It could be bunnies...

Oh wait.  Sorry.  Wrong show!

For the whole four people who read this (thanks btw) you are now going to be subjected to my rambling thoughts on the cyclical nature of... well basically everything but specifically gaming/society.  The three of you who aren't Radar can go ahead and run away now, I'll understand.  Radar has to read the whole damn thing though, because it's his fault I'm writing it.

As a rule I don't involve myself in politics and whatnot.  However I do have a few very politically savvy friends and relatives and tend to just sort of soak up the information they shove at me on a regular basis.  I learn a lot this way.  One of the things I've learned is that politics goes in cycles.  For a while we're very conservative.  Then things swing in the other direction, until those policies no longer work for society and things swing right on back the other way.

Whilst I don't study politics, I do tend to study people.  Fascinating animals, we are.  And I've noticed that just as with politics, society tends to swing from one extreme to another.  If you've ever been to a science museum and seen the giant pendulums that swing super slow but you can see that they do tend to move over time, you should understand.

Everything tends to end up coming full circle in the end.  That isn't to say that everything always ends up staying the same.  But the patterns tend to return after a while.  How the hell does this apply to gaming?

Believe it or not it does.  While we've evolved in the gaming world, we still tend to return to the same patterns.  We started out as kids playing cowboys and indians or whatever sort of FPSish game we played when we ran around til we passed out.  We got older and started playing arcade games like Pac-Man and Galaga and the fighting games (Mortal Kombat ftw!).  Then we started gaming on PCs.  Hello Doom and Quake and Unreal etc etc.  From there we moved to MMOs.  Now, even our MMOs are shifting back towards FPSishness.  Only now they're somewhat evolved FPS games and our deathmatches have matured.

There's also a cyclical pattern to the way that people seem to play online games. 

My personal example.  EverQuest and EverQuest II tend to be my base games.  Touchstones that I always play.  When I played EQ, I'd stray now and then and play something new when it came out (Dark Age of Camelot!) but I'd return and apologize for having been an MMOslut and promised to once again be monogamous.

I quit EQ when I had a kid cause I spent all my time playing with him and sleeping.  Then I found out that EQ2 was coming.  WOOHOO!  I dove back in (i cut out sleeping, cause really who needs to sleep?) and learned everything I could and eagerly waited for the beta.  I even jumped back into EQ for a while to enjoy the nostalgia. 

With EQ2 there also came an explosion of other MMOs (I missed SWG pre-cu and I'm terribly bitter about this!).  WoW, DDO, LoTRO, TR, etc.  I've tried darn near all of them at one point or another.  I've missed a few here and there, whether from lack of time or money for yet another game. 

The point though is that all the sampling of other games aside, I keep coming back to EQ2.  Someday a game will come along that will woo me away (I know, how fickle, right?) but that is going to take a hell of a game.

There's all this speculation right now about how Age of Conan and Warhammer are going to spell the death knell of EQ2.  That's a crock of shit.  I fail to comprehend how people can honestly believe this.  Vanguard was supposed to be the death of EQ2.  And while it did have a ton of potential, it was released unfinished.  It could have been a great game.  But that's neither here nor there.  Would it have killed EQ2?  Not a chance.  Because every game appeals for different reasons.  That's why people keep coming back.  Just like they keep going back to WoW or any of the other games on the market.

A game doesn't need ZOMGZ 10 MILLION!!!!one11eleventy subscriptions to be a success.  Having a player base that can't stay away and speaking to people on a level that keeps them playing through all the growing pains and shinie new games is what makes it a success.  Yeah, people will leave EQ2 for a while to try the new games.  And they'll be back.  Then it'll start over again with the next round of releases.

So, there's a thread on the offical eq2 forums right now. 

Basically, someone caught a guild member using a power leveling service and wanted advice on how to handle it.

There have been a lot of responses already ranging from boot him, to report him and boot him, to you people are heartless he made a mistake get over it.

The responses are certainly telling.  The vast majority are outraged because this person is putting their guild at risk after the recent widespread account stripping that's been going on.

The question is, what do you do about it?

Does it matter if the person is a friend?  A good friend?  Online vs RL?

My opinion has pretty much always been that anyone who will cheat at a game that you can't win deserves whatever they get.  This includes having your account information stolen, your credit card number jacked, your debt run up out of control, your credit ruined, and your lazy stupid ass kicked out of your guild.

It isn't like the game is hard.  There's no prize for getting to the end first.  Hell, there's no prize for getting to the end.  It's continuous, on-going entertainment.  It's like going to see a movie but watching the end on YouTube first or reading the last chapter of a book before you start it.

Grow up.  There are other people who play and the actions of one individual can negatively affect the gaming experiences of all of those others.  So, why?

So I've been in kind of a game funk lately. The forced questing in order to progress is a giant pain in my ass, cause sometimes I just don't wanna do it.

