Trial of Being the Champion

If there's one thing that irks me the most about RPGs and MMOs, it's that the power fantasy is kind of baked into the genres.

That's not to say that all I ever want to do is sit around at a virtual bar and get hit on by other players*, but rather that I want my RPG and MMO experience to be more than merely about getting more stuff. 

Given how Wall Street acts these days, Gordon
Gecko's pronouncement back in 1987 is
positively quaint. From Wall Street.

To what is probably the largest number of players**, the whole point of playing an MMO is to get the gear that shows off what you've accomplished. Most third party material is focused on all aspects of accomplishing just that: get the right gear for the class with the right specs and the right talents using the right rotation to kill the boss for the loot. If it's not explicitly that, the other aspect the majority of players are interested in is killing those bosses at ever increasing difficulty to show off your physical skills. 

Of course, the power fantasy is far more than the mere acquisition of loot and using said loot to defeat the bosses. It's also about having the game tell you how important or powerful you are. 

Okay, it could also be "mortals", but...

***

Having been a participant in --and a watcher of-- sports and sporting events, there's a lot of overlap between the stardom inherent in competitive sports and the power fantasy in RPGs/MMOs.*** In both environments, the better you get the more you're lauded by people, and you accumulate more hangers-on who want to bask in your reflected glory. After a while, you pretty much expect this adulation as par for the course.

But what is frequently missed in the RPG/MMO power fantasy is what happens when your skills diminish over time. Or when you screw up and those adoring fans turn on you. 

Just ask Bill Buckner about that one.****

In an RPG/MMO, you know you're the hero, so even if there's a setback you know that in the end there's a redemption path for you. Just look at the old quest chain in WoW's Burning Crusade expansion where you inadvertently assist Teron Gorefiend's return to power. Of course, you end up meeting him as a raid boss in Black Temple (I think) so you "correct" your mistake there. No harm, no foul.

But in life, such redemption stories rarely happen. You screw up badly at work, you find yourself reassigned if you're lucky, and out of a job if not. If you drop that game winning pass, you're the idiot who couldn't catch a damn ball; no matter if you've done it since time immemorial. 

And the boos come; both physical and virtual.

***

I guess I want more complexity to what RPGs and MMOs mean than just the power fantasy. "The line goes up" doesn't necessarily thrill me, when I'm at that point in my life when I counter with "yeah, but you can't take it with you". That's something I can't emphasize enough; when you're closer to the end of things than the beginning, you start looking around and thinking "just what am I going to do with all of this shit, anyway?" It's easy to want more things, but what the hell are you supposed to do with them when you've got them? Want even more things?

The problem is, the desire for more and more is baked into these games because that's what keeps people buying. The power fantasy is a psychological tool to purchase more.

But why can't there be, well, more to offer than just the power fantasy?

Well, Champion? What say you?

*In the right frame of mind, I'd be down for that. The thing is, I'm typically not in that frame of mind.

**If it's not the largest number, it tends to be the loudest voice in the community.

***Also in politics. There's a reason why narcissists flock to the political life.

****And for the record, that Bill Buckner forgave the fans who eviscerated him is far better than those fans deserved.

That Hangover Sucked

My wife worked on New Year's Day --that's the blessing (time and a half pay) and curse (you have to work on a holiday) of working retail-- so she went to bed early on New Year's Eve.

I, for some reason, stayed up past midnight to listen to the fireworks*, and I got on WoW Classic Era just to screw around a bit. 

Not terribly much going on there.

So... before I retired for the night I got on WoW Season of Discovery.

Things were a wee bit different...

Who let the reindeer in?

Oh, right. Lava Lash is an RP server.**

And given that little fact, things got a bit rowdy...

Night Elves of both sexes were, uh, "dancing"
on top of benches and kegs. And there was a gnome
on one of the picnic tables, egging the male NEs on.

With free booze available, Card got drunk...

See that blur in the middle? That's her.
Apparently I either didn't drink enough
or you can't get so drunk in game to hurl.

Anyway, the fireworks went off at midnight and people were calling for an afterparty at Goldshire. That was when I decided that I didn't want to end up on the wrong side of some adult role playing and retired for the night.

*And a couple of kids in the neighborhood zipping around on ATVs up until New Year's as well. We have a hilly neighborhood, so frequently people can't see cars coming, but that never seems to deter these kids. There have been more than a few near misses with cars, especially when both cars and ATVs speed quite a bit through the neighborhood. I just shake my head and wonder when we're finally going to get the big wreck that our neighborhood has been spoiling for.

