have been lackluster.  Outside life pulled me from my mmorpg hobby and now I'm wondering if I will continue with games much past next year.  The only game I play regularly now is Lord of the Rings Online. But even my time in that game has taken a hit.

Halfheartedly, I tried to get back into RIFT.  But not long after I re-subbed, they announced their Free to Play conversion.  Luckily it hasn't had a big effect on my characters.  All of them were on decent population servers and were not forced to move due to mergers.  But I've lost the incentive to level and the only thing I do when I log in, is putter about in my dimension house.  Boring, I know.

I did enjoy Tera for a bit.  That was the game I thought I was joining when I signed up for GW2 because I had them mixed up.  The graphics are beautiful and the game play is interesting.  But due to lack of time, I haven't logged back into my Popori Archer character in more than a month.

So now, I'm trying to decide if I should keep Rift and Tera for the times I feel the need to log in or just delete them to free up space.

I suppose it was nostalgia for when I was new to games that made me sign up for a few months of WOW. But I returned to find a vastly different game from just last summer.  The servers that contained my main and second most played character had gone belly up since my last log in.  I mean really died.  They were both once bustling with activity.  At first, I thought I would carry on, but going from one empty area to another was depressing.  Even the cities were desolate.  I was also disappointed in the hype surrounding the Siege of Orgrimmar update.  I thought the game would include a lot of story material for non-raiders then leave the actual boss fight to the raiders.  But NOPE, you have to raid if you want the story to progress at all.  At first I laughed but then it just further depressed me.  Even despite losing a large portion of the player base and "merging" servers (cross realms), the developers still insist on forcing everyone to play the way they think their game should be played.  It struck me as a obtusely ungenerous, more in the spirit of the appropriately named expansion Cataclysm which caused the free fall in subscribers.  Up until the Free to Play explosion and glut of games, Blizzard could get away with forcing people into certain play modes.  But now so many other options are out there plus with no subscription tag!  Blizzard no longer has the ability to throw its weight and haze its player base.  They should really change their ways since they are shrinking noticeably now.  My two high levels are now on more crowded servers.  But who knows how long they will last?

I won't even discuss the coming shut down of WAR.  The thought of it makes me so sad.  I'm holding a bit of hope for Camelot Unchained but even my short time in gaming has shown me to be skeptical of everything until I'm actually in the game.  And even then it is still questionable.

Oh Bother

Eve Online, yeah, EO.  *sighs and shakes head*

What do you think about when this game is mentioned?  Spaceships? Space? Wild scandals in which players gang up on other players in order to make them commit suicide?  More scandal in which a popular blogger (Mintchip) was hired as community manager by CCP and led to slander and pillaging of her character?  Ayn Rand idol worship?

So having only 4% of the player base claim to be female is surprising?

Although CCP claims not to worry about this minuscule number, I have a feeling that they do anyway. Why?  Because, even though most male gamers don't admit it, any game that attracts a large female player base makes money.  Lots and lots of money.  Really, what developer would turn up their nose at money?

So now CCP has a hit a wall with subscriptions and their mostly male player base holds part of the blame.  But still the majority of the blame is due to CCP's lax policing of outrageous behavior.  They don't govern against harassment, threats, cheating (in fact their own devs took part in early cheating scandals), the list goes.  The player government had that famous scandal with the Goon Squad suicide campaign.  I haven't looked into what happened to Mintchip, but I've seen the comments on her recent vlog post and they weren't nice.

