f13.net

This is currently going on. So I typed as fast as possible. Only 10 minutes left though. I didn't put in much of the funny and I apologize. But all the ideas are here. Someone will probably have an official transcript up in a couple days. But I figured you all would want the highlights now.

I’m jessica mulligan some of yolu have seen me in other rants. I’ve been in the industry for about 20 years, at turbine, and now I’m a consultant and living in Paris.

I’m Brian Greene – Psychochild – something about middle aged. I rant. I run Meridian 59, I’ve been doing it for several years now. I have some Strong opinions. I consult. Yay.

I’m Jeff Hickman, exec producer – DAOC, young and bitter.

Gordon Walton - Awesome. Who wants to go first.

Jeff – Lum gave me ranting lessons. My rant is basically about (fist closed), as game developers – the fact we often make games – core pieces – it’s a critical error in the things we do. As a player, it’s effecting me in the game I play right now, damnit. As a developer, I’ve done this and made core changes and probably didn’t achieve the goals I wanted to achieve. As I make these games, we attract a certain type of player. It’s because of the things we put in – the gameplay – for whatever reason, we see another game that’s cool, doing something better, or we want to change the billing process. For whatever reason, we make a change and it alienates people. The people playing right now. We go out and want those 3.5 million from the people over there. Instead of sticking to what we love, we change it. So we have our current players, changes. Those people playing WoW are happy and it’s difficult to attract them. The chance we’re taking at making changes is huge, but it happens all the time. There aren’t many big games or small games that haven’t done this. And that’s my rant.

Brian – You’re an arrogant designer who can’t adjust to market realities.

How many have you attracted? Hahhaahah.

I want to talk about user created content. I love the way Will Wright talks, I want to talk the wayt he talks.

Dear Mr. Stephen King,

You don’t know me, but I’m writing about Dreamcatcher. Blah blah. I wrote C++, I can write better. So read careful – what’s with the retarded kid. Nobody likes retards. Add a ninja or a pirate. All my friends agree that they’re cool but noone likes retards. Pirates, ninjas, aliens, and cowboys sell better. (can’t type, he’s rambling). Cowboys are cool. And they’re cool like ninjas pirates and aliens. But none are special like Doditz. More rambling. Dreamcatchers should be magical. With a new name, and it could be used as a throwing star. Use it on enemies. Make bullets from them for the cowboy. More rambling. How hard is it to be original, it’s obviously easy.

I also think you suck as a writer. (talks about baseball) You obviously do not know how to write scary books, let me write them instead, it obviously makes me an expert as well.

You’re also too greedy. Older things are better than new things and new things are worth more. You should ship me hardcovers of your old books, they don’t cost anything anymore. Something about ebay value.

(Ok, this is impossible to type). Apologies, but it’s not about games – well, abstractly. But not.

3 points:
No point to distinguish between amateurs and pros.

Players are valuable resources.

Player content is the way of the future in online games.

Gordon – I’ve always thought the difference between amateur and pro is that amateurs can make more mistakes (mumbled).

Jessica – How many people here work on MMOGs. Let me just say, you suck. Get that one out of the way. My rant is “I’m so tired of this industry after 20 years making the same mistakes that I could just puke on his shoes.

Some guy – we don’t want to smell it though.

Now that there’s money involved, steve Jackson is donating his shoes. So I’ll get famous and the ebay value will go up. What could I say about the same mistakes?

Coding before designing – I don’t know how many projects I’ve been called into troubleshoot, they say what do we do, it’s a 3 page document and I say “You’ve been coding for 2 years and you have 3 page design documents? That’s why you’re paying me $10,000/month”. I’ve seen people who have made an MMO before the design document was fleshed out. You have to have  a general idea of your destination before you ship. That’s ONE!

