Insta-Level would be a terrible waste

Jessica Cook asks, "which class will you insta-level?"
My response: None, because it's pointless.

Leveling a class takes a certain amount of dedication. It takes time. Less time than it used to, but 1-90 isn't a trivial investment. Not to be confused with I-90 which is currently undergoing a lot of investment. Similarly, gearing a class takes a certain amount of dedication. Less than it used to, but spending time in the Timeless Isle and running a few tiers of LFR aren't trivial investments.

As I see it, if I'm not going to have enough fun to level a class to 90, then I'm probably not going to develop it much at 90. In short, I'm going to be doing some short-term funsies playing. I can do that at level 15 just as much as at 90. I can run instances, BGs, do some crafting and fishing, and generally do a lot of what a max level character would do. If it's just to try out a class, then again, why not do that as I level up? You can get a decent feel for a class once you pick a specialization and leveling to that point is trivial.

You may have spotted the flaw in my logic here. No, it's not the subjectivity of my experience and perceptions.

Something useless cannot be wasted. If I can find no productive use for the insta-level, why not use it for something pointless? Why not snap my fingers for a max level... uh. Class. I lose nothing by it except the ability to use it for what I just used it for. If the insta-level is only useful to me for making a useless alt and I make a useless alt, then mission accomplished.

I just don't know which useless alt I'd make.

Perhaps someone else would find it useful for joining friends without burning vast sums of money on a server/race change. Suggestion for Blizzard: I would buy a server transfer if it included a race change, hint hint. Joining friends could justify the investment of time in leveling, but why not jump up and join them sooner? Of course by that logic, why not have recruit-a-friend give the new player matching gear? It's clear to me that friendship destroys all rules and standards. Friendship does not give meaning, but instead removes it and leaves nothing but nihilistic anarchy. That is why I don't like the insta-level.

Free to play

Back in the day I loved shareware.  I'd get these Mac Addict discs from my cousin after he'd used them, packed with demos and shareware.  Wonderful things, those discs.  The equivalent download would have taken days, even if it didn't get interrupted.  Who else remembers using some sort of download manager to be able to continue downloads after someone screws up the dialup or dsl?  Horrible times #firstworldproblemsfromadecadeandahalfago

Anyway, these discs were a way to play all sorts of games that I'd have never played otherwise.  I'd not have even known they existed.  How would I?  My friends weren't gamers and the internet was just an unruly adolescent rebelling at its neglectful father, Al Gore, before it gave up acting and went into porn.  Shareware games were nifty.  Play for a while, then if you like it, send someone a few bucks then they'd send you a license code to enter and viola, you'd have a fully-fledged game.

The closest we have to that is free to play games, and that brings us to the theme of this post: free to play games.  Act one: The fourth wall enters into a cash shop.  Act two: I'm cheaper than an ethnic stereotype.  Act three: Wretched hives of scum and villainy.

Act one
I like being in games.  Actually in them, where all that I experience is the game.  This is why I start all gaming sessions by first telling everyone in a five block range to shut up and if they're going to get injured, please call the ambulance now so it doesn't distract me.  Yet some games ruin this.  The shareware games did it with a variety of techniques, such as Hector in his invincible spaceship blowing you out of the sky if you'd played more than 30 days without registering.  That's why God invented afterburners.  Even games where you buy a box do this, inviting you to buy DLC at all moments.  I first ran into this in Dragon Age: Origins, where in keeping with the RPG rule to Talk to Everyone, I talked to a guy who told this interesting story and hey cool I should go to that place, but I don't have that DLC.  Huh?  Guild Wars 2 has its gem shop, but it's shoved off to the side and seems to be a shady side business than part of the real store, like when you ask the guy at Home Depot if they sell any Happy Plants, wink, and slip him $500 cash before he calls the police.

And then there are the free to play games.  At all turns you're reminded that you didn't give them money.  There is another bag slot, but you can't use it.  You can't check your mail because you're too cheap.  You would be able to level up, but not if you won't pay!

Act two
I really like that free and play parts, but that to bit in the middle causes trouble.  There are all manner of sources of free games.  Many of them are good games in their own right.  Many are not broken out of the box.  That leads me to my annoyance with many free to play implementations: they don't work so well out of the box that you didn't buy.  Why would I not pay good money for something that doesn't work?  If I'm going to not spend money, I want to get my no money's worth.

I could pay a little bit of money to get a fully-functioning game.  Sometimes its even quite inexpensive to upgrade.  If presented with such a package I might even buy it.  I give you money, you give me a game that works in its entirety.  Yet free to play breaks this concept for me.  My ability to hand over money is mentally hindered.  It's a free game and why should I pay for free?  Sell a man a fish and you feed him for a day; offer a man a free fish and an inexpensive fishing class and he'll get really pissed off and starve to death instead.  Because he's stupid.

Act three
What sort of scum plays a free to play game anyway?  No one I'd want to be around!  On one hand you have the cheap jerks who refuse to support a game that they're more than happy to play.  They have literally zero investment beside their time, which I presume they have in abundance and can therefore use to do a lot of whining about this thing that they refuse to pay for. The other group are the idiots who pay for a game that is free just so they can get another bag slot.  Why not just play a subscription game that never tries to get a few more bucks from you with seemingly-obvious features or ridiculous items?

Today's post was brought to us by a bunch of imaginary people at whom I am angry and me, who might be getting some pretty cool fanmail for people such an excellent writer but cannot open it because "you can't check your mail because you're too cheap."

A cage is only as small as the reach of your mind

My post the other day about quests received an interesting comment:

Such is the sorry state of our virtual world of Azeroth now. I have a pandaren level 10 stuck forever on the back of a turtle because she can't bring herself to help the Tauren invaders just because some mad old fool asked her to. She wants to go and heal the humans who are engaged nearby in a fight with her enemy, the lizard-men; but in their infinite wisdom, the gods have changed the nature of the medical supplies she can see on the ground, so that her fingers pass through them as she tries to pick them up.

