A Short Ponderable about MMOs and Motivation

As much as MMOs are driven by so-called Big Bads, the top enemy of whom people have united against, it's kind of funny how few times that plot device has worked in the real world. 

The most obvious example is ol' Adolph Hitler, with folks such as Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and other great conquerors as other examples, but for the most part conflicts and wars have little to do with opposition to a specific leader. If you made a list of the top reasons why people go to war, there's race, territory, resources, and history*, but the one bugaboo that almost never gets brought up in MMOs is the one I was wondering about: religion.

Most MMOs out there don't have religion as a primary motivating factor in warfare or conflict like we do in the real world. Hell, even in a lot of RPG campaigns I've been in, religion has hardly been a motivating factor. More frequently I see a "orcs hate the elves and the dwarves hate the goblins" dynamic but you rarely see an "our gods hate your gods" motivator. If such a motivator exists, it's kind of a secondary thing, where "yeah, the gods dislike each other" motivation tacked on to the primary ones. 

In a world where the gods actively intervene on behalf of their adherents, you don't get a lot of "Our gods are real, and yours don't exist" assertions. Neither do you see the "we worship the same gods, but ours is the correct way to worship them!" argument.

Ah, Life of Brian. I love that movie.
From Yarn.

***

I was put into this frame of mind when I remembered a story that my sister-in-law once told me about when she was in Vet school in the Deep South. This first year she was there, they were coming up on the end of the semester and the Winter Break. Conversation with some of her classmates devolved into what they were going to do for Christmas. 

Knowing that she was Catholic, one of her classmates asked my sister-in-law what she was going to do instead of Christmas.

"Uh, celebrate Christmas," my sister-in-law replied.

"Oh," her classmate responded, "well, we know that Catholics aren't Christian, so when we celebrate Christmas, you celebrate...."

"Christmas. Catholics are Christian."

"No they're not."

My sister-in-law was flummoxed. This was the first time she'd encountered anybody who didn't think that Catholics aren't even Christian, which would be a bit of a surprise to the Pope. 

Then again, I've met people whose version of Christianity is such that they believe the Pope is the Anti-Christ, so... Yeah.

***

I guess we kind of tend to sweep these sort of conflicts under the rug when we play MMOs or RPGs, because the concept of "nobody is correct" and "everybody is correct" with regards to religion touches a raw nerve with people. Besides, religion in the real world comprises a large amount of a person's identity --whether we realize it or not-- and that's kind of hard to replicate in a fictional world where you don't have any real personal stakes. At most, you tend to get what I call the "Exorcist" type of religious interaction. As in the book and movie, the "Exorcist" references the temptation to worship and devote yourself to evil, as opposed to merely worshiping somebody else's gods.

Once in a while religion does come
up in an MMO in a way that is relatable.
But you know, it could be worse.
From Knowyourmeme.

This conflict is comfortable --if you want to call dealing with evil comfortable-- because we're familiar with the tropes involved. It's much harder to drop, say, the Wars of the Reformation into an MMO or RPG because it forces us to look harder at why religion makes us do what we do. That's not a path toward a successful and popular game.

But what do you think? I've talked enough, and danced around certain aspects of this topic enough.

#Blaugust2023

*The "you started a fight with us years ago, so now it's our turn to get back at you!" reason.

How My Brain Works, Part Whatever Plus One

My son challenged me the other week, saying that I just buy games and never play them.

He's not wrong, given the number of paper and pencil RPGs and board games I own that I've never played. Gotten out of the box and devoured, yes, but actually played? No.*

The ironic thing is that prior to his challenge I had actually begun playing some of the video games I'd bought and sat in my inventory.

None of the RPGs that would likely suck me in for hours at a time, mind you, but some of the other games that scratch that building itch. Such as Old World, Surviving Mars, or the reimagining of Master of Orion.

This is the MOO I know, as I never played
the subsequent iterations of the game. And yes,
I know that MOO2 was supposedly better than
the first game. From Steamcommunity.

These three --and others-- can be as nit picky and as complex as you want them to be, but I can also step back and play them with only one eye on the details while I do other things. (Like listen to some of the meetings I'm required to attend but am only peripherally involved with at best.)

But still, I want to get a chance to play those long running single player RPGs.

