Saving the world in string bikini

Spinks wrote that she does not want to play Runes of Magic, because the front page shows women in a "skanky" (whore-like) outfit. She does not want to support such game.

I wouldn't like to play such game either, despite I'm a male and I live in a relationship since 5 years (that's closer to the dreaded 7th year than to the first date).

So why do I don't like the possibility of spending my time in a world populated by sexy women? Am I a feminist, hating the "women pictured as sex tools" thing? No. I think feminists are stupid, and there is a reason why every successful women start their speech about such topics with "I'm not a feminist but..."

The reason is very simple: if the game was real, if I was a druid going to battle against the forces of evil and the cost of defeat would be real death, I'd prefer to move out with the ugly blue women of Storm Peaks, than these maxed make-up skilled, exalted with Victoria's secret girls, simply because the blue women seem to be able to fight.

When I play, I want to be immersed in the game world. I don't want to role-play, I want the game make me role-play. When I play counter-strike, I don't have to "roleplay" a terrorist. I am a terrorist, sneaking in the slime with an AK in my hands towards the bomb placing spot. If I'd stand to chat with some friends, I'd be fragged. I don't sit on the bomb because I "roleplay suicide bomber", but to protect it from defusing = winning the game. The game makes me act like a real terrorist.

The pictures of super-sexy girls in a game is equal to shouting "the game world is a joke, the point is to hang out, to socialize, and to jerk off on screenshots, paying us in the process". The developers don't take their game seriously. They don't care about monsters, battles, the whole "saving the world" thing.

When the task itself is easy, and people get bored so much that boosting random idiots seems fun, they automatically turn to random social actions. Sexy-seducing actions (without the real sex) is just another pointless social activity, aimed to increase the person's feeling of self-worth (all the girls/boys want me, I'm awesome).

Hard tasks make the people focus on it and force them to act as an effective team. Have you heard sexists jokes on firstkill attempts (on a meaningful boss)? No, you only heard "add", "interrupt", "tank change" and such. Have you seen blood elf tits on world first videos? No, because the viewpoint is so far that the whole character is just few pixels.

The feminists are stupid because they expect the men to abandon some joyful activity without any reward. Why would a bored man stop making sexist comments when that's the best part of his day? Pointless social activities are inevitable consequences of a pointless life. The successful women get little-to-none sexist abuse, simply because they are in a success-oriented environment and men there have several reasons not to make sexist abuses:

• They are doing their job, have less time (and reason) to do pointless activities (including, but not limited to bad sexist jokes).
• Since they need the work of their female coworker, they are focused on that. Being sexy or not is irrelevant compared to doing her job or not.
  
• Since they value her work, they don't want to risk losing it over some stupid drama, so they rather don't make offensive comments of any kind against her.
• She is not dumb, she knows that she can sue them.
  

Doing challenging, success-oriented activities automatically create an atmosphere where social activities are irrelevant. This is the best protection for socially undesirable/undervalued people. Jesse Owens could be the part of the Olympic team in an era when "only white" signs were everywhere, simply because he was fast and losing him could cost medals to his team.

The game which advertise with characters dressed as whores say that "it's a social game, there is large space for pointless social activities here". I don't want to play such a game.


PS: I found the avenging wrath animation for Blood elf females in T9.

Sitah and Helcsi

With my girlfriend we set up a little research about human behavior. While it was in WoW, the results has nothing to do with spell rotations. It's about the people playing, not the game.

The place is Warsong Gulch, lvl 19. Why? Because twink PvP is free of "farmers". No one goes there to get Hateful Bracer to be full epic, or because he is bored and has nothing else to do (simply because he does not have a twink). There are only two motivations possible:

• He wants to win a PvP match
• He wants to gank non-twinks
• +1 he has no clue what's going on, just see a daily quest and join

The plan was set fast: I started Ghosttob, the healerpriest, she started Helcsi, the flag carrier bear druid (ignore the head item, damn fish doesn't bite). It was a simple plan: we get in, get the flag, walk home, occasionally send a /kiss to the desperate twink rogues who damage less on her 1600 armor furry butt than my renew heal.

