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		<title><![CDATA[News & Articles - Sanya Weathers' Articles]]></title>
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		<language>en</language>
		<ttl>60</ttl>
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			<title><![CDATA[News & Articles - Sanya Weathers' Articles]]></title>
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			<title>Pickup Group Panty Twister</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=66</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=66</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[Pickup groups have a bad reputation, but honestly, it depends on the game, and what you're trying to do. If you're trying to do an end-game raid requiring precision execution and top flight communication, a PUG is going to resemble <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=monkey+fucking+a+football" target="_blank">a monkey trying to fuck a football.</a> If you're playing a game where the average mental age and the average IQ converge, a PUG will look like a herd of stoned housecats.<br />
<br />
But, say, LOTRO? And all you're trying to do is knock out a few group quests in one of the midlevel zones? PUGs are great. You watch the spam for your quest name, head to the meeting point, group up, finish the quest, say &quot;GG, guys,&quot; and leave. Sometimes the person organizing the group lists out multiple quests, in which case the idea is that the group is going to do a chain, or several quests in the same difficult-to-reach area. <br />
<br />
And because this is a computer game, not brain surgery or test piloting five million dollar jets or even masturbating, sometimes people can't finish what they start. I try not to join groups going to difficult areas, or even take those quests at all. Between puking animals, conference calls that start two hours late, clients in other countries, and living so far out in East Bumblebunny, Nowhere that the power is uncertain on windy days? I'm lucky if I can focus on a game for a whole hour. If I have to bail, I have to bail. I apologize, I wait for a replacement if I can, and I gate to a safe spot without a second thought.<br />
<br />
That's what normal people do, right?<br />
<br />
A few weeks ago, open chat. A guy I will call Snowfire Shadowstar made an /ooc macro, and started hitting it every ten seconds. <br />
<br />
&quot;Don't group with Billy! He will join your group and leave as soon as he gets what he wants!&quot;<br />
<br />
After five repetitions of this mewling playground whinefest, the peanut gallery piped up. <br />
<br />
&quot;Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're grouped with a bitch?&quot;<br />
<br />
&quot;Something tells me Billy just got a few dozen group invites.&quot;<br />
<br />
&quot;Can you repeat that? I couldn't hear you over the waaaahmbulance.&quot;<br />
<br />
The original whiner got more and more worked up. Here he was doing a public service, warning people about a dangerous PUGfucker, and we were all making fun of him. He started swearing, explaining himself in all caps, asking why we were so stupid, and all the while hitting his macro.<br />
<br />
Then Billy logged back in.<br />
<br />
Billy's toddler hit the power button on the computer.<br />
<br />
We haven't seen Snowfire Shadowstar since.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:06:54</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Radar Love</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=61</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=61</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[The first UI mod was arguably the radar program in EQ - a map of the zone you were in with an overlay of where each and every critter was. If I recall correctly, it also told users what loot was on each monster, too. (Yes, Virginia, these games didn't used to generate drops after the monster's death. Used to be the critters popped into being with their loot already generated.) <br />
<br />
Sure, it was a hack, and only Dirty Rotten Cheaters did it. Sony watched for it, and by watched I mean &quot;lurked in guild chat for suspected users.&quot; So the DRCs who used radar were very subtle, a la &quot;My roommate thinks I should start pulling in the north corner.&quot; My guild totally outfitted everyone in plane gear before I realized they were running radar. What can I say, I was a newb.<br />
<br />
I was reading the comment threads on Jeff Kaplan's GDC presentation in order <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-5353-MMORPG-Examiner%7Ey2009m3d30-Things-that-suck-about-World-of-Warcraft-quests-and-six-solutions" target="_blank">to write something for another one of my jobs</a>, and one thing that kept coming up was the desire for people to be led by the... hand... from NPC to quest objective, whereupon the objective should choke up the required object immediately. No riddles, no puzzles, no story, just gimme the damn dog, lady.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm the first person to say that when you kill a bear, it should drop a pelt and four paws, or an explanation as to why it didn't. I mean, really. I don't want to kill fifty pigs to get five pig snouts, unless I needed to kill fifty pigs for some other quest and and I double up. <br />
