The Joy of Anonymity

While my son and I were grabbing lunch before visiting our local game store for Free RPG Day*, he asked me if I was planning on playing Final Fantasy XIV any time soon. I'd created a Lancer a few years ago, but I'd never gotten around to playing him. 

"I don't know," I admitted.

It's not that I don't want to give the game a try, I suppose, but it's more like I'm not sure if I'm going to like it very much. After all, I've expressed my displeasure on more than one occasion about the focus of WoW circa Wrath onwards of the player as the Champion of Azeroth.

From ifunny.co.

When the story doesn't involve a telenovela about the major faction leaders, that is. 

From Pinterest. (And ifunny.co.)

I may not know much about the FFXIV story but I do know that your character is supposed to be the equivalent of the Champion of Azeroth, the Warrior of Light, which puts you on the level of a Godslayer or something. Given that we've been killing gods in Azeroth since 2006, this isn't exactly unknown territory. Still, that original C'Thun raid was a 40 person raid, and was a stand-in for an army in-game, even though it doesn't explicitly say so.**

In FFXIV, being called out as the Warrior of Light right from the beginning means that the focus of the story is on you in more ways than one. You're the protagonist in a fashion that's closer to being The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time) or The Child of Light (The Belgariad) from a novel. 

Even Google anticipates the inevitable Mary Sue question.

But that's neither here nor there, since one of the things I've learned as I've gotten older is the enjoyment I derive from being anonymous. 

***

Being a redhead --and having worn a beard since roughly 1990 or so-- I know a bit about sticking out in a crowd. Beards are accepted now, but they weren't that common 30+ years ago. Couple that with a natural hair color that is also the rarest, and you have a recipe for being "that guy" who people notice in a crowd. 

Even if I'm not trying, I used to be able to stand out in a crowd just because of what I wore. I remember one time I went to a Star Trek convention back in the late 80s and I stood out because I was one of the few people who did not wear a t-shirt with a logo, a jean jacket, or a Star Trek outfit of some sort***. I figured just dressing like I was going out to a baseball game or to Kings Island would be appropriate; who knew that wearing a pretty basic polo shirt and shorts would make me stand out like that? Oh well.

Fast forward about 30 years, and the older I've gotten the less I stand out. More people wear beards these days, more people dye their hair****, and my clothing is for the most part jeans and t-shirts unless I go somewhere where I have to dress up. I'm just Joe Average, and I'm fine with that.

It's quite freeing, being able to go places and people not really giving a fuck about you at all. If you've ever been to a car dealership and you're pestered by the sales force ad nauseum, you now understand the beauty of being invisible. Sure, it sucks when you actually want to speak with someone and you can't find anyone, but I'd rather have that problem than fighting off the vultures as they swoop down on you.

From @itsmariah.

But if you're famous for some reason or another, you can't just blend in with the crowd.

Maybe you don't want to blend in, but when you're famous or of high rank (pick an organization, any organization) your time is not your own. 

This may surprise some of you, but back in the mid-late 90s to the early 2000s I was a member of the Parish Council at the Catholic church we attended. As such, I got to go over items such as the budget and planning for the next fiscal year. Let me tell you, it was pretty eye opening. But even more than that, it opened a window as to how the time spent by the Pastor was divided. What we saw, as handling Mass and other Church observations, was merely the public face of their activity. There was a ton of stuff (sorry, not at liberty to discuss) behind the scenes that took up a lot of their time. When someone asked during one of the Parish Council meetings about something concerning the Archbishop, the Pastor told us a story about one of his recent discussions with the Archbishop. During the meeting the Pastor asked about scheduling some time for the Archbishop to work on a particular line item, the Archbishop opened up his calendar and pointed out that his time was booked solid for the next three months, and there was a backlog just to get on the calendar for non-essential items. The conclusion of the story is that if we thought we could get to the Archbishop for anything, well... Good luck with that. "He has no time for himself, and it's been like that for him since be became Archbishop."