I do have to say that the hiring of Mintchip is due to CCP holding out a tentative hand to female players.  Mintchip has a fun vlog and she is one of the few female gamers who is very enthusiastic about EVE Online and it's sister game DUST.  At times I have been leery about Mintchip's giggly female persona but I never thought that she wasn't serious about her gaming hobby or the games she enjoyed.  The reason for my hesitant support was not because of jealousy over a younger, pretty female gamer but because her behavior was bound to attract misogynist male gamers of every age.  It also made me angry that I even had to worry about this, because it shouldn't matter if Mintchip wanted to be flirty.  She is young and pretty and has every right to enjoy being so.  But now she is accused of sending sexy photos to someone for game money.  Is it true?  Don't know.  More likely it was embellished by jealous male gamers to get her fired.  Even it if was true, SO FUCKING WHAT!  None of us know the details except for the stories spewed on game boards and youtube comments from a bunch of men screaming like sexually frustrated, hysterical Church types.

I'll be pissed if CCP folds for these screechers.  Seriously these men need someone to get Freudian on their asses.

Anyway besides the previous story, why doesn't Eve Online attract women?

Is it because the avatars are just spaceships?  Partially, I've written about that in previous posts.  But not totally.

Is it the PvP?  There are plenty of women who enjoy PvP.  My friend who got me into games (WoW) played on a PvP server and she enjoyed it immensely.  I, myself, loved WAR to death.

You know why it doesn't attract women?  Take a look of that screenshot in the header that I've included with this post.  Look at that godawful UI.  I mean seriously.  You want another gander at it?  Look at an official screenshot of it.

Holy CRAP!  What the hell is going on in there?  It literally takes a few weeks to learn all the menu and sub-menu systems.  There has to be a better way.

How do you drive your ship?  Do you see it on that nightmare of a UI?  Nope.  

Another reason, there is no codified attempt to guide the player into missions or crafting.  After the tutorial (which is better than when I first signed up), the new players are left high and dry.  The developers figured that the rest of the training would be completed by the many player corporations in the game.  Which considering the bullying scandals, is laughable.

The questing....whatever there is of it,  is enjoyable.  However, and a BIG however, whatever questing there is in the game is spotty, ridiculously arcane and purposely obscure.  Even if a player manages to follow the quests/agent missions in the game, there is a ridiculous jump in skill levels.  Since the game does not label its levels or allows easy tracking of skills, it is possible for a player to accept a mission that they cannot complete but won't know it until they accept the mission.  That leads to the PvE faction that gave the quest to permanently ban the player from future quests.  Nice.

I won't get into the crazy that is mining/crafting.  The UI doesn't even tell you how to fly your ship much less how to mine.

Whatever.  I would say to CCP, if you want to attract female players do the following:

1 - Properly police your user base in game and out (forums), even the popular players/corporations.

2 - Clean up that UI

3 - Ban obscurity in everything.  The mechanics of every feature must be transparent.  It isn't dumbing down.  Believe me, the main features of the gameplay can stay as is without alteration.  But it is not shameful to allow the player to easily understand how, why and what.

I have a feeling though, that CCP has painted themselves into a corner.  Any change would alienate the players they have, but no change will continue to keep females out of the game.

Jaron's Internet Class critique

Jaron Lanier's book "You are Not a Gadget" was so revolutionary and clear headed in its critique of internet culture or really, lack of culture.  In fact, Lanier presented evidence that the internet was actively destroying culture.

His main argument was that cultural music, films, photos, television shows were being decontextualized from their time period, mixed and mashed into meaningless bits.  Our cultural heritage, both high art and pop, were  being ground into meaninglessness.  In turn, new ideas were being subjected to the same grindstone so that nothing new was taking hold.  The music of the 1960's and 1970's into the 1980's had a distinct sound.  But everything past the 1990's, when the internet culture took hold, is generic and rehashed.

In essence our culture has frozen in time.  We are in stasis.

Unfortunately, Lanier's amazing book did nothing to wake anyone up from their dreams.  The Internet class is still spouting off the decayed and contaminated mantra of the opensource web.  While unable to see that it destroys IT jobs and benefits only the richest few.

Now Lanier is back with a new book that carries on with what he discovered in his last.

He granted an interesting interview with Salon

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class/

This time Lanier digs deeper into why the internet and its no culture locust mentality is actively destroying the middle class.  His interview reveals that outlier success ventures on Youtube and other social networks are masking the damage being done to the middle class worldwide.