When the world we explore is nothing but a backdrop for a series of quests, that are themselves nothing more than a meaningless series of button-clicks required for our guaranteed reward, our virtual world is gone, replaced by a games lobby and an internet chat tool; and then we may as well be on Facebook instead.

 I may be placing too much emphasis on the presence of the word "now", but its use suggests that something has changed.  In my reply I note that in terms of the game itself, almost nothing is different.  If anything the world is a little bit more interactive.  The quests which currently act as gates in the form of phasing once acted as gates in the form of prerequisites (and are still prerequisites).  The change is visual, but that's all that changed: it became more visible.

I could chalk this up to the usual blend of nostalgia and burnout, with a dose of old-fashioned Perpetual Downfall of Society.  That last one is, as I suggested, not new.  Just the other day I had to tell off an old man who attacked my generation, pointing out that PDS is nothing new: from the moment we invented the written word our memories have suffered, as if a single cognitive measure, taken in isolation, matters.  I refrained from throwing some Camus at his Dante because I had to get to work.  My point is that I think people take a sort of comfort in thinking that they were the correct generation, smarter than the ignorant previous and smarter than the impaired next.  This requires one to interpret old change as good and new change as bad, and to generally misinterpret and disregard anything that is new and good, or even old and good but retained by the next generation.

In the beginning Azeroth was a vast world.  It seemed limitless.  Now it does not.  This was not a matter of size; it has grown larger since then.  Nor can I attribute it entirely to transportation changes, for while faster travel reduces the perceived size, the actual land area to discover remains intact.  I could go anywhere (with frequent death) and do anything I could think of.

That last part is the key: anything I could think of.  Early on I did not imagine what else I could want to do in this world.  I'd done only a tiny fraction of what I could.  This had two effects.  One was that I had not run into a limit yet.  The other was that I could not imagine a limit.  I did not imagine that the sky ended, that the quests ended, that the raids could all be done.  These were all true, but since I did not know them and did not even imagine them, they were irrelevant.  I was running the infinite distance of a circular path.

Since then I've learned and my behavior has changed.  I do not run in circular paths.  I run out, find the edge, map it out, and then fill it in.  This means that very early on my mind has already filled the size of the world, so that all that can happen after are details, with nothing big to be revealed.  In my mind it looks like two strategies for filling in a circle.  Both start at the center.  One draws a line out to the edge and now the radius is known.  It then spirals inward, knowing exactly where it is headed.  The other starts the spiral at the center.  It will cover the same area, but it will do so not knowing where the edge is, what the limits are, until it reaches them.

This is part of why I like new genres of games (that is, when I can pull myself away from habit).  I don't know the limits.  I don't even know if it is a circle, so I cannot easily dart out to the edge and cut it off.  My meta-gaming is temporarily disabled and I regress to a simpler state of simply playing the game.  Eventually I may start to figure it out and move to the different fun of meta-gaming, but not yet.  It's a two-for-one deal with a new genre or significantly new game.  I haven't yet made rules for myself, so I get to break them.

Mists of Pandaria is an abomination, unworthy to be called a WoW expansion: Proof inside

Gourmet Kafa

A poop quest.  Of course.  All expansions must have them.  In one, we ate the results.  It was as it should be.

Then Mists of Pandaria comes along and just ruins everything.  All that is proper in the world of World of Warcraft is undone, destroyed, thrown out, as if it were nothing.  But it is everything.  Or was.

Gentlemen, ladies, ungentlemen, younger males, younger females, and females of less-than-reputable standing, I have a terror for you:

I won't ask you to gather it--kind of a mussy task, not fit for hero-- just mark it so we can find it easily when the mountain is safe again.

I thought it would be the kung fu panda that ruined WoW.  I was wrong.  It is the dung poo not-in-handa.

Is this really who we want representing [state that I do not live in and have never been to]?

We all know that Maine state senate candidate Santiaga is an orc rogue.  A female orc rogue.  But did you know that many female characters are played by males?  This raises the question, who is the real Santiaga?  Is it the woman running for office, the murderous orc, or the secretive man who pretends to be a woman?

Even worse, the pretend rogue has no glyphs.  This means that I am cruelly deprived of the opportunity to make jokes about glyph of pickpocket being evidence of government overreach.  But it gets worse than that.  I can't find her (his?) talents.  We don't know if the plan is to Prey on the Weak or to use Dirty Tricks.  There is Subterfuge that we cannot yet see, but I'm sure there is Anticipation and Preparation.  Or is there?

As we learn more it only gets worse.  The last thing he (she?) did was to fish.  Fishing achievements.  Are we going to see an open door policy at her office, or a closed door and a sign that says "gone fishing... in Azeroth"?  We don't know and she hasn't said.  Why does she refuse to give specifics on her choice of zones to fish, whether she has purchased Mists of Pandaria, and whether she has ever cosplayed as Chen Stormstout?  That last one is a fictional character who makes terrifying, possibly poisonous alcohol.

Who is the real Santiaga?  And why does her name sound vaguely Spanish?

Paid for by Google's free blogging service and in no one coordinated with any candidates.

Second-guessing ourselves

I've noticed that we as bloggers have a tendency to second-guess ourselves.  We have an idea or opinion and write it down, but before we hit publish we get all worried.  Did I forget a side?  A perspective?  Am I being balanced and objective or just claiming to have the absolute truth and moral high ground?

It's all quite discouraging to see that.  I say we should just go ahead and put out our opinions, right or wrong.  Just like relatives at a Thanksgiving dinner.  Excluding Canada, because they celebrate Thanksgiving wrong and are too polite.

Though I don't actually have much evidence for this.  There is me and my ten million drafts.  Probably less.  I should confirm that figure before I post this.  Sometimes I chat with Syl and she tells me that I second-guess myself too much, but that's probably just her trying to trick me.  You know how those Europeans are, all pretending that they don't speak English no matter how loud I talk and other things like that.

