What a MMO can do to some people

[WayAbvPar]

In real life, STDs are BoP.

Yeah, but most of them have a dupe bug that allows you to pass them along to other people in your group.

[HaemishM]

Finding a group is also a real pain in the ass. Hell, finding any group is tough. We need to work on better LFG tools.

[Nebu]

Finding a group is also a real pain in the ass. Hell, finding any group is tough. We need to work on better LFG tools.

The best LFG tools in the world still won't effectively filter idiots.

[Sky]

That is why I have reversed my personal feelings about mmo naming policy over the years. While they may break immersion, I want idiots to have dumb names as a self-selecting filter. Sorry, S00p3r MaNG, I won't group witchoo.

[Venkman]

That is why I have reversed my personal feelings about mmo naming policy over the years. While they may break immersion, I want idiots to have dumb names as a self-selecting filter. Sorry, S00p3r MaNG, I won't group witchoo.

Exactly :)

Otherwise, LFG tools don't solve the problems. They're a small part. Transport tools and downtime tools, sheer zone size and respawning wandering mobs, those elements need to be addressed as well.

[lamaros]

But posting in said thread. Ahh, what a life to lead.

Why does everyone around here seem to be so obsessed with getting 'laid'?

I would assume that cybersex and real sex are what we commonly call "different things" and thus while they share some common ground are not to be compared directly. Which seems to be what Stray said.. except then he said that real sex was better than cybersex...

You're joking...right?

About?

If you think I was equating cybersex and sex on some level (of productivity/enjoyment) you need to read again my friend. I was just being a bit of a philosophical pedant.

Why, I even say on the very next line that sex and exercise hold far greater value for me than activities in a MMO...

[Strazos]

I'm surprised you typed that sentence. At all.

[Tale]

Hmm. Meet the warbiker.

[Xanthippe]

I could use one of those setups.  The worst part of exercise for me is that tedium. Listening to podcasts helps but not enough.  My gym has CNN on the TV, which I can watch for 15 minutes before it starts repeating itself.  Playing WoW while on the elliptical though, now that would be cool.  I'd stay 4x as long on that thing easy.

[Merusk]

I've had that idea before, and if I had the right bike/ elliptical for it I'd have done it a while ago.  It's how I watch TV as it is, since the bike is in my bedroom.   Problem is I play games more than I watch TV.  Hrm.. perhaps I should just give-up on Computer games entirely and go for consoles.  That'd be an easier setup.

[Daeven]

It's actually (for those games that play this type of design) a quite involved decision making process aimed at correctly preparing timelines for new content based on expected progression of the groups of players the new content is aimed at.

I've seen project managers lynched for less biznospeak than this boy. I sure hope you can run fast.

[Tale]

It's actually (for those games that play this type of design) a quite involved decision making process aimed at correctly preparing timelines for new content based on expected progression of the groups of players the new content is aimed at.

I've seen project managers lynched for less biznospeak than this boy. I sure hope you can run fast.

In that contingency he would leverage his existing bipedal resources to ramp up velocity.

[Xanthippe]

It's actually (for those games that play this type of design) a quite involved decision making process aimed at correctly preparing timelines for new content based on expected progression of the groups of players the new content is aimed at.

I've seen project managers lynched for less biznospeak than this boy. I sure hope you can run fast.

I haven't had a job in ten years and despise biznospeak.  I had no trouble comprehending the sentence; it's not bad at all.

Time to play Buzzword Bingo.

[Slyfeind]

Dilbert Mission Statement Generator for the win!

[Morat20]

It's actually (for those games that play this type of design) a quite involved decision making process aimed at correctly preparing timelines for new content based on expected progression of the groups of players the new content is aimed at.

I've seen project managers lynched for less biznospeak than this boy. I sure hope you can run fast.

Business speak gets a bad rap because some idiots learn the lingo and use it to obscure concepts. In the hands of people who know what they hell they're talking about, they express important concepts that generally need to be addressed.

And that was pretty easily readable. I don't bring out the whup-ass stick for bizspeak until they start "levering synergies" and shit. Stick to timetables, milestones, deliverables, customer requirements, and things like cost/benefit analysis and you're fine.

[Tale]

"levering synergies"

I'm impressed that you didn't type "leveraging synergies". That tends to be the actual business speak.

