I feel like I’m levelling up as a blogger for today, I blog about 2 other bloggers arguing together XD Oh yes, regurgitating “news”.

Except…. I’m not quite going todo that. I’m not really going to comment on who I think is right or wrong. What I’m going todo is highlight afew things, be it faulty assumptions/perceptions. If you know me well, you may already know that when it comes to a proper debate/discussion I will quite happily play devil’s advocate but it’s more to make sure we’re addressing all the saliant points and to clear up and misconceptions than being a total arse.

Though I can be that too ;p

So then – onto the meat of the matter. I recently subscribed to a couple of podcasts, namely DDOCocktailHour and  Yakcast. Now I adore @Lessah and @Samius on DDOCocktailHour, so much so that I’m actually a guest on an upcoming show, Episode 10 I believe (yet to be released at time of writing) but Yak….Yak irks me alittle. I totally understand that everyone has their own style for doing their podcast and it’s all very subjectively, but it just does not gel with me. But, I’m going to keep listening for afew more eps because, 2 episodes is not exactly statistically significant

My position declared, so you can judge for yourself if I’m displaying bias as well as trying to be objective I will now get to the point.

Yak and Samius argued for the best part of two whole hours on Ep 21 of YakCast. I say they “argued” but it was more like Samius verbally trounced the guy. I would love to praise Samius for his uber skills (he is afterally, quite “a big thing”) but it had as much todo with some elemental failings on Yak’s behalf as much as Samius’ lead on experience.

Assumption One: Everyone is like me and I am like Everyone

Nevermind the fact that we are all different, we all play games differently (I can’t stand Samius’ xp-per-minute powerlevelling moments or @kudesnik2000’s zerg-alicious mission running, for example), bloggers and podcasters are in the peculiar position in that we are often held (sometimes subconciously) as the “voice of the people” for a particular game. A good example was Tabulablogger (my dear friend @shuttler), back in the good ol’ TabulaRasa days and for the first while, this was pretty true. But problem comes with experience. The longer you do this, the further you get from the main body of the players. It is a given that we have to be pretty enthusiastic about our game and so we probably play it more. The personality traits which lend us to blogging and podcasting also serve us well in being social players, making connections and going far (or as far as you want to) in the game. All this while, we are casting an sometimes critical eye on every aspect of the game, looking for our next big topic. We, and by extension our nearest contacts as most of the people we play with will be relatively like-minded are no longer representative of the playerbase. Yak repeatedly made the mistake that he and his group of friends were representative of the gaming population as a whole and from here stemmed most of his incorrect assumptions. I will bet solid money that at lot less than 10% of the population are regular perma-deathers, not the 90% 70% 30% that Yak would have us believe.

Assumption Two: I’ve been X, so I know everything about how the company works

I say X, because Yak claims two things. Both that he is/has been a programmer and secondly that he has been in some sort of management position. Unless those were both AT LEAST working on a “classic” MMO, in which DDO has it’s roots, or even better using the exact engine used to create this game, any specific assumptions he draws are mere speculation and prone to incredible inaccuracies. I, personally cannot speak for the management side of things but I did study Games Development at University. I have a Bachelors with Honours. I spent 5 years living and breathing that subject and I’ve been examining the “finished” articles since 2000. That’s 10 years people. A Decade. If he’s a programmer he better be a C++ programmer or he should get a slap. If he’s throwing out the “it’s easy to just code it in” lines when he’s been working Java on little client/server chat programs then he needs to take a deep breath and just pull his head out of his arse. The differences in programming in different languages can be as little as slight readjustment in how you think about the order of things to whole paradigm shifts. C++ (which all AAA games are programmed in, certainly all “classical” MMOs), is both a very old language (about 20 years) and a very messy one (it’s basically C with Objected Orientated gubbins bolted on, in short). This does not even take into account the relative skill of the programmers, nor the various constraints placed upon them when the game was written 4-6 years ago. That is an eon in games-dev terms. With a system has hideously complex (even if it’s coded perfectly to spec/design – which they never are, can never be) as an MMO, you cannot, absolutely Must Not ever be under the illusion that something will be “easy to just code in”. Especially when you have no, absolutely zip, nada, zero direct knowledge of the system itself.