I don't want to just jump out on a limb and act as if my experience is common or representative.  This needs more analysis, more thinking, maybe some other perspectives, such as people who think we're underthinking, or single or triple-guessing.

This made so much sense before I started writing it.  Note to self, don't hit publish until you've given it a few days to work out the bugs.

One of Those People

My second-most hated activity in groups is silence in response to questions.  Questions like "why did you roll need on that?" or "can we do the boss over here?"  That second question could be answered with body language (pulling the boss over there), so maybe it's a bad example.  The first, well there's where it all began...

*swirling graphic with that sound that I can't quite type, like doodloo doodloo doodloo*

Despite having had it repeatedly demonstrated that every single other tank in LFD is a huge asshole or at best, total noob*, I nevertheless decided to relax a bit and queue as a DPS.  This was, of course, stupid, since dealing with random tanks is not relaxing.  It makes about as much sense as deciding to have a relaxing day at work by assigning all your responsibilities to a two-year-old child.  But I did it anyway, because I am stupid (note to haters: this is a great thing to take out of context, maybe reword to get something like "have a relaxing day at work by assigning all your responsibilities to a two-year-old child.  I did it... because I am stupid.")

*except the one DPS DK who I convinced to tank when the tank dropped and who did well enough and seemed to enjoy it, so I felt good about that.  And the warrior in that ZD run who told someone to take stairs and generally did everything correctly.  There were probably a couple other tolerable ones.  Of course then there was the DK who'd been assigned DPS (no idea how he was queued) and who kept using death grip, responding in /say with "I AM" when we asked if he wanted to tank and who, after we gave permission, then proceeded to do nothing different, including remaining in frost presence.

So there I was, in AN, which might stand for Azjol'nerub, which sounds spidery, so I bet that's it.  Things started off well, with me successfully recognizing that the bear was a druid and therefore I should do might instead of kings.  Then a one-handed mace with agility dropped, causing me to facepalm and wonder why they didn't make it an axe, seeing as agility is a shaman/rogue/hunter stat and all three classes could use an axe.  Also druids, apparently, since the druid tank then rolled need on it.  I told him that it wasn't a druid weapon.  And then asked for mark of the wild, since I'd noticed that my list of buffs wasn't sufficiently diverse (affirmative action gone mad).

This was when I got the no response.  I hate the no response.  Is it a bot?  A child ordered to never ever talk to the pedophiles lurking around every internet corner?  Are they incapable of typing and tanking?  Or are they just an asshole who doesn't think the legitimate point that one-handed maces are not good druid weapons is worth responding to?  Correct responses would have included :"oops, misread that", "transmog", and "sorry, thought I was on my shaman".  Note that the mace lacked any stamina and was lower DPS than his current green 2h.

My first-most hated activity in groups is unnecessary hostility in response to reasonable questions and comments. I interrupt this post to link Big Bear Butt and the remarkable example which he presented to us, seemingly while I was writing this post.

For example, a warrior the other day was at about 12% of damage done (in a 5-man, with other DPS in the 20s) and was disappointed about it, but got mad when we pointed out that intellect is useless to warriors and that his talents weren't chosen well (we said it nicely).  He insisted he needed better gear, which made no sense, since he had at least some quest items (agility ring?  strength? intellect!), meaning that he wasn't undergeared, he was stupidgeared.

Eventually a response comes, something like "no one cares" from the tank and "shut the fuck up" from the healer (in the same guild).  That wasn't on the list of correct responses, which while not an exhaustive list, does cover the general concepts of mistakes and transmog.  I pointed out that it was worse, yielding "duel wield" as a response.  That's when I suggested that maybe he'd mixed himself up with an enhancement shaman, prompting more profanity from the priest.  I should note that despite my searching, the druid appeared not to have used any profanity and may have ultimately just been someone who misread, but was overshadowed by a total asshole of a priest in his guild.

We jumped down the long long hole to the water.  The druid died.  Someone asked how.  I replied "karma".  In the meantime one of the DPS whispered me to stop arguing because they were trying to kick me.  Why?  Why is it that the person who points out that someone is a dick is the one who gets blamed, rather than the dick?  So the druid made a mistake, that's fine!  Say it was a mistake and tell your friend to chill out about the profanity.  I won't say problem solved, but maybe problem sedated.

Who am I kidding?  I really am just stupid, thinking that there is any point to pointing out dickish or stupid behavior.  For every "oops" there are a dozen replies of "shut the fuck up".  It's all just a bunch of randoms in randoms, who don't give a damn where they are or who they play with, beyond bringing along a guildy or two to provide an r-rating for the run.

I started writing this post thinking that I would single out the druid or priest as "one of those people" and complain about the jerks who sneak in to ruin the game for everyone else.  But that would be wrong.  I am "one of those people", the person who won't shut up, keep his head down, and ignore the widespread anti-social activity, ruining the facerolling reward parade for everyone else.  Sorry.

Down the the Dictator, but not the extensive bureaucracy that maintains civilization

"There must always be a Lich King."  Lame, right?  Or is it?

The other day I watched Equilibrium, which is basically what would happen if you wanted to make the Matrix but couldn't legally do that, and replaced machine-driven illusion with drugs to block emotion.  For various reasons it irritated me, but one in particular stood out: the downside of ending the regime was never discussed.  The film of V for Vendetta had this same problem.

It might be because I'm a Stalinist*, but I'm not a fan of the pattern of "dictator falls, everyone lives happily ever after."  That's not actually how things happen.  Ever.  I can sense the objection rising up inside you, so I have these two things to note.