Lately I've been doing a few quests and mostly crafting. Well, much as I love it, even crafting gets old when you've done eighty gajillion writs to try and keep ahead of your friend in guild status.

I was very much in danger of burning out completely.

We've been trying to rebuild our old guild right? Well recruiting is going a little slow... Mostly cause I haven't gotten off my ass to really do it, so things are a little slow there.

But lately some of our folks have been coming back and starting to play more. Which just kicks so many levels of ass that it isn't even funny :)

We've been having a ton of fun getting little guild groups together and playing the lower level content again as we help folks level their new characters.

The other day we spanked Blackburrow from one end to the other. The respawn in there is incredible. It's like the gnolls couldn't get enough of us anally violating them. They just kept coming and throwing themselves at us.

We died a few times under a mob of like 20 mobs... But it was a ton of fun all the same. It's been so much fun that I've actually vowed to go ahead and finish up my high level quests.

It's amazing what a few good groups and a ton of spankage will do for your state of mind ;)

so, i'm running my very first ever fan site contest. and like... people are actually entering. i expected to have at most like 5 or 6 people...

i'm a little overwhelmed and yet totally gratified.

It's brenlo's birthday today. Happy Bday :)

It's also winter's birthday. * spank *

there'll be other stuff... later sometime.

It's so often used as a bad word in the gaming world.  Oh, well so and so is just hardcore.  Alright then, Kato.  What constitutes hardcore?

The people at EQ2 Flames?  Are they hardcore?  Of course they are.  They are passionate about their style of gameplay.  They raid.  They try to get the best gear they can and they want to be the best they can on their servers if not the game as a whole.

Groovy.  So what about other sites?  EQ2 Traders Corner?  (<3 Niami!)  A site dedicated to all things crafting.  Oh well... crafters can't be hardcore can they?  I mean come on.  A person who spends all their game time crafting... Even if that game time amounts to 20+ hours a week isn't hardcore are they?

You're damned right they are.  Even the person who solos their way from 1 to 80 is hardcore if they invest the time into it.

Hell, I'm even hardcore.  I get home from work and log in only to start working on my second job with actually centers around EQ2.  Hi... you can't really get much more hardcore than that.  Does it suck that it's basically made it so I don't have the time to indulge in my desire to raid?  Well, yeah.  But I still log a ridiculous amount of time in game just so that I can write about it.

I'd love to write about the raiding game.  Unfortunately I can't raid and write at the same time.  Not without being a craptacular cleric.  So I opt out and refuse to screw over a guild cause I need to multi task and can't devote the required time.

That doesn't make me a casual player any more than a rabid crafter, quester, altaholic, or whatever is casual.

I do my best to experience every aspect of the game.  Right now I'm fiddling with an alt to see just how far I can get without dying 9 times.  Yes, I know my first death is down cause I'm a dumbass.  We'll chalk that up to me being blonde and have done with it.  No way are those other 8 deaths going to happen.  Grrr.

After that I think I'll try my hand at PvP.  Chances are, I'll suck at it.  But I can't rag on PvP if I haven't tried it...  And I really need more people at whom to poke fun.  Rangers are getting to where it's just MEAN to poke at them :(  I'm starting to feel bad making Ranger jokes...

I'm exhausted, but gods it was well worth it.

I've been in a frantic tizzy the last few weeks, trying to catch up and prepare for SOE's Winter Summit. I know, right? They invited me?

There's obviously a lot of things I can't talk about what with signing away Radar's soul in the NDA and all that, but nonetheless there was some seriously groovy stuff that went down.

We got to talk to the Customer Service peeps. That was nice. A couple of my pet issues with CS were covered. Namely: Gold sellers and all that entails. While we all know that they work on it, it's hard to remember this when we don't see a whole lot of flag waving from them about it.

And now I know why. It seems more than 30% of what they deal with everyday is in relation to finding gold sellers and tracking through all the contacts they make with people to get rid of as many accounts as they can. We're talking tens of thousands a week.

Those are some serious numbers. As much as I'd love for them to shove numbers in our faces every week with how many of these folks they've gotten rid of, I'm content without that now. The CS team did say they were going to try and post more frequent updates on the Station Blogs about these issues, so keep an eye out!

We got to see a lot of future plans for expanding our community and player base. Can't really say a whole lot about that, other than I think it's an incredible idea and should really see some great returns.

They showed us gameplay footage from Free Realms. I'll be throwing up a write up about that on Zam.

I wish I could talk about The Agency. All I can say is that it looks like it's going to be REALLY FUCKING COOL!!!!

In the end, I just really wish that everyone could experience quality time with the entire team. Devs, Community, CS... Everyone. I think it'd really give people a hell of an appreciation for what really goes into making these games we love to play.

More when I've slept!