Archive for December, 2008
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
A Look Back at 2008
So I’m sitting here chewing on a Mrs. Prindable’s candy covered apple that the mother in-law sent down, and I’m thinking, this has been quite a year. I don’t think I’ve the energy for a retrospective at this point, but I’m remarkably thankful this year came and went. Talk about change. For me, things went from being the worst they’ve ever been to the absolute best they have ever been this year.
This year, I had the opportunity to move back to the black hole that is Brevard County, and I lept at the chance. At the time, it felt more like a forced choice than a conscious one, but in retrospect it was a choice I really wanted to make. Before he died, my grandfather tasked me with keeping my family from falling apart, as his had when his parents died. Proximity is everything when it comes to family, and I’ve transitioned into the role of keeper, patriarch-in-training. I have a feeling that’s probably why Pop forced me to carve the turkey the last few years before he passed away.
Being close to my brother has also been important this year, as he went through a divorce after being married for something like 8 years. I feel that he is a better person and certainly happier being out of a destructive one-way relationship. I’m glad that he’s around, there’s a comradery we share that went lost during our later formative years that has returned. We’ve dabbled with being roommates earlier in the year, and it was successful enough an experiment that he’s going to move in with us.
This was also the year I got married. It isn’t legal as far as the laws of this state go, but it is as real and bonafide as ever marriages ever have been. It is a comfort to finally be able to answer the pesky question “Is there someone out there perfect for me?” with a definitive “Yup.” The whole “better half” thing took some getting used to this year, and lord help me I still struggle with pronouns. Our instead of My. We instead of Me. Anyone who knew me beforehand would likely find it amazing that I was able to get over a raging fear of intimacy and defensive pomposity to let someone closer than arm’s length, but fate and love wins out. I was always afraid of becoming a “They”, but as of this year, I am content to bask in the warm glow of codependency.
Which, I think, has altered me somewhat. In least in respect to my friends. Great segueway into the friends retrospective, they are the second point of reason I moved back to Florida. Friends, the very hint of their existence provides a support structure that doesn’t exist otherwise. Flat tire on the freeway, eviction notices, and boring Sunday nights are all potential disasters that friends provide insurance against. I make friends SLOWLY, and I make them for life. Jay and Dan may not be aware, but they are in large part why I moved back. Same goes for Dean, Andy, Kevin and even Nat. Friends are the bulwarks we build against horror and calamity, brothers and sisters that we get to pick and commiserate with.
Career-wise, this was a weird year. It started decently enough, with the continuance of the historically troubling doubling of my salary couched in a fleeting disaster. My first year working remotely, and I am truly spoiled to the concept. I have never gotten more work done in a day’s time than in the earlier months this year in VMK. With no interoffice politics, I can get crazy amounts of work done. No stupid producers leaning in my office doorway talking mindlessly about patching and the latest problems with the publisher. If it’s important, it goes in a bloody e-mail and I action it. I’m tempted to keep the community growth percentages I achieved in VMK a secret, as there’s only a handful of other remote-style CM/Director level types in the industry now. Hah! That would SO TOTALLY explain Eve Online! Holy crap!
Moving on though, closing that damned game was… eh. Traumatizing? It was emotional, that’s for sure. I’m just glad I was able to help most of my employees find work before the end. And I’m also pleased that the community continues to survive in some fashion in another virtual world. That really makes it worthwhile to me, that promise of continuance. I chalk the whole experience up to providence. The past few months have been weird. Moments of boredom in the limbo of being on retainer punctuated by spurts of community creation. Working on the genetic code of a new international online community is thrilling, but the continued unsatisfied anticipation is SO damned anticlimactic. Previously, I’ve only been the symphony conductor, stabbing my wand this way and that to build crescendo and pace the rhythm, but now I’m writing the effin’ sheet music. It’s slow going, but I expect the reward will be intoxicating.
Also in 2008, I found myself becoming more political than ever. I got involved in a local campaign to replace the Sheriff, which ultimately failed, but not before I culled what lessons I needed from it. Obama gave me hope, and I’m eager for the change. I’m also willing to become the change I wish to see in the world, as the old quote goes. After looking at the numbers and seeing the abysmal selection of candidates during the primaries this year, I decided that in 2010 I would attempt a run at Congress. Seriously. I’m going to give it a shot. Sure, it’ll be state level. Likely Representative, but I haven’t ruled out State Senator. After looking at some of these other jackasses and absolute buffoons making a run for it, why the hell not!
So that’s it for my look back. Later if I have time, I’ll go over the games that came and went. Tootles!
Monday, December 15th, 2008
UO: Sosarian Setbacks
Ultima Online has failed me for the last time.
Over the years, I have, for the most part, kept my tongue about the fickle and aged mistress that is UO. I’ve defended it as the rightful progenitor of the MMO, espoused the replayability of its brittle, but ancient interface and I’ve even gone to such lengths as to interpret the core religion of its imaginary world into a practical ethos for handling communities. At this point though, I’m essentially done.
For a long, long time, the UO design team has been excruciatingly tunnel-visioned. So much energy and effort has been expended on rewriting and updating the user client, each effort has failed MISERABLY and CONTINUES TO FAIL. Third Dawn. Kingdom Reborn. And soon, Stygian Abyss. I can’t even begin to imagine the kinds of discussion that goes on amongst the design and production teams when discussion of building a new client is broached.