*according to my critics

First off, I don't think the downside to the fall of the dictator must necessarily be shown, at least not right away, but there should be at least some notion that something went wrong.  Take Star Wars for example.  After A New Hope we're all happy that the Death Star was destroyed.  Then the Empire strikes back in the appropriately-named The Empire Strikes Back in which the Rebels are stuck on a planet made entirely out of ice and wampas.  In the extended universe we learn about how just because the Emperor eventually died doesn't mean everything is great.  Instead, people go out to celebrate and are gunned down by the millions and a whole new form of civil war breaks out, which as best as I can tell, never ends no matter how many times they kill clones of the Emperor.

Compare this with real life where we celebrate the fall of a dictator, and then all go "so... now what?"  That's when every single suppressed grievance explodes and suddenly people start missing running water and streets paved with something other than unexploded ordinance.


Despite that, there is my Second thing to note: just because there is a downside does not mean it is bad that the evil regime has fallen.  Of course it's bad when the basic infrastructure is wrecked and rule of law breaks down, but that's something to consider when taking down the dictator.  This doesn't mean "oh well, things would be worse without them", but instead "let's have a plan for what happens when the Elite Guard of the Evil Government are all out of work."




The admission of a downside is part of what can make the story complex and interesting.  It makes the enemies, the villains, a little more understandable.  Sure the dictator is bad, but perhaps his supporters are just people who see stability as worth the occasional murder and rampant corruption.  Maybe they think it will be even worse without him.  This makes them people with different philosophical leanings and social predictions, rather than evil people.  That's what the world is filled with: people with different perspectives, who we may still find ourselves in conflict with, but who are not evil faceless goons.  After the rebellion they may even join the winning side, not because they are traitors or flip-floppers, but because they see it as the best way to protect what they value and to continue to do their jobs.





They are the bureaucrats.  They are the police and the army.  The judges and administrators.  Are they on the wrong side?  Perhaps.  But that doesn't mean they cannot be on the right side.  Nor does it mean that they are necessarily evil.

I remember an argument in a Star Wars novel in which the hero is arguing with his future father-in-law about smuggling.  The father was a smuggler, running Imperial blockades and bypassing their customs.  It paid well and seemed to be righteous work, sticking it to The Man.  But the hero points out that while the Empire was evil, those import taxes were what paid for roads and schools and healthcare for children.  So even as it is a blow to the Evil Empire, it is also a blow to those who are subjects of the empire and who have no choice in the matter.

Perhaps the best book I ever read that showed the downside, the cost of victory, the burden of maintaining civilization, was called The Star Conquerors.  It's an old science fiction novel in which humans are gradually getting crushed by an alien empire.  It is approximately a gagillion times bigger, which is not helped by a human population which isn't very interested in paying for the war effort that keeps them from being crushed in a week.  The hero does the sensible thing: rounds up what ships he can and goes flying off to kick some ass, which after a mix of luck and brilliance, results in him capturing the core planets.  The aliens hand over control of the entire empire, about a third of the galaxy.  Cool, right?  USA USA USA!  Er.. TERRAN EMPIRE TERRAN EMPIRE TERRAN EMPIRE!  Except for one problem: Before they leave the aliens explain that now we're responsible for administering it all, of managing the flow of trade, of preventing starvation, of keeping everyone in line so it doesn't all collapse into a giant civil war among the various species.

Should we have just given up and lost?  No.  But knowing that there is something after victory, some burden of leadership, of survival against entropy rather than war, makes the story that much more complete and interesting.

And so, when we hear that there must always be a Lich King, maybe let's go ahead and say that in the literal sense, that sounds ridiculous.  But let's not forget that there are still the Vrykul up there, who are going to wonder what happened to their Death God, who are going to need to be either crushed, assimilated, or some mix of the two, and better hope we don't get that wrong.  There are still Scourge agents, dedicated to various agendas of evil, power, and insanity.  In fact, we run into one in the Eastern Plaguelands, a spider who thinks he's going to start his own Scourge.  A joke, for now.  We should wonder, without the leadership of the Lich King, what will the mindless ones do?  What about the sentient and free agents?  What happens to the Plague?  The diseased and corrupted land?

Perhaps we should even be glad that Deathwing showed up.  Imagine the chaos, the destruction, if the greedy, amoral adventurers with incredible magical and combat powers backed with even greater magical artifacts and armor, found themselves bored.  Perhaps that's what was meant by the Scourge going on an even greater rampage of destruction.  With the Lich King, we had a target and that target was something everyone could agree on.  Without him, then what?  Perhaps he did not actually need to convert or corrupt us, merely step aside and let us do what we do: mass slaughter of anything which might be remotely profitable.

Maybe those daily quest givers aren't so bad after all.  I shudder to think what we'd do otherwise.

The Scariest Story Ever

Death wasn't new to her. She'd died before. Murder wasn't new to her either. She'd killed before.

But this was a different sort of corpse. It looked just like any other, of course, but this one was different. She could feel it. She just knew. It wasn't her kill...

Turning slowly, she scanned the horizon. Nothing. A quick spin around the other way: nothing.

No one.

She typed, slowly and carefully, "/who"?

No one.

She deleted the level range and tried again. "/who"?

No one.

Only one thing could have killed those people. Only one faction, and it wasn't her own.

She turned again...

BREAKING NEWS: The wasps have armed themselves

 Terrifying!

Trolling is serious business, Keredria

This was going to be a comment on your post, but then I figured, "hey, post counts are the thing of the week, so why not boost that?"

Pretty pissed (though I should have been more saddened) that there are people who have to make low, personal attacks on those who don't agree with them. I guess either to make themselves feel better or because they don't have any substance to actually respond to opinions

Being "right" or "ethical" are abstractions with little day-to-day value to an individual. Winning arguments by never ever stopping talking, that has an impact. It boosts self-esteem and can get you a lot of profitable attention. Since most people are concerned about practicality rather than morality, due to eating practicality rather than morality, they will tend to shout until you give up.