Jeff touched another one, changing after Launch. I’m guilty of this too, and have nerfed and wasted millions of player hours and have learned since then and haven’t done it in a long while. How many people had it done to them in WoW? I almost feel ashamed to say this, but you can’t ignore the community. The forums are an indicator (a vocal one) of where your game is going. But we’re scared to death of players. Who can blame us? We’ve seen you at conferences. We don’t meet the majority though, anywhere, and those are the people playing and having a great time, You can’t ignore the community and you have to find ways to communicate because they can be resources. WoW has some of the worst customer relations I’ve ever seen. The CR staff notified the players today that they would be at Blizzcon, but they won’t be interacting. Har. That’s just ridiculous. Why don’t you tell them you’re all a bunch of fucking nerds and we just want your money.

Launching before you’re ready. Everyone who’s ever worked on an MMO should be raising their hand. Sometimes the money runs out. Sometimes it’s a public cooperation and the stock price will tank. This can be solved with better planning. No customer service tools or are written at the last minute because they play the blame game. They might have been planned but were delayed til after launch. You can’t, because things fall down.

Just one more thing – billing programs. I thought we were over this. I worked on a game in the last 6 months where the billing program was written 3 days before launch and tested once with one credit card. With 120,000 presales. I’ve ranted about it, other people have. The billing program is one of the most important pieces. That’s how you get money. It’s the first interaction with players, why can’t we get this piece right.

Stop making the same mistakes over and over again or I’ll be here next year telling you how badly you suck,

Gordon – So, we’ve managed to put ourself on a spiral of mediocrity. I’m not really mad at you for getting where you are, but I’m mad at myself because I’m in the same place. I’m a master of risk mitigation. So, uh, I’m certainly not the risktaker I was when I entered the business. I realized there were a thousand things I could do. Rambling. We’re employing herd strategies in our business. When we do something, people copy it. And 90% of those things suck. They’re worse than the original. They’re more like 30-50% worse. Why’d we do this? We did this because we’re a mammal and we’re herbivores more than carnivores. And risk mitigation in this, is that we’re going to act coherently and get to the center of the herd. If we’re not the slowest one, we’re gonna be cool. It’s somebody else, not us. We’re supposed to be highly rational, but we’re just a bunch of mammals doing stupid stuff. Not thinking. The thing we’re up to here is creativity. As a customer, what do you want? Something delightful, novel but not too novel. You want something that will titillate you but not in the same way as the stuff you’re already doing. We’re doing a little bit in the higher-stake MMOG market but not enough because it’s so risky. We’ll have an ever shrinking pool of hardcore crazy customers who get the vision. We build this because we got the vision. This is change the world kind of stuff and what are we doing? The same shit over and over and not learning from our mistakes. Not taking risks, with gameplay, audiences and trying to steal the same audience from each other. Which is done.

I have some good quotes. (he went too fast to type them).

(continued rambling about herd mentality) …ruining uniqueness.

Who thinks they are creative? You don’t get into this and not have a creative bone in your body. My goal for you guys is to prove it. Let’s prove that we’re creative. We’re going to have to risk failing. The beauty of online games is that we can test and control failure and take negative feedback. I know hundreds of people who shutdown from negative feedback. Embrace it. Welcome it, enjoy it, love it. When you don’t get that, its adulation. I see people – oh that never happens. I’m going to do a few things in one second here. Without the risk of failure there’s no reward. That’s clear. If it’s an easy game where we always win, it’s not good. Most of us want a little more challenge. We need to make fools of ourselves more often. With MMOGs we’re not going after anyone from our core audience, and we’re wrong not going after other people. You think you have to prove you have an audience, but you’re not going to grow our industry. Part of the problem, not the solution. I want all of you to think about, how even in the smallest way, how you can take risks. Is there anything you can do to make a risk in the one thing you’re doing. You think you’ll be shutdown in 2.2 seconds. Think about how you can prove it’s new, unique and interesting. I’m going to beg you to stop contributing to game inbreeding. Don’t look around and say I’m going to make a WoW clone. That’s not where it’s at. How are you going to get customers excited about it.

