This month began with Narraptor revealing his addiction to Leveling. It's only proper that it ends with my own tearful confession.
I've been playing Kingdom Of Loathing off and on for over a year now. It's a free web based game, where your tiny stickman adventurer boozes, eats, and kills their way across the kingdom. Eventually, you climb up to the naughty sorceress' tower, kill her, and jump into a portal leading to heaven. Then, you start the process all over again, but with one of your previous abilities permanently added to your new level one character. There are a few differences, but the second verse is pretty damn close to the first. Also, the thirteenth is pretty much the same as the last twelve, but my character is a lot better at making mixed drinks than he used to be.
There ought to be a sane reason I still play this. World Of Warcraft kept me around long after it had lost it's luster, just from the co-operative gameplay and it's financial simulation aspects. Meanwhile, Kingdom of Loathing is a very solitary experience if you don't hang out on the forums, and it's marketplace might be robust, but it is also painful to use.
Then again, they try to include new content every Tuesday, usually based around enriching the lives of lower level players. This certainly beats the content drops of WOW, which hit once every four to five months, and 90% of it is designed solely for the top 10% of the players.
Showing posts with label world of warcraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label world of warcraft. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The Post Of Three Things
Thing One:
Looking for a work-safe site to obsessively visit every 420 seconds at the office? Check out the Global Incident Map. It tells you what shit is going down where, courtesy of Google, flashing icons, and a guy browsing the Internet for news stories every day. Take the 420 seconds with a grain of salt, though. I haven't seen much of a change in the last 24 hours. Either the world is considerably safer than I thought or someone's on vacation. Look on the bright side. Maybe it's both!
Thing Two:
Skip this Thing if you don't want my wife to ruin Lost for you, too. If we choose to believe what we've been told by The Others, their primary purpose is to find a way for women to conceive and give birth to children on the island. Now, this can't be the whole story--it doesn't explain their interest in Walt, for example. But let's say it is. If that's the case, why didn't they just come out of the jungle and offer the crash survivors to join them for hamburgers and Dharma rum mai tais in their love gazebos? "Hey, you're all pretty hot and, trust us, we've been here for years, no one's coming to rescue you. Why not come to our resort hatch and get laid?"
This approach could still have a lot of intrigue...
Sawyer: Someone stole all my condoms! Whoever it was, give 'em back!
Paulo: Those weren't your condoms. Things have changed. They belong to the group now.
Sawyer: Look, I don't what y'all do down in Brazil, but where I come from they're one-use only.
(Sayid pulls Jack aside)
Sayid: I suspect The Resort Staff of stealing the condoms. If they don't want us having access to safe sex, we need to know why.
(Jack confronts Ben in The Resort Hatch game room)
Jack: Give us back our condoms!
Ben: Why, Jack? Don't you have a latex allergy? What would you need them for?
Jack: [doesn't ask any relevant questions]
Ben: I know all about you, Jack. Your ex-wife, your aborted affair with the daughter of a mysterious philanthropist. You aren't getting any here. Why do those condoms mean so much to you?
Jack: Because if I'm not having sex, no one else should experience unobstructed physical pleasure! Bernard's getting more action than me!
Thing Three:
I have edited my previous post on my leveling addiction. The conclusion is now more in line with my original intent--to explain in the most discursive way possible why I haven't finished Oblivion. It will probably be edited again, but in case it never makes it into the final version, here's a comment I deleted about end-game content in World of Warcraft:
"You might as well pay $150 to choose Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie, or Elf in Gauntlet, then sit back and shoot or pick up whatever the guy standing behind you at Shakey's with pizza in his beard tells you to."
Looking for a work-safe site to obsessively visit every 420 seconds at the office? Check out the Global Incident Map. It tells you what shit is going down where, courtesy of Google, flashing icons, and a guy browsing the Internet for news stories every day. Take the 420 seconds with a grain of salt, though. I haven't seen much of a change in the last 24 hours. Either the world is considerably safer than I thought or someone's on vacation. Look on the bright side. Maybe it's both!