We failed badly. If you check Helcsi's statistics, you can see 15/29 victories. That's barely more than 50%! What happened? Usually the following things:

1. We went for flag, spammed "we go for flag, defend ours"
2. We got the flag
3. Someone got our flag (as no one defended it)
   
4. We carried the flag to the top of the building
5. Someone carried our flag to the top of their building
6. 10 minutes passed
   
7. Random players came, couldn't do significant damage on her, I wanded them to death
8. 10 minutes passed
9. Random players came, could do moderate damage on her due to the "flag carrier's weakened" debuff, I wanded them to death
10. 10 minutes passed
11. Random players came, killed her due to the "flag carrier's weakened strongly" debuff

Optionally the same thing happened with their flag carrier. Practically the outcome depended on which side had an able bodied player who cared to climb to the top of the building after the 100% flag carrier debuff.

OK, we can set the "funplay" theorem: most players don't give a damn about flag or winning, they just want to gank. To disprove them, behold Sitah (and her faithful lynx, Szilvia). The new plan was defending the flag, in our flagroom. The results were stunning:

• 32/40 victories (80%!!!), in the same battlegroup, same times of day where Helcsi had 50%
  
• 500 honorable kills in 30 matches.
• 100 of them were flag carriers.
• 3:0 victory on the first match, 21/40 altogether
• 66 PvP deaths and 750 PvP kills
  
• Fun achievements like kill 20 enemies without death, return 5 flags in one match
• Usually #1 or #2 on damage charts
• 29/40 #1 on killing blows

So there goes the "funplay" theorem. Defending the flag seems to be the best for killing enemies, as they are alone or with 1-2 buddies, and they run with flag instead of fighting back. You have time to drink between battles, you can LoS them easily, the healer could position out of their sight, reinforcement from the GY comes fast if they are too many. If we assume that "ganking is fun", then there is no better place than our flagroom. The only occasion when it wasn't a gankfest is enemy twink premades coming in 5+ vs 2 of us.

The funny thing was that another stall could happen, as more and more joined us in the flagroom, making it impossible to get and giving everything else to the enemy. They happily defend the flag, while they never-ever do that when they should: when Helcsi was bringing the flag. After that, we were focusing on this behavior: when Helcsi ran flags, we noticed that 1-2 uninvited sidekick joined us, causing nothing else than getting enemy attention. Practically anywhere we went, some came along (even if we purposefully went to pointless, stupid places or running big circles).

Of course it's not us who had some special attraction. Between incoming wannabe flag carriers, I watched the map, where the teammembers are just little dots. It became obvious that they have no other purpose than joining others. If someone was left alone, he went for the nearest friendly, ignoring directions, objectives or even enemies. Like some badly scripted bots they behave.

Surprisingly, the good-geared twinks were those who had some purpose, even if it was just ganking. Some went for the enemy GY. Others for the flag. But most players followed nothing but their dumb script: "join the group".

WSG is pretty simple: take flag or defend flag. Even if someone is completely new to the game, should attempt to do one of the above. But no. They ignore the "game reality" and use their normal social rutine, although in a battleground it's anything but useful: be with others. Note: being in a pack does not increase survival chance as they don't buff, heal or protect each other any way. The enemy just run back to his buddies and then the two zergs clash.

Being like others, being with others are very strong in social people. This explains their sick tendency to follow fashions and do every stupid things what others also do (like camping eggs or bringing orphans to BG while they hate it). So goblins, feel free to abuse this behavior for your advantage any way you can.


Oh, forgot to mention (since it's obvious to anyone who tried it): any kind of group coordination is impossible as they don't respond to tells or /bg. I mean not reject the suggestion, they don't say anything. They don't give the impression of being able to read English in an English-speaking realm. Only a few twinks seems to be able to communicate (even if it's restricted to "I'm here to farm kills").


About WSG, the success of base-defender tactic is not a miracle. As the players have infinite number of respawns, the only resource the teams have is time. If you kill an enemy, you take the respawn time from him. Also he loses the time running from the GY to wherever he wants to be. If you defend the base, the enemy has to run all the way from the GY to the other end of the map. You also don't just kill random idiots, but wannabe flag carriers. The random idiot, who just kill midfield is worthless, so killing him is equally worthless. Unless the flag carrier is dumb enough to try to run in the middle, the random idiots never even encounter anyone else than other random idiots and have no effect on the outcome. Even if they win every battle, all they do is get below the GY and gank, ignoring the game.

