Insert statement about game forums generally being a Star Wars Quote about scum and villainy and hives.

Counter written introduction in order to place emphasis on important point of post.

Post point about the coolest forum threads being meta, and how Rift now has its own meta-thread about negativity and doomsaying from players.

Post link to said thread.

Mention that the Dev Tracker subcategory has a lot of mentions from amused members of Trion staff.

Smile.

Post the written post hoping that people will find this very short, meaningless post interesting and worthy of comments and love.

Feel lonely about the fact that time is spent writing such a post which has no inherent value other than self-referential and self-deprecating humor.

Cry in bed.

Slee…. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME3Qs0HlseM]

I spent ten minutes earlier playing Angry Birds on the iPod Touch of a friend. The game is available for play on the iPhone or iPod Touch, provided that your device has the proper updates required to play the game.

Angry Birds is a game starring a bunch of differently colored birds who are angry… angry at pigs who apparently have done something wrong. I do not know what these pigs did (probably mass genocide of birds?), but the introductory cutscene-type deal seemed unappealing and cartoony so I skipped it.

Most of the ten minutes I spent playing Angry Birds was actually comprised of listening to my friends tell me about the controls. Apparently, these furious fowl are willing to jump on a slingshot and have someone finger them into position to be released all cannon-like in order to obliterate some pigs. This smacks of many MMORPG tropes, such as the suicide mission trope and the band of heroic fowl trope. By comparison, World of Warcraft and LOTRO both have chickens in them, and I assume they are also rather angry at the misrepresentation of their species as a fowl race.

Much like other MMORPG’s before it, Angry Birds is actually quite the intriguing multiplayer game, but for a different reason entirely. It involves a system of gaming known as “sharing,” which is commonly unheard of in many MMORPG’s as it requires people to relinquish control of the game in order to allow other people equal time in completing or failing objectives. That said, the addition of a sort of ranking system to determine who should best be set in the sharing roster may become an intriguing development for the game, should its developers decide to implement it, as it opens up an entirely new metagame that can enthrall its sizable fanbase into playing.

With that, it can be said that Angry Birds is one of the most innovative MMORPG’s I’ve had the experience of playing. Despite its lack of a crafting system and its rather lackluster quest implementation, Angry Birds serves as the immutable metaphor for the human spirit, as man, like an Angry Bird, must learn to overcome obstacles together in order to succeed in killing people who want to do other things which you disagree with.

EDIT: For the record, I do not take money from Rovio. They have not paid me to say anything. But I would like some money, so if you could send some my way, that’d be nice, Rovio.

This NDA is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to non-disclosure agreements, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Also, this was inspired by True Events. Truly.

Dear User,

Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in the beta testing process for Thrift: Prize of the Compliant.

In order to participate in the pre-release testing of Thrift: Prize of the Compliant, you must read, UNDERSTAND (we cannot stress this enough, dear user), and accept the following Terms of Use, License Information, and Non-Disclosure Agreement below. Don’t just skip to the end and press “Accept” (especially since we did not put an Accept button at the end of this thing). If you are already itching to scroll at the bottom, feel free to ignore this warning at the cost of your soul. By clicking the “Agree” button below, you agree to be legally bound by the terms of this agreement.

TERMS OF USE, LICENSING INFORMATION AND NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT FOR THE TESTING OF A PRE-RELEASE GAME

Three Ton Birds Corp. (henceforth known as “The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements”) has developed and designed the pre-release version of Thrift: Prize of the Compliant (henceforth known as “the game”) to allow a set number of people to test the feature set, capabilities, and performance of the game, as well as the ability of individuals to resist bringing up their sense of entitlement on beta forums. By clicking on the “Agree” button below,

1. You promise that you are at least 18 years of age, hopefully mature and sensible enough to understand the legal and long-term repercussions of your actions, are not a principal or employee of The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements, and are doing this on a voluntary basis, without expecting remuneration, compensation, or gratitude from the gaming public at large. If you are not, you should not have attempted to enter the beta to begin with.

2. You accept that The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements has the power to accept or revoke your access at any time for whatever reason they see fit, and y0u cannot throw a bitch fit on the forums or your personal blog as a result of such. If you are accepted, you also agree this agreement is a binding contract between you and The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements.

3. You acknowledge that your participation on the beta will require some access on the part of The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements to your computer specifications and DXDiag information, and will not throw a bitch fit at the fact that the pre-release program is a complex piece of technological work that cannot be tested by one single company on every computer specification setup known to man.

4. You acknowledge that The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements may, at its discretion, choose to charge a fee to acquire the beta software and/or gain access into the pre-release testing program. Again, you also agree to not throw a bitch fit if such a thing, rare as it is, happens in the future.

