Laying It Down

I was reading about Tigule's (Jeffery Kaplan) discussion about some of the problems with WoW's quests, and started reading the comments. One comment that caught my attention was this, by WildDanimal,

"This is the main reason why I don't play WoW any more. It gets to be a pain in the ass and sucks way too much time for not enough actual enjoyment. Even I don't have time for that, just because I have classes to go to, and I can actually get laid sometimes."

Something I've noticed that seems to occur in most WoW discussions - including the Chuck Norris-ridden ones in Barrens chat, is that someone inevitably ends up gloating about the fact that they can get laid, and always that term, gee, be more creative, at least! First of all, this is World of Warcraft we're talking about, if you're going to brag about anything, brag about some new purple you just got, because otherwise, most people aren't going to care - and even if you were to brag about that, I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't care anyway, unless you were the first one on the server to get it, etc.

Secondly, and this is probably because I'm female, but personally, I don't think it's something worth bragging about, and to be perfectly honest, a guy like that is a real turn-off. If you think it's something worth bragging about, then chances are, you're not getting it very regularly, or you're an ass, which probably explains why you're not getting it very regularly.

I was reminded about another tidbit of conversation from Barrens chat, where a guy said that he told his roommate that he was tired and going to bed because he wanted to play WoW instead of going out to a pub. A few people laughed at that, which was to be expected, but then a few more people chimed in saying that going out and getting drunk was overrated.

I think it's awesome, that WoW geeks can admit to being geeks, rather than feeling like dorks for not having a social life - or at least the social life that go-out-and-get-drunk people consider a social life. Before MrMan5.5, I thought maybe I could meet someone at a bar, but I was so uncomfortable there, that the possiblity of being with someone who considered that their primary form of entertainment, and still enjoying my time with them seemed pretty improbable.

On a completely unrelated to guys, but related to MMOs note, I've been trying to think about what makes a good MMO. I guess this is the topic of discussion for a lot of people, considering the new MMOs that are in production at the moment, and it seems WoW gets a lot of crap from players of other MMOs, but you can't argue with the fact that it does have a very high subscriber base. Whether or not some of those subscribers are just people wanting to play both factions on a PvP server is irrelevant, it's the fact that people are still coming back for more.

One thing I always thought contributed to it, was the way which it allows people to come together, and interact in an environment without it being too overcomplicated. In my opinion, the best MMO would be one in which the players are allowed to play the part of anything, and there would be no NPCs, kinda like the way EVE is run, but you get the problem in that nobody wants to play the boring characters, just like how if you really had the choice, would you prefer to be doing the job you're doing, or be out there in some other glamourous job? There was a slashdot post about how one of the players in EVE was entrusted with an EVE bank, and he was actually stealing money from the in-game bank (money that belonged to other players), and was selling it to players in exchange for real money. I'm a crafter at heart, and so I'd like to be able to sit in a city and craft to my heart's content (Charles keep yelling at my for fishing instead of levelling my priest, but then he heard that there's a water mount that you can only get by fishing - so there!), but I'm terrible with selling my stuff, so I don't think it's something that's sustainable without having to go out and farm materials.

I imagine an MMO without the level grind would be awesome, except for the fact that the level grind teaches you how to play your character. Tsuruya was complaining about how most people don't even bother to level in instances anymore, so when they group together with others for end-game content, they're usually noobs who have no clue what's going on. Unfortunately, I hate the level grind, and I'm so terrible at it. I level so slowly, it took me ages to get my shaman to 60, and even now that I've started playing on Barthilas again, I still can't seem to be able to get my shaman to 70, even though I know where all the quests are and stuff like that. In Guild Wars, there's an option to create a level 20 (the level cap) character as a PvP-only character, which I think is cool, except you can't get all the spells possible, because some spells are only attainable through PvE experiences, and you only start out with a small number of spells, and the only way to unlock more is to have another character unlock them through PvE. I guess one of the benefits to this, is that you can try before you commit hours of your life levelling the character up. Also, I've mentioned this before but GW needs to have jumping. T_T

Player interaction is important, and I know I haven't levelled a PvE character to 20 in GW yet, but one of the things I noticed was how hard it was to find the other people in your party. When they're outside your minimap, your UI doesn't display their location at all, and it requires some combination of either of you pinging and drawing lines all over the minimap, or a poor attempt at describing your location, in order for you two to find each other. Not to mention the fact that you never bump into people outside of cities (both a good and bad thing). I can't even begin to recall the number of times I've been saved by a wandering healer in WoW who decided to chuck a heal just as I was about to die from having pulled too many mobs, but there's no chance of that in GW - which I guess means you should be more careful, but I like the idea of saving someone (maybe that's why I prefer to play healer classes, so I can be the hero! >_>)

Anyway, I think I've given my blog fingers a bit of a stretch, so I'm going to continue this later, if I'm not lazy!