Leverage is traditionally a noun, meaning the effect you get from using a lever. The correct verb for creating leverage is "to lever", not "to leverage". The correct use of the word is really "levering our existing resources", not "leveraging our existing resources". As far as I'm aware, until ignorant people started copying "to leverage" from each other in the 1990s in an attempt to look smart, there was no such word. Besides, anyone who says "we will leverage our existing resources" instead of "we'll use what we've got" is being unclear.

[Daeven]

In that contingency he would leverage his existing bipedal resources to ramp up velocity.

That's it. Boys, get me a yellow memo pad, a silk tie, a jar of honey, an 11 million fire ants.

P.S. Who said anything about it not being readable? It's the principal of the thing damn you!

[Engels]

What bothers me most about business speak is that it generally presents 'concepts' with very little thoughts as to how the work is going to get done.

"Levering resources" more often than not means "Lets overwork the poor schmucks some more" or "let's sacrifice quality for quantity" or some other bad business decision all made acceptable by using the aformentioned business lingo euphamisms.

Let's not kid ourselves; the language was largely created to let CEOs sleep better at night.

[Endie]

What bothers me most about business speak is that it generally presents 'concepts' with very little thoughts as to how the work is going to get done.

I've always suspected that it's used to make people who know they're not that smart seem brighter.  It's just the same with other areas who harbour inferiority complexes: critical theory is used in the arts to make simple and obvious (and - often - wrong) things sound complicated and clever.  Why else talk about "aggressively anthropomorphisised figurative representations" when you could say "cartoon animals"?

[stray]

So at G8 Summit meetings, who is less bright: All the diplomats and UN representatives spouting their equivalent forms of politico-diplo-speak? Or Bush, who decided that greeting the Prime Minister of England with "Yo! Blair!" and giving the German chancellor a backrub were good ideas?

---

Zepp's sentence wouldn't have seemed so bad if he had only slimmed it down a bit.

[Margalis]

I've always suspected that it's used to make people who know they're not that smart seem brighter.  It's just the same with other areas who harbour inferiority complexes: critical theory is used in the arts to make simple and obvious (and - often - wrong) things sound complicated and clever.  Why else talk about "aggressively anthropomorphisised figurative representations" when you could say "cartoon animals"?

Good analogy. If you look at modern English departments at major universities they are mostly overrun by these people that strive to "complexify" simple concepts. I've seen professors tell grad students straight out they need to make their thing sound more complex by obfuscating it.

For a kick try reading some academic feminist literary theory sometime. I randomly picked up a book of that junk that was sitting in a classroom, it was hilarious. In one essay the author spent the first 5 pages redefining existing terms, making up new terms, then using them inconsistently the rest of the way. A lot of paragraphs were seriously 50% made up words.

[Engels]

My limited experience with this type of language is that it attracts those who have a sense of linguistic inferiority. My boss, for instance, is very undereducated in English. She's barely passable as a 9th grader in terms of writing an informal email, replete with dyslexic misspellings, missing verbs, etc.

However, she's been in IT management for 15 years, and boy, she can write a mean mission statement, technology plan document, etc. It's nearly as if at some point in her life she learned an entire subculture's language in the same way someone learns Perl scripting. She knows what words to tack together with the internal logic of a demented German 8 noun word. It's a skill to read her documentation, let alone understand it.

If  you have a preponderance of catch phrases and buzzwords, upper management thinks you're a serious business person with an eye towards efficiency and the bottom line. Lets just not bring up the ugly fact that when I got hired, all 60+ workstations had viruses, our bank server had so much dust in it that upon opening it, it acted like an impromptu catholic censer and we were running our main data server on a Dimension home desktop x800 from 1999. She had a 26 page Technology Plan!

[Special J]

I believe this thread has undergone a paradigm shift.

/I'm sorry.

[Daeven]

I've always suspected that it's used to make people who know they're not that smart seem brighter.  It's just the same with other areas who harbour inferiority complexes: critical theory is used in the arts to make simple and obvious (and - often - wrong) things sound complicated and clever.  Why else talk about "aggressively anthropomorphisised figurative representations" when you could say "cartoon animals"?

Kind of like an MBA: More words with neither context or thought!!