***

If you take that experience into MMOs, you begin to see how my own real life experiences have colored my in-game experiences. I've known teachers who have moved well outside of the school district they teach in because they want to have lives separate from their students,***** but that only works in the modern era where you can be that far away and still teach. If you're in Fantasy Land, you could potentially do that if you're a Mage,

Neve: "Of course I can."
Me: "Oh shush. Shouldn't you be hunting
on the plains near Garadar or something?"

but most everybody else would be stuck wherever they were at. And like celebrities everywhere else, you're not going to get a moment's peace from anybody who wants your ear.

So while it would seem at first blush to be pretty awesome to be the central character and the Warrior of Light, I'm not so sure that's a blessing. Being the hero and being able to rush out and do your own thing whenever you want is very much a best of both worlds for the player. It's like partying all the time while you're the king, because it gives the impression that there's nothing to ruling a kingdom: you just show up and things take care of themselves.

Having seen how it all works makes it that much more difficult for me to appreciate MMOs (or other video games) where you can be the hero without consequences, because my brain won't simply shut up and enjoy the ride. Kind of like me, the guy with a Minor in History, having to leave the room when I watched National Treasure for the first couple of times because I simply couldn't take the butchering of history that was done in the movie. (My wife can attest to this, as I did it while we were watching the movie together.) 

I do have to admit it was very well acted and

plotted, however.

I guess I may eventually play FFXIV, but I need to push through the inevitable doubts that are going to crop up in my head.

*Last June 22, if you're curious.

**If you're in a 40 person raid versus a 10, 20, or 25 person variety, you can feel the difference in scope.

***They weren't cosplayers by any stretch, just people wearing a Star Trek jacket or shirt or wearing vulcan/elf ears. There were very few people who dressed up in costume (as we called it then), but quite a few people who at least made some effort to put their full-frontal nerdity on display. 

****That's so they can either hide the graying of their own hair or so they can have it a funky color. Either way is fine with me, but you'd never catch me doing it myself. 

*****::something something middle schoolers::

Meme Monday: Melty Summer Memes

It's Summer, and yes, it's hot. You know, "Welcome to Summer."

Both, Dude.
From Pinterest.

Very astute of you, madam.
From Imgflip.

The heat dome went that-a-way.
From Imgflip.

Or, as my oldest put it, you could put
"allergies" for all seasons and it'd be accurate.
from Facebook Memes.

I'm Not a Monk, You Know, But Come On...

I sometimes wonder about the YouTube algorithm and what shows up on my YouTube front page.

For every video that appears that's from a channel I subscribed to --or one in which I've watched videos of without subscribing-- I get some suggestions that came from out of nowhere. 

Like this:

I don't play Final Fantasy VII, never have, and probably
never will. But I ain't blind, you know.

Or this:

As if you didn't know, the picture --and likely
the rain sounds-- are AI generated.

Or even this:

What I did not know was that tents that use inflatable
"tubes" as supports are apparently a thing. Not exactly
sure how that'd work, but it is a thing.

And that's not even counting the YouTube videos of women "trying on" see through clothing, which suddenly blew through my feed and then vanished after a couple of weeks. To which I had to ask just how those videos got past the YouTube "adult" filters.

I mean, I get where all of the screencaps of the videos above are similar --I am a guy, after all-- but why these videos suddenly made their appearance is beyond my understanding. But there they were, intermixed with videos about D&D, sports, woodworking, MMOs,  and other forms of gaming.

Oh well. If I don't respond to their pretty obvious clickbait, they'll go away after a few weeks. But even my oldest has been getting these sorts of videos in her feed, and she's been annoyed by them as well.

Meme Monday: Questing Memes

Presented without comment, because I'm pretty sure we've all been there before.

Apparently boars don't have livers.
From Pinterest.

Judging from the background,
probably Shattrath City.
From Pinterest.

Remind me again how you're the Champion
of Azeroth. From quickmeme.

The bane of quests: the escort quest.
From @pepevaro3.

And, of course, there's the quest reward sent by mail:

Amazing what they can stuff into a fantasy
mailbox. From Pinterest. Again.

Meme Monday: Scheduling Memes

I thought about having this Meme Monday cover one of the things people love to do during Summer, which is go to the beach.

Well, I started collecting a few of my memes I'd left over that cover this, and realizing I needed some filler, I went in search of some more RPG or MMO beach memes.

