About those TPS reports...

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, out there on the prairie...
--Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion (pick an episode, any episode)


Yeah, it was a quiet week last week.

I ran some battlegrounds and perused another MMO (watch this space for more info), but other than that, not much happened.  Well, in MMO gaming space, anyway.

Last week was a week more for getting things done around the house: painting the kitchen, painting an adirondack chair (with another one to be built on the docket), replacing the 20 year old entertainment center with a more modern design* that had "some assembly required", and some annual cleaning of the heat pump and the porch/deck.

Yeah, Summer is here in the Midwest.

I did break my "only AV and IoC" battleground credo after finally getting what I consider to be enough Prideful gear (meaning I finally had enough Conquest points to get the Prideful weapon), and I promptly regretted it. There were so many bot filled games that it makes you want to pull your hair out, and to add insult to injury the Alliance was back to bad habits, where I as a (at best) partially Conquest geared Rogue was in the top 3 in health on most of the games I played.

If you're a fresh 90 and you're just chain running regular BGs, you're doing yourself and your team a disfavor. If you're Alliance, queueing for AV and IoC will get you a full Honor set much more quickly than the "queueing for random" strategy.  If you're Horde, just go ahead and pick anything OTHER than AV and IoC; hell, I think I've won Silvershard Mines as Alliance only once the entire expac, and why any Horde would queue for anything else for free honor is beyond me.

***

Overheard in MMOs:

In Eye of the Storm (WoW):

Me: Just how many bots do we have?
Other Rogue: Well, there's you and me at least.
::silence::
Other Rogue: Oh, that's not good.
Me: I don't know about you, but I'm going to hang out around FR for a while.


In Warsong Gulch (WoW):

Hunter: Blizz loves bots, you know.
Me: Okay, I'll bite. How do you figure?
Hunter: They keep their sub numbers up. They used to ban more of these bots but they stopped when their numbers started dropping this expac.
DK: Plummeting, you mean.


In Republic side Taris (SWTOR):

Player 1: Aaaaahh! When will this planet end?
Player 2: I don't like it either.
Me: What's not to love? Jedis and zombies. Er, ghouls.
Player 3: Zombies!
Me: Yeah, but movie zombies act like ghouls.
Player 4: OMG, you play D&D. I can tell.
Me: Guilty!


On Republic side Alderaan (SWTOR):

Mini-Red #1: I don't like politics.
Me: You're still on the opening zone, aren't you.
MR1: Yes, and I don't like the politics!
Me: It gets more interesting starting in the second zone.
MR1: AAA! I can't stand House Thul or Organa or the other guys!
Me: Just relax, kid. It's not a big deal. It's not like Belsavis, anyway.
MR1: Is there politics there too?
Me: No, the planet never seems to end. Just when you think that you've reached the final zone, there's ANOTHER freaking zone to travel to. And that's not even the Bonus Series.
MR1: ...


In Republic side Taris (SWTOR, whispered conversation):

Player: You get to have Risha as a companion?
Me (realizing I had Risha out): Um, yeah.
Player: When does that happen?
Me: Not for a while yet. I don't want to give out spoilers.
Player: Oh, come on!
Me: I'll tell you this much, it'll be in Chapter One sometime.
Player: Like that helps a lot.
Me: It's worth the wait. The Smuggler story is the best one Republic side, IMHO.




*Which is step one in eventually replacing our old --and I'd like to emphasize the 'old' part-- 25" RCA television with a new digital model.

Friday Funny

From the Facebook page
Confessions of a Female Rogue

Okay, I laughed.

How To Annoy People in MMOs, Part Whatever

There's a new sheriff mount in town.

The $30 Blizzard Cash Store Warforged Nightmare party mount.

This Guy.

You read that right: party mount. You can click on an item and get the mount for the duration of the instance/raid/BG/whatever.

But what they didn't tell you is that it combines the sparkle pony's ubiquity with the Lil' XT's mind boggling annoying sounds.

The noise was so bad from having about 13 of these at the starting gate in an Arathi Basin run that I turned my sound off.  There was no way in hell I was going to click on the totem/whatever-it-is to get my own mount, and neither was a Mage.

"Get with the program!" one of the fellow Alliance BGers said.

"No thanks," I replied. "Blizz gets enough of my money, and I don't want to encourage them."

I could only imagine the obnoxious sounds of 13 metallic mounts clanking and steam whistling away. This isn't the "clink clink clink" of a Gnomish mount, but something right out of the Molten Core.*

Gah.

I do have to hand it to Blizz in that they do give the people what they want --or at least they think they want-- but hearing this noise is almost too much.



*Not literally, but it sure does look like it could have come out of Blackrock.

Don't you mess wit' my people, or there might be an accident. Capiche?

I have found the new Hillsbrad, and it is called Hellfire Peninsula.

The past few weeks, I've been hanging out in Hellfire while groups of (primarily A-52) Horde invade Honor Hold and the Temple of Telhamat, ganking everyone and everything in sight. The cold war of the Stadium/Overlook/Broken Hill has turned hot ever since A-52 and its 10:1 Horde:Alliance imbalance was lumped in with Ysera.

There are times when I'm the lone L90 in Hellfire Peninsula and I have to simply grit my teeth and take it when a group of 6-8 Horde sweep down on Honor Hold, slaughtering everything in sight. If it were a bunch of Horde L60 toons doing this, I'd probably not care, because the fight would at least be a fair one. But when it's instead a bunch of L90s wearing Conquest badge gear doing the ganking, I really get annoyed.