That being said – the podcast as a whole was pretty informative. But maybe that’s just me and fascination with people and their reactions to things.  Yak managed to get a good bit of interest, with over 30 comments to that ‘cast on his blog and afew blogged replies to boot. For that I commend him for a job well done. I still don’t dig his style, though I know enough people do to make it worthwhile. I’ll still listen, as I like to think that I can give anything a fair chance. Which just reminded me that sometimes my oldest friends refer to me as Darth Harsh in an “debate” due to my Harsh but absolutely Fair attitude in such circumstances.

I also accept that people reading this may think I have no right to criticize and that it’s just an attack on Yak and I’m supporting Samius or I’m just another FanBoy. To these people I refer you to the long standing ideals of martial arts schools the world over since time immemorial. Ideals to which I adhere most strongly: Do not discount any source of knowledge. It’s paraphrasing, I know but it’s been said in so many different ways. I, personally, have learnt as much from 5 year olds as I have from 50 year olds. People come from different lifes, different experiences, perceptions and skill-sets.

And yes, I started this a comment on someone else’s blog, stopped and  thought “oooh that’s a blog post just waiting to happen” ;p

I’m a pretty lucky guy in some respects. Two of the things I’m thankful for are really two parts of the same thing. I don’t judge people. We’re all different; we’ve had different experiences and we have different values and weightings. I’m also surrounded by friends who broadly follow the same thought So firstly, thanks chaps (and chapettes) – you’re all awesome

That may sound like an oddly gushy intro but it leads me onto a topic that I find myself in discussion over again and again and again. Why do I, a fully-fledged member of the ever shrinking (hehe) sect of heterosexual males, so often play female characters in MMORPGs. Games where your choice in character is potentially very public and a long-lasting investment. Games where voice-communications are becoming more and more a standard feature.

I will typically, often brazenly reply with the oft-touted “I’d rather look at a cute butt” argument. This is not the reason. I’m just lazy and I know most people can’t be bothered to get into an actual intellectual conversation. That’s not a knock, it’s just an observation

The real answer, for me at least, is that I simply don’t see a difference. I play games, but I don’t see myself as the actual character in MMOs. In very immersive RPGs such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect my first playthrough will almost always be a me-like character. Certainly in his choices, if not his looks But in MMOs I don’t feel that same investment in the character itself. They are merely a vehicle for my fun.  They allow me to interact with the game-world and spend time with often very distant (physically) friends.

I do not spend afew hours playing a female character and then suddenly decide to go on the prowl for a cock sammich >.<

The question is usually asked by other guys and without sounding too judgemental, they often come across as somewhat homophobic or at least insecure during the course of the discussion. In my mind, computer games, especially ones as vast and social and socially significant as MMOs are just another form of media. Like movies or music, except that the player potentially has the leading role.

So I put this question to those who think it wrong for guys  to play female characters and indeed anyone else who wishes to comment:

1. Do you feel any less of a man when playing what amounts to some lines of code, hours of work and some pretty colours?
2. Do you have a problem with female singers or female leads in movies?
3. Do you have a problem with women playing male characters?
4. Is it better or worse for the female avatars to be “hot”?

That last one I ask because though I hear that “I’d rather be staring at a cute ass waggle for hundreds of hours” line alot, I really don’t get it. I’ve never looked at my char in a game and gone “phwoar, ain’t she a looker?!”. Maybe I’m just weird like that

My rather secondary reasons for playing alot of female chars (but not exclusively) are ones of cosmetics and taste. I primarily (almost exclusively these days) name my characters as Tepp-something. Starting with Teppo and Teppan, sometimes Teppot. Then I start running out of masculine sounding names. I’m onto Teppa, Teppi, Tepp (this just seems more feminine to me, but it could go either way), Teppy aaand the list goes on, much, much longer than the list of names for male characters.

The other point is that I’m a fan of Style Over Substance in my customization. I won’t switch to a new piece of gear that is just slightly better if it ruins the whole “look” of my character. Shock, horror! Yes, I am at least within shouting distance of my “feminine side” and have some small degree of style-sense. I have a great appreciation for the female form as a figure of beauty, not just sexuality and often in-game items just seem to look better on those outrageously modelled hourglass figures.

That and male characters in these games mostly just look like steroid-chomping beef-cakes who’ve had their heads made by a depressed sculptor exploring Cubism in the wake of a messy divorce.