***

Back when I played Ultima V I used to keep a notebook of all sorts of game info for easy reference. It helped me to know those details as there wasn't a quest system like that found in modern games, so a player had to keep track of everything to give them a chance at completing the story. Even before I formalized notebook usage I scribbled down info from Ultima IV and the original Bards Tale on scrap paper from my dorm room, because a busy college student needed this so they could get their coursework done and keep up with playing the game on an occasional basis.

I was taught how to take notes during
a seminar on studying we all had to take
in 8th Grade, but really it was the old
Colossal Cave adventure that got me started
on this path. From DOSGames.com.

Today, a lot of that bookkeeping is done for you by the games themselves. If the info isn't there, you can also find it on a wiki or somewhere else around the internet. That makes it easy to find answers, I suppose, but for me it also means it's harder to re-engage after being away for a while. I find this lack of direct participation in the note-taking and bookkeeping makes me sloppy, and it leads to me wanting to keep playing a game more so I won't forget what I've been doing. 

This isn't exactly a new phenomenon for me, because I experienced it firsthand in a few classes I had in college. 

A lot of my classwork while attending college revolved around how good I was at taking notes. Or copying equations down from the whiteboard or blackboard (yes, I'm old school), and the subsequent discussion surrounding the problem solving process. Some of those processes, such as solving for the Hydrogen atom in Atomic and Nuclear Physics class**, took about half of the semester. That meant that if you weren't keeping up on your notes, you were going to fall far behind very very fast. 

Here's the proof I actually took A&N
30+ years ago. (!) From Modern
Physics, by Paul A Tipler of
Oakland University. (My copy says 1978,
not 1977 that Goodreads says.)

However, there were a few classes that I had that the notes were passed out prior to each session, and then we discussed the notes in the lecture itself. At first, I thought this was absolutely great, because I wasn't spending my entire class writing so fast that my hand began cramping. I could focus on the concepts and not worry about missing anything. What ended up happening, however, was that I had less retention in those classes than the others.

Back when I was in high school, my teacher in my Physics class allowed us to create a "cheat sheet" on a 3"x 5" index card for use in our mid-term exam; we could cram as many formulas into the card as humanly possible, as long as it was on a 3x5 index card that he handed out a week prior to the exam. The nights before the exam I feverishly shoehorned every formula that I thought I might need into the card without requiring a magnifying glass, and on the day of the exam showed up --card in hand-- ready to go. What I discovered, however, was the act of me writing everything down as I reviewed what might or might not be important meant I committed to memory all of them, so I didn't need the cheat sheet at all.***

I am apparently one of those people who have to actively participate in the writing down of notes for me to retain them better. 

***

Why is this so critically important? Because if I'm going to play one of these single player RPGs, I'm going to have to ration my game time. 

I have multiple demands on my time, and while I thought that once the kids grew up and left for college I'd have more free time, I've found that my time has simply been filled up with other things that demand a slice of the pie. Therefore, unless I suddenly enter an alternate dimension --hey, don't laugh, because if the Cincinnati Bengals went to the Super Bowl in 2022 anything can happen-- I won't have a ton of free time to devote to playing these games to my heart's content. 

As you can see, keeping up with the games doesn't mean "more automated processes" for me at all, because that won't help nearly as much as me actually writing stuff down. I need that act of writing and note taking to make things stick, and therefore it's time to invest in a few notebooks of my own. I am going to play some of these games, and doing so will take discipline on my part; I guess I'm going to suck a bit of the fun out of those games by doing so, but I have to acknowledge reality.

And oh look, Back to School sales are going on right now, with plenty of notebooks to choose from...

Imagine that!
A partial snapshot of the Target
website on August 3rd, 2023.

#Blaugust2023

*There's actually a method to my madness with the pencil and paper RPGs, but that'll have to be on another post. Let's say that it has to do with worldbuilding and leave it at that for now.

**Hi, Dr. Craver! I'm almost 100% certain you don't cruise the net looking for where your name might show up, but if you do, it's great to see ya! Just wanted to let you know I've very fond memories of A&N as well as Physics 206, and I miss those times when you'd slyly sing the Hail Purdue fight song when we were talking Big Ten football after the Friday seminars. And I see that A&N has mutated into a "Physics IV: Modern Physics" class, which is fine by me. Times change, you know.