Some people would leave, and others would try and tilt at windmills for a while, but that's not me.  I might not be able to stop the onslaught at Alliance bases, but I can skip over to Thrallmar or Falconwing, exacting an eye for an eye.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some lone juggernaut who is able to wipe out an entire settlement, and I do often get caught by the same Horde group rushing back to defend their own base, but I also don't gank their own lowbies. I don't sink completely to their level.

But all is not lost for the Alliance.

Eventually someone either calls their guildies or makes it to Shattrath and sends out a plea over Trade Chat, and the cavalry comes running. There was one time a few days ago when a pair of Hunters and a Shaman thought Honor Hold would be easy pickings, never guessing that myself, another Rogue, a Hunter, and a Feral Druid were waiting in ambush.

The results were messy. For them.

"AND STAY OUT!" I shouted when we'd dispatched the last of them.

Ramblings while in search of coffee on a Monday morning...

There's been some more fallout from the Rob Pardo incident.

Rades has unsubbed.

I'll miss his voice, but he insists that his decision will not impact From Draenor With Love.

Kurn, over at Kurn's Corner, has a very in-depth post talking about how social media impact the wider world. It's close in length to a Cynwise post, but very much worth the read. There's even a Ratters appearance in the comment section.

***

I don't often read Twitter, but it seems that more than a few bloggers I know have invaded Wildstar. I'm not sure how well that will go, but I wish them luck.

Also, given the whole explosion from WoW-space (see the first musing), I'm not sure how well Wildstar will hold up, either.

1927 screen icon or Wildstar character?
You decide.

***

This week is exam week at the kids' schools, so I don't really have a lot to talk about from that perspective. I will mention that two of them rolled up Smugglers and one a Trooper, and they're all loving the class stories so far. (Apparently Corso is "soooo cute". Who knew?)

***

I hope your Monday has been going better than mine has so far. I really need to go get some coffee now....


EtA: Apparently my issues with punctuation include the period. Corrected.

And Now for Something a Bit More Lighthearted

After the news from the last couple of days*, I needed a laugh.

Here's a comic from 2011 that still tickles my funny bone:

From shoeboxblog.com via geeksaresexy.net,
but you knew that from the graphic, right?

*Both in and outside of the MMO world. Like what happened at UCSB.

It's Never Boring Around Here

I wasn't exactly planning on making a second post today, but there's currently a bit of an internet kerfuffle going on right now concerning some commentary that Rob Pardo, Chief Creative Officer at Blizzard, made at a recent MIT Media Lab talk. While he made some references to emphasizing fun and gameplay over narrative during the talk, the most interesting comments happened afterward.

Todd Harper, writing an opinion piece for Polygon, covers the questions and answers he had with Rob Pardo that touched on how Blizzard portrays women:

His subsequent list of justifications, reasons and examples became increasingly problematic. Pardo argued that Blizzard works primarily in sci-fi and fantasy because they're "kids at heart," reinforcing the idea that games — specifically Blizzard games — are not a place for "real world issues" to be discussed:

"We're not trying to bring in serious stuff, or socially relevant stuff, or actively trying to preach for diversity or do things like that," he said. His example of a place where Blizzard struggles is portrayal of women.

Pardo notes that "because most of our developers are guys who grew up reading comics books," Blizzard games often present women characters as a sexualized comic book ideal that "is offensive to, I think, some women."*

There's a bit more there --particularly about Nintendo and their Tomodachi Life issues-- so if you want to follow the link below and read the article, go ahead.

Aside from the issue where it seems that Blizzard is all but saying they're not that interested in appealing to women, one of the problems with Pardo's statement is their belief that because they don't intend to write about real world issues their game has no effect. But unless you live in a bubble, everything has an impact on the wider world.

I've told my kids time and again that when they wear their school t-shirts and jackets out and about, people are judging their school based on their actions. It is most definitely not fair to judge an entire diverse community based on the actions of a few, but nevertheless it happens all the time. That's the entire point behind the term "represent" as in "Represent your school". If you act like an ass, you taint everyone with your behavior. But if you act responsibly, people will think more highly of your organization.

The same thing happens with Blizzard and WoW. For all their words, Blizzard demonstrates with their actions that they don't value very highly a substantial portion of their player base.

But the thing is, their representation issues are so easily fixed, it's not even funny.

Looking at Heroes of the Storm, for example, you could easily replace the Priest with Tyrande and the Paladin with Lady Liadrin, and you'd then have 4 of the 9 WoW characters as women.

Want to (partially) fix the lack of female faction leaders in WoW? Swap out Lor'themar for Lady Liadrin. Hell, until Mists dropped, I'd wager that most people thought she was the faction leader anyway. You could also make Moira the head of the Council of Three Hammers.

And before any lore nuts go ballistic over my suggestions, remember that Pardo also said that Blizzard emphasized "fun and gameplay" over "narrative".** Given the lack of emphasis on story and their total control over the content, there's no reason why they can't simply tweak this via a novel.

***

As I mentioned earlier, all this has stirred up a huge hornets nest in the WoW blogosphere.***

Kurn and Rades each have a take on the issue. Cynwise cancelled his WoW account.

And I can't help but think this is another black eye in Blizzard's direction when the company is having retention issues.

Maybe this won't have much of an impact with WoW, but the company can ill afford to piss off a not so insignificant amount of their player base. I doubt there will be a boycott of Blizzard, but what I do think is that some people who were considering taking a break from WoW might decide to pull the trigger now.

And really, if you feel shunted off to the side, why continue to spend money on the game?

It will prove interesting to see what happens next.





*From Erasing your audience isn't 'fun': The false choice between diversity and enjoyment by Todd Harper.

**Which kind of explains why they're not bothering to go back and fix major continuity issues in WoW.

***As of this moment, WoW Insider has been completely silent on this.

(EtA: At 7 PM EST, WoW Insider had this post by Matt Rossi on diversity.)