Though I still stand by my assertion that such low handed comments are not only unnecessary, but doing it via Twitter where they may not see such comments is downright cowardly. If you want to be a bitch, have the balls to do it to someone's face. Not everyone follows everyone else on Twitter.

What is "to someone's face", digitally-speaking, is a tricky thing. Obviously if I am in an email exchange with someone, that is "to their face" and if I am in a private exchange with someone else, that is not "to their face." What about an @personIhate? Or a #personIhate? The first gets them the tweet even if they don't follow, but depends on them knowing about the Interactions/Mentions and checking them recently enough to be able to respond, something I didn't know about for an embarrassingly long time. Perhaps hastags are just a weak pretend-"to their face" and just tweeting into the tweetosphereverse is the equivalent of calling them a slut on a bathroom wall that they might use at some point and therefore see. My point is that it's a little murkier than you make it seem.

"It's just a WoW blog."

Sure. It is. But no! Wake up tomorrow and imagine your blog is gone. Are you going to shrug your shoulders and say "meh"? Or are you going to be a little tiny bit upset, perhaps more upset than you would be over "just a WoW blog"? I'm guessing the latter. Beyond your own personal attachment to your own blog, I don't much like the "just a WoW blog" concept in general. Is this all of great national importance? Certainly not. But it is of personal importance and it is of cultural importance. I'm sick of seeing the "it's just a game" thing tossed around every which way to trivialize any differing opinions. A raider tells a casual to quit whining because it's just a game and the casual tells the raider to chill out because it's just a game and meanwhile a form of entertainment enjoyed by millions of people is all just a game and if anyone takes it the slightest bit seriously we start questioning whether they suffer from some sort of mental illness or social impairment. Somewhere there is someone who is very concerned that the wood that he uses for model ships is of lower quality and to a complete outsider that may sound silly, but who the fuck are we to tell him to shut up because "it's just a silly ship"?

I'm not going to suggest that it is ideal to have so much time and mental energy devoted toward hobbies and entertainment when national elections in the US don't break 50% turnout with even fewer people following the races. There is an argument to be made for a different distribution of time. But don't fuck with entertainment. That's how you get revolutions and I am not in the mood for one right now.

Furthermore, I'm really getting sick of people linking "immature and petty and ridiculous" and "hateful and full of vitriol". A person is perfectly capable of being immature and petty and ridiculous without being hateful and full of vitriol. Don't link the troll looking for a laugh with the guy who sincerely believes that birth control is for whores. Did I just get political? No, I did not. I've been political this whole damn time, I just happened to mention an issue that we think is "political", as opposed to being "social" or "health-al", while somehow the earlier concept that people focus on day-to-day survival at the expense of ethics is not political. If anything, it should be the reverse.

While we're on the subject and I'm getting angry, what's with "don't talk about politics"? What sort of stupid social rule is that? I can understand religion, since ultimately religion is based on personal believes about that which cannot be measured until someday something happens about which I will make no particular claim. Politics should not be a religion. That's the danger when we put it in the "don't talk about or question this" realm. If you think a certain tax policy will have a certain effect on the economy, that's not a matter of faith or belief, it's something that we can, with varying degrees of uncertainty and error, test or at least predict. It only gets worse over time, because as we push politics further and further away from conversation, we lose our ability to talk about it politely. It's like "the talk". I don't think it will ever be entirely without awkwardness when parents give "the talk", but maybe if we talked about the subject of "the talk" a little more often it wouldn't be such an awkward subject steeped in strange imagery and obscuring language such as "the talk".

Something that heavily influences our economic futures, our freedom, and our survival, should not be shoved off to the side to be debated on TV sideshows and ten thousand dollar dinners. I'm not saying it will be pretty. We will, wait for it... disagree! Yes, we might have different opinions! Shocking. But wouldn't it make some sense to talk about those opinions, find where we stand, and maybe have some small chance of spreading a little bit of knowledge or a new perspective?

Can you imagine if we all thought it was impolite to express our opinions on other subjects? Can you imagine a WoW in which no one ever expressed an opinion on class changes? Or a TV show that no one could talk about? How about the food you're eating, can you say whether you liked it, or is that rude because someone else might not have enjoyed the meal?

It's perhaps naive to think this, but I suspect that politics could be a little bit less political if we didn't work so damn hard to not ever talk about it.

P.S. SEX SEX SEX "the talk" is about SEX can't we use the damn word? I'm sick of seeing "gender" when we're clearly not talking about how a person identifies themselves. The word SEX is not going to get children pregnant but having no clue what the hell is going on just might. My point is that abstinence-only sex ed is about as smart as abstinence-only internet. One of these days I need to write that post about why gay people would care about birth control.

Pirate This Post

Apparently today is the day when everyone goes silent to protest SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Well, I don't know how to do that. I mean both in the technical sense that I don't know how to take this blog down for a day (maybe I could make it private, but that wouldn't say why) but also that I'm not very good at shutting up.

I believe government has a very important role to play on the internet. In fact, I believe that there should be a regulation enforced by any means necessary, and I mean any means. Violate this regulation and I believe the government should get to blow you up with a drone.

The Regulation:
No one gets to regulate the internet. No governments. No corporations. No person. No organization.

The internet is the closest thing the world has ever gotten to a truly free market. It is an engine of innovation and communication. Some powers don't like that innovation or that communication, so they try to stop it. They hate the free market because it threatens them. Free markets are unstable, just like democracies. Powers rise and they distort the system in their favor. It is necessary to counter them, put them back in their place. This is one of those times.

Piracy is bad. But overreaction and overreach are at least as bad.

It's a bit of a shame that Wikipedia is going dark, because without it, how will anyone know why it is down?

Maybe xkcd will be up. Maybe not. Either way, I think this comic fits.
http://xkcd.com/274/
Yea, just the link. I'd hate to accidentally pirate it. Maybe on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Zero Means Zero

Microwave, World of Warcraft, please, sit. I want to talk to you about a problem we've been having. Maybe we need some historical context for this, you know, for perspective.