[Nebu]

I've always suspected that it's used to make people who know they're not that smart seem brighter.  It's just the same with other areas who harbour inferiority complexes: critical theory is used in the arts to make simple and obvious (and - often - wrong) things sound complicated and clever.  Why else talk about "aggressively anthropomorphisised figurative representations" when you could say "cartoon animals"?

I attribute this to self-esteem issues.  There are many brilliant people in the arts and business that still feel they don't get the credibility that they deserve do to tired old hierarchical systems.  I think they'd be better served riding the merits of their work rather than trying to embellish it with language.

[Merusk]

This thread reminds me of when I had to write a booklet to explain the use of our new drafting system a few employers ago.  You all have seen my postings and conversational style, my writing isn't too much farther from that.  I was rudely awakened to the fact that most folks have - at best- a 9th grade reading level.   Words with more than 2 syllables and complete sentences seem give people headaches.

[Nebu]

This thread reminds me of when I had to write a booklet to explain the use of our new drafting system a few employers ago.  You all have seen my postings and conversational style, my writing isn't too much farther from that.  I was rudely awakened to the fact that most folks have - at best- a 9th grade reading level.   Words with more than 2 syllables and complete sentences seem give people headaches.

I think you missed the point.  You can either choose to call a pencil a "pencil" or you can call it a "meticulously honed, graphite-tipped calligraphic device".  I don't think anyone really minds the use of large words when it's appropriate to do so. It's using large words to show that you can use them rather than because the use of the large words was required that causes the rub.   

[Sky]

This thread reminds me of when I had to write a booklet to explain the use of our new drafting system a few employers ago.  You all have seen my postings and conversational style, my writing isn't too much farther from that.  I was rudely awakened to the fact that most folks have - at best- a 9th grade reading level.   Words with more than 2 syllables and complete sentences seem give people headaches.

You should write any documentation or press releases, anything for general consumption, at an 8th-grade level. That's what I've always been told.

[shiznitz]

I have no idea what an 8th grade level is these days.

What grade was that sentence?

[Nebu]

8th grade level would be something akin to:

OMG wtf r u?  any1 no?

[Morat20]

This thread reminds me of when I had to write a booklet to explain the use of our new drafting system a few employers ago.  You all have seen my postings and conversational style, my writing isn't too much farther from that.  I was rudely awakened to the fact that most folks have - at best- a 9th grade reading level.   Words with more than 2 syllables and complete sentences seem give people headaches.

You should write any documentation or press releases, anything for general consumption, at an 8th-grade level. That's what I've always been told.

That's what I remember from my tech writing classes. It's not just "Managers are dumb" but because if you're writing at that level, you're less likely to make invalid assumptions about what your readers know. I can't count the number of shitty-ass documents floating around here that are only readable if you already know what they say, because half the fucking document is acronyms that are never defined.

[Endie]

For the same reason, I always write a Janet-and-John level "executive summary".  It's not just that it's the bit that will get read (allowing me to hedge freely with caveats within).  It's the fact that, if I can write a three-paragraph summary of a proposal, then I am more confident that I truly understand it myself.

[Morat20]

For the same reason, I always write a Janet-and-John level "executive summary".  It's not just that it's the bit that will get read (allowing me to hedge freely with caveats within).  It's the fact that, if I can write a three-paragraph summary of a proposal, then I am more confident that I truly understand it myself.

I wrote an internal memo on web services (and why we should pitch them as a solution to a specific interface problem between us and another contractor who doesn't want to give up access to his OH SO FUCKING PRECIOUS DB). I then got asked to "summarize" it for our customers, then got asked for a "quick two sentence explanation".

I went with: "It's a much faster and more compact way to serve information over the web.". I dread the day I have to explain the difference between HTML and XML. "One describes how to display data and the other descibes data" is not something that's going to go over well.

[Typhon]

My take on the social reason why "business speak" prolifer... ahh, spreads is as follows; A simpleton at or near the top pays someone smart to explain something to him/tell him what to do.  During one of those sessions, the smart person uses jargon as part of the explanation that has a certain pinache... er, sound or meter, to it that the simpleton likes.

The simpleton then repeats the phrase, occasionally not in the right context.  The herd that wants his/her favor immediately takes up that catch phrase to prove their loyalty and that they "get it".  From this fruit is "leverage", "synergize", etc born.