He plays it wrong

Every time I show a stupid behavior, I get the joker argument: "it's fun for him" or "he plays the game he wants". Actually "I do what's fun" is equal to "it's right because I think so", just sounds better. However this case I can say "he plays it wrong" without debate: Professor Beej describes (part2, part3) his playing as "addiction". Being addict is surely not fun or the "right way", so this time I'm safe from the "I do what's fun" trolls.

The current statement of medicine is there is no "game addiction" in the sense of alcohol or drug addiction. There are no detectable neurological or physiological changes in the body that compels the patient to carry on with his harmful actions and cannot stop without expert help. The "game addiction" is considered "lack of control" over his time spent.

I disagree. I think "game addiction" (playing unhealthy amounts, ignoring jobs, studies) is the consequence of "playing it wrong". There are lot of people who "plays it wrong" and they all suffer from it, even when they have the control to not play 15 hours/day. Such "healthy" people are feeling unaccomplished and empty after forcing themselves to log off. While they keep their play time limited, they spend it in a "wrong way" upholding the bad feelings. So playing for them is "not fun", despite they obviously claim the opposite. (see also "I smoke for fun, I could quit anytime").

"Playing it wrong" has two major points and Professor Beej declares them both. He obviously finds them true, and believes that other things cause his "addiction". With his pretty good words:

• "The driving force in these games is a quantifiable increase in the power of your character through various types of progression"
• "MMOs directly link this character progression with time spent in-game, thus making casual gameplay impossible if a player wishes to experience the highest levels of the game"

I claim that anyone who finds the above statements true:

• spend most of their free time ingame
• feel unaccomplished "wish I had more time"
• unable to limit their game play without forcing themselves (and feel bad about it)
  
• some of them are "game addicts", playing so much that it hurt their job or studies
• unable to ever become (real) casual, they either quit the game or carry on with the above style
• and above all, they are not really successful players
  

At first let's prove that the two harmful beliefs are factually false. The conscious point of any games is to win them. There are other points like improving skills (game or social) and to spend good time by gaining the state of flow ("having fun"). The sub-points cannot be achieved without trying to win, and (unless the task is very hard, which is unlikely in a popular video game) trying will lead to winning.

There are no "you won, game over" screen in MMOs. This is not strange among games. You cannot permanently win tennis either, even if you win the Grand Slam this year. There will be a next season. This case the "winning" can be described at your position on the chart of competitors. If you are on the top 100 list of tennis players of the World, you pretty much a "winner" in tennis and commonly perceived as a "great tennis player"

In video games, there are similar lists. In case of PvP, the arena rating places you somewhere on the spectra of players. In the top regions, armory directly places you on the list as "111th" or "2nd". In PvE, the wowprogress list tells how big percentage of the raiders did the achievements you have. While it's pretty much arbitrary, I think we can agree that being in the top 5% is pretty nice and we can call the person a "winner" of that style (PvP or PvE).

Have you seen any "character power" mentioned above? The belief in "gear progression" is a nonsense. Gear is a tool for winning. You would laugh on the tennis player who sais "I have a $10000 tennis racquet, a $5000 tennis shoe and a Vera Wang designed tennis skirt, so I am an awesome player".


The second statement is equally nonsense, even if someone falls for the first one. I play 4 hours a week with my main. 3.5 spent in Ulduar, other 0.5 spent enchanting the new gear, writing macros. Granted, I live on savings now, but if I would make the raiding costs on the fly, it would take 1.5 hours to get the weekly 5K. So I would spend 5.5 hours / week (50 mins/day average). With this time investment I have the "I choose you Steelbraker" achievement (top 2%). I merely maximize the utility of my time. I do what I'm best in (making money fast) and for it I go directly to the days when the firstkill tries will be.

The raiders of my guild raid all 4+4+6=14 hours/week and I assume without AH it takes another 3-4 hours of dailies to get the consumables/enchants (if the guildbank wouldn't provide it for free). So they are still below 3 hours/day, far from anything unhealthy. They simply couldn't get more gear by playing more, as Ulduar is already empty.