Go for the white spaces in the market. There’s a venn diagram for that. We’ve hit about five dots. Korea has hit thirty dots. There’s a  huge amount of stuff yet to do that all of us are too afraid to try. You won’t get unconventional results without being unconventional. You have to make something new, pushing the envelope. How many people in here are in a position to pick the topic of their game.

David bowman kept his hand raise when he asked if you had to con someone else. SEE, HE MAKES FUNNIES.

Here’s something that might be a little bit harder – stop running down people who you think are doing crazy shit. Stop saying they’re screwed beyond all redemption. I’ve watched other people in the marketplace, and I have to stop. We need to celebrate the rebels. And then watch them fall on their face. If 100 people do it, 2 people will make something new. There aren’t enough MMOGs right now that drive the kind of innovation we need. Dev cycles are too long, we’re not iterating fast enough. Asia is outstripping us because they’re making five times the MMOGs and much faster. That’s my thing.

Do you want to be right? Or grow the business. The path we’re on, the risk mitigation path will not grow our business. It will stall us or think it. No one thinks they’re making the same thing, but they all come out that way. Aim a little higher and be crazy so maybe you’ll get over the line of what’s been done. How are we going to change this and I think it’s us, not an external force. It’s the box our head is in about not taking risks. Start thinking about risks differently please.

Jessica – Let’s not forget you suck. We all suck. (then they banter).

Lum – Gordon, I respect you a lot, no offense to the people at turbine, I’m sick of playing DDO. If I want to make the game that’s not DDO, how do I get $50M to make something when I’m not Will Wright?

Gordon – I haven’t found the person crazy enough for that? Don’t do a $10M one, do a Runescape.

Then they discuss Merdian 59.

Brian – M59 isn’t the game for everyone, but it has a lot of innovation.

Gordon – What’s the smallest possible scale I can do this on and get people playing together. You can build Runescape for a couple million instead of $50. You need to get people playing games on the web. We’re PC game nuts. We buy new machines. We’re self-reinforcing a hobby instead of looking at the mass. What we do will never be done by 10s / 100s of millions of players. But we’re chasing the hardcore. We’re in a pond, I want to play in the ocean. The pond is interesting, but it won’t change the world. A few 10 million won’t change the world, you have to go to a different playing field.

Jessica – Somebody said how well that’s going for Brian. But I said how that went for ID and Doom. You can trade sweat equity for money. Look at SimCity. There are some huge examples.

Some guy – Counterstrike.

Some guy – What are the whitest of the white spaces.

People – Ninjas. Pirates. Puzzles.

Jeff – that would never work.

Brian – how could you build that for $50M.

Gordon – Everyone I know has asked why we haven’t done Deer Hunter Online. Because we’re snobs. There’s money in killing bambi. But it doesn’t matter. There’s all these things we could do but our imagination isn’t big enough to encompass that.

Jeff – If you look at where we all focus our time and energy, it’s in medieval and space. There are a million things we could be doing if we take the risks. Learn from mistakes, etc. It’s hard, but we should be doing it.

Jessica – The white spaces are non-hardcore players. That’s all you need to know.

Brian – Everyone thinks bigger is better. Schubert gave a talk which was great. Instead of making 1 game with 100,000. Make a game with 1,000 players –a  hundred of them. I have a blog. A lot of people do. They talk about cats. I have a professional blog read by people here, niche content, and it’s viable. My mom doesn’t read my blog. I’m a game dev, I tell my mom I’m a crack dealer. It’s more lucrative.

Some guy – Some guy says he doesn’t have enough time to play. He can’t keep up with the curve.

Lee (not shockeye, one that has money) – We need to step outside the box. Hardly an answer to what Lum said, there are people out there with money who’s primary reason is not profit. There’s a US government. They’re not out there for profit. Carnegie Mellon University is making a game. They don’t have to make a game that will profit. There are people all over this country who are given money in universities to make games.

Jessica – To the people at CM, you suck.

Brian makes a joke.

Steve Jackson – This isn’t MMOGs, but every game except Pong. Why is your documentation so bad? You push your shit off on the people that write Dummy books (Lum), you push it off on the poor guys in CSR and they don’t know how to play the game either. Those of you that make MMOGs can update your documentation every day, but you don’t.

