July 8, 2010
In addition to all the cruddy reasons why RealID is bad, let’s add one more – Blizzard has chosen the metric mindset over direct player input.
I’m sure Blizzard considered the fact that going forward with RealID would scare players away from posting on the forums, thus removing the direct link to player feedback. So what they’re essentially saying is that their number crunching and data collection is more valuable than your posted feedback.
How do we like that notion guys?
Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (1)
July 7, 2010
I’m jumping on the pile of bloggery about Blizzard’s use of Real ID to attach everyone’s real life names to posts on their forums.
Yes, this will affect anonymous trolls who post simply to bait and flame. They’ll definitely think twice about what they say from now on. Unless of course, they create a bot account with a fake name.
Who else will be affected by this though?
The teenage kid who makes a clumsy post and ends up being ridiculed by his friends.
The high school teacher and coach who doesn’t particularly want her students to run up to her in school and laugh about how they PK’d her over and over the night before.
The young lady who doesn’t want creepy guy_01 to find out where she lives, because being followed around non stop in game is creepy enough.
The highly competitive hardcore player who is getting some serious threats from someone they beat in a fcfs race.
The players who use MMOs as a way of escaping, if briefly, the daily reminders of who they are in real life. I’m not just talking about roleplayers either. I’m talking about the many gamers who are disabled, or members of minority groups, or who live an alternative lifestyle. For some gamers, it’s a true luxury to be able to assume a new identity in a virtual world, where they can’t be pre-judged.
And if someone feels this is paranoia and scare mongering, I’d be happy to link up some really ugly threads over the years where people’s pictures, real life names, street addresses, IP addresses, and other highly personal information were revealed because of a simple post on a forum.
Will this be the end of the WoW forums? Of course not. But there will most likely be a new site somewhere, though, where people can go to post and still use their avatar names.
What bothers me about all this, apart from some of the disturbing possibilities of what will happen to people like the ones above, is that it’s really removed one of the best qualities of MMOs, which is that we get to play a character in a virtual world. MMOs sell because they advertise the opportunity for players to become a hero and take on adventures. Lately, we’ve even been told that we get to create our own meaningful stories. By revealing the link between our avatars and our real names, that’s all gone.
I haven’t played WoW in years and didn’t have plans to return any time soon, because I’m happy in EQ2. But I’m writing this because MMOs seem to love borrowing ideas that come out of WoW. This is not only the worst idea to come out of WoW, but the worst idea I’ve ever seen come from an MMO.
Here’s hoping that the loud objections will be heard.
Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (8)
July 2, 2010
We’ve had a pretty large influx of members in Revelry and Honor recently. Without fail, the most common question asked, is, “what the eff do I do with all these vampire incisors?”
But right after that, the question I always hear is, “where does the rank of Llamabait come from?”
Well, let me tell you a story!
About three years ago, RnH was playing Vanguard, and we were neck deep in lumber, tiles, and stucco, as we slowly prepared to build a guild hall on Keejay Cove.
To build a guild hall, you not only needed the building materials and the coin, but also the paperwork. (Yes, red tape does exist in virtual worlds!) To get the right papers, our guild needed to complete parleys through the diplomacy system, which was a type of card game. But even though we had a few diplomacy experts in guild, the sheer volume of cards we needed for the guild hall was extremely daunting.
I had just about traded my soul to line up a brickmaker, so I was pretty much out of options when it came to working some trades for diplomacy cards. And while our guild was working hard to chip away at it, we only had one person in guild that was high enough to get the high level cards.
Unfortunately, without the cards, we couldn’t get the guild hall plot commission from the Sultan of Aghram. No commission – no plot. So we were rapidly approaching the release date of guild halls, and we were faced with the possibility of having to watch other guilds scoop up plots, including the one we wanted.
And then, as I was sitting in Mekalia, furiously dip’ing with the horrid gnomes, I got a tell from Faunis, our high level diplomat and officer. He met a really nice ranger named Drax, from the guild Mystic Llamaherders, and the two of them were working out trades to help us get the high level cards we needed.
Over the course of the next few days, Drax actually ended up donating many high level, hard to get cards that enabled us to get the commission we needed. Paper in hand, we got our plot!
But our real reward was soon after, when Drax decided to come join our guild. And in tribute, we used his old guild’s name as inspiration for our rank for alts – Llamabait. The name seemed oddly appropriate, and it’s stuck with us ever since, all the way from Telon to Norrath.
Happily, Drax has stuck with us as well. He’s sporting a red mushroom these days, but he’s still the quiet hero for us when things are looking grim. Whether it’s coming to help tank the Sisters in Hate, or being the fastest clicker on the block in Lair to cure blindness, Drax often helps put us over the top.
And just like a true illusionist, he’s always changing himself into strange things. My favorite is when he turns himself into a mender bot and runs to where the bot will be summoned. The result is a flurry of “Hail, Draxer,” followed by “DRAX NOT AGAIN! @#%!@%%”
So that’s the story of how a guild hall plot, a stack of diplomacy cards, and a former Mystic Llamaherder brought us the rank of Llamabait. Thank you DRAX!
Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (3)