The interview goes into interesting views on the fall of Kodak and that internet success story of Jenna Marbles is built on a mountain of failure and ponzi scheme dynamics.

Anyway the his new book, "Who owns the Future" has my attention and I plan to get my hands on it as soon as possible.

Pandaria

Way back before the holiday mayhem started, I received a promotional from Blizzard to play the Pandaria expansion for two weeks.  I wasn't feeling any real need to go back to WoW but I heard so many good things about the latest expansion that I took them up on their offer.  Amazingly, Blizzard managed to get back a little of the magic that surrounded the game during the heady Lich King days.

What Blizzard had managed to do was keep all the great things about the Cataclysm expansion and curtail its excesses (such as too many cutscenes, phasing and vehicle quests).  The smooth sailing questing lines that I enjoyed in Cataclysm, with no back and forth to the same areas, has been introduced to Pandaria as well.  I loved the new story lines and the mysterious Pandaren continent.  As crazy as it may seem, Blizzard managed to throw off its European Middle Ages Sword fantasy shtick and totally immerse itself in Chinese Middle Ages Sword fantasy shtick.  The new expansion feels like a different game.

The artwork is absolutely fantastic.  Despite the low fi graphics, Pandaria looks lush and colorful.  Great attention was paid to creating wide open spaces as players leave the initial forest area.  The vistas are gorgeous and created with care to mimic real Chinese scenery.  The game's equivalent of The Great Wall is a true achievement.  What is even more, the new score for the expansion is just as beautiful and matches the art.

The class tree lines have been pared down to very straight and simple techniques.  On my Paladin main, this was a relief.  I mostly played as a Retribution Paladin since I mainly just solo play.  During Cataclysm my Pally was hamstrung because her hits depended on the game's casino wheel to roll triple diamonds.  This meant she either wiped NPCs with just a look or she would be forced to keep hitting for minutes on end.  It was strange and frustrating.  Thankfully that is all gone.  The wheel of big hits has been tamed and now Pallys do reliable damage.  I spent a bit of time on my other main, a warlock and she is doing rather well too.  However the warlock is nowhere near the powerhouse it used to be and was once the scourge of PvP and PvE alike.

Cross server areas....  I'm holding back my opinion on this element.  This was Blizzard's way of trying not to close empty servers.  In fact I was a little dismayed and confused when I was visiting Silvermoon to see it filled with players with hyphenated designations/server names.  There are only certain areas where the cross servers work and those areas are mostly low population.  However I've noticed that it hasn't led to happy, happy family results.  It mostly leads to people from my server snarling at cross server visitors to go back to their own servers.  It doesn't help that the players sharing my server are from Moonguard (which has a terrible reputation as being the red light district of WOW).   We'll see where this goes eventually.

I have run two dungeons so far, Stormstout Brewery and Shado-Pan Monastery.  Both times I held my breath when I signed up for LFG.  WoW still has a terrible reputation for nastiness among its players.  I have to admit I rarely experienced this in any group, even during my heyday in the game.  However I am no longer the player I used to be nor even half as good.  So I was terrified of being cut out of a dungeon run.  My fears were unfounded and the two groups I was matched with were calm and cool.  Out of the two dungeons I found Stormstout the more enjoyable.  The fights were slapstick instead of the intense atmosphere in Shado-Pan.  I especially enjoyed rolling barrels into a monkey boss who liked to throw banana peels at players.

So far I have found a lot of enjoyment in this expansion, and I was glad to purchase a few extra months to see it develop.  Does that mean I will be going back to WOW.  I'm not sure.  I'm not the motivated player I was years ago and there are times when weeks go by in which I don't play any games.  A regular subscription isn't cost effective for me at this time.  But I can say that I will probably spend 3 to to 6 months in Pandaria.  Because right now, looking out at the game scenery while standing on the Great Wall is just too enchanting.