***Before you ask, yes, I got a really good grade on the exam. No, I'm not going to tell you what it was.

Who Dresses Up For Plowing the Fields, Anyway?

Waaay back when I first tried out Guild Wars 2*, one of the main complaints I had about the game involved fashion. Or rather, that the game was full of beautiful people wearing their Sunday Best clothing, even when they're out in the field farming and doing menial tasks.

Okay, so I'm in Divinity's Reach.
One of these NPCs actually said,
"He's going to look across a crowded
room and instantly be smitten."
So at least they're self aware.

To my mind, tasks where you get grimy are not the sort of time to be wearing your best clothing, and I likened it to looking at Medieval and Renaissance art depicting people farming in the clothes you'd wear to Mass. 

Take a look at the bottom right, and remember
that those are the peasants.
The Three States of Medieval Society,
from The Regime of Princes by Rouen,
Based on Gilles de Rome's work of
the same name. From classes.bnf.fr.

Fast forward to today, and I still have those opinions, although I can articulate them better now.

As much as I admire Kamalia's fashion design using WoW's transmog capability, I will be the first one to admit that wearing those outfits while "working", ala fighting and adventuring, is akin to those peasants in the painting above wearing their finery while being on the business end of a horse and plow. 

This is an entirely separate argument from the "boob window" and other sins of F&SF armor design, as while the boob window is designed to titillate, the fashion behind RPG gear doesn't really fit with the job description. After all, it's as if we're a modern soldier wearing our dress uniforms while on patrol in a flashpoint area around the globe. As much as camo is its own fashion these days --go to your average Bass Pro Shop or Walmart and you'll see what I mean-- its original and still most common usage is to blend in with the background while hunting/fishing or in active duty military.**

***

If there's one thing that's a trope of any society, it's that fashion matters.

As much as I've tried to dance to the beat of my own drum, even I have to conform to societal customs if I want to blend in and not be noticed.***

Are you going to work? Wear the clothes most commonly worn at work.

Are you going to a wedding? Dress up. In prior years that meant a sport coat and tie, but now you can get away with "business casual", especially if you're corralling a bunch of kids in tow.

Are you going to a funeral? Dress up.

Are you going to work out in the yard? Wear old clothes you don't mind getting dirty.

It's pretty much common sense, and if, for example, you go to religious services --pick one, any one-- you're likely to be dressed up to varying degrees. And if you're a kid and you come home from church and want to go play, well, you'd better change out of your church clothes before you do or you'll have to be really careful not to get those clothes dirty. 

Or you could have parents like mine who, after going to a Saturday evening mass (yay, Catholics) gave my brother and me the ultimatum that if we came inside (even just to change) we had to stay inside. And you can guess what I decided to do: stay outside even though I was wearing slacks/corduroy pants and a button down shirt. And you want to talk about standing out, especially in the Summer, that was definitely it.****

If society places certain demands on fashion now, imagine what that might have been like "back in the day". The scarcity of certain hues and dyes meant cloth made of such colors were reserved for highest classes; such as, oh, Royal Purple. (It's right there in the name.) And that's not even taking into account the types of clothing worn by the various classes of society.*****

***

Now, it's one thing if your toon looks something like this:

Been hanging around with those ne'er-do-well
pirates in Stranglethorn Vale, have we?

Obviously Card's wearing stuff that nobody would confuse with something formal, such as this:

Neve: "A Dawnweaver always presents well."
Me: "Yeah, whatever."

But which look would be more appropriate for getting in a mix-up with some nearby yetis?

Me: "You stay out of this."

I was thinking about the appropriateness of Neve's Robe of Power when I remembered an event well over a decade ago. Back before the woods near our house were torn down and houses went up, there used to be an old wooden shack back there. I used to hear from neighborhood kids at the bus stop while I waited with the mini-Reds about how the shack was haunted --typical kid stuff-- and that people would go back there and drink beer without being caught by their parents. I stuffed that knowledge in the back of my head but never thought much of it until one night in the Spring. It was roughly around midnight when I heard quite a few cars going by the house all at once. Our neighborhood used to have its share of people who would speed through as a short cut, so I poked my head out to see if it was enough of a problem to warrant calling the cops.

It turns out that wasn't what was going on at all.

A bunch of teenagers were parking their cars up and down the street and then walking up toward the woods, carrying six packs. All were dressed in very formal outfits, especially the girls.