Gordon – Customers don’t read it.

Steve Jackson – that’s why you’re limited to the hardcore. The people that want to read it are frightened away by your games. It would be nice if you could be friendlier, but you won’t. If you could put it in writing, at the bare minimum of how the game actually plays (not 3 months before release) but now. Maybe some people that aren’t no-lifers would actually play it even though they don’t know what they’re doing. Document.

Brian – Documentation is not just on the enduser side. Documentation on all levels. I’ve got a 9 year old game, documentation is important, but it’s systemic.

Then they stopped to answer a simple question. More incoming.

Gordon - The whole balance thing is a retarded idea. The whole thing is a theory in most cases. There's fun in the unbalanced game, there's gameplay that's fun. Some types of games do need to be balanced. But to use it as the high moral ground, it's lame. Too many variables.

Jeff - There's a fight in Camelot we always have. We have RvR and we've tried to embrace the difference. But it doesn't work. The players say they want all the same tools and it pisses off more people. There's no win.

Brian - Even if you do a good change, players hate it. In M59, there's one way to make a perfect character and I made more options and now they're pissed. It's hard, the best way to handle this is to ignore the screaming and see what happens.

Jeff - You should really communicate with your players. Take polls. Tell them what you want to do. If they say it sucks. Don't do it.

Apologies for the editorial interjections, I tried to specify, like rambling means rambling. The David Bowman thing was real.

Good Grief!

A-fuckingmen.   I'm still bemused when people here say things like, "it's 2005, if you're not on broadband you aren't needed." or "Fuck 'em if they haven't upgraded to XP yet."  It only underscores that gaming as it exsists is the realm of geeks and people with more money than sense and can't see past the tip of their nose, or their circle-jerk of friends.

Face it, folks.  You want a 'mass market' game,(aside from the innovation things) you need to design for systems 3-5 years old, not "what will be out there in 3 years" (Hey there EQ2, SWG!). AND explore things that "REAL GAMERS, LOLZ" think are stupid.

Cool, wish I could have seen it live.

Me too.  If they loved us, they would have sekretly recorded it.  I bet they don't love us that much, though.

We recorded 8 things. We're going to transcribe them. If you notice, this is the only one typed up. I DID IT LIVE BECAUSE I LUV. DETECTIVES YOU ARE NOT. /sadf

You're so sweet.

Is he saying the same stuff I wrote in the other thread?

He is ranting because they don't take enough risk to try to appeal new players or because this risk is too high and it's better to not piss off the current subscribers?

Or is he saying that games wongly move away from the original concepts just to chase the players of other games and losing their own qualities in the process?

Just trying to understand what is exactly his opinion.

I read it as him saying the second interpretation, Hrose.

schild did a pretty fair job typing this up but I did get it all on tape. There were some pretty serious oversimplifications and incorrect assumptions by some of these "ranters" and at some point I would like to tackle some of what they said head-on.

I'd like all of that on tape. Just to hear it. Please. I'll give you cookies.

Emphasis mine. Gordon again remains the only grown-up in the crowd.

That.

How does it feel to have your name be synonymous with "rant"?  Three sentences into the speech and you're mentioned.

It's given him a huge ego. He needs to be taken down a peg. Down with Lum! 

Someone should put up a crappy geocities page, denoucing Lum for the phony sellout he is! Fight the powah!

Oh Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum.

No point to my post... I just like saying it.

Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum,Lum.

It takes practice to keep it right.

So I can disagree with Jeff.

I think the right point is the one explained by Gordon:

I don't think that observing and learning from other games is bad. In fact I believe it's *essential*. But then it's also essential to move ahead instead of behind someone else.

There are problems, you use your and other games to figure them out, then you propose new solutions.

The problem is when something is copied without even grasping completely how it works and what is exactly its use, which leads to games that are only lesser versions of something else.