*sigh*

Where do I even begin? Okay, here's roughly how I remember it, and not directly copied from Wikipedia.

"By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonian mathematics had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BC, a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating from about 700 BC), the scribe Bêl-bân-aplu wrote his zeros with three hooks, rather than two slanted wedges."

"Records show that the ancient Greeks seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number. They asked themselves, "How can nothing be something?", leading to philosophical and, by the Medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero."

See that's where I think it came from. You're like the Greeks. Except not quite. Maybe you're like... Anyway, my point is that you're stupid.

Counting goes 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on. Counting down goes toward zero and... Okay imagine that you're running a race and there is a countdown so it goes 3, 2, 1, GO! What? No. No that's just stupid. I have never ever run a race that went 3, 2, 1, 0, GO!

Look, let me just say my bit and you can go back to being stupid.

If the timer is at 0, that should mean you turn off, not beep a bunch and keep rotating the food for a few more seconds. And if fear is at 0 seconds that means it is DONE. I am SICK and TIRED of getting KILLED because you think that ZERO LASTS TEN SECONDS!

Er.

Well yes, thank you for joining me here today.

He was no dragon, fire cannot kill a dragon

A concerned reader sent me this distressing news: Nefarian is no longer immune to fire damage. Shocking, I know.

Gameplay vs. Simulation
Using wording shamelessly stolen from Nils we can see that what is happening here is a weakening of simulation in favor of gameplay. It is easier to balance the encounter, and gives classes more options in their talents, if one tree of magic is not blocked. It also doesn't make much sense that a powerful black dragon is vulnerable to fire. These are the same dragons who come from eggs stored in a cave where lava is all over the place and whose mother, and/or wife, and/or sister, since dragons are weird like that, breathes fire all over the damn place, including on the eggs. His distant cousins under Wyrmrest have a tendency to throw waves of lava around with no damage to themselves. Fire just is not their main problem.

At an extreme I could see it. I'm sure if Deathwing started spewing fire they'd get toasted. Just like we can imagine that a sufficiently powerful mage could damage Malygos with arcane damage, but that bridge has been crossed, burned, and washed away. Not as if that fight demonstrated much gameplay-simulation tradeoff since it didn't do either very well.

I replied with this line from Game of Thrones: "He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon."

Not at all a waste of time
I'm being sarcastic. Changing the fire-immune status of a boss who has been old news for three expansions was a waste of time. It is an attempt to balance content that doesn't need to be balanced because it's already trivial.

It's all connected and I can prove it because I'm saying it very loudly
Dragon Soul comes out or came out or something, I've not been paying much attention, and people say it is too easy. Dragon. And at the same time, another dragon is retuned. Don't you see? The devs wasted all their time testing Nefarian to make sure he's balanced for level 85s soloing him for hats rather than testing the new raid. Normally I'd make a chalkboard drawing some dragons and an arrow or two, maybe with an exclamation point, but this is far too serious for mere chalkboards. Instead, I'm going to just leave you with this chilling thought:

P.S. Someone please leave a chilling thought in a comment; I'm coming up blank.

Really, a month? Who thought a MONTH made any sense at all?

Great news! I figured out the problem with my DSL connection.

It is not September.

Does this make no sense at al;? Good! We're on the same page.

Let's rewind to around August 20, when I signed up for AT&T DSL. I did it online, then had to call them to finish it up. I was told that the activation would be August 29. Or that's what I heard. This seemed slow, but not totally ridiculous.

But what would Corporate America be if not totally ridiculous?

From a location other than my apartment I was able to use their convenient chat support. Really great. Nice guy. Helped work through step by step. We finally figured out the problem: It is not September.

AT&T: "I see that the service activation date is set to 9/29/2011."
Me: "9/29, as in september 29?"
AT&T: "Yes."
AT&T: "However, as you have installed the equipments, I would like you to contact our sales team and they will activate your services as soon as possible."
Me: "Is there any way to do that online?"
Me: "I mean, that must be a typo. That would be an activation date over a month from when I signed up"

I got the equipment only a few days after I signed up. They did not wait around on that. In fact, I got a "we've sent your stuff" email the same day. It arrived soon after. This was not "cheap slow shipping", but a bit short of "expensive overnight". Why... Why would they spend the money to quickly get something that is not need for a MONTH?

Now I have to get more minutes for my phone so I can call them and hopefully convince them how incredibly stupid this is, and as an added bonus, might convince them to activate it sooner.

This is a truly remarkably stupid situation.

What's with all the Europeans?

Here's the one problem I have with English taking over the world. No not THE English. English the language. The English lost their empire and I have no comments for now on their gaining of it. But where the fuck did my point go?

Okay, everyone speaks English. At least according to the parts of the internet I frequent, the places where people speak English. My sample might not be representative.

This creates the problem that I cannot readily tell Americans from Europeans. It's rather disturbing. You know? It's like, you're talking with someone thinking they're perfectly normal and next thing you find out they're not American. It's just not right.

It gets worse. Based on my non-extensive investigation and poor counting skills I have concluded that a majority of the blogs I read are written my non-Americans. Mostly Europeans. But sometimes an Australian sneaks in. Or two. Maybe more. Do you see the problem? At any given moment I could be talking to an Australian and not even know it. It's not like they have that awesome, I mean terrible, accent when they're typing. And don't even get me started on the Brits*. Then there are those people from places like Belgium or Austria where they shouldn't even be speaking English, but they do, and then how are prisoners of war supposed to have secret conversations around them? Ugh. Just to make it worse, they have a more consistent, if not outright better, grammatical structure than I do, making me look bad, and that's not good.

So really, what's with all the Europeans in my blogroll? It makes no sense. Are Americans incapable of writing interesting (subjective, I know, but that doesn't mean other people aren't wrong) posts in a statistically significant manner?