"Huh, didn't know it was prom," I mused as I shut the door. I knew exactly what they were all up to that night.#

The sight of those girls in those big bright formal dresses and heels navigating the woods at night is what I think of when I see toons wearing gear that look like this out in Azshara:

Uh, yeah. Shouldn't Card be
at a dance somewhere?

***

We're obviously not playing Dragon Age; the gear isn't getting splattered with mud and blood, and we're not leaning into the grimdark aspects of gaming ala Dark Souls. I'm not advocating for gear that is a constant downer; people want their toons to look good and have fun playing the game. I guess that for me that means that --especially for the NPCs-- their clothing match the their activity. Or at least look like, well, what you'd expect people to look like. 

#Blaugust2023

*A decade ago if you were keeping track.

**I mean, duh. Camo is short for camouflage.

***As much as a red headed bearded guy can blend in, that is. After all, there aren't that many of us out there, and because of that we do tend to naturally stand out.

****I have a story about an event that occurred one evening while I was still in all of that church clothing, but it's one of those stories that requires a very specific topic to dredge up. Let's say it involves puberty, girls, relationships, and perceptions of the same, and it's a story I've never ever forgotten.

*****You know you've been playing too many RPGs and MMOs when I have to clarify what I meant by "classes".

#I know Bruce Hornsby and the Range aren't trendy --they weren't very trendy or popular among fans of the bands I listened to back in the 80s-- but I liked them. And really, if you like what you're listening to that's all that counts.

Because I'm Getting Old and Have Seen It All

The other day, I was querying my Questing Buddy how the Friday raid went. "It went well," she said. "We downed Ony first and then got a group for TotC."

"Did you get an Ony bag?" I teased, as that was one of the reasons why people would continue to run Onyxia even late in Vanilla Classic. The "revived" Wrath Classic version of Onyxia returned in Phase 3, a month or two ago.

"Oh, I got it the other week, but I won the head!" (That's the other big reason why people would run Ony.)

"Wait, what?" I was not expecting that reply. "There's an Ony Bag in the L80 version of Ony?"

"Oh yeah! It's a 22 slot bag."

"Huh." I just got outfoxed by Blizzard, as I wasn't quite expecting that they would put an updated Ony Bag in the loot. "I kind of expected it to be a 24 slot bag."

"No, it's like the bag out with the dragon area," she replied, referencing The Obsidian Sanctum raid from Phase 1, which also dropped a 22 slot bag. 

"Hmm..." I replied, trying to remember. "I can't recall if I got that bag or not." Given the amount of effort people put in back in TBC Classic to min-max everything, including bag space, I kind of tuned out these sort of reward drops. I looked at it as representative of the problems afflicting the Classic community, and my appetite for these little quality of life rewards from TBC Classic onwards turned into revulsion instead.

My Questing Buddy, of course, didn't know about any of this. "You DIDN'T?" she said incredulously.

"I just really didn't care if I won it, so I skipped rolling a lot of times."

I could almost see her rolling her eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

I went back through some notes I made on those Phase One raids. "Oh wait," I corrected myself. "I did win it on the last time we went through that raid. I waited until everybody else had won it and then I got it."

My Questing Buddy sighed.

***

There's another reason why I mentioned this story, and it's this:

If you need to click on the pic to bring up
the original size, that's fine. But it's
pretty obvious that I'm not talking about
the regular maintenance window here.

Even if I didn't have some revulsion toward Blizzard courtesy of their corporate behavior, the "fund raising" pet sale in support of Ukraine would have generated a ton of ick all by itself.

Not that I'm anti-Ukraine or anything, because I'm most definitely not, but because of the corporatization of doing something for a good cause. 

It's not any sense of purity that I feel this way --okay, maybe a little, if I'm being completely honest about it-- but that I know that very very few corporations look at something as an altruistic endeavor. Over the years I've seen the man behind the curtain, and I know that at their heart most companies put only profit. Not good deeds, not society, and most definitely not people. So when I see something like this, where Acti-Blizz recruited Mila Kunis* to promote pet sales in support of BlueCheck for Ukraine, I simply can't see the altruism.

