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Week of Fives: Five 2006 Assholes to Remember

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(Yanno. That title might end up in an interesting Google search too.)

Do enough multiplayer online gaming, say ten minutes or more, and you’re bound to run into assholes. These five, although entertaining in their own way, really went above and beyond the behavior of a typical jackass.

Five 2006 Assholes to Remember — so we can keep a close watch on them — three from me, two from Raster:

1. The Priest who would be queen. Of drama, that is. I haven’t told this story yet because it only wrapped up this week. (Months in the making, however.)

This woman was a long-time guildmember of ours — married, with small children, and a decent priest, truth be told. Over the past year, she’d been linked romantically with a few guildmembers — a couple several years her junior, and a couple around her age. (Not judging, just saying, how young before I step in and remind her that this might be approaching ILLEGAL? It was getting close to that point with a few of them.) At least one of these kids guys left the guild because she dumped him; the others just moped around as she frolicked with the new love interest. So far, not really any of my business … except for the possible legal ramifications of guild complicity.

Meanwhile, she’s denying a few priest applicants here and there, mostly for no reason at all. We’d ask the other priests, “what do you think?”, they’re all fine with the app’s she hated. But, what can ya do? Guildmember hates a new guy, that’s too bad for the new guy. I prefer the evil I know to the evil I don’t yet know.

Oh ya, did I mention she was an officer? Ummm yaaaa. That was another problem.

One week this summer she told the guild that she was sleeping with one of our mages who lived in a neighboring state. I didn’t really need quite that level of detail, “we’re in love”, “we’re a couple”, either of those would have been suitable, but there was no misunderstanding after her description of his particulars. They continued making the beast with two backs for about a month and then she announced that she had left her husband over the weekend, moved into an apartment and the happy couple would be living together soon, in paradise, as she sought a divorce.

Fucking great, cuz I knew that was doomed to fail. Eventually Mr. Mage is going to wake up and realize he signed on for a whole lot more than paradise and then there’s going to be trouble.

Another few weeks passed and she announced that she was stepping down from officership, and so was Mr. Mage. (Did I forget to mention that he was an officer too? Oops.) They were far too happy spending time together to retain their officer positions, or to raid or play Warcraft anymore.

No problem, our guildleader demoted her down to member and demoted her offline boyfriend to member also. We wished them well.

The next night, Mr. Mage logged on and All Emo broke loose when he saw he wasn’t an officer anymore. “YTF did we demote him???” “What were we thinking??” He was seriously ticked.

This was us: What. In. The. Fuck?

Someone explained that his girlfriend had told us they weren’t going to play anymore and please demote them. “WTF, she doesn’t speak for (him)!”

Ya, we should have known that. Somehow. I guess. All I knew was, there’s trouble in paradise. Maybe Mr. Mage had woken up and smelled the peanut butter on the Lil Tykes toys, I dunno.

Then this week, which is a month-ish since the “demotion incident”, she left the guild, after saying her goodbyes to a select few. She didn’t say goodbye to me, cuz I never respected their love or some shit, I forget the exact second-hand explanation. Whatever.

Someone asked Loverboy what was up with that and turns out, they had broken up that week (shocking!) and the guild wasn’t big enough for the two of them (equally shocking!)

FOR ONCE, we got the best part of a deal! Hallelujah, it’s gonna be a good week.

Hey, maybe she can sell her priest like she did her other character that we equipped in Tier 2 armor. Oops, did I forget to mention that too? (Foton)

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Week of Fives: Gaming Wishes

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A few years from now, maybe a few more, probably never, these are the top five things we’d like to see in online gaming, three from me, two from Raster:

1. Let’s rethink this whole healing gig. Personally, I’d like to see the primary healer role eliminated completely. I realize there must be some people who enjoy the primary healer role, the pure defense character, but crimony, every goddamn game it’s the same issues … faster burnout, repetitive play, short supply, limited solo’ing options. I’d like to see multi-player gaming either move to a model where every class has minimal healing/recovery abilities or, at least, something like Guild Wars with a primary/secondary class choice system. I realize this would homogenize classes somewhat, but surely someone, somewhere, can figure out a better system than the current one. (Foton)

2. Let’s rethink travel. Guild Wars did this quite well and I’d love to see instant travel moved over to more games. EverQuest provided portals to a majority of zones with the Planes of Power expansion, which was better than nothing. Sixty minute hearthstones are not the answer, Blizzard. Neither are slow ass griffins which usually take the longest possible route to get anywhere. If I’m not in combat, I should be able to port myself to any major city on the continent, and there should also be an “express airlines” to cut down on unwanted travel time. There are enough time sinks in games already, and travel needs to be done away with as one. Don’t even get me started on bag space and inventory space … (Raster)