<br />
But no story? I know the writing in games isn't always the best thing since Shakespeare, but it's usually good for a grin. If the text doesn't grab me in a couple sentences, I roll my eyes and hit next, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Especially because the text usually does lead me by the hand to whatever it is I'm supposed to do in order to get my pellets.<br />
<br />
Of course, almost everyone who posts claims to love lore, and puzzles, and challenging encounters. It's everyone else who is an illiterate instant gratification monkey taking a break to quest in between marathon fwap sessions.<br />
<br />
Since &quot;everyone else&quot; vastly outnumbers &quot;everyone who posts,&quot; the AAA games are getting more and more simplistic in the name of mass market success. I truly envision The Next Big Thing having a minimap toggle that reveals the location of each monster/NPC, and if you mouseover the icons, you'll get a popup telling you what is on the loot table for that particular target.<br />
<br />
You know... radar.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:34:20</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Wanted: More Roleplaying</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=56</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=56</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[Overheard on my server the other night, roughly paraphrased:<br />
<br />
[OOC] Bobtail &quot;I am the coolest furry who ever lived, period.&quot;<br />
[OOC] Amelia &quot;Furries cannot actually be cool, period.&quot;<br />
[OOC] Bobtail *casually backhands Amelia*<br />
[OOC] Amelia *ducks the blow with ease, being short even for a hobbit*<br />
[OOC] Larry &quot;I'm amused that the only roleplay on this server is happening in the OOC channel.&quot;<br />
<br />
First of all, the hobbit was right. I have no special mockery for furries, because I once briefly dated a Vampire player. That &quot;relationship&quot; didn't last long enough for me to learn much about the game besides &quot;good lord, you mean I can't bum smokes off your brother when we're out at the club because he's in a different clan from you?&quot; As long as that chucklenuts still stalks the earth, if by earth you realize I mean &quot;his mother's vegetable garden outside the sliding glass door to the basement he lives in rent free,&quot; then I can never really laugh at furries. But still, being a cool furry is sort of like being a hot gamer. It can be done, but the bar is low. Most of us have faces made for the internet, you know.<br />
<br />
Second of all, Larry had a point. Why is there so little roleplay in massively multiplayer online ROLEPLAYING games?<br />
<br />
Roleplaying in an online game is totally risk-free. The odds are decent that you will run into people who don't think you're insane for playing the game in the first place. Non-roleplayers who do stumble into you don't really have a fair expectation of you acting like a normal person. It's not like you're at a club, dressed in black like everyone else, leaning against the wall near a hallway with your arms crossed, so when I walk up to you and ask if you know where the bathroom is, you get all huffy and fold your arms across your chest even tighter, and we go back and forth until you finally shriek like a fourteen year old girl &quot;THIS (arm gesture) MEANS YOU CAN'T SEE ME.&quot; <br />
<br />
I mean, if someone came up to you doing that online, no one would laugh at you. Certainly I wouldn't tell that story to the entire internet. Because in the game, it wouldn't make you look like an idiot for assuming that someone who is CLEARLY not playing Vampire knows all your Sekrit Arm Gestures. See, in the game we have an OOC channel, so you can't get all pissy if someone asks you an innocent question.<br />
<br />
Online, you don't need to worry about looking silly in your black poet shirt and vinyl pants outfit. You don't even need an outfit.  <br />
<br />
I salute the roleplayers and confess, on occasion, to being one. Their events are fun. They add flavor. They flesh out a world sketched in by NPCs and developers. Every player who judiciously uses appropriate emotes, every player who takes the trouble to /sit in a chair or on a bench, every beast rider who avoids running over other avatars, every musician who transcribes Enter Sandman for lute and harp, you all make MMOs more fun and interesting.<br />
<br />
And remember, it could always be worse.<br />