At this point, I'd much rather that companies simply stop trying to put lipstick on a pig about their corporate altruism if they're going to prioritize profits over everything else. That's their prerogative to do so, but they're definitely not fooling me into thinking that somehow Blizzard has turned a corner and will behave like a responsible corporate citizen. Maybe when the wheel turns and shareholder primacy yields to another form of corporate activity I'll change my mind about this, but until then I'll do my good deeds out of the public view and not in service of a corporate master.

#Blaugust2023

*Holy crap, she's matured. I don't know why, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that she's grown up and reached the cusp of 40. Before you accuse me of being ageist or something, I think that she looks absolutely stunning, and not just "for her age". Of course, me being in my 50s, I still think of her as being young, but that goes with the territory.

EtA: Corrected spelling.

The Blogging Version of Sitting on the Fence Returns

Apparently there's some blogging thing that's starting today in our little corner of the internet. 

Given that blogging is now so passé that it's due to come around and be ironically trendy again*, that some of us old farts have kept up with blogging all these years means we're either persistent, delusional, stubborn, or a combination of all three. 

Either way, giving a bunch of MMO players --who are used to min-maxing the hell out of everything**-- the opportunity to post for a "celebration" of blogging and potentially win prizes in the form of badges as proof of, oh, I don't know.... "winning at blogging", that's certainly going to bring out some people to post a lot.

Or, if you're like me, refuse to formally participate yet go ahead and post a bunch anyway.***

***

Am I going to post a lot? Mmmmmaybe?

It's still too early to say, because 31 days is a long time, but we'll see. 

#Blaugust2023

*In the same manner as cassette tapes have been. Sure, there were good cassette tapes made, but from a record manufacturer? Oh hell no; you had to make copies off of records yourself onto quality tapes, such as Maxell or TDK, if you wanted a quality cassette made. Ironically enough, the best tapes were made from CDs in that period when CD players were a rarity in cars and you wanted your collection of CDs copied onto tape.

**Or know that everybody else is min-maxing the hell out of everything.

***If you want to call me hipsterish for behaving like that, go for it. I've been like that since before the current hipsters were even born. For example, the summer after my Freshman year of college I spent working at my Dad's office for one of his friends. When the time came for me to leave and go back to university, my Dad's friend wanted to take me out to lunch. I passed, because I didn't really feel like I earned anything special. He tried to convince me otherwise, but I held firm.

Meme Monday: Blogging Memes

Given that the annual blogging event Blaugust* is going to start on Tuesday, I figured that a Meme Monday for Blogging itself is worth a go.

Truth! And I know I don't have
to worry about that one.
From imgflip.

I'd say that 3/4 of the time when I wake
up in the morning I have no idea what
to write about. So, yeah.
From quickmeme.com

Admittedly, I'm not trying to make a living
while blogging. It's more like I blog to
satisfy a need to write, because otherwise I'd
just write fanfic, and.... yeah. Let's not go there.
I know I can't pull that one off.
From wordsalad.com.au.

And finally....

Yes, yes I can. In fact, there are a few
of them on the blog itself. You might
not realize it, but yeah, they're there.
From memesmonkey.com.

*Is there a Trademark on Blaugust? One of these days I ought to find out.

All Hail Glorbo

With AI driving content at places such as Z League's The Portal --go read up on the Glorbo prank here from Ars Technica-- I have been wondering whether you can set one AI against other AIs. 

Bellular News' take on the whole AI thing.

The TL;DR of Glorbo is that The Portal uses AI to scrape Reddit for content, with AI-created articles that push what the AI believes will increase pageviews to The Portal. Several Redditors created a fake World of Warcraft expansion, Glorbo, and began posting about the "expac". Z League's AI picked up on those posts and began flooding The Portal with a lot of "Glorbo" related content. Only afterward did Z League realize their AI's mistake and they had to "correct" all of those posts to identify them as "satire" and then later took down WoW related content.

My thinking is that we could "seed" a second website with AI-generated articles based off of The Portal's content, potentially supplemented by posting AI-generated articles to Reddit, creating a feedback loop where the AI's basically feed off of each other in escalating content craziness.

If someone were to do this with AI generated art, I'm not exactly sure what might come out of it. Given the sameness a lot of the AI art from Midjourney, I suspect the "human" or "humanlike" art will give rise to an AI version of the "Hapsburg chin". 

It's all an interesting exercise, as long as said AI's don't become sentient and turn on us in revenge, I suppose...