The art (of design) needs some ego and pride. It's probably the only field where with the modesty you don't go anywhere. Your aim should always be to be better than everyone else and do something that noone else can offer. The designers would need that type of drive and motivation. Be out there to be just the best because there's no space, no satisfaction and no time for mediocrity.

I posted the letter I "wrote" up on my blog at http://blog.psychochild.org/?p=92 if you want to read it directly.

Keep in mind that we were supposed to rant, and that requires taking extreme positions.  There's obvious answers to some of the rants, including my own, but generating discussion is kind of the goal of these things.  Ranting for ranting's sake is just meaningless mental masturbation (even if we all enjoy engaging in it occasionally).

Wish you had come up and introduced yourself, schild (and anyone else there).  What is it with you guys hiding from us devs?  I promise not to hurt you.  Much.

Have fun,

I introduced myself twice, you were almost always talking to someone when I was around. It was hard to get a word in and my schedule was packed to the brim. Apologies.

He lies.  I have a scar from when Div introduced us at the last E3.  I still have nightmares over it. ;)

Since this is a thread dealing with MMOG rants and you've wandered your way into here, Sachant... I have a question...

Would it kill you to put an index in your strategy guides?

I would have LOVED to have had an index in them.  But for some reason the powers that be didn't decide to add that in the layout.  You should have seen how much of sacrificing small kittens and various other things my editor had to do to push us into the 400 pg range on the WoW guide.  Much blood and carnage I can tell you.

I don't think it's likely I'll be doing anymore for Brady but you never know.  The WoW guide just about drove me insane and thankfully my children survived it as well. ;)  The people at Brady are fantastic though to work for and with.

Except for the whole index thing. At least now I know where to focus my wrath.

Need some contacts?  :evil:  I kid!  Or do I?  hrmmm

I guess what really bothers me about the WoW guide not having an index is the fact that with the binder purchase and update system, or even with updates for the non-binder version, they could've gone back and provided an index.

Yes they could have and still could probably.  It's just a matter of resources.  They're not huge as far as employees in office and all the writers are contractors they've managed to find that they can trust to get the job done but that costs money and they try to keep cost down as much as possible for the consumer.  Brady is definetly in the 'growing' phase and until I did the Shadowbane book with them, they had never done an MMO guide before.  The binder and updates came as a result from me and others telling them it was really a vital aspect for the longevity of the guide as well as for future guides to keep the value there for players.  MMO guides are a massively major migraine to put together since things are still in the changing phase even at release and then of course with subsequent patches. 

I think between having a new baby and a toddler to take care of I averaged 4 hours of sleep a night plus went about 72 without sleep just to get everything together and get a significant amount of playtime in as well.

I agree though, an index would be beyond just the icing on the cake, it would be the extra nice colored sprinkles too.

Ah?  I don't remember; I'll blame the booze even though I didn't drink all that much. ;)  But, yeah, schedules are full.  I just finally met J. in person this last conference, so it seems to be a theme. :)  I always enjoy the chance to put a face to a name (or pseudonym).

1. You asked for it.
2. You said you liked it.
3. I don't believe I could possibly scar anyone who does something as insane as write strategy guides! ;)

You should try to make it to Austin sometime, though.  Best conference for general MMO-focused topics, IMHO.

Have fun,

I know.  Clay was going to try to bring me out for the conference but WP had limited tickets they were being allotted.  They had me out in July for a few days and I'm hoping to get out that way in a more permanent capacity if I can. ;)

It's true.  You probably couldn't scar me.  Between the community and the guides I'm sure I've gone a tad insane anyway.

Which brings us back to your finding this place again.

I summoned her by chatting behind her back.  Really.  I was just as surprised as anyone.  Now it's up to you to keep her here!

It's true.  Some unforseeable force was used on me and I ended up here after all this time. 

Apparently my ability to get lost indoors translates to getting lost on the internet as well.  :-o

*Signe- Did you get my response btw?  Or did the boards eat it?

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=2041.0

Fill it out or I will mock you.  Or something.