<br />
They could be LARPing.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:45:55</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Priorities in MMOs: Set By People With No Perspective</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=53</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=53</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[In every MMO, there are monsters you kill hundreds and hundreds of times. You get quests to kill them, you get achievements for killing enough of them, and they're on insta-spawn timers to make sure everyone can get enough. There are also monsters (usually a monster, singular) you only see after two hours of solid raiding, after five hours of rounding up fifty of your best friends, after you've all played for two years. You kill it once and never see it again.<br />
<br />
Guess which one is assigned to the very best artist in the stable, and guess which one gets assigned to the guy whose closest encounter with anatomy is his porn collection.<br />
<br />
It's not just monsters that fall victim to this. You see it with environmental stuff, armor,quests, items, and more. <br />
<br />
The magical castle at the end of a dungeon, seen for ten minutes during one quest, is executed by the most senior designer working with the most experienced and talented artist. But the basic level hut seen along every road in every zone in the game goes to the guy who can't doodle a convincing <a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/245600.html" target="_blank">meat and two veg</a>. <br />
<br />
The epic quest (one quest done after a character is maxed out) is given to the finest, most imaginiative writer on the team. The fifty quests littering the newbie area are given to the guy who spends a lot of time doing interviews with fansites talking about how FedEx quests suck. To absolutely no one's surprise, he indeed has no quests requiring you to deliver a letter to an NPC in the next town over - a quest even smart writers will give low level characters, to show them the next quest hotspot. No, the typing monkey doesn't do those even when they would make sense. Instead, he specializes in &quot;bring me skeleton finger&quot; quests, which lead to &quot;skeleton rib&quot; quests, which lead to &quot;skeleton skull&quot; quests. <br />
<br />
And of course, the skeleton was modeled by someone who was drunk, painted by someone who couldn't see, and animated by the new guy still on his probationary period. The animation will remain in the game for seven years, even after that particular animator fails to pass probation and leaves the team after ninety days.<br />
<br />
Ha! I can't believe you fell for that! Did you actually believe for a second that a game company would get rid of an animator, no matter how crappy? Animators are more scarce than tits on a boar! No one gets rid of animators!<br />
<br />
You'd think that a game that depends on subscriptions to live, a game that depends on sucking people in during a thirty day trial, would frontload the product with their best work.<br />
<br />
Oh wait. That's what mass market successes DO.<br />
<br />
But as long as human nature is such that the senior people only want to do the sexy stuff, well, I guess we'll all just endure another five years of listening to people blather on about polish.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:26:34</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Bad Names: You Aren’t Half As Clever As You Think You Are, Dickhead.</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=50</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=50</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[After approximately five minutes of playing experience, you can spot the people who are going to be annoying. Their first names are “Lotta,” “Dirty,” “Chulpa,” and “Ilike.” It doesn’t take a college degree to know that the last names are going to be “Balls,” “Sanchez,” “Mipenga,” and “Pussy.”<br />
<br />
What’s the harm, you ask? Who cares what a couple roleplaying knob jockeys think, as my old guild leader used to say?<br />
<br />
Well, for one thing, the roleplayers may be assholes, but they’re a different kind of asshole than a player with a stupid name. If they’re going to be obnoxious, it’s usually to guildmates. And while they certainly generate their share of tickets, usually revolving around a husband/wife pair where the wife’s character is “just roleplaying” a torrid love affair with the guild leader complete with one handed typing, and the husband cleans out the guild bank and sells the gear on Ebay… well, CS people read them, print them out, and close the ticket as totally irrelevant.<br />
<br />
An asshole with a stupid name has intentionally chosen to make absolutely certain that everyone who even sees him, let alone plays with him, has to endure him in their faces for at least a few minutes. Ever hear the phrase “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”? Yeah, well, naming your character Cleveland Steamroller is an inch past the beginning of my nose.<br />