Thing Two:
Skip this Thing if you don't want my wife to ruin Lost for you, too. If we choose to believe what we've been told by The Others, their primary purpose is to find a way for women to conceive and give birth to children on the island. Now, this can't be the whole story--it doesn't explain their interest in Walt, for example. But let's say it is. If that's the case, why didn't they just come out of the jungle and offer the crash survivors to join them for hamburgers and Dharma rum mai tais in their love gazebos? "Hey, you're all pretty hot and, trust us, we've been here for years, no one's coming to rescue you. Why not come to our resort hatch and get laid?"
This approach could still have a lot of intrigue...
Sawyer: Someone stole all my condoms! Whoever it was, give 'em back!
Paulo: Those weren't your condoms. Things have changed. They belong to the group now.
Sawyer: Look, I don't what y'all do down in Brazil, but where I come from they're one-use only.
(Sayid pulls Jack aside)
Sayid: I suspect The Resort Staff of stealing the condoms. If they don't want us having access to safe sex, we need to know why.
(Jack confronts Ben in The Resort Hatch game room)
Jack: Give us back our condoms!
Ben: Why, Jack? Don't you have a latex allergy? What would you need them for?
Jack: [doesn't ask any relevant questions]
Ben: I know all about you, Jack. Your ex-wife, your aborted affair with the daughter of a mysterious philanthropist. You aren't getting any here. Why do those condoms mean so much to you?
Jack: Because if I'm not having sex, no one else should experience unobstructed physical pleasure! Bernard's getting more action than me!
Thing Three:
I have edited my previous post on my leveling addiction. The conclusion is now more in line with my original intent--to explain in the most discursive way possible why I haven't finished Oblivion. It will probably be edited again, but in case it never makes it into the final version, here's a comment I deleted about end-game content in World of Warcraft:
"You might as well pay $150 to choose Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie, or Elf in Gauntlet, then sit back and shoot or pick up whatever the guy standing behind you at Shakey's with pizza in his beard tells you to."
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
This Is My Brain On Leveling
My name is Narraptor and I am a level addict. I have a myriad of vices, but in terms of hours logged and opportunities for social interaction wasted, I've spent more time sitting in front of a computer screen playing with myself than sitting in front of computer playing with myself.
The last 20 years are lost in a haze of disposable party members and experience points, 50+ hour orgies of monsters dying that invariably ended in hasty anti-climaxes, abrupt conclusions always leaving me craving that next fix. I can't remember exactly how it started, but my sponsor Wikipedia helped me piece together a likely progression of events.
Although I was first exposed to leveling in Telengard, given the randomness of the encounters and the lack of a quicksave, the concept that there were character levels and attribute improvements waiting beyond level one never connected until years later. I vaguely recall that my interest in the Advanced Heroquest board game, a curiosity eagerly encouraged by overly-permissive family members and elementary school enablers, lead me to my first epiphany that characters could improve as a result of their exploits, as opposed to just bumping their heads on platforms, robots, light fixtures, or falling down holes. But it was probably my impulse purchase of the D&D Basic Box set that started my addiction.
(Impulse purchase, indeed. Games Workshop and Waldenbooks knew what they were doing, with the former's cheap, entry-level plastic minis and the latter's fantasy sections filled with stories about Angst Elves who no one understood but their magical cat familiar and trusty scimitars...and maybe their best friend's girlfriend, who might realize one day that the guy who she goes to with all her problems is really the man for her.)
Might and Magic III, Ultima VI, Eye of the Beholder, and Bane of the Cosmic Forge--I played them all in a two-year period, xp'ing out on weekends and school vacations while listening to the best of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. I was so high on level advancement that Peter Cetera seemed cool, and probably was compared to me. I not only played through several Gold Box games, I played silver box games like Hillsfar. I struggled through the broken Worlds of Ultima, the bugs of Space 1889, and Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace just to get a fix.