5. You accept that The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements may choose to move the pre-release testing dates to better facilitate the remedy of any issues that have come up as a result of internal and prior beta testing, and will not throw a bitch fit if such a thing does occur during the pre-release testing phase.

6. You will not throw a bitch fit if something doesn’t work because HELLO… It’s a freaking beta.

7. You agree to the terms of the agreement as indicated below.

AGREEMENT

Licensing Information.

You have a license to use this software, but The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements made it, so it’s The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements’ intellectual property. Don’t steal our stuff, and we won’t sue you.

You also agree to indemnify (not hold us responsible) for any losses you may incur as a result of losing this software. This includes sleep you may give up, family you may neglect, and money you may gamble on our future e-sport venture based on the game.

You hereby agree to test the shit out of this pre-release version. Break anything you can in-game, spot every spelling and grammar mistake available, and point out any other screwups The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements  has made, and make sure you note these either in-game through the bug report system or through the beta forums. Just please, for the love of everything good in this world, don’t simply complain about it. Make your beta issue report as detailed as possible in order for us to determine how to best replicate the bug and fix it on our end.

Confidentiality

Much like Fight Club, the only rule of our confidentiality agreement is that you don’t talk about beta, at all, except on our beta forums. Not on Twitter, Facebook, the game’s regular forums… NOWHERE ELSE EXCEPT THE BETA FORUMS or in a court of law as mandated by your respective governmental body. When we drop the NDA, then you can talk all you want, but not before.

Warranty (actually, the lack thereof)

You acknowledge that the game is a beta version, and will not throw a bitch fit if something doesn’t work. Yes, this is the second time this has been mentioned, because no one wants added stress from dealing with idiocy on a daily basis. If something doesn’t work, tell The Company who wishes you would read, understand, and comply with the following statements through the proper channels mentioned above.

Miscellaneous

Break anything in the agreement above, and we will find you and make you pay… Oh, will we make you pay. Mwahahahaha!

[Agree] [Disagree]

The title of this piece is off-putting, I know. Bear with me though because I’m not telling the story of my character. I’m telling the tale of how my cousin found fun in New Vegas with an hour and thirty minute time limit.

You see, my teenaged cousin (who wishes to not be named) spent an evening here at my house recently, and I observed him while he played Fallout: New Vegas on the PC. It was his first time to play New Vegas, and he only had an hour and a half to go before he had to go to sleep (long story), so he basically did everything I was not expecting out of a gamer.

He set out to create a character so unlike any other I’ve ever met. Strangely enough though, during my watch of his playthrough, I kept thinking that his character looked a lot like the Hispanic porn star from the movie Boogie Nights (Luis Guzman, pictured here). Of course, all my cousin heard was that he looked like a porn star, and so, Blackrod Ledouche was born.

Blackrod Ledouche: the man, the legend

My cousin quipped that Blackrod was now an amnesiac former pornstar who took part in the straight-to-video release of Ghouls Gone Wild 6. That statement has absolutely no bearing on the play session, but seemed fitting for the setting and took note of it.

Of course, Blackrod’s first order of business upon leaving Doc Mitchell’s House was to relieve Easy Pete of his revolver and dynamite, and does so by shooting the old man in the head. After doing so, he takes the starting quest for the Gecko killing mission, and pickpockets a live stick of dynamite into Sunny Smiles’ pants. He then follows this up by taking the newly acquired Leather armor off of Sunny Smiles and goes back into town, taking down Trudy and a random settler.

Moving into the next door general store, he performs a sneak critical on Chet, the shopkeeper, who has his head blown off. Remembering his roots (and perhaps what it feels like to have his head blown off, wink wink nudge nudge), Blackrod proceeds to mount Chet onto the countertop, where he promptly begins mounting him again.

Blackrod Ledouche Relives a Sliver of the Past

I forgot to mention this earlier, but Blackrod also teabagged the corpse of Sunny Smiles before taking her armor off, which was a bit weird.

The intrepid amnesiac ended his playtime with a jaunt to Primm, where he promptly stole some Power Ganger outfits, killed NCR soldiers, and finally, realizing the futility of it all, took a frag mine, activated and stood on top of it, and promptly fired into the ground, setting the mine off, and killing his crippled Blackrod body.

While I would never play a game in such a manner, I think it’s nice that someone can actually do that sort of thing in a game. Sure it may be weird or unsightly, but the alternative to this sort of  “fun” might be to experiment with real people, and I could never live in such a world.

A bit of a backgrounder: I found these videos on Rock, Paper, Shotgun and basically, it’s an informational-advert/softcore cosplay porn video for a free-to-play Online Game, featuring a Singaporean model named Kanny. The game is essentially online Pokemon, and the ad is quite… informative, if not weird.