<br />
That name says “I’m an antisocial basement dwelling loser who doesn’t care about anyone’s enjoyment but my own.” Except to a few likeminded wankers, his behavior is sure to be selfish, rude, and cost the company customers who decline to accept this guy as “colorful.” In his single (or is it simple) minded quest to be the beetle with the biggest pile of dung, he is going to make an ass of himself on forums demanding changes to the game that would suit a tiny minority of players like himself, and ruin the game for tens of thousands of others.<br />
<br />
If he plays long enough that in real life he leaves his mother’s basement and stops relying on lotion filled tube socks for relaxation, he inevitably comes to regret the name. But he isn’t going to take responsibility for his choices, oh no. Instead he is going to harass the CSRs for hours on end, and incidentally cause massive waits for people who actually need help, to change his name so he doesn’t have to be reminded of his idiocy whenever someone talks to him.<br />
<br />
The names aren’t even that funny! Even the most puerile of players will laugh once, snicker a second time, and by level twenty sprain their eyes from rolling them. The names are utterly predictable, and after ten years of MMOs, never original in the slightest. But the guy who puts up one of those names thinks he’s the most startlingly original thinker since Einstein. Assuming Einstein was a coprophiliac.<br />
<br />
He is a festering boil on the ass of the community that must be lanced with a red hot needle. My by now extensive experience proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He costs the company money, he damages the game experience for everyone else, and he’s as much fun to play with as a rabid porcupine.<br />
<br />
After I’ve changed his name and lobbied for his preemptive banning, I see on the boards that he’s created a new account with a new (marginally acceptably named) character, and is planning to come to an event I’m hosting so he can punch me in the crotch. You knew that anyone enough of a cretin to play a fantasy MMO and yet call himself by an improbable sex act is also the kind of person who lacks perspective on a message board.<br />
<br />
What a tool. And yet…Somehow, I always wind up drinking beer with Mr. Mipenga at 2 AM, and we wind up standing wobbily on a pool table, declaring that indeed, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:13:08</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Elite MMO Player Notices Treadmill, Quits</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=46</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=46</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[Reading, Pennsylvania -- For Adam Tormansky, last Saturday was just another day. He got up, ate a bowl of Captain Crunch, dropped some kids off at the pool, and logged into World of Warcraft. As the junior officer of a raid guild, it was his responsibility to serve as a contact point for stragglers. While he waited for the last tank to log in, Tormansky was idly killing bears. That’s when he realized that something was wrong.<br />
<br />
“I’m level 80, and I realized, like, what the hell? I’ve been killing these fucking things since I was in cloth pants. They don’t even look different. Every time I go to a new zone, they’re right there with no changes but more hit points.”<br />
<br />
When he was told that the monsters in question were sometimes slightly larger in the high level zones, he retorted, “Yeah, if flipping on photoshop and making a small design bigger counts for anything. They look wrong. The details are distorted and smeary. It’s just a small monster that some chimpanzee looked at and said, fuck it, I’ll make this one BIG and it’ll be a boss monster.”<br />
<br />
“I’ve been playing for three years, and I’m outraged,” Tormansky continued. “These shortcuts are unacceptable. If I go to the trouble of devoting my every waking hour to a game so I can be the first to get through new content, the developers owe me a legitimate effort. Recycling content to hide their lack of originality is just lame. Did they think I was going to fall for this shit forever?”<br />
<br />
His “I Quit” post was off the front page of the forum in less than ten minutes, but the frustration lingers on. He estimates that he has spent approximately two hundred hours killing bears throughout his Warcraft career, and that enough is enough. Now, he’s a man on a mission. The time he used to spend on the game is now being spent on raising awareness among his gaming friends of Blizzard’s deceptive practices.<br />
<br />