3. Let’s rethink loot. MMO loot is a lot of the fun of gaming, but it’s a lot of the pain as well. Two things I’d like fixed: randomness that bites you in the ass and worthless trash mobs. There’s a few ways to fix the wonky randomness, maybe a self-correcting behind-the-scenes randomizer that just gives you the damn loot you’ve been farming for 290,348 hours; or, how about meaningful faction systems? High-factioned players can just buy from NPC vendors what they didn’t loot. (Similar to EverQuest’s Lost Dungeons of Norrath and Warcraft’s Blood Elf Ghostlands area — an idea I LOVED in the beta, by the way.) And trash mobs, either they should drop useable items or equipment FAR more often, or once a group or raid of players have bested a dungeon, they should never have to clear the trash again. I know that’s unreasonable, but goddamn, I hate trash — there’s got to be more interesting, or less annoying, barriers to boss fights. (Foton)

4. Let’s rethink play styles. I don’t care if a game is classified as Massively Multiplayer, sometimes I just want to solo or do something with a friend. Forced grouping to get any worthwhile equipment is ridiculous. Raiding especially is a chore — with EQ forcing 72 people to show up (later 48) and WoW going the 40 man route (25 in the expansion). Add in PvP, and the gear difference from raiders and non raiders is just magnified. Please don’t take this as me advocating people should just be able to go kill some random easy monster and get the best gear in the game, I don’t. I just feel every style of play should be offered worthwhile rewards (no, reputation grinding to be able to purchase maybe one or two decent things does not count) and there may be hope on the horizon. The Burning Crusade promises much 5 and 10 man content with ample rewards, here’s to hoping. (Raster)

5. Let’s rethink play sessions. Sometimes I wonder if what we really need in MMO gaming is a pause button. Those of us with discretionary income have jobs, and families and mortagages and other obligations … we need fast travel and fast recoveries and fast groups and fast fun. The days of multi-hour LFGs and multi-hour experience groups and multi-hour corpse runs are over. I’d like to see better chunking of the content into shorter play sessions. Quests are ideal for that, of course, but we need raid content with easy entry and exit points. I think two hours or so should be the most time required to complete an instance. Add in group/raid formation, travel time, yap yap about loot time and that’s a solid three hours. Naturally, the first few times attempting a dungeon/instance will add to that, which is fine. Games shouldn’t require lenghthy time commitments to accomplish something. (Ya, SHOULDN’T.) (Foton)

Thursday, Five Assholes from 2006 We Want to Remember FOREVER.

I Hate People

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I’m not kidding. I’m so tired of people and their baggage, I’d really like to order all my Warcraft guildmates out of the guild and I’ll just run around collecting flowers and ore and checking my game mail for sales. “Fuck all of you, get out.” I only hesitate because I know some of them won’t get out and there we’ll be, all ten of us, sitting in guildchat, staring at one another.

Let’s back up. Few weeks ago, there’s this HUGE drama problem in the guild. I’m involved peripherally. And it’s big as it involves an officer and real lives and … let’s leave it at that. (Remember, I said I was involved peripherally, so don’t send emails asking what the hell I fucked up this time. On the periph, that’s me. I was catching fallout though, hence my problem.)

The drama news broke and the guild started creaking at the seams. The guildleader (aka Puppet #2) asked me what I thought should be done about this little mess to ensure guild tranquility and, after about two minutes consideration, I ordered the assassination of one of the directly involved parties. (I mean an assassination in the guild sense … your basic /gkick.) Instead of accepting their fate gracefully, the newly unguilded started raising a ruckus … they’re gonna bring down this guild, there’ll be nothing but ashes in a few days, we’ll all be sorry, also, Foton is a prick. Whatever. Move along, asshole.

Frankly, it was largely a business equation. I weighed the guild-worth of the involved players and who could continue to work together amicably, and they were odd man out. I mean CMON, I’m not gonna boot a priest, I’m not an idiot in matters of the guild.

(Repeating a lesson from weeks prior: Do NOT fuck, or fuck with, the guild priests. Too much fallout.)

Ok. That was a few weeks ago and we fast forward to this week … The guild is recovering nicely from that little mess, although, I’m still pissed off that we had to deal with all of it. Bright side, I’m mighty proud of myself for ordering the assassination and seeing it done before my very eyes. (Power, she be intoxicating.)

In the midst of all the drama, a tiny sliver of guild powerbrokers was trying to grab some political muscle, with some minor success I will add. In hindsight, I didn’t really notice at first because I was occupied with cleanup duty, shoring up the ranks, farming raid loot so everyone’s getting paid. Y’know, doing my game job? But, live and learn, baby. Live and learn.

Once order was restored, the powerbrokers were pushed back and rebuffed. In plain language, they were trying to wrestle control of the raids, DKP and loot distribution, (the lifeblood of an endgame guild), and after a few missteps with raiding and loot distribution, they were told to back off. Their services in this regard would no longer be required, but thank you for stepping up.

They seemed fine with this. Which should have been my first clue that they really weren’t fine with this.

What should have been my second clue? You’ll have to find out tomorrow — I’ve finished my coffee.