A better description of Kanny from FivePlayers’ Emily:

You may know Kanny from such Channel 8 hits as Nanny Daddy or “those pictures on your harddrive”. She’s a D-cup Singapore model that looks a bit like a combination of an 8 year old sucked out of Spirited Away and an 18 year old in some kind of Spirited Away-themed straight-to-video gravure title. She’s been hired on as the game’s celebrity GM.

A quick Google search reveals that she also has a public Facebook page and spends way too much time with Monster Forest’s mascot.

Anyway, some videos of Kanny and Monster Forest:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_sOL98X-Zs]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnrZK7Ngl9Q]

Syp of Bio Break recently posted a list of some of the MMO Topics that have been discussed so often, they’ve been beaten to death.

Of course, like Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, I took that as a challenge to incorporate each one of those elements into a blog post. Now, I could have done it simply enough with just a really kilometric post about all those topics in some sort of meandering fashion, but I was listening to Electric Light Orchestra’s Twilight and thought, “If Twilight was an MMO…”

So I decided to combine the fictional (OR IS IT!?) Twilight MMO with some other well-known or recently announced MMOs, and thus, we have Twilight: The MMO Song.

Feel free to sing along. Cheers!

Twilight: The MMO Song

(Please follow along to the tune of Electric Light Orchestra’s Twilight)
The visions dancing in my mind:

Playing a girl with nice behind

In my MMO of choice today

-

I paid for sex change RMT

for my Pally in WoW, you see

“A hot Blood Elf Pally Chick,” they would say!

-

With your head held high and your scarlet lies

You promised permadeath but to no surprise

You changed your mind, We’d resurrect;

If I was dev, I’d change that back!

-

Twilight: An MMO for Teenaged Girls!

Twilight: A game they play, but they should stay

Away from Me!

-

During the night, a raid was phased

A casual wanted a space:

“I’m such a noob, can someone port me there?!”

-

The hardcore, they just all complain,

“To casuals, it’s just a game.”

The discussion just will not go away.

-

*bridge*

-

It’s MMO or not at all, An MMO ain’t Firefall.

Twilight, Twilight: Open Beta Sucked, Now you’re just f*cked

We’ll PLAY FOR FREE!

-

Will Star Wars Galaxies Pre-NGE Come Back?

-

With your head held high and your scarlet lies

You promised a story, but you brought me GRIND

Eastern or Western MMO’s: you grind a lot, that’s how it goes.

-

Twilight: An MMO for teenaged girls!

Twilight: Your beta sucked, and now you’re F*cked

Twilight: I only meant to play a while!

Twilight: An MMO for Teenaged Boys!

Twilight, Twilight!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR0ZQaBVtsw]

I was debating with myself whether to show my true colors, and then I thought, “What the hell. You only live once.” Today, I’m going to go out and show some racial pride!

You see, I think Sarnak rock. Hopefully, the explanation below will show you why I think Sarnak are awesome.

1. They’re dragons. None of that Iksar “Oh, I look like a lizard but am actually draconic” business. They look like straight up dragons. Who eat Aviaks for breakfast, with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti.

2. Sarnak have carpentry skills, and we all know Carpentry is the best tradeskill out there.

3. Sarnak have the best starting area out there. None of that overly icy stuff.

4. Hastened Gathering!

5.  They’re honorable warriors who don’t want to extinguish other races just to prove their superiority. They just want to beat your butt down and make sure you know who beat you.

6. Two Words: Peter Sarnak.

7. Sarnak is one letter away from the band Karnak, and we all know Karnak has one of the most awesome songs ever created, “Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6wwWJZyP2Y]

I recently succumbed to the urge of playing through the classic Gabriel Knight adventure games. There are many reasons for this, some of which shall remain unknown for the time being, but having had it recommended by a very close friend was certainly chief among them. It also helped that Tim Curry and Mark Hamill are voice actors in the first game (though it will be strange hearing Curry voice a non-villain). This article isn’t so much about Gabriel Knight as it is about the vendor from which I purchased it though.

Rather than pirating the games I opted instead to acquire them through Good Old Games’ online store. As this was my first time using the site I had to create an account with which to track and download my purchases. So I went through the motions of punching in my pertinent info when I came across something that seemed a little… off.

GOG.com certainly appeals to a large number of demographics now doesn’t it?

“Perhaps they’re from the future,” I thought, “and in this future we failed to homogenize ourselves into a gender neutral species and instead branched off into a myriad of gender distinctions, each one a product of attitude honed to a fine edge along the evolutionary precipice. What a world that would be! So many new peoples to encounter… and hate! Where would we draw our figurative lines in the sand in that faraway time? Already we throw fits over gays and lesbians, what derogatory labels would these futuristic bigots apply to homosexual Breddas or Xippies? Would Jedi from Britain be referred to as Sith (you know, ’cause the accent automatically makes them evil)? And what the hell is a Bad bwai?!”

*ahem*

Well, whatever the case, so long as I can be a Funky Monkey it’s all the same to me.