“This isn’t about me, anymore. The guys at the hobby shop, they get it. They would never paint any two Commando mechs the same way. But my guild friends don’t get it. They’re being fooled by the extra attacks and the effects into thinking that they’re fighting a different kind of bear, and they’re totally not. I can’t rest until they’ve seen the light.”]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 2 Mar 2009 19:40:42</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>People Are Stupid: Attacked By A Rouge</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=37</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=37</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[When I was a wee lass, green with envy because my GM kept his dice in a Crown Royal pouch and mine were in an old peanut butter jar, games were the province of the nerds. D&amp;D was played by the kinds of people capable of keeping a hundred damage tables in their heads. Computer games were played by people capable of getting the game installed on machines that were not intended to be user friendly unless the user was a genius.<br />
<br />
It meant we gamers were… well, dorks. Fringe people. The end of the bell curve. And although no one had ever heard of Asperger back then, let’s just say that now most of us look back at our tabletop campaign group, and go, &quot;Oh. Yeah. That explains a lot about good ol’ Billy, and probably Eric too.&quot;<br />
<br />
However, some of us weren’t necessarily geniuses when we cracked our first module. We weren’t as smart as the kids who really took to the genre, but we found ourselves at the table anyway, seeking refuge from the savages. It doesn’t take much to be above average, and it doesn’t take much for average children to go all lord of the flies on any deviations from the norm. In that respect, RPGs and their gaming cousins were a blessing and a curse for those of us only slightly ahead of the curve.<br />
<br />
See, gaming made us smarter, and ruined any chance at mediocrity.<br />
<br />
Crack open a Gary Gygax original and prove it to yourself. I’m holding an AD&amp;D Players Handbook from 1978. What’s in the 100+ pages? Medieval weaponry, most of it obscure. Mathematical progression tables, influenced by multiple variables. Names and places taken from myths and legends. Multisyllabic words, many not used in casual conversation or by the media. Systems of ethics, from both before and after the Christian era. Budgeting. Planning. Spatial awareness, for crying out loud.<br />
<br />
Every page of this slim little book could send anyone with the slightest degree of imagination into half a dozen directions of further study and investigation. And this is just the toolkit for the game. The actual game took another degree of imagination, creativity, and dedication.<br />
<br />
Now, consider the fact that most of the people who played this thing started around age twelve.<br />
<br />
Serious players had a stronger grasp of math, a wider vocabulary, a certain grasp of the breadth and depth of history, a more creative imagination, and all of that at a much earlier age than people who did not play. Well, unless the non-player was an intellectually curious, avid reader at twelve.<br />
<br />
But some people were too smart for their own good. And the overlap between the computer kids and the D&amp;D kids made the advent of computer-assisted D&amp;D inevitable. Dice rolling is fun to a point, but it can get tedious. Attacking high level monsters is bloodthumping excitement in the hands of the right GM, but in the hands of most it became round after round of table checking, simple addition, and boredom. Surely the computer could automate some of this drudgery, leaving the players free to do nothing but the good bits.<br />
<br />
And at first, that’s all that happened. Most of the people playing were the ones who’d learned the systems, with their lore and vocabulary and historical underpinnings. Not all, but most. With the computer handling the dice, campaigns needed to have a lot more content, since people could blow through a dungeon in a tenth of the time, but that was the point, right?<br />
<br />
Only, at that speed, and with the participants no longer huddling around a 1”=10’ map, people began to have trouble remembering where they were in space. Wouldn’t graphics help?<br />
<br />
Step by inexorable step, the melding of RPGs and computers brought us to the current state of affairs. Today, the sons and daughters of D&amp;D have spawned a generation of people who type “ne1 help plz” without a shred of irony. Their games are home to every mouth breathing knuckle dragging one handed typist who ever managed to gain access to a stolen credit card. The thoughtful, erudite intellectual who knows a ranseur from a partisan finds himself getting called a faggot by people who gave their female avatars the asses of fifteen year old boys.<br />
<br />
