after chatting with a WoW friend on ghat, who helps me out with this site, and another who is hiding anonymously in gchat from an internet stalker (true story. Yay interwebs.) I broke up with WoW about 6 months ago (hey, its ME, not YOU) and to be honest, I horribly miss the people there. Wait, let me clarify, I miss my guild and my friends there. The rest can go (and are on their way) to hell. I don’t mean that in the literal sense of eternal damnation – I wouldn’t wish that on anyone – but the community is, to put it nicely, garbage – except for the select group of good people we choose to build walls with around our guild (via the guild application process) and make WoW as little of a MMO as possible (which it already is), and more of a SFMO (Select Few Multiplayer Online). I have had these upcoming thoughts for awhile, and when I was directed to this post through a link it all but secured my thinking of yet another revenue stream for Blizzard. One I would happily pay.

Let me rent my own WoW server. Charge me $300 a month, I don’t care. I can collect donations (a la Battlefield 2142 servers) from my clan and group mates. Friends of mine that can’t afford to donate, I’ll cover the $5 a month for you. I would rather game with my friends who are down on their luck than say goodbye to them online until they can find a good job again. Right now, I won’t pay Blizzard $15 a month because of the things I dislike about their game. If I could have my own WoW server, and make it a happy, positive place for those who I care to game with, you can take my money.

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Yay?

Something else to get overly excited about and (hopefully) not dissappointed in the end. Can’t wait to see what they do with it. I was a bit skeptical with Bioware at first, as a first time MMO developer, until I read the below in their FAQ

“Another member of the Community is harassing me on the website, what can I do?”
Simply contact the Community Team and give us specific details on what’s going on. A member of the Community Team will contact you as soon as possible.

Seems they totally understand the MMO community already, so I feel much better about it all.

I always wanted to do an internet comic. Only two things held me back.

1. Artistic Talent
2. Sense of Humour

I know, those sound big, but really, this is the internet where anybody can almost fake anything.

I was waiting for a WAR model viewer to be done similiar to the WoW one to cover the ‘Artistic Talent’ issue. I sketched out my first 12 comics, which dealt with the cut classes, and waiting for the tech to make this hobby dream of mine a reality. With the announcement that the cut classes are coming back in (which I do have comics planned for as well) I don’t have time to do it the way I wanted, so I am releasing them – “as is”.

To see the first two and read about how much I make fun of myself for doing them, click here.

• Hammerer Up
• Black Guard Up
• KOTBS Up
• Choppa Up!