The two bad statements together make a deadly mixture as you can spend infinite time for a goal you have not set. If you just log in to do something, you can keep doing different things for long-long time without feeling of real accomplishment (as without goals it's impossible). Since the game is designed to give you rewards, you will feel several minor accomplishments, like "look I'm richer than yesterday", "what a cute pet I got", "I've finished Sholozar Basin!". Due to the second statement, you increase time spent in the hope that it will provide accomplishment, and it does! 2x more time, 2x more minor, meaningless, empty accomplishments.


The way out of the "game addiction" is simple. I mean not simple as "just don't smoke anymore", but really simple: set a winning goal like "be in the top 200 in 3v3" or "get the FL+4 hard mode achievement" and use the same (unhealthy) amount of time towards this goal, instead of just doing random stuff. Before starting any game activity, ask yourself: does this bring me closer to my goal?

• does leveling my 5th alt gets me closer to Orbituary? No. Then I don't do it, I work on my main.
  
• does getting "explore Ashenvale" achievement gets me closer to Orbituary? No, so I work on really making my main ready.
• does doing another 5-mans gets me closer to Orbituary? No, as I'm already wasting badges on +XP gear for alts.

By excluding these time sinks, 50-70% of your game time saved without any loss of progress, just by setting a goal.

Now "sick statement #1" comes back and says "you need more gear for FL+4! Go farm gear!". Sick statement #1 is a strong belief, as it's supported by the peer pressure from equally unsuccessful players ("we are not geared for Ulduar yet"). Here comes the goblinish trick:

• Fact no1: those who have the achievement you want surely knows how to do it
• Fact no2: if they done it more than 2 times, they probably could boost you through it
• Fact no3: therefore if you could get into their guild you could get your achievement
• Fact no4: they decide who they invite, there is no universal invitation process

So, all you have to do is send them an apply and ask them to explain in a couple of lines why they rejected you if they did. Their answer set your course:

• They are full on your class/spec: go to another guild, or switch mains
• You don't have raiding experience: ask back what raiding achievements they need. Apply to a lower guild, that does only that (probably a Naxx25+siege guild)
  
• You are ungeared: ask back what stats they need and go to wowhead, see where you could get the proper stats. Tip: in Naxx25 and siege
  

Now you have a short-time working goal. You can focus your time to this sub-goal. As soon as it's done, you can go back to applying to a guild having your goal achievement. What about gaming time? Soon it will be limited by other people and game mechanincs, I mean you can only get closer to achievements or gear when your guild raids (or your team does arena), and you can't kill more than one Yogg/week (who has loot). Being online other times simply cannot help you at all to get closer to your goals. So you won't feel it important (or fun) to be online such times.

This process gives maximum time efficiency: feeling of real accomplishments in short time. No more "addiction".


Note: the two sick ideas are not random but coming from common social beliefs. Actually it's quite "normal" to believe in them, in the same sense as it was normal in the medieval ages to believe that the Earth is flat and the middle of the universe. People use to compare each other according to wealth. The guy with the $10000 tennis racquet is considered a "winner" just not in tennis but as "rich person". The guy with the $100000 car is considered a "winner" just not in car racing. So the social person automatically assume that having "epixx" (or bike, or Mammoth) will make others consider him a "winner of life". In the game it is true that with enough time investment anyone can get these.

However it should be obvious even to a social that you can't "win life" in a video game. You can only win the game itself. While other socials respect your $10000 tennis racquet, they will only laugh on your pixel-wealth.


Note to retards: I do not say that anyone without competitive goal (just to hang out) is addict or plays it wrong. I say that anyone who plays it with the goal of "gear progression" is playing it wrong.

Dalaran Gardens

If you don't know already, Ydraisa has her own blog now. Let's wish her good luck.

Now back to business shall we. After deciding to keep mining, she leveled it to 395, so she can mine in Northrend. She already sold all mined ores, of course some sold as bars. She knew alredy what lot doesn't: check bar price before list ores.

Her tailoring is now 426, meaning she can create ebonweave, spellweave and moonshroud time to time. She makes netherweave bags daily, creating a steady income.

She found a special market for her. She asked me not to reveal it in the blog, but there is no great secret. Just roll your tailoring list with LilSparky and craft the items that are significantly above material prices and you find similar abandoned items.

She turned her previous income into materials for further crafting without any hint from me.

And, of course against my judgement, she bought a mount: the flying carpet. She is right that she can spend her G the way she want, but it's still a waste. As you know I don't have any mounts besides a Frostwolf and the Swift Flight form, although I could buy all mounts. However she is damn right that she can spend a small portion of her wealth for vanity. She could also enchant her back now.

