So yeah, school caught up with me for a while. My advice to you, constant reader, is never go into a career that requires hard classes. Get a business degree, become ineffectual middle management, and get your joys impeding the progress of others. Shuffling papers won’t change the world, but at least you didn’t have to work hard getting there. Next quarter involves organic chemistry, microbiology, and a film and cinema class. Every day I wake, I kiss the stone ass of the idol of good fortune that I’m done with anatomy.
The PS3 lost exclusivity to Devil May Cry. This I find funny. Not so much because Sony is losing exclusive after exclusive (at this point, you’re basically buying a PS3 for Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, or Sony’s funny DVD format), but I’m just imagining what the counter to not having much in the realm of exclusive games are going to be. I can see ad campaigns touting Home as having “the most intuitive product placement ever seen in videogame history.” Not only can you watch movies on your Bravia television, your Kenmore fridge is stocked with Doritos and Mountain Dew. All of the integrated products have their own links too, so you can learn more about them and purchase them online! ‘Course, knowing most gamers, keeping the Mountain Dew and Doritos flowing is all you have to do to keep them hooked.
I’m looking for a new MMO to play one of these days. I put a ton of time into “City of Heroes”:http://www.cityofheroes.com back in the day (hello Pinnacle!), but the idea of getting into another one is kind of daunting. Most MMOs are designed around people who have no lives, or at the very least are willing to schedule their lives around the game. There are plenty of stories about people being kicked from their guilds for not being “dedicated enough,” unwilling to quit their jobs or dump their girlfriends in order to raid and get better loot. I’ve got a friend who is in a similar situation with his WoW guild. They’re mad at the fact he has something to do outside the game. I’d say it’s more important to pay the rent than it is to get the sword of n00b pwn +3, especially since having a level 70 character doesn’t get you as far in life as spending the same amount of time doing virtually anything else outside your home. Being a long time Warhammer tabletop player (until recently. Fuck you Games Workshop, you know what you did), I am interested in Warhammer Online. The Warhammer fantasy world is nice and bloody, and even though they have elves, the elves aren’t totally gay. Well, high elves are still pretty fruity. Not quite “this fruity”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liza_Minnelli, but still less so than typical fantasy elves. I’m convinced that people who play elves by choice are just letting their gay side out to play in a socially acceptable manner. People who you accuse of this get really defensive. Don’t know why.
It’s either going to be Warhammer or “Tabula Rasa”:http://www.playtr.com/index.html that get me back into playing an MMO. The only reason Warhammer would get me to play a fantasy game is my liking the universe, otherwise the entire fantasy genre can take a dump on itself. A decent sci-fi MMO would be a breath of fresh air, and this looks to be one of the best on the horizon. I’d rather blow people up with guns and psi anyhow, it must be all the Heinlein I read as a young man. The main criteria of my playing another MMO, above and beyond the setting, is going to be its design. I’m not talking about an intricate crafting system, or a wide variety of gear, I’m talking about being able to play for an hour or two and actually getting something done. I’m tired of these games being designed for people who have 16 hours a day to donate to playing. I know that these people like to refer to themselves as “hardcore” gamers, but there is nothing hardcore about being in a basement and shitting onto a tarp, unless it involves nudity and a camera. Being able to donate large portions of your young life to a form of passive entertainment doesn’t make you hardcore, but it more than likely makes you a virgin. Get out, get laid, get a diploma, get something besides another shiny helmet for your character. As long as game designers keep making games treadmills designed to be climbed by people who are willing to make playing one game a second job, they are going to miss out on a segment of the market that would love to play their games but cannot rearrange their lives to do so.
I think the funniest thing here is that if you asked your average MMO player to run on a real treadmill, he’d laugh at you and call you a n00b. Virtual treadmills are way more fun and less sweaty.
That’s all for the moment I think. I’m on spring break at the moment, so I should have plenty of time to write. I’ve even got time to start reading again, and am going to read all that sci-fi and cyberpunk brain candy I’ve been putting off in favor of college texts. Go me.