**I did check Orgrimmar just for curiosity's sake to see if the Horde was partying. After running there with a newly created toon, there was literally nothing going on. All the RPers were in Stormwind, I guess.

Meme Monday: New Year's Memes for 2024

I thought about taking this Meme Monday off, but I decided against it. I mean, it's not that big a deal to put this together, and there's no shortage of memes to choose from.

From Shen Comix via Reddit.

Did you know that in 2024 there's a solar eclipse
with totality crossing about a 15 minute drive
from my house? Oh yeah, baby. From imgflip.

This was sports related as it came from
sportskeeda, but I'm down for this.

And really, after the past several years, 
I'm kinda like this right now.
From imgflip. Again.

A Collection of Guild Names, Season of Discovery Edition

Okay, so they're not all from Season of Discovery, but the majority of them are, hence the title.

And yes, when you want to hang around a major city and just people watch, this is what you find.

Not sure what they mean by "worst", but
I'll take them at their word.

I think I found the guild my questing
buddy would join!

Who is this 'Debbie'? Is she a downer?

I want to know if there's a guild named
"Ready Only After Coffee".

They were apparently asleep at the wheel
during the Battle for Azeroth expansion.

I'm pretty sure you're standing right there.

Found the John Le'Carre fans.

Well, this is correct at first, but he
kind of went off the rails.

I have this sudden urge to go collect pottery.

Given my employment history,
I could join this one.

If people weren't getting their dopamine hits
they wouldn't be playing.

Found the guild that Josh Strife Hayes
would be a member of.

I honestly don't know how to respond
to this one.

I have this sudden urge to say "Peace..."

I figured they used the wrong word for
'brakes', but you never know...

This is how I used to read the street
signs that were meant to say
"SLOW... Children at Play".

Next on Mythbusters: Testing the Myth of
the pre-nerfed C'Thun! Is the Old God unbeatable?

"But my name's not..."
"SHUT UP!!"

It's legal in Ohio, too!

Okay, I see the ceiling. Now what?

Not sure if the "N" refers to Night Elves...

I thought this might be a Planet of the Apes
reference, but there's apparently a podcast
with this name. Go figure.

Yes, this is the guild I referenced a couple of posts ago.
And yes, it's fairly active.

I keep thinking Dragonlance when I see this
guild name, but for all I know it could be
a vague reference to England's War of the Roses.

I'd make a Bernie Sanders joke here, but he
apparently has come down with Covid.

"Rise again, little fighter
And let the world know the reason why..."

Knowing what I know now about how the Murloc
sound is made, I just kind of shudder when
I see this guild name....

Gary's pretty popular, from what I can tell.

Well, I'm glad you're proud of that.

I'm sure the UC was "Undercity", but
I like to think they meant University of Cincinnati.

Hey, thanks. You're not so bad yourself.

If that's a janitors' guild, I ought to join since
I was a janitor in high school.

The Expectation That Things Will Be Different

I don't typically care that much about award shows.

There was a time when I did, back when I used to think of myself as a film connoisseur of sorts.

(Yes, I was a snobby asshole at times.)

It was one of those things where I felt that film had the capacity to provide art on a high level --okay, it does, actually-- and that I used to watch movies for cinematography as much as the plot or the acting.*

I also kept a close eye on the SF&F awards out of WorldCon and the SFWA Con, not to mention the World Fantasy Con, because I thought that raising the bar of what SF&F could be was the way to get those genres more accepted by society at large.

So, what changed? Why did I stop caring about awards? And why bring this up at all, anyway?

***

It took my employers for me to stop caring about awards.

Or rather, what my employers did with their own awards.

Back when I worked in a small materials lab, the owner of the place during the quarterly meeting would "distribute" some awards. Since he was the arbiter of the whole thing, these so-called awards (which meant nothing) were all based on his whims. However, once I moved onto larger corporations, I thought that the awards given out on an annual basis meant a lot more, because... Well, I'm not sure why I thought that, but I felt it was going to be less personality driven and more impartial.

That first year I attended the annual all hands meeting for the software company I joined in the mid-90s I had no real opinions on, because I was still new. The next year when I attended, however, I had opinions on who had worked their asses off and who "deserved" awards. Part of the joy of working on the QA side of things was that I was exposed to most of the development teams, so I knew who was loafing it when they made code changes and who was putting in heroic levels of effort. Surely, I thought, that the people who were given awards were those that truly earned them.

Boy, was I wrong.