If by chance you are ambiguously foreign and on my blogroll, could you give a confirm/deny? It's uh, for a list. That you don't need to worry about at all. Nothing bad could possibly come from making a list of different people.

* I really hope that isn't actually some horrible term. Only recently I learned that Vietcong is offensive, having never really heard it spoken or in any context I figured it was just one of those silly words that people make up, as opposed to one of those silly words that people make up to tell the world "I'm a horrible person." Oops. So my apologies and please tell me if I'm saying something awful. I mean, beside the actual content of the post. You people are polite like that, right?

P.S. Tomorrow I might actually write my review of Fallout 3. Or, I'll just end up playing it all evening, again. I guess it's a good sign when I'm too busy playing the game to write about it.

Playing and Losing Network Roulette

For work reasons the home network was switched to a static IP. Obviously this had to involve shit not working.

First the Mac upstairs couldn't connect. We managed to fix that. Then my mom's new work laptop didn't work. Obviously a major problem, but we fixed it. So just to complete it, my computer stopped connecting.

Normally I'd have had "restart modem/router" at number 3 or 4 on my list, with "plugged in/turned on", "repair connection", and "restart computer" as possible winners. But when everything is taking turns not working and the most important things work, those being the two work laptops, the last thing you want to do is tempt fate by touching the router.

Not that I could have, given that it was no longer at the default address. Well, I eventually did, after what I'll call an hour of wasting time on pointless shit. So finally I managed to figure out where the router claimed to be and connected to it. Then I wasted more time trying to get anything done using the UI. You'd think "reset DHCP leases" or something equivalent would be easy to find, perhaps on the LAN -> DHCP page, but no. Add in more time as I finally...

One sec, I forgot to mention my adventures with manually setting an IP address for my computer. If it won't give me one, then I will take one! Simple enough. I can see that that one is 202 and that one is 204 and that one is 203, so 205 or 206 should be available, right? Okay, my iPod apparently took 205, because it thinks it is just that important to steal one of the only five available slots. But 206, bam, got it, refresh the page and firefox is oh my god loading google! WOOOO! I don't recall exactly what button I pressed, but next thing I knew, it was all lost. And to make it worse, it now claimed 206 was in use.

Skipping ahead, I finally found the unsearchable (firefox find didn't work) manual for the router software which eventually led me to the command line. Ah yes, command lines. The place where you can get shit done. If you know how. But now I did! Thankfully the Mac has built-in telnet (in Terminal) so I could connect to the router, log in as admin, and enter that glorious command: reset dhcp server.

And glorious working internet was mine again.

So now between two laptops, the Mac, and my computer, we have one single spare address. I'm not even sure I can change that. This seems stupid. I'm not quite sure who to blame, since my usual scapegoats don't really seem applicable. I mean, how can this possibly be the fault of Obama, Bush, Wall Street, Austria, Stalin, Tigole, Ghostcrawler, casuals, noobs, hardcore losers, kids these days, old people, Protestants, Catholics, heathens, Reagan, or God?

So guess what? No fun post for tomorrow. But here's a sneak preview of what I might write one of these days if I get around to it: so far, Homefront is a really crappy game. It's like Call of Duty except somehow fails to ever feel like much fun. And after wasting time fixing the new game crashing problem, it found a new random place to crash, with a new error to go with it. But I plan to finish it, if only so I can know for certain that it is entirely not worth playing.

Apple, I used to think you weren't really, really stupid

iTunes is pretty neat. I like the store, though I'm too cheap for it these days so I just listen to the same songs I did five years ago.

My iPod Touch is pretty awesome. I love it. The iPhone looks cool.

Your computers are pretty, if pricy.

Your OS is a solid piece of work that for years (decades?) was leagues ahead of the absolute garbage that Microsoft produced.

The iPad is awesome.

But I didn't bring you here today to praise your impressive line of software and hardware. No, I brought you here today about this email address: akleps@earthlink.net

Does that mean anything to you? Anything at all? Here, let's try this. We'll open iTunes and try to play a song. What, not authorized? Okay fine, I have reformatted my computer and stuffed the hard drive in a totally different box. Even Microsoft got confused by this and demanded the same reauthorization of their cutting-edge and expensive Windows XP operating system, since it looks like a new computer, which I suppose it is. So fine, I will authorize my computer to play my legally purchased music.

You tell me it is linked to that email. Right. Well let's see... password... Not ringing a bell. Let's try a few that I know I've used before. Not that one. Or that one. Ditto on that one. Hm. Weird, since those last two were the previous and current ones I used for your app store on my awesome iPod.

Fine, password retrieval. Obviously the email send won't work since I wouldn't remember the password for an email that I haven't used in how many years. But I can answer some questions instead. Alright, birth date. Month, day. You think it's wrong? Let's try that again, maybe the intertubes mixed it up. Still no. Ooh, let's try reversing it, like maybe it wasn't Name of Month and Number of Day, but Number of Month and Number of Day so perhaps I have that backward so I can just switch them and... no. Maybe I had the month off by one? Day? How the hell doy ou not remember my birthday? I wrote it down for you!

Wait a minute... iPod. App Store. iPod that can still play all of my music. What happens if I use my App Store email and password?

Yep, that worked.

Let's go back to something before. akleps@earthlink.net Does that mean anything to you? Not a damn thing, right? Yea, I thought so. That email, that supposed Apple ID, does not mean a damn thing. So why the fuck are you telling me to log in with that?

Apple, that's just plain stupid. User experience is your thing. Seamless experience and all that jazz. Please no literal jazz, I don't enjoy it. So why, WHY, would you tell me to log in with the WRONG ACCOUNT THAT DOES NOT EVEN EXIST!?

While we're at it, stop asking me to update iTunes every single time it opens, even after I check "do not ask me again."

At least it worked, so now I don't need to pirate the songs that you attempted to steal from me. Jackasses.

