Thursday AFK: Drunk Mages Wipe Parties

You’re at a holiday party, talking to the drunkest guy in the room.  Sure, he knows everyone there that you don’t.  Sure, he works in the industry you’re trying to break into.  And yeah, for a drunk guy, he smells kinda okay.  Do you keep talking to him?

Hell no.

Playing World of Warcraft for three years taught me one thing above all else: Drunk mages wipe parties.  In real life, a mage is someone who’s well-connected, powerful, and fragile.  If it helps, think of the head of human resources at your work, only as a sad chick who just got dumped and has final say over all payroll decisions.  Clearly this isn’t someone you want to cross, but you still need her around.  So when she comes up to you announcing that all men are scum, her cat is the smartest creature in existence despite its crossed eyes and proclivity toward running into walls and your raise has just made its way to her desk, what do you do?

Like a drunk mage, powerful and unstable people need ego strokes.  Gentle ones.  Really, really general ones.  Also, as you do this, you should back away slowly while smiling and nodding.

A real life drunk mage is a disaster waiting to happen, and since you’re now staring into the face of Christmas and New Year’s parties, you’ll be seeing them a lot.  They take all ages and all forms, and you must be ready.  Otherwise, the party will be a disaster of epic proportions.

Like a glass cannon, a drunk mage hurts everyone when he explodes.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like OMGWTFBBQ!

Listen to the kid. He knows what he's talking about.

I’m a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game player, and I enjoy being one about eight to nine months out of the year.  However, there is a scourge about to descend upon my world.  For two to three months out of every calendar year, if I play, I must turn off my zone chat log and ignore 99% of the private messages I receive.

In short, I must avoid the “massively” part of MMO.

The holidays are usually a great time, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from playing MMOs, it’s this: Around the holidays, parents treat MMOs as a baby-sitting service.  Hence, during November, December, and January–a break that’s too short for most kids to do anything productive and too long for them to just sleep through it–I run silent.  No pick up groups, very little super group/guild recruiting, and just about zero tolerance for outright stupidity.

Now, that’s not to say all kids grate my nerves.  Just most.  About 99.9875% of them.  But really, it’s the parents that make me want to throw my computer out the window.  Why?  Let me give you an example:  Once upon a Christmas break about three years ago, some random kid royally cussed me out in the middle of a run through Stratholme.  (That’s in World of Warcraft for those of you who aren’t savvy.)  I threw it right back at him, just as colorful and ire-inducing as his original spiel.  Sonny boy went and got his mother on the computer, who promptly chewed me out for hurling insults and expletives at her ten-year-old.  She claimed I was hurting his feelings, injuring his self-esteem, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself.

Seriously, some of the words this kid used…  Well, I didn’t even know they existed.

Miniature turds like that kids think they’re funny.  They think it’s a riot to go whining to their parents, game moderators, or whoever will listen, that it’s a veritable smorgasboard of laughs when you get someone suspended or banned from a game.  It’s not funny; it’s annoying.  It makes me want to strangle rabbits or something.  I mean, kids are one thing in reality, where their actions have consequences, but give them internet anonymity and they become little terrorists, accusing everyone who won’t put up with their BS of being gold farmers or of calling them some insult that could be construed as a hate crime.

Parents: For the love of God, keep your kid on XBox Live where he/she/it belongs.  Ensure that other adults can enjoy the holidays by securing your child on a couch, in front of a TV, playing on a console that allows me to never have to hear anything your kid says.  Those games function well without chat options.

Besides, you know if you want to mute junior, I do, too.

(Thanks to http://images.mmosite.com/news/2009/07/20/obama/oo01.jpg for the image.)

Thursday AFK: Be Thankful

So this one is a timely gimme of a post. And it’s cliche. But, hey, it’s the night before Thanksgiving, and I’m getting ready to move my cubicle. Plus I get to wake up at the bald crack of dawn to drive to San Antonio. You’ll pardon me if I take the easy way out.

This is how I really feel, both in-game and out.

 

 

Anyways, happy Thanksgiving to you all, or, in the spirit of retail corporate America, happy mid-Hallanksmas season. (You know, that mash up of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas that we’re all so used to seeing at the mall.)

If there’s one thing that real life has taught me, it’s that you gotta be thankful for the little things. Whether it’s knowing where you left your keys or finding out that, yes, you do have two more double-A batteries, innocuous events can really make your day. I’d go on and on gushing about e-mails that changed my life or meeting “the one” when I was least expecting it, but most of you will be putting up with that tomorrow at dinner.

So let’s talk about the little things that make a game. Whether it’s properly adjusted drop rates or a well-designed control mechanism, small things can really make all the difference. Does anyone remember when World of Warcraft started up and the server queues that came with it? We all thought we’d won the lotto when the lines finally died down and we got to play the actually game. Ah, memories…

Now, don’t get me wrong: I actually cannot hold popularity against anyone. I’m just not hip enough. But that’s one of those irking qualities of MMOs that sometimes cause me to question why I bother. But although we’ve all felt that kind of frustration with everything from armor that won’t drop to body campers who won’t log, we all can be thankful for one thing–group of people actually.

Every game has a dedicated team of developers whose job is to make sure that problems are fleeting. So on this Thanksgiving Eve, I’m giving a big shout out to the devs of the gaming world. You guys make it possible, and you deserve some props.

…and now that I’ve sucked up, can I get some free stuff? I kid.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and a continued merry Hallanksmas season.