“Hey, let’s build a new client.”
“Oh, like the last several ones we did that were epic failures where the overwhelming majority of players continued using the legacy client and we were forced into maintaining multiple codebases for art resources?”
“Yeah, let’s do that again a few more times.”
“Sounds good.”
This infinite ad naseum pattern of blinding stupidity is only trumped by the barebones, skeletal committment they’ve had to their “live team”. They’ve touted “Live Events” for a few years now, which are essentially the most miserably assembled pieces of scripted crap you’d likely ever see in a virtual world. There are communes of furries in Second Life who can and HAVE directed better, more immersive events in one-eighth the time it has taken this distended, bloated carcass of a “team” to hoist into Sosaria.
Let me scream something very pertinent at any who might dare brave the depths of design or live events for an MMO in the near future:
COLLECTING TRASH ITEMS TO TURN IN FOR POINTS IN A CONVOLUTED REWARDS SYSTEM DOES NOT COUNT AS IMMERSIVE OR ENGAGING GAMEPLAY TO ANYONE, EVER. And for that matter, doing it six or seven ways, ultimately tying a “grand master plot” that has been “professionally written” to a SPRING CLEANING DATABASE OPTIMIZATION SCHEME does not equate what most would consider prime fiction.
At current, Ultima Online is in the midst of what has been called the “Warriors of Destiny” arc of prime fiction. This is actually touted as a Feature on the Stygian Abyss website, as though you might actually find something relating to the six or seven paragraphs of poorly written lore in the actual game. Alas, no such luck. For those unfortunate ”active” players, you’ll have to wait a conservative 6-8 months for the next stage of development in the storyline, because, well, that’s how long it will take the design team to figure out that one problem with the special effect that functions as a roadblock to every other possible road to storyline continuance.
Moreover, and this is where I really napalm the bridge… EA/Mythic’s dedication to community has, let us say… waned substantially since the departure of the iconic Sanya Weathers. After bringing on Robert “Bob” Mull, (who, if you haven’t heard of, don’t worry, no one else has either), community for EA/Mythic seems to have become merely a worrisome afterthought.
Here, let me link you to the official UO forums to show you.
Oops, they don’t actually exist. Well, maybe the official forums of UO’s more popular, younger sister Warhammer will shed some light on the direction the community has taken. Ah, oops. My bad. They don’t exist. As a subscriber to both games, I’m SURE GLAD I have a line of communication in case something (massive lag) happens to (balance issues) go unnoticed (housing bugs) by the skeletal live team.
As of this writing, due to layoffs at EA, UO and Warhammer are splitting a Community Manager. Now, I may just be playing the part of the typical UOer that hates change and misses the good old days, but I don’t quite get the impression that the new person… entirely… knows what UO is or is about. After having been CM for Star Wars Galaxies, I do realize the blazing irony of this statement - but at least I gave it a good college try, damnit.
This brings me to the Event Moderator program. I’m a staunch advocate of live, hosted events in-game. Their value cannot be overstated, and I will champion the creation of an events team in whatever project I work on until I go to my grave. I’ve seen the kinds of growth they can bring, and it’s absolutely undoubtedly worth it, every time. The UO EM program, however, has a fundamental flaw and a deep curse that is going to doom it to yet another fizzled out failure.
The problem isn’t the people - the problem is hierarchical. The previous EM program lacked dedicated support and any semblance of leadership. It was essentially a pocket arm of customer service, run by a single GM who was daily driven mad by a dozen unique requests AND tasked with tracking. Now, as I understand it, the EM program is to be answerable to production (god help us), with the same tunnel-visioned miscreants responsible for Live Events steering the ship. It will still lack leadership, any qualitative control or examples, and most likely the raging mediocre of the assembled team will be rewarded for their immersive minimalism.
Haha. Hoo boy. Sorry, I laugh because while they announced openings back in November, I’m betting no one even sees an EM until late February, if even then. They’ll cite legality, but really it will be the simple politics of the mildly interested.
In the interim, it would appear the new designer Sakkarah hasn’t burnt out or jaded yet, and she’s become a single-woman content factory for the game. That provides some hope, but lordy, I have to say, it’s just not enough. Mages still wear armor. Mages don’t wear leather armor, guys. They just don’t. They wear robes. It’s December, where’s the snow tileset that everyone loved? Turn that on, would you? For the love of god, decorate some of those hideous rooms you’ve taken screenshots of on the Stygian Abyss website. There are trailer-park houses in Malas with more eye-candy than those things.
I’m cancelling my Warhammer account. I’ve promised too many people that I’ll be in Sosaria till they turn out the lights to cancel UO, but for the first time in a long time I am very sorely tempted.
Monday, December 8th, 2008
Death to the Big Three
Back from the honeymoon cruise! It was way too much fun. Those Norwegians sure as hell know how to have fun on a boat. *boong!* “Theese eez your Captain spee-kink.” I’ve got a fair number of cool stories to tell about the trip, but that’ll come later.
So, uhh, about this bailout stuff. Am I the only one content to let these multi-billion dollar corporate criminal conglomerates writhe and