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Since we can’t turn back the clock, we must take steps to reclaim gaming from the masses. Those of us who can count to twenty without taking off our socks must band together against those who live in places that permit intermarriage between siblings. We must harass anyone who types “u” when they mean “you.” We must kill steal from those who think “If You Seek Amy” is clever wordplay. We must exp leech the people who think Saruman died the way he did in the movie. <br />
<br />
Above all, we must enforce the death penalty against people who play assassin characters, but refer to themselves as cosmetics.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:36:26</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Self-Moderation: A Handy Scoring System</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=35</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=35</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[The stated aim of this site is to have a completely unmoderated forum. (Incidentally, “unmoderated” in no way implies “no banning,” in case you were wondering how we would deal with that one dickcheese who shows up in every forum for the sole purpose of metaphorically sticking his fingers in his ears and screaming LALALALALALA. And gold spammers.) That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to hang your ass out and act like a moron. It means you are capable of moderating your own posts.  <br />
<br />
This works well when the forum is still small enough for peer pressure to keep out the more poorly socialized members of society. It usually collapses in a sea of its own filth once critical mass is achieved. But we’re betting that the greater MMO society has aged to the point that it’s worth deliberately building an asylum that can be run by its inmates.  <br />
<br />
And boy howdy, have we aged. It used to be if ten MMO players got together in real life, it was in Vegas! Or New York! Or at minimum the guild leader’s basement, and there would be booze. These days we’re all just as likely to meet at a Chuck E. Cheese equivalent so we can all bring the kids. THE KIDS. This is vaguely upsetting. Is there an AARP guild? Are we going to be discussing hemorrhoids and cholesterol levels, next?  <br />
<br />
At any rate, by being a member of Unmoderated, you are part of a grand experiment in self-determination. However, I have taken the liberty of drawing upon a ridiculous number of years of forum moderating experience (in dog years, I'm old, and in internet years, I'm DEAD) to create this score sheet for our slower members. Each listed item is worth a certain number of points. If the scored content of a single post exceeds ten points, the post should die so that the forum may live.   <br />
<br />
Links to genital photography, clearly marked as such: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Links to genital photography, unmarked: 10 points  <br />
<br />
Links to own genitals: Subtract 5 points  <br />
<br />
Boobies: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Mocking people strictly on the basis of their gender: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Mocking people on the basis of race: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Mocking people on the basic of sexual preference: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Mocking people for physical handicaps: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Mocking people for their place of birth: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Mocking Canadians: Subtract 5 points  <br />
<br />
Writing a long ass essay with no paragraph breaks: 7 points  <br />
<br />
Point by point rebuttal of that long ass essay: 8 points  <br />
<br />
Long ass essay RESTATING the long ass essay: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Summing up long ass essay with pithy and amusing statement: Subtract 5 points  <br />
<br />
Funny in general: Subtract 5 points  <br />
<br />
So funny the link gets passed around everywhere and crashes the forum: Subtract 20 points  <br />
<br />
Using British spelling without ever having lived in a part of the world that uses that spelling, you pretentious ass: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Complaining about guild drama: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Giving details about guild drama with names and chat logs: Subtract 5 points  <br />
<br />
Making an I’m Awesome post: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Making an I Owned You post: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Making an I Quit post: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Making an I Quit post complete with details of guild drama and sordid beta stories: Subtract 5 points  <br />
<br />
Abortion references: 8 points  <br />
<br />
Funny abortion references: Subtract 5 points  <br />
<br />
Incorrectly using your/you’re, their/there/they’re: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Spelling errors beyond the above: 1 point each  <br />