Now I haven’t posted since I started playing Star Trek Online (actually for a good long while before that too), so I’ll give you a brief overview on my thoughts on it. It’s a “Good Game”. It isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. It needs the flesh out it’s content in a big way over the next 12 or so months. I hit max level with my main afew days after the EU launch (I was in head-start), so about a total of 10 days. Waaay too easy. But nevermind. I enjoy it thoroughly and I think it’s the lovely mix of sci-fi ground and space combat that does it for me

So they added their first Raid-isode the other day, by the name of “Infection”. It’s Borg centric whereby you have to disable a transwarp conduit bringing in Borg reinforcements then beam down onto a Federation Starbase in the throes of being assimilated, fight your way past hordes of nasty nasty sci-fi zombies to the Queen’s Lair.

Oh yes. The Queen. Or rather A Queen. The trick here – well I say THE trick, there are many – is not to fall in the “water”. I think it’s described as plasma coolant. It does a craaazy amount of damage that kills you in a second or two. So yes, you have to fight the entire circuit of the spacestation and down a looong, twisty, increasingly Borgie corridor, pass a halfway-house boss that used to be the Captain of the station and then you have this platformer of a Boss Room.

But that’s fine. I actually enjoy the slight absurdity of the encounters, the “challenge” of new content and of course the “phat loots” So yes, first things first, we tried doing this “challenging” 5-man raid for 4-men. 2 of which (myself included) were decidedly rusty after a week or so away and afew patches. So yeah – the space-bit was fine once we read the quest text and worked out what we were supposed to do The corridor fighting took quite some time. A couple of hours before we got our tactics sorted out. One more man would’ve worked out REALLY well >.< But kudos to our healer, as my Science Officer is very focused on debuffs and not heals. We would’ve died more than the 20-bajillion times we did without him XD Simply put – Damn You InterLink Nodes! *shakes fist*

So you’re in the Queen Boss Room and hopping around on the platforms, fighting constantly respawning Borgies. The key to this is going to every corner platform, punching the Borgies into the water (oh yes, you read that right ), then having 3 people simultaneously use 3 consoles to bring down the shields and upload a virus on the corner computers. These start individual countdowns such that you have to have all 4 hacked at the same time to bring the central shield generator’s shields down. You destroythat and then the evil flying Queen gets out and starts to bring down the hurt.

I feel I may’ve made that all sound relatively straightforward. It took us almost 5 hours total todo this Raid-isode (which I’m okay about – it was our first time, we weren’t well-equipped and a man down), 1hr 40mins of which was the zerging the last room, time and time again, trying to work out how todo it right >.< For future reference – do not start doing a Raid at 9pm. Or 10pm for one of our continental team-mates. He was a verrry tired bunny at work the next day.

But you know what? the loot wasn’t that good and the final peice of the pie?

IT DIDN’T BLOODY COMPLETE FOR ME! /RAGE

I just felt the need to get that out there. Don’t start me on the Sixteenth Hall in LOTRO. I’m just glad we got to the bit with my class quest in it. Thanks chaps!

To those of you who were getting redirects when accessing the site, I was the victim of a Wordpress hack because I had been a naughty boy and not updated this site in so long. Anyhow, I’ve removed the offending code and all should be well now. Please, please, please do not hesitate to contact me if similar issues occur. I have SOME technical pride, y’know?

Also a big thanks to @askgar for spotting the problem and pointing me towards a solution Cheers buddy!

Odds are, if you follow what I have rather optimistically named a “blog” then you are also aware of the chaps over at VanHemlock.com.  This is good, as they are probably my favourite regular podcast, spliting into a “what we’ve been playing” episode and a “news” episode (currently on hiatus) and as wonderfully British as they are, they do have a tendancy to come up with some very interesting points (we won’t get into VanHemlock’s intimate practical knowledge of UK Supermarket Security).

In their latest episode, they are prompted by the furore over Ubisoft’s latest plans for DRM – namely the needing a continuous, steady internet connection to play your single-player games – to have a little chat about computer game piracy.

Being a recently graduated student, still fresh in my mind is the exploits of many a student (especially the Computer Science ones) in various nefarious activities, including various forms piracy; be it music, movies, games or through various means such as torrents, rent’n'rip, swap-parties (not your partners ) so-on and so-forth.