Klepsacovic is not happy now

You know what would be a great job? Try this: fresh air, talking to people, helping them out, getting good money by saving people money. No strings attached to anything. Perfect, right?

Sure. Of course. Assuming you don't utterly fail at sales and quickly learn to hate people.

I got that job. Trained. Learned a script. Learned what was behind the script. I understood this stuff.

But after the second dozen people who aren't interested [in saving money], who don't want to change [nothing beside saving money], and who refuse to even talk. Well fuck them. Fuck. Them. I cannot summon the will to care about our shared humanity. Just fuck them. Assholes and idiots.

Of course I can't quite blame them. Some company had come through with a similar thing earlier, but ended up burning a lot of people. So fuck them too for making everyone paranoid. Hell, I was paranoid. I wasn't willing to do any door to door until I'd determined for myself that there were no catches. There are none. But damn, try to explain that to someone who got fucked over a couple months back.

I guess I'm just not a people person. I like talking with people, socializing, fun stuff. But playing the manipulative game, even though it isn't a scam, just doesn't feel right. Before writing this I was talking with my parents and suddenly realized that I felt insincere just in normal conversation, like I couldn't just talk, I had to be driving a sale.

I wonder how many days it would have been before I started throwing rocks at houses that didn't sign up. Maybe two at most. Two more days I mean. Two rocks would just be lazy.

So long story short, I had a job for two days, only got one sale (really three, but the verification call got fucked up, so they don't count), realized I was terrible and it and hated it, so I quit.

This is doing wonders for my self-esteem and mood.

My first day I briefly tried to relate it to gaming. I thought back to pickpocketing for Insane in the Membrane, for the books that never dropped, for all the impossible materials. But then I realized, that achievement was saner than this job. When I loot something, I have a certain percent chance of that mob having it, and that is constant. But people don't work quite the same way. If one in ten people sign up, it's not as if each person is a ten percent chance. They're all unrelated, not using a quantifiable drop table. In other words, an MMO grind lets me take advantage of large counts and probabilities. People aren't so logical.

Even worse, killing a mob is killing a mob. Technique only matters in terms of efficiency. People aren't so straightforward. The slightest hesitation and they shut the door in your face. The slightest bit of paranoia and all the time is wasted.

I guess I'm stretching it a bit. Oh well. I tried.

So, anyone have any job openings they need filled?

Dear everyone suggesting a rating system of LFD

Lol.

No really. Lol. I laugh at your idea.

It will be abused. Or, it will be so uselessly gimped as to be... useless. Let's all think about what happens when anonymous interacts with anonymous. Yep, the exact LFD system we have right now. Pretty awful, isn't it? What makes you think the god-awful DPS, elitist tank, or whiny healer are going to suddenly start being calm and sensible when presented with a survey about the other players in the group?

One of my last experiences in randoms was to get kicked by a group. Why? I wasn't kissing the tank's ass properly, pointing out that he was in frost presence. Pressed on it, also pointing out that it was my sheeping, kiting, and interrupts that were keeping the healer alive when the tank as busy being garbage. Hey, I never said you can't carry a tank, just that it's not as common as so many DPS seem to think. That is the result of an anonymous system in which you'll never meet people again: good players get kicked and people reactive extremely badly to the slightest negative thing.

WoW used to have a rating system. No really, it did. We called it a "server" or sometimes "realm." Gather round and let me tell you about a time when people played with people from their own server and only their own server. When there are only a few thousand people to keep track of, it's a lot easier to get the word around that someone is a complete jackass, or amazing. Of course a few thousand is still quite a lot, but not everyone is logged in at the same time.

When you're going to be around the same people again, then you're going to care more. Their opinions will matter, not merely "I don't want people to think badly of me" sense, but "if I act like a total jackass people will know not to group with me again." It wasn't an explicit rating system, but it was there, some way to measure and communicate performance. Yep, trade chat used to serve an essential function of giving groups a place to complain about shitheads. It wasn't a perfect system. For instance, it can be hard to sustain a solid flame wall about a bad group member if there are a hundred enchanters desperately looking for customers. Things were bad before vellums were added.

No wait, don't say it. If we go back to single-server grouping queues will go up. You think so? Maybe. But maybe not. Listen to the tanks; how many are complaining that their short queue times cause them to have to tank too much (none) compared to how many are complaining that randoms are too often hellish nightmares of awful and bad? (many) So I suggest this: even if we lose some liquidity by cutting off servers, that could be compensated for by tanking being less stressful, thereby causing more tanks to queue and possible more players to tank.

More players tanking? But won't they all be garbage? Maybe. Or maybe when people are no longer just a bunch of anonymous jackasses they'll be more willing to talk and listen. The awful tank will know that if he doesn't listen and improve he'll be kicked to the curb whereas if he does, then he can get some tiny bit of reputation for listening and improving. Meanwhile if they have a good chance of possibly seeing him again, the group will be willing to talk and help improve, since if they can fix a tank, that's one more good tank for them. When we'll never see them again, we shovel off bad players as a problem for someone else (guess what happens when everyone does this, oh right, we get their garbage), whereas if we have to acknowledge that they are in fact our problem, we fix it.

Oh, you just never want to have to deal with bad players? Fine, go play in your guild and never touch LFD. That's fine. You can go away and have no affect on anything. Good. Everyone wins.

As for the rest of us, who care to fix the world rather than just grab at the last few scraps and whine about how bad everything is, we can do something.

Or we can't. What the fuck am I thinking? We're never going back to servers. We're too attached to the idea of fast queues for groups we don't want to be in, somehow imagining that a lot of not having fun is better than a little of having fun.

But hey, at least there's RIFT, right? Maybe. At least until they get around to their own tools and the inevitable cross-server implementation, and there we go again.

Yesterday I remarked at how I remember when ramen noodles were a dime. I think MMOs cause premature aging. Now get off my lawn.