I Don't Know Where Ya Been, My Lad, But I See Ya Won First Prize

I was out of commission due to illness most of last week, so there's not that much to report.  I mean, I played a little, but I didn't really do much of anything at all.

Somewhere around Christmas time I finally splurged and bought Skyrim (hey, it was on sale).  Sure, it's about a year or so too late to be relevant, but I figured I'd play around with the game and see if I liked it.  I've heard enough about the sandbox nature of the game to make me interested, and the fact that you're not forced into FPS mode but you can zoom out a bit into a more familiar third person mode is even better.*

The game is okay so far, but nothing so engrossing that I would find myself up way past my bedtime playing. The graphics are nice, and the old style quest finding is a welcome change to the MMO style quest markers, but when I sit down to play a game I find myself skipping over Skyrim for Civ IV or an MMO.  The fact that (I believe) that purchasing the DVD of the game appears to be irrelevant as the game uses Steam to download to my computer doesn't exactly help, either, since I'm not that big of a fan of the Steam ownership model:  you don't purchase a copy of the game itself, you only purchase the right to play the game, just like Amazon's Kindle purchases.

However, there was one aspect of Skyrim that I was unprepared for.

Like quite a few people, I use Curse to manage my WoW addons, and once every couple of months I hop onto Curse to make sure all of my addons are up to date.**  I've gotten used to having WoW as the only game in my stable with a Curse connection, so imagine my surprise when I saw Skyrim pop up as an option.

Curious, I clicked on Skyrim and loaded the database of mods, just to see what I could add.  There were mods to make lockpicking easier --something Ol' Fumblefingers can definitely use-- as well as mods for tracking your mats and whatnot.  But by far the most popular mod was something I didn't expect:  Nude Females.

No, really.

Apparently this game isn't "Rated M for Mature" enough for some folks, and they took it upon themselves to create a few mods to "tweak" the models for the game.  Making more detailed facial models is one thing, but making sure what's under a toon's clothing is anatomically accurate is quite another.  I'd almost be inclined to believe that the mod's creators had altruistic intentions except that you won't find an equivalent mod for male toons.

Just like some people can't play Age of Conan without going "Oooo, boobies!"***, some people need that in-game nakedness that the nude female mods --yes, there are more than one-- provide.  This is akin to people who like to zoom in and watch the female Night Elf breast bounce, I suppose.

Me, I just don't get it.  If you're interested in this aspect of the game, why are you playing and not surfing the Internet instead?





*It's been a while since I mentioned it, but I find that FPS games give me headaches, and one of the reasons I suspect that MMO's don't is due to the game's viewpoint.  With third person mode, I can use my character as a focal point and not have issues with the constantly changing terrain.

**If I were a raider or already into Mists content it'd be a lot more frequent updates, but I'm still about 30 levels away from needing to purchase Mists.

***Go hang around Tortage on any server, and you'll see what I mean.  I suspect that some people play Demonologists in AoC just so they can have the nude Succubus hanging around.  And if you thought that the Shivarra in WoW was bad, the AoC Succubus makes the Shivarra look tame.  But that AoC Succubus has a very sinister look about her.  Oh, and the AoC Incubus (for female Demonologist toons) has just as little clothing and the same uncomfortably malign feel to them.