Oh Noes, Died. Who Will Carry On?

Agents Simon has gotten me hooked on boingboing, and I came across this article about how to ensure someone will be able to access your encrypted data once you've died (there's a link to the actual article in the Guardian there). This has occured to be in the past, and it probably occurs to anyone who had a password for anything sensitive. What will happen to it if you suddenly died before being able to tell anyone the password? Even though I don't really have anything important that I need to store, I think I do have a safeguard, that I won't mention here, because the security of that safeguard will be compromised if I do mention it, but it really makes you think about how hard it is to do something like this. The author's initial solution was quite convoluted, and really, it came down to how much you trust your significant other.

Whenever I think about how much I could trust someone I'm married to, I think about Mr and Mrs Bristow from the TV show Alias, in that they were both secret agents, but during their marriage, he was unaware that she was sent to seduce him in order to find out his secrets. In later episodes, they are forced to work together, but there is always this underlying sense of whether they can trust each other - as they must in order to complete the mission, but the one who betrays the other is more likely to come out alive than the one who gets betrayed.

On the other hand, if you can't trust someone you consider your significant other, then who can you trust? The first solution that occured to me was to give it to someone who wouldn't know what it was, and so wouldn't be able to use it against you. But then you come against the problem that if they don't know what it is, then how will they know to use it if you die? Not just that, but if they don't know how important it is, what is to stop them for throwing it away/forgetting it/telling other people? Not to mention the problem of updating, in the event that you change your password. "Hey, remember that word I told you last month? Well, I just thought of a better word: s923id0!jd}#5da1+5jsxpf5." Yep, smooth. If you change your password regularly, then updating it with your keeper would become an increasing security hazard, as something like that would appear suspicious. Especially considering that picking someone close to you would be bad, as they would be the natural target of someone looking to break your code, but if you suddenly started regularly visiting your cousin twice-removed that nobody really likes, but gets invited 'round for Christmas every few years, someone's going to wonder what's up.

Also, relationships tend to phase in and out for me. The people that I couldn't be separated from in primary school I never see now (although I still talk to one on occasion). The friends I grew up with in high school aren't nearly as close as they were at the time. My friendships at uni seem to grow and fade as their lives move to intersect with mine on occasion, or pull away, as our interests and hobbies change. Other than family, I don't really know anyone that I've kept in constant contact with in my life. Family is difficult. I can't be sure that my parents will outlive me, and even though I know I'd do anything for my siblings, lately I really can't tell if the feeling is mutual.

I do know of one solution that does work, but isn't very practical: have nothing worth hiding, which is how I'm operating now. And in case I do drop dead tomorrow, this blog will be in the hands of Dante, although since he doesn't want to post any more, I guess it'll have to suffer the same fate I did - which I don't think is that bad, as the blog was meant to be a way for me to get my thoughts down, and if I'm dead, well, presumably I'm not having any new thoughts.

(And that was meant to be the end of the post, but as a slight aside, I was reading about how blogs actually make money, and obviously, there are billions of blogs that fade into the ether never to read any kind of level of prominence, but apparently the biggest moneymaker for blogs (other than getting a book/TV deal/other misc. job out of it) is to sell stuff through them. There's the whole issue of blogger's integrity, but if you think about it, a few cents for the however many minutes of entertainment you manage to get out of a blog post is a good price - and it's not even out of your pocket. That being said, if I were to start selling stuff on my blog, well, I wouldn't even know what kind of stuff I'd sell, and I don't even have the audience for it anyway, but maybe I'd sell Heinz Big Red Tomato Chips! Though I don't want money in exchange for people clicking links, I just want more chips!)