<br />
Improper use of Latin terminology: 2 points  <br />
<br />
Thread hijack: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Breaking an NDA: 8 points  <br />
<br />
+1, QFT, /bump, or other null statement without contribution of original thought: 2 points  <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html" target="_blank">Logical fallacy</a>: 9 points  <br />
<br />
Gratuitous mention of one’s significant other: 1 point  <br />
<br />
Gratuitous mention of one’s salary, car, or zip code: 1 point  <br />
<br />
Political humor: 5 points  <br />
<br />
Religious statements, pro or con: 7 points  <br />
<br />
Any statement comparing any aspect of gaming whatsoever to any aspect of Nazism: 10 points   <br />
<br />
<br />
This post will be modified to include any really good ones from the discussion thread.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:23:01</pubDate>
			<category>Everything Else</category>
			<dc:subject>Everything Else</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Just Wondering: What’s With the Homophobia?</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=30</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=30</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[Elite MMO players are at some point in time convinced that the studio running their obsession of choice is… watching them. Lurking in their chat channels, positioning invisible CSRs at every raid, logging their every word. Since the advent of voice chat, the paranoia has only increased. The logic being since “they” can no longer monitor communications, their big studio brother has to be doubly vigilant. The more elite the guild, the more ridiculously sure the members are that they’re important enough to watch.<br />
<br />
Oh, horseturds.<br />
<br />
Game chat, whether typed or aural, is unspeakably dull unless you’ve got the context for each and every person. Every guild makes the same jokes, uses the same insults, and has the same kind of banal drama as every other guild. Your guild is only special because you’re in it. No one else gives a damn.<br />
<br />
That’s particularly true of the uberguilds. They’re all more or less the same, so if you’ve heard one blather on about their awesomeness, you can recite the speeches word for word at the next. Sometimes you get something original, like Shadowclan. But the other million times it’s some variation of one strong personality determined to do everything first and do it faster, plus a handful of funny, engaging cat herders, plus a critical mass of people with both the ability to read and time on their hands, with a secret sauce of “interpersonal chemistry” and VOILA, uberguild. One whose chat and methods are no different from a dozen others.<br />
<br />
There is one thing different about the chat at the elite level. It’s a million times more homophobic than that of a more casual guild, unless one of the officers is openly gay.<br />
<br />
Some people think gamers in general are ‘phobes, but I don’t think that’s it. Everyone settles down and puts on their civilized hats as soon as an out and gay officer comes on board, and the settling happens too fast for the homophobia to be intrinsic to the natures of the players. But unless the guild has a such a moderating influence, the chat is laced with “that’s gay,” “you’re gay,” “your dad’s been gay ever since I pegged him with a broom,” “faggot,” “ass burglar,” “sperm gurgler,” “cocksucker,” “suck my cock,” “eat dick,” and “was that you at meatspin?”<br />
<br />
The phallic frenzy can barely be overstated. Do they think domination is sexual? Is the rush from beating an encounter so sexual that they have to define it in terms they can understand? Are men so undone by the sheer joy they’re experiencing by working as a united force with other men that they’re weirded out by it? Can they not talk about domination in a game sense without thinking of penetration in the ass sense? Is it really all about the cock?<br />
<br />
Or is this just a case of monkey hear, monkey speak, and no one realizes how stupid they sound until someone makes them aware?]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 9 Feb 2009 16:44:53</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>Significant Others: Dear Stupid, We All Hope Your Partner Divorces You</title>
			<link>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=16</link>
			<guid>http://unmoderated.info/cm/showentry.php?e=16</guid>
			<description><![CDATA[We have no idea why the two of you got married. Not every gamer marries a gamer, but &quot;gaming tolerant&quot; usually makes an appearance on the list of features desired by a gamer. It's not because gaming is so damn important. It's about respect. It doesn't matter what our stupid time sucking hobby is, as long as it's not cheating our family out of the time they deserve, it's OUR HOBBY. Our downtime. Our shred of self not totally subsumed into the endless grind of responsibility. The bit of expression we don't owe to anyone.<br />