Given what I found --sometimes I can be quite naïve, particularly where fandom is concerned--  I think it's safer going to Plan B: trying to schedule an RPG game!

This is highly topical, since my game group that plays 3-4 times a year is having some difficulty with that Summer scheduling slot. We were supposed to play this coming Saturday, but conflicts by several people kept this from working. So... we worked on our July schedules, and... No go there either.

Oof.

So, it's a work in progress.

Yeah, that's another way of putting it. From d20.pub.

In a post-pandemic world, this actually works.
From Pinterest.

Heh. From Facebook's DnD_Memes.

Hey, it's better than nothing!
From Pinterest.

Speaking of Pandora's Box

Long time blogger Kurn has tried out Follower Dungeons in Retail WoW recently, and wrote about her experience with it on her latest blog post. To say she was impressed with the NPC groups she had is an understatement.

My original comment on her post, that it was a technical solution to a people problem, is likely the most obvious take. After all, MMOs in general --and WoW in particular-- is infamous for toxic behavior toward tanks and healers in instance and raid groups. This solution, presented in Retail, is an obvious way toward allowing people to see group content without actually fixing the toxicity itself. 

The more I've thought about it, however, the more I wonder whether this will become the ultimate goal toward making an otherwise dead or empty location in an MMO feel alive. 

If you go to a place such as Silvermoon City or The Exodar --both out of the way cities that first saw light in WoW's Burning Crusade expansion-- other than a few bank alts and some new toons running here and there both cities are dead.

Blizzard tried to make them seem more alive by having a few groups of NPCs roam both cities, but the paths followed and statements made are pretty much on repeat. There are similar instances of in-game NPC interactions throughout Azeroth that are gradually more elaborate but still on rails throughout all of the expansions I've played. While I give Blizz credit for trying, it isn't even close to what it's like to having a real vibrant community.

If you hop over to Guild Wars 2 and Divinity's Reach, that's a bit more of what I believe Blizzard is attempting to do. By comparison, Divinity's Reach is a lot more "alive" with NPCs --namely that there are more of them around so that the place feels less empty-- although NPC interactions with the game world are still pretty limited. 

But what if you programmed NPCs to act more like what you find in Follower Dungeons, but interacting in the game world itself?

You know, a step or two away from Westworld...

It's from Pinterest, but it's a screencap
of HBO's Westworld.

Of course, Westworld is what you'd get if a Renaissance Faire were entirely composed of robots who never broke the fourth wall (or never were aware there was a fourth wall).

The bane of MMOs isn't toxicity, but apathy. If there's nobody to interact with, the main selling point of MMOs is dead. But if a game company can fill a game world with NPCs that interact with the game world as if they were real players (minus the toxicity) then you can negate the worst problem of the MMO genre.*

It's a tempting proposition, isn't it?

And holy crap, I just realized how this could be used in "adult" MMOs. (Again, just like Westworld.) 

Yikes.

Whether or not we like it, I think that there will be some game companies that will move video games toward truly immersive experiences, with NPCs that interact in a more lifelike fashion with each iteration of generative AI. 

And I'm not exactly sure what I think about that.

*I guess the bots would quickly follow suit and up their own game, wouldn't they?

EtA: Corrected a sentence from "to to" to "to do". Got all that?

Meme Monday: Age Disparity Memes

No, I'm not talking about what is colloquially known as "robbing the cradle", where one adult has a relationship with a much younger adult. It's more an issue with Fantasy as a genre in novels, movies, and video games. Inter-species romance aside --and I have issues with that as well-- there's the issue of age disparity in relationships. 

Hell, never mind relationships, there's the issue of skill level disparity:

From REIQ.

But yes, relationships.

The Doctor: You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on, alone. That's the curse of the Timelords.* 

 

 

That. Pretty much that. So... some of those memes.

From imgflip.

I wish I knew who did this meme; it's great.

Obviously this person never knew about
Beren and Luthien. From Owlturd.
(Really? Sheesh, what a name.)

And leave it to Spidey to have the
last word. From Reddit's r/dndmemes.

*From School ReunionSchool Reunion. the third episode of the revived Doctor Who's second season.