Of course, with prolonged abuse came greater tolerance. After high school I needed a more potent product, and I found it in Fallout and its sequel, Planescape, and Baldur's Gate II. So many party members! So many opportunities for micro-management! So much leveling! I did dozens of "one more turns", collecting every resource and throwaway magic item and all the gold xp Heroes of Might and Magic II and III had to offer, even when my level cap was met. What started as an addiction became certifiable OCD--Obsessive Completist Disorder. I found myself psychologically incapable of completing a game without clearing every zone of fog of war, calculating maximum experience points and skill bonuses for greater leveling efficiency, and completing every side quest.
Thanks to the crackdown of the Console Enforcement Agency, the hardcore RPG is a thing of the past. Whether imported or grown domestically, the product available is either embarrassingly incomplete or cut with real-time combat. I've tried permutations of the genre, but because of OCD, I can't enjoy them. Leveling is just a $14 a month prelude to actual content in World of Warcraft. The character options in Fire Emblem and Disgaea are so close to infinite that leveling would be rendered meaningless even if the reward wasn't to click through a thousand ellipses. And as much as I've tried to have "fun" playing Oblivion, it's the first game I've ever played where character advancement is punished.
I am Narraptor, and this is my brain on leveling.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
/played
This picture says 11 depressing words. Also, I'm not wearing any pants.
That's over a week's vacation in the land of Azeroth, where Dave Chappelle fought David Hasselhoff, for only $250. Not a bad deal, assuming the trip didn't ruin my craving for experience points forever.
I have invested a lot more time (though for a lot less money) in other games, but don't regret the hours I logged in high school on Civilization, the "one more turn nights" with Civ II and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 in college, playing through Diablo, Diablo, Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II, Dia...and countless Neverwinter Nights modules of varying degrees of tedium and design flaws. I am only mildly perturbed at Disgaea, not myself, for going out of my way to max out my favorite characters over the course of 92 hours only to learn that the game had two more stages left. My brain likes gaining XP and doing inventory management.
At least, it used to. I am not normally one to wax existential while running up character levels, but the realization that things only got worse after hitting level 60 (for those of you not in the know, people will arrange their schedules to get together groups of 40 people and run through the same 4-hour dungeons every weekend, all in the hopes that the final boss might drop the right color hat you need to complete your outfit...except you won't get it until you've logged enough "Dragon Kill Points"--no joke--with your guild, and even then it might be stolen by one of your paladins because the Internet is full of fuckwads) really made me think about whether maxing out any more fighters, priests, or magic-users had a point. I've reached the level cap in dozens of other games, why bother with this one? For that matter, considering my lifetime RPG kill count, do I really need to put up with Troggs?
A tangential observation: I've noticed that while rats in Oblivion are too stupid to realize how many of their kind I have felled in other games, there are no spiders. Either some other hero cleansed the world of them in previous Elder Scrolls or my reputation precedes me. There are giant webs in all the caves, but no giant spiders to make them. Yeah, that's right. You better hide, fuckers.
I think if WOW was a typical RPG and had an ending, burnout and wondering what the hell I was doing for the last year and a half wouldn't have plagued me. I would have made it to the end and kept playing until it was time to move on to something else, just like any other game. What the game needs is an ending cinematic at level 40. Gain ten levels in Treadmill Vale and open a gate to the Horse Dimension of Horseia. Defeat Horsephestra solo and gain the ability to steal and ride one of her young back to Azeroth. The game is now fully open to you and your travel time is increased. High-end content and regular add-ons are there for as long as you want to pay.
Ideally, you wouldn't have to get off your horse to pick up plants or kill guys either. Blizzard--king of game balance via limited function! As was pointed out in a recent CGW podcast, there was mounted combat in Ultima Online. Please note that I've been lazy in italicizing game titles, so that's sarcastic emphasis added.
As it stands, I see WOW as one long GTA ambulance mission with a special hat at the end and an even worse save system.