The way I see things is that we’re always talking about the effect on The Industry, on Developers, Publishers and Retailers but we always miss out an important aspect. The Pirates. In this I mean the people who actually download the games (we won’t get into the other media right now), as opposed to those individuals that get down-and-dirty with the code and crack them in the first place or the distributors who get it out there into the public domain. So The Pirates, the users – some speculation goes into their motives for doing this in the first place. Maybe, as VanHemlock points out, they may have a misplaced sense of Anarchy or perhaps they feel they would pay for them, if they could but afford them or perhaps they keep telling themselves that they want to know what it is like before buying it. Afterall, we can listen to music on the radio or in the store, we can view a painting or watching a movie at the cinema before deciding to buy the DVD later, so why not computer games? They are, afterall, just another form of media/entertainment.

But once they get into the habit of it, what’s to stop them? I’ve often heard that some of the most habitual pirates are, in terms of demographical statistics, the best consumers. They spent the most money on this assorted media, even if they also supposed commit the most frequent crimes against it. Does this perhaps suggest that by immersing themselves in so many games (and lets assume they do, I mean it’s free right?), they start to develop a certain level of taste or preference. They understand and appreciate the difference between a good game and a bad game (in their opinions), and perhaps the work that must go into them. So now they appreciate them, they may not stop pirating but the chances are they are more likely to dig deep for some cash for “Good Games”. If out of solidarity if nothing else. Maybe they evolve into only Saturday Driving Pirates or somesuch.

Personally, I agree with VanHemlock, I don’t think that piracy is ever going to go away. There will always be someone who wants to crack things for the fun of it. I know I have and I will qualify that by saying that only on software that I have paid for and I deleted the modified files after proof-of-concept. Call it Intellectual Curiosity. And I’m a bugger for buying the latest and greatest games. But that’s besides the point. Piracy is here to stay and it’s a good idea to make it as inconvenient as possible for the mass market, thus maintaining the market, but not to go all draconian on us. StarForce did that and various other disc-checking DRMs and it did not go well for them. It’s probably better off keeping Piracy around about where it is now, if you keep pushing it deeper and deeper, it’s practices will only get darker and more dangerous for everyone involved.

As a last note I would like to say that though I can see where people are coming from, I do not condone Piracy. Of any media. These people have put time and effort into these products, these creations. Blood, sweat, tears have gone into these things. Often spiced with a sprinkling of divorce and broken families. They deserve they’re jobs and they deserve the small trickle of money they get from the publisher for every item sold.

A quick apology for not posting like I promised – my sleep patterns have cut-loose and cycled into oblivion now Uni is over. My bad.

Now onto the topic of this (hopefully succinct) post.

I’ve got back into WAR in a big way lately – moved onto the EU servers and got a couple of local buddies into it too. Firstly, let me just say I love the PvP in this game. If you want drop-in/drop-out 10-20min fun, you’ve got scenarios, if you’re just pissing about – go play PvE. If, on the otherhand, you want some good solid PvP, find a Warband and do some Open RvR. Maybe you’ll even take a Keep, right? WRONG. It seems that after T1 all the good adventurous people leave the game. All you get in T3 warbands is a kind of insipid cowardice that is not becoming of either side, especially the war-mongering Destruction. “Oh noes, there’s some Order there – lets run away”. Even if we outnumber keep defenders 2-to-1, if we don’t have 2 full WBs, nobody wants to try. It disgusts me.

I could understand if there was some risk to this. But the Death Penalty is laughable – it’s 10% reduction to HP (give or take) and costs a couple of silver to fix at a Healer – who you’ll spawn next to. I could understand if there were negligable rewards too. But the fact of the matter is that Mythic have spent some energy making RvR (and all PvP) much more rewarding since launch. There’s normal exp, Renown Rank (PvP level), Influence (for area-based rewards), high-value loot (chance of set-peices – I’ve seen over a dozen in the last couple of hours of RvR), Tokens/Medallions (collect them up to trade for set peices at vendors), “normal items” (Rare -> Common) and plain ol’ money. It’s not like you even have to run all that far when you die (and you will die at SOME point – though not as much as you might think) if your healers are halfway competant. Considering I’m playing a healer – if you’re in a WB with me, there’ll be at least one

I don’t care if it’ll take awhile – all that time we’re racking up rewards and sure, so is the enemy – that’s part of the game. There is no “I Win” button. This is a competition between players. It just strikes me that people want to join these warbands so they can say they only play RvR and that they’re “hardcore” because of it – but all they want todo is comp-stomp the 4 normal guards and 1 champion/hero guard at each of the small Battlefield Objectives. They place an inordinate value in “locking down” the zone for buffs.