Done.  Lord knows I wouldn't want to be mocked!   :evil:

Thank you.  I found your blog, and have added you to my list of people to stalk.  I meant admire!  People to admire, god I always fuck that up.

Thank you for the warning.  I'll be sure to get the restraining order ready. ;)

So how is Shadowbane doing these days?  Got any decent "nuetral" links on its status?  o how I yearn for the days when it was considered PK Mecca. 

Start a new topic in MMOG Discussion to discuss this, Cheddar.

Well, I'm glad she's finally here. I have Sachant to partly thank for one of the better experiences I've had in online gaming (I think?!).

That almost sounds dirty.   :-P

I did get your response.  Twice!  I am preparing my response to your response.   :-P 

Phew.. as long as my response to your response went through even with subsequent responses and now I will look forward to your response and most likely respond accordingly.

Haven't read the whole thing, but I've been saying this shit for years. I  :heart: this man.

Also, I love how Mulligan shits on WoW as they dance with money hats on the grave of her dreams.

It was. You burned my city to ashes, I think.

It was fun though  :-)

Ooooh.  Burning cities to the ground IS very fun.   :evil:

Popular doesn't mean good.  Most people have realize that WoW is just one of a line of Diku clones.  Sure, it's made a lot of money but what has it done to really move the industry forward?  About the only things I can see is that it's shown that a good brand name (both Warcraft and Blizzard) means big sales, it's shown that dumbing things down is popular, and it's shown that Diku clones are still popular.  Hey, good on them that they've made tons of money, but those of us interested in more than just pure profit wouldn't mind something more.

Have fun,

I'd say it shows polish can lead to profit.

It also brought at least a good 3 million people in who weren't playing MMOG's before. When those people get tired of WoW, there's all these other things they can try too. It expanded the market, something I'm sure other games will reap the benefits of in the 3-4 months before WoW's expansion releases.

It also showed that fun was good, casuals will stay if you have a shallow leveling curve instead of a punitive grind, and that PVP isn't anathema to everyone if you put some restrictions on it.

It's also fun.

You seem to be developing an eye tick. You might want to get that looked at.

Yeah I'm due for a checkup.  :)

WoW is fun at it's core.  It's polished, it's smooth and it's pretty.  Yet, It just couldn't hold me for as long as I would have liked.  Once you start watching paint dry in molten core or killing Onyxia over and over you just lose sight of what was fun to begin with.  I'll probably get the expansion and start my account again just to see it.  I like seeing what other games are doing anyway.  I've been jumping into games here and there and I think I want to start keeping a comparison chart of all the different games and what they offer.  I think it would be interesting to see who is using what more comparitively and who is finding success with which things.

I'm still somewhat dissapointed in the minimalistic PvP in WoW.  It's also fun and takes a degree of skill but not really as much as I'd like.

For some reason, it's just very, very easy to walk away from WoW.

I have friends there, was invested in the social aspect as anyone could expect to be, was up to level... 42 or 43, well on my way to getting my own mount, decently equipped, and not HATING the game... but I don't know.  I just one day said, "You know, I really don't care to continue this."  Sent all my gold to a good friend of mine, logged out and cancelled the account.  And I haven't looked back (except at the Blood Elves, but I'm a sucker for badass elves- night elves are too fluffy).

I can't really explain why it was so simple for me to walk away.  I think I was as invested as one can be to a game.  Just one day my interest went poof.

At a guess, knowing that the end game was largely raids and that I didn't have much to look forward to probably played a role.  This was before battlegrounds.  But I don't much care about those either.

I find it very easy to just walk away from all MMOs nowadays. I haven't agonized over quitting since EQ or UO.  Might be a maturity thing, dunno.

Both WoW and Guild Wars were very easy to quit.

DAoC was not easy to quit.  I finally had to sell my account (you didn't hear that) to put the final "DONE" stamp on it.

CoH has been so hard to quit that I haven't quit since release.  Even when I was playing WoW or Guild Wars and almost never logging in to CoH, my account was open.  At that point I was completely bored but I still couldn't quit.  And I've been having fun again since the release of Issue 5.