But that's all over now. I made the peon cry and cancelled my subscription. Interestingly, they don't delete your characters when you leave. Lodz springs eternal. There's also a hard sell in the form of pull-down menus that beg you not to quit. "Don't want to pay by credit card? Call us at..." "Lost your girlfriend? We've partnered with eHarmony.com to..." Among the options under "Reasons For Living" are addiction (to WOW, not, presumably, meth or EQ), military service, and Will of the Forsaken Nerf.
I am am proud to write that I was not so into the game to correctly parse that phrase immediately. I thought it was some sort of l33t philosophy.
That's over a week's vacation in the land of Azeroth, where Dave Chappelle fought David Hasselhoff, for only $250. Not a bad deal, assuming the trip didn't ruin my craving for experience points forever.
I have invested a lot more time (though for a lot less money) in other games, but don't regret the hours I logged in high school on Civilization, the "one more turn nights" with Civ II and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 in college, playing through Diablo, Diablo, Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo II, Dia...and countless Neverwinter Nights modules of varying degrees of tedium and design flaws. I am only mildly perturbed at Disgaea, not myself, for going out of my way to max out my favorite characters over the course of 92 hours only to learn that the game had two more stages left. My brain likes gaining XP and doing inventory management.
At least, it used to. I am not normally one to wax existential while running up character levels, but the realization that things only got worse after hitting level 60 (for those of you not in the know, people will arrange their schedules to get together groups of 40 people and run through the same 4-hour dungeons every weekend, all in the hopes that the final boss might drop the right color hat you need to complete your outfit...except you won't get it until you've logged enough "Dragon Kill Points"--no joke--with your guild, and even then it might be stolen by one of your paladins because the Internet is full of fuckwads) really made me think about whether maxing out any more fighters, priests, or magic-users had a point. I've reached the level cap in dozens of other games, why bother with this one? For that matter, considering my lifetime RPG kill count, do I really need to put up with Troggs?
A tangential observation: I've noticed that while rats in Oblivion are too stupid to realize how many of their kind I have felled in other games, there are no spiders. Either some other hero cleansed the world of them in previous Elder Scrolls or my reputation precedes me. There are giant webs in all the caves, but no giant spiders to make them. Yeah, that's right. You better hide, fuckers.
I think if WOW was a typical RPG and had an ending, burnout and wondering what the hell I was doing for the last year and a half wouldn't have plagued me. I would have made it to the end and kept playing until it was time to move on to something else, just like any other game. What the game needs is an ending cinematic at level 40. Gain ten levels in Treadmill Vale and open a gate to the Horse Dimension of Horseia. Defeat Horsephestra solo and gain the ability to steal and ride one of her young back to Azeroth. The game is now fully open to you and your travel time is increased. High-end content and regular add-ons are there for as long as you want to pay.
Ideally, you wouldn't have to get off your horse to pick up plants or kill guys either. Blizzard--king of game balance via limited function! As was pointed out in a recent CGW podcast, there was mounted combat in Ultima Online. Please note that I've been lazy in italicizing game titles, so that's sarcastic emphasis added.
As it stands, I see WOW as one long GTA ambulance mission with a special hat at the end and an even worse save system.
But that's all over now. I made the peon cry and cancelled my subscription. Interestingly, they don't delete your characters when you leave. Lodz springs eternal. There's also a hard sell in the form of pull-down menus that beg you not to quit. "Don't want to pay by credit card? Call us at..." "Lost your girlfriend? We've partnered with eHarmony.com to..." Among the options under "Reasons For Living" are addiction (to WOW, not, presumably, meth or EQ), military service, and Will of the Forsaken Nerf.
I am am proud to write that I was not so into the game to correctly parse that phrase immediately. I thought it was some sort of l33t philosophy.
Punchline, After The Ellipses
Consider Narraptor's challenges taken. And I can already announce that no matter what you've been told, man is not the greatest monster of them all.