What happened to the Player in PvP?

*deep breath*

I feel alittle better now. I’m told that these tactics are exactly that “tactical”. I’m not convinced. I’m also told it’s even more like this at T4. Which’ll be interesting because if the general mentality in MMO high-level PvP prevails – people will only want to have L38+, fully kitted out people in their teams.

*lesigh*

This is just a quick note to say no, I haven’t forgotten about this blog. I’ve been busy getting on with my last ever exam of my formal education (YAY!) and sorting things out for graduation and whatnot in 7 or so weeks time.

Inbetween all this I managed to catchup with the entire 5th season of Lost, which I enjoyed immensely. I have stumbled upon what may be The Answer to the mystery behind Lost which I’ve been hammering out with one of my buddies. They’ll be a substantial post on it going up over the next week I’ve never really been one to bother looking into this kinda stuff with TV shows but we’re really excited about this one mwuahahah.

As for games, I’ve been playing about of WAR with a buddy of mine – still thoroughly enjoying my healbot Zealot to his wild thrashing Choppa. OK, that sounds abit wrong but nevermind XD There’s also been abit of EVE happening, where I’ve finally got into an Abaddon, our Alliance has expanded MASSIVELY with the introduction of about 5-8 corps over the past week, so verrrry exciting times there.

But like I said, I’ll fill things in with abit more detail over the next week – I’m hoping things will quiet down now I have no further obligations

I often find myself return to games I’d played previously for a few weeks every year. I certainly do with Anarchy Online (my first ever MMO, not counting the likes of Aardwolf, Discworld and Terris MUDs) along with a couple of others including Dungeons and Dragons Online and Eve Online. Now I love my Sci-Fi, so Eve is a pretty logical choice for a static MMO for me but I could never quite stick with it. This was for a number of reasons, including the now infamous learning curve/cliff and the somewhat alien (to me at least) sandbox nature of the game. It was frankly overwhelming. So toe-dipping like the intrepid MMO paddler I am continued for some years. With the release of the Apocrypha though and some regular gaming buddies chatting about it on and off, I decided to take everyone’s advice and get stuck in with a corp.

In step EMC Mining Corp and the Puppy Reprocessing Plant alliance. Now I’ve been in afew corps/guilds/kinships/whatever in a great many games and some of them are just plain rubbish. The vast majority, from what I’ve seen. The best ones I’ve been in have involved people I know IRL, like my regular LotrO and CoX groups but EMC really bucked that trend. A friendly (and slightly unhinged) group of people, generally getting stuck in for the good of the corp and dispensing advice and goodwill as and when required. 

So I’ve been filling my odd hours (and an evening or two a week) with Eve lately. I’ve finally got into my first Mining Barge, a Retriever and I’m almost ready to fly Amarr Battleships (Style > Substance!). I’ll also discovered the joy of banter of the mining lasers in afew corp mining ops, and the utter boredom of a bad war dec’ XD

But if there’s one bad thing to say about all this, it’s this. Why can’t CCP realise a patch that doesn’t cause me to have to do a clean install?! Every single patch, it crashes during the patching process and corrupts my install >.< It’s might frustrating!

Oh and for all those who have missed it, here’s a link to the first part of Clear Skies ep 2 on YouTube:

If you’re at all into Eve Online (as I am) then you really need to check out the Clear Skies movies. Well I say movies. The first ep has been done (at about 40ish mins long) using a mix of Eve’s ingame engine and the Source engine (for interior areas) and is truly a masterpeice of community created content. More games need fans as devoted as this.

You can DL it for yourself (in all it’s glory), here.

Ep 1 can be found via the links in this post on the eve insider forums.

I thought I should probably mention this – seeing as every other bugger is on twitter >.<

Beta entertained me for all of 5-10 minutes (half of which was spent in the character creator, as limited as that was). Simply put: it isn’t a game for me. I wouldn’t consider myself “Hardcore” really, but I’m just not that casual. I get spurred on by content that I haven’t seen before and it gets me into the swing of levelling (my regular Monday Night LotrO group will attest to that) but this entire game just did not interest me. But then again – I don’t think it was ever aimed towards my particular demographic.

Have fun in there shuttie-boy!