I discovered during that annual meeting I rarely agreed with the award recipients. In fact, about 2/3 of them came from a project that frequently broke the environment and was in such sad shape when we shipped our software that a separate Tiger Team was created to fix their buggy application.** When it worked it was great, but the critical issue was the "when it worked" part.  But because it was a highly visible project, the lion's share of awards went to people who worked on that project.

As a result, over that next calendar year several people who I thought were more deserving of those awards left the company for greener pastures.

This cycle continued over the next few years, culminating in my team winning an award in my final year with the company, and both myself and my closest co-worker left within six months for other jobs.

I then made a quantum leap in company size to the job that directly lead to what I do today, but I discovered that pettiness and other associated bullshit for company created awards just got larger as well.

That provided me the realization that awards are like certifications: they're there to make people feel good, but have no bearing upon whether you can actually do the job or not.*** I mean, does anybody remember the controversy surrounding that the first Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance when it was given to Jethro Tull for Crest of a Knave?****

From the Heavy Metal masters themselves...

***

That's not to say that people won't try to use awards and award shows for their own political ends.

There was the incident at the Academy Awards back in 1973 where Sacheen Littlefeather went on stage to explain why Marlon Brando was rejecting his award. 

And, of course, if you're familiar with SF&F, there was the Sad Puppies right wing campaign to take over the Hugo Awards from roughly 2013 through 2016. Given that the Hugo awards are popularly voted on by those with memberships to Worldcon (at the time it was something like $50) a voting bloc could buy a bunch of memberships and attempt to take over the awards in the same fashion that people in the past have voted on for All-Star teams for various sports. 

Now we have the latest controversies surrounding The Game Awards.

From the people complaining about how the award recipients had almost no time to thank their staff and dev teams to the people who wanted the award show to make a stand about the Israeli Palestine war, it seems that The Game Awards has truly arrived as an awards show.*****

It has also proved that The Game Awards' relevance as awards is pretty much corporate in nature. 

When your awards show is more concerned about providing advertisements for upcoming video games rather than celebrating the games from the past year, it shows your awards show only cares about corporate sponsorship. That is reinforced by the desire to not rock the boat politically; you could make the argument that making any political statement at all is a losing proposition as people of all stripes play video games, and wading into political waters is likely to piss off a certain group of consumers. Of course, making no political statement at all is also making a political statement, so good luck with that.

In the end, The Game Awards is corporate driven and shouldn't impact your enjoyment of what games you like, because awards and award shows aren't made for you. Even popularity contests such as the Hugos or the American Music Awards (or the MAMAs, which is the K-Pop equivalent) can't tell you what you like, because you're you. 

And you shouldn't expect your award shows to align with what you believe or advocate for, because the goal of awards and award shows are different than yours. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go play Crest of a Knave and ...And Justice For All, since I'm in the mood to hear both today. And yes, I do have both albums, thankyouverymuch.

*That was how I was introduced to Martin Scorsese, via film study class in high school. We had an assignment to break down the cinematography of a film --any film, our choice-- and I happened to catch After Hours on cable. I had no idea who the film's director was because I missed the first few minutes of the film, and the plot was so surreal that it was like a Terry Gilliam fever dream, but I absolutely loved the cinematography. I had to confess I didn't catch the director's name in my paper, but the teacher loved it anyway.

**It took them the better part of a year to stabilize things to where it was usable by our clients without crashing.

***True story: a person who literally just passed their UNIX Sysadmin certification exam came to me later in the day and asked me the following question about accessing the root user:

Him: When we su to root, what do we use?

Me: ::puzzled:: We use 'su -'.

Him: No, I mean that when other people switch to root, they use 'su -'. When we switch to root, we use....

Me: We use 'su -' too. The OS security software knows what access you have based on your group membership.

Him: ::wanders away and goes to another cubicle, where I could hear him asking the same question of someone else::

Me: ...

Before you ask, despite me being on the team for six months longer than he was, I hadn't gotten a chance to take the certification exam. And to this day, I never have.

****Even Ian Anderson used to make fun of that award, as reported to me by a college friend who went to see them in concert when Tull was touring in support of their Rock Island album.

*****That was sarcasm for those who might have missed that.

Meme Monday: RPG/MMO Christmas Memes

Because Christmas comes but once a year, and this year it falls on Meme Monday...

Yeppers. From Familyminded.

Uh, oops.
From Pinterest.

Oh, Silver would be fine. or Bronze.
From dndmemes on Reddit.

Wait, you only found this out NOW???
From Pinterest (again).

A Christmas Miracle...

...brought to you by a glitch in the WoW Classic Era servers.

Cardwyn: "How's the weather up there?"