Now I just have to find a way to get back to my giant piles of papers saved through the years, under the mistaken impression that I'd one day want to read them again. I'm sure at least one of my short stories must have survived. Barring that, perhaps I can entertain with a campfire tale about how my third-grade teacher read my Halloween story aloud, deliberately pronouncing every spelling and grammar error to make them clear to the whole classroom. I don't remember the experience dampening my enthusiasm for writing, or for making terrible spelling errors.
I have just discovered something: Giving myself only a short time to post before work was not a smart idea. On the other hand, I now have three fragmented paragraphs I can try to rehabilitate in time for my next entry. Instead of inflicting them on you, I'll end with my own brief tale of MMORPG burnout. World of Warcraft has devolved into a expensive instant messaging system to communicate with my friends who still tolerate it. At the same time, I haven't logged on in months, because I don't have time to play the game I'm no longer interested in.
Now I just have to find a way to get back to my giant piles of papers saved through the years, under the mistaken impression that I'd one day want to read them again. I'm sure at least one of my short stories must have survived. Barring that, perhaps I can entertain with a campfire tale about how my third-grade teacher read my Halloween story aloud, deliberately pronouncing every spelling and grammar error to make them clear to the whole classroom. I don't remember the experience dampening my enthusiasm for writing, or for making terrible spelling errors.
I have just discovered something: Giving myself only a short time to post before work was not a smart idea. On the other hand, I now have three fragmented paragraphs I can try to rehabilitate in time for my next entry. Instead of inflicting them on you, I'll end with my own brief tale of MMORPG burnout. World of Warcraft has devolved into a expensive instant messaging system to communicate with my friends who still tolerate it. At the same time, I haven't logged on in months, because I don't have time to play the game I'm no longer interested in.
You Can't Mount Here
Chillin' with my west coast guild members today before D&D, it looks like everyone I know is ready to bail on WoW. I feel guilty for never running a real raid on Feathermoon, but after learning that, I'm currently auctioning off all my virtual stuff. Does anyone need sungrass? I have Stormwind minimized as I write this. I am the hot chick by the mailbox.
I have more to say on how trying out a Massively Multiplayer Treadmill destroyed my enjoyment of levelling up characters. I'll be back to discuss it in full. My purpose at the moment is to switch the focus of this blog to something other than television. I have two challenges to encourage this change in direction.
Halloween is approaching, and I think this would be a good time to discuss our favorite monsters and why. Shall we say by Thursday? And That Guy Skipp (downgraded from "My Pal," a title which has yet to be reinstated) mentioned an experiment on Storytellers Unplugged that I think we should steal. They are posting their old scary stories over there. I have one from third grade I can share. Are you in?
One final note, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to respond to blog posts on my own site in the comments sections or not. Let's say I wanted to call Mr. Bile out for writing "Never do this" and bolding it. If I want to ask him why (it's working for them so far) or to challenge his formatting ("Dude, what's with the bold? I don't use bold.") where am I supposed to put that?
I'm all for the Penny Arcade passive-aggressive fictional posts myself. Also, I think we both need to cut down on the number of words in our titles...or change the font size.
I have more to say on how trying out a Massively Multiplayer Treadmill destroyed my enjoyment of levelling up characters. I'll be back to discuss it in full. My purpose at the moment is to switch the focus of this blog to something other than television. I have two challenges to encourage this change in direction.
Halloween is approaching, and I think this would be a good time to discuss our favorite monsters and why. Shall we say by Thursday? And That Guy Skipp (downgraded from "My Pal," a title which has yet to be reinstated) mentioned an experiment on Storytellers Unplugged that I think we should steal. They are posting their old scary stories over there. I have one from third grade I can share. Are you in?
One final note, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to respond to blog posts on my own site in the comments sections or not. Let's say I wanted to call Mr. Bile out for writing "Never do this" and bolding it. If I want to ask him why (it's working for them so far) or to challenge his formatting ("Dude, what's with the bold? I don't use bold.") where am I supposed to put that?
I'm all for the Penny Arcade passive-aggressive fictional posts myself. Also, I think we both need to cut down on the number of words in our titles...or change the font size.
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