Horizons was laughably easy to quit.  A couple weeks into it I thought "I've been playing this game for a couple weeks, I still don't know what the fuck is going on, I'm bored with the gameplay, it looks like shit, and there's nothing interesting happening in the story. Cya."  And serverwide unlockable races sounded so cool.

I had a similar experience with WoW really, one day I was in RedRidge on my way to just solo in the blasted lands or something for the hell of it and I happened upon two shaman who were in their mid 30's attacking all the 18-2x alliance players who were acting like morons.

So I take my priest, which is a great 1v1 but not so much with the multiple enemies that aren't too stupid to stay out of pbaoe range, and kill them both.  I ask for some help corpse camping them from the newbs, but nobody listens.  I start to leave and the rez (GY is right by town) hop in the water and go back to killing newbs.  I stop, get off mount and come back down, kill them again.  This time I try to corpse camp them both, they come back, I kill, they come back, I kill, nobody is helping me from the newb population.  They are rezzing within a minute and they've dragged me out into the water.

Each time I'm also loosing about 5% mp when the next fight starts.  Eventually after about 6 times of  and a few chases they rez and finally kill me.  I rez, and they are camping me.  I kill them both despite the half hp/mp (they really were dumbass').  I promptly log off and never logged on again.

AC2:  I was perching gear knights on a 5 foot tall rock with my human female alt named "Bunny Lebowski". Basically this involved getting these mobs, that could destroy me in a heartbeat, stuck running into the geometry, jumping up on the rock, and then stripping down to my skivvies so I could autoattack them "for the win" faster while the gear knight runs into the rock like an energizer bunny stuck on autopilot.  Rinse, repeat, for hours. That should say enough, but there's more. Some uber template human mage comes up, destroys me in like 5 total seconds, hops up on the rock, and then starts perching away himself.  In attempting revenge, I run into some soul crushing rubber band lag and basically have to portal out due to the lag.  Then trying to bitch to my guildies about how much I suck at this game and how cheesy that occurrence was:  the chat server crashes.

So, it was time to quit. Then, trying to transfer the account to a guildie of mine without divulging my credit card info, I get charged for two extra months (that each lasted like 5 minutes).

Anyhow, we should rerail this at some point or perhaps put this out into a "amusing MMO quitting story thread". 

Lies.  It's only successful because it's got a big name brand! That's why Star Wars did so well! Oh wait, no it didn't. Shit, that makes that argument look bitter and hollow now.

Umm.. no, wait, only idiots like it!  Dumbing things down is for lamers, it should all be complex and archaic and "Deep"! Just like how we should all be on text-based OSs like Unix instead of a simple, unified GUI like Windows! What? You mean that the PC revolution wouldn't have happened without some kind of simple to use UI?  Accessiblity is a GOOD thing? No, that can't be right.

I'll have to come up with some other way of tearing thsi apart.. I'll be back!

I worry about you some times Cheddar, despite having no idea who the fuck you are. That's not good.

I am mostly harmless.  I have an addiction for blogs/news sites, and as such bookmark them every chance I run across an interesting one.  I do wish Sachant would talk more theory though, her laundry is really not that interesting :(

Sorry.  It's my blog and I'll babble about everything I want to. ;p  Sometimes that means you have to hear about my laundry and potty training. ;)

Naw, I am down with the potty training.  Its hot.

Don't get me started.

Signe, did Schild really generate your .sig quote?  I must have been sick that day.

Good work, Schild.  This is a great thread.  I'll give textual thanks for now.

He said it today in that crazy SWG thread.  It's not actually what he meant to say, but although I don't usually quote people, that one came out funny enough to make it an exception.

He's just adorable when he fucks up his words.

Christ. I just realized the problem with that sentence. I hate myself today.

I -rm'd so it'll die... unless you piss me off or something then I'll bring it back, along with other stuff you've even forgotten you said, I bet.  I wrote them all down. :-D

If anyone doubted you were female....