<br />
It doesn't matter if it's gaming, golf, gardening, or getting on a twenty dollar whore and calling her Mommy, it's OUR DAMNED PERSONAL TIME. We're allowed to have some, and we don't have to beg for it if we're in halfway decent relationships.<br />
<br />
You are not half of a decent relationship. We understood when your better half stopped gaming on weeknights. Hell, after your kid came, we understood why he stopped raiding. You can't be 100% focused on any hobby with a little kid in the house. Half of us had kids before you did. We're the ones that ENCOURAGED your partner to breed with you. Stop making it out like we're demons, here.<br />
<br />
You told our guildie that Sunday afternoons were personal time. And now every crisis, every emotional meltdown, happens Sunday at 3 PM. We can set a clock by your ranting. We've started to joke about it. And in the endless hours of joking, we've realized you violate every rule of guild membership.<br />
<br />
See, the guild has been together for more than ten years. We met in college, for the most part, and the only rule about joining was that you had to know a member in real life. This rule has served us well. We don't have loot whores. We don't have whiners. We don't have the fake bisexual trying to cause drama in private chat. <br />
<br />
You are three for fucking three.<br />
<br />
You are a huge loot whore. You've gotten every gadget your mercenary heart ever desired. You even got a car for your birthday one year. But it's never enough. And you're teaching your kid to be even worse. If our buddy leaves the microphone on during a bio break, we can hear the sound of a thousand toys being stepped on, tripped over, and triggered. When every square foot of the basement is covered in shit that rings, dings, and screams out colors, it is time for a yard sale or possibly a nuke from orbit. You make fun of us hoarding virtual treasures, but no one ever sprained their back by tripping over a helm with plus eighteen to poison resistance at two in the morning.<br />
<br />
The whining is totally not okay. When your partner was laid up with a back sprain, you didn't exactly do any fetching or special caretaking, but when you have the slightest little sniffle, we can hear your demands on the Vent server. Suck it up, already. And enough with blaming your mate for all your problems. Anyone who bitches about whose fault it was when a raid goes bad gets kicked out of the guild. The reason is because whining saps our collective will to live. The sound of your voice is like a vampire's fang. Not that we believe in vampires, unlike you. And seriously, side note, grow up. The Twilight books are shitty fantasy lite for twelve year olds who are afraid of sex. None of the Cullen boys could get it up with a vacuum pump and a squad of fluffers, from what we can tell. <br />
<br />
The bisexual thing sounded like a bonus when we first heard about it, but we forgot that we'd banned bisexuals from the guild. Well, not bisexuals, but <a href="http://www.brokentoys.org/2005/05/10/the-most-important-thing-you-will-read-this-year/" target="_blank">the kind of people who tell you they're bisexual during the first few chat sessions.</a> You told our friend that you were willing to bat for both teams on the second date. In person, that didn't sound like a warning sign, it sounded kind of hot. But has it meant any three ways? Any adventurous scenarios for us to enjoy vicariously? No. No, it has not. <br />
<br />
What it has meant is a lot of mysterious phone calls and secret emails from your hordes of MySpace buddies. The amount of time you spend not using proper punctuation on MySpace easily triples the time our friend spends in the game. We're trying to tell your partner that MySpace is your kind of game, and you're playing both boys and girls with your woeful tales of not getting any love or support. If only there was an experience bar on your page. Congratulations! You've dinged a new level in psycho!<br />
<br />
We're sorry, but in order to remain in a relationship with our friend, you are going to need to fill in the guild's application for membership. You will need to have a useful spec in one of the desired classes, you'll need to have acquired your own raid gear, and you will need to shut the hell up and start functioning as an adult with a sense of humor. <br />
<br />
And as far as the bisexual thing goes… pics or it didn't happen.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sun, 1 Feb 2009 18:40:32</pubDate>
			<category>Game-Related</category>
			<dc:subject>Game-Related</dc:subject>
			<dc:creator>Sanya Weathers</dc:creator>
			<language>en</language>
		</item>
	</channel>
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