She also made the long term plan to level tailoring higher to be able to craft ilvl200 epics. While they are not as expensive as they were at their heyday but still 50-100G above their materials. The point is that many people lack the money to buy 400G materials to be able to sell an item for 500G. She has gold, she can do it.

As you can see, Ydraisa was always reluctant to do what I told her. I'm sure she had more money if she acted promptly. Am I sad because of it? Not at all. A robot is more effective in a static situation than a thinking human. But when things change, a robot just run into the wall. I have no doubt that Ydraisa will adapt when a patch turns the market upside down and last weeks top seller is today's "lol look at the noob!".

While there are some more things to do, the first apprentice project is closing to its end. Ydraisa is ready to find her success by the AH.

PS: anyone knows how could blogger be changed to give 19:00 instead of 7:00 PM? It's not the first time, that I set the time to 7 PM instead of 7 AM and notice I don't have the post up later.

Proper attitude towards friends

Anne wrote it in a letter:

After a 2 months absence, i came back to wow and needed 10k gold quick. I want to raid with a dps char, not healer anymore. So I logged in and listed glyphs. I list about 1000 glyphs, which takes some time. I undercut by about 20% (im on Bronzebeard, a server with so many scribes, it makes you scream, and many active and obviously using Auctioneer [you can tell by the prices which are like 15g 67s 25c, no one would ever have the patience to complete those silvers and coppers manually I think]). A good friend, that is also a real life friend, comes and says I ruin the market, buys a lot of my glyps (lol ! i go and make like 20 more...)

That's what friends for!


I got lot of "someone undercuts me, please help" letters, but none of them were funny enough for posting. They are rather sad monuments of human stupidity.

If you see moron activity in the game (other than simple failing), please send me a screenshot, let's give a purpose to the existence of these beings: to give us laughs.


Just arrived from Matthew:

On griefing

Spinks linked to a scientific report, and also commented it. I couldn't disagree her more.

The researcher started a character, Twixt on City of Heroes/Villains, went to the PvP zone and ... PvP! The players hated him so much to start message boards and forums dedicated only for abusing him, several of them get banned for writing abusive whispers to him, even such as "I kill you IRL".

The gamer community, even the friends of Spinks considered his actions "griefing". I always found it a strange thing, it's somehow related to "node ninja". Spinks finds the reactions normal and caused by game designer errors.

At first she blames the PvP being imbalanced, as Twixt had some kind of "ultimate" weapon. Like balanced PvP could ever exist in an MMO, where class skills and gear differences exist. Even in games like Counter-strike and Starcraft (where the player abilities are equal) there are ongoing debates if the small map differences make or break the game. In WoW it's officially declared that 1 vs 1 PvP is not and never will be balanced. Even 2 vs 2 is too hard to balance, so Blizzard tries to discourage players from doing 2v2 arenas.

I'd like to note that every character could talent into the same "teleport foe" ability that Twixt used, so they could use against him any time. Actually "teleport foe" is nothing overpowered, it is identical to the DK's death grip. What Twixt did was simply standing next to NPC guards and death-grip enemy players, so the guards kill them. Other people choose to not talent into this as it would be "twixt-like" = lowly.

Then she blamed the devs for not "fixing" the game according to the whiners. I blame this comment on Blizzard. WoW players are too used to get whatever they whine for that they find it normal. I think the CoH developers found it "working as intended" and did not changed their minds instantly for a few spoiled kids.

The game worked as intended. Players played it as not intended. Instead of trying to win the zone PvP (like WG), they tried to farm NPC-s for high XP/hour for their alts. He played it right and therefore he won. In turn, they hated him.

Social people uphold the belief that - by magical means - their social groups holds the power to decide what's right and what's not. When their expectations are not met, they call the activity "griefing", "ninjaing" or "asshattery". This is plain stupid. There are only two kind of activity: legal and illegal (cheating in games). Everything what is not illegal is legal. There is no such thing as griefing.

As always, there is only one true moral rule in the world.


His most important result is (read his whole article): "the social order within CoH/V seemed to operate quite independently of game rules and almost solely for the sake of its own preservation. It did not seem within the purview of social orders and ordering within CoH/V to recognize (much less nurture) any sort of rationality"

The funniest thing came from my favorite crybaby: "By teleporting (the action described) villains into a row of firing squad computer-generated enemies, he would give the other character debt. This debt would impede the character’s ability to gain experience by cutting it in half for a certain period of time. Thus, anyone who suffered from what Twixt did would pay for it by having their progress cut in half the next time they got the opportunity to play. A full portion of debt could take upwards of 3 hours of nonstop play to be worked off." Terrible! Causing damage to an opponent! Oh no!

In the dumb-friendly games like WoW, losing has no consequence at all (Oh wait, it has, you get 1 badge and honor for it). In real life losing in a team sport can make or break your next season's contract. In business, losing a big customer to a competitor can drive you bankrupt. If you lose in the high school basketball, you lose the shiny cup and being called "champ" by others.

Losing is part of the life. Be faster, be stronger, or be more careful. No one forced you to the only PvP zone of City of Heroes. "I am entitled for nothing but rewards" is another stupid social norm. You will lose sometimes.


There is one good question remains: why there is PvP in WoW? I mean if the social norms of CoH are anti-PvP, how come that the very "casual"-friendly atmosphere of WoW tolerates PvP? The answer is simple: unlike CoH, WoW does not allow cross-faction communication. For social people, expressing feelings make the other object "human". So if there are two identical pixel characters, but one of them send me whispers, I will consider it a human being and will respect its feelings during my actions. Well, I mean if I were a social person, I would. Would CoH remove cross-faction communication, the PvP zone would turn into a gankfest.


PS: for trolls asking "what would you do if someone corpsecamp you?" the answer is simply "there is a reason why the spirit healer is in the game". Oh, you can't afford it? I can feel your pain :-)

PS2: did I mention my favorite kind of PvP?

Note: Seth made a great experiment, read it!

Ydraisa's grind

Ydraisa started her own blog. It's an RP fashioned set of writings with little moneymaking potential, but lot of laughs.

I gave Ydraisa several advices:
Craft netherweave bags
Craft 28 slot warlock bag
Craft PvP cloak
Specialize into shadoweave tailoring (cheaper warlock bag, double ebonweave)
Craft azure and shining spellthreads (money and skillup)
Sell all the useless stuff she has
Sell the BoE epic she got for the price the market is willing to pay for it

She had a very smart comment about them: they are grind, as repetitive and non-creative.

She is damn right. Making money is grind. Finding out how to is not, but doing it is. I spend lot of fun hours perfecting my glyph industry and spent 3/week non-fun hours around the mailbox getting, crafting, posting glyphs.

Our difference from the elemental-grinders is merely quantitative: they grind for 100G/hour, we grind for 1000+G/hour. Ydraisa never grinded, so it's no wonder that she found most of my advices boring and seeked alternative, creative ways to make money. She made some really good deals. She bought twink items for cheap on /trade and sold them high on AH.

The only thing I cound convince her to do was selling Netherweave bags (they sell like candy) and selling old stuff collecting dust in the bank.

She rather leveled tailoring to 415 by crafting the cheapest useless stuff than by crafting sellable blues and sell them 1 by 1. She made around 1000G, that's really nice. However her sources were either limited (old stuff), or random (idiot on /trade, spotted by no competitors). She also found some really good trades, like crafting tailoring twink items. It seems like she spent more time thinking how to make gold without my advices than using them.

All my advices are kind of grindy. They must be, as any non-grindy advice would be "use your own creativity". Sites like this can give advices for high G/hour grinds, but they always remain grinds.

So maybe it's not "I'll do it later" that casued Ydraisa's low account balance, but rather "I want to do only fun activites now and grind later". But random ideas won't keep a steady income. Remember, today's great and unique idea is just another grind tomorrow. You must grind sometimes. So I keep bugging Ydraisa to not skip her grinds. It's better to grind in your own pace and create a security blanket, than be broke and forced to grind, especially since beging broke blocks the ways from crafting items as you can't afford the materials.

After long hesitation she decided to keep mining instead of dropping it for enchanting. While I'm sure that enchanting would be profitable for her, it's true that the RP servers enchanting market is far from optimal. Materials are expensive, scrolls are cheap as there are not many raiding guilds demanding enchanted gear. But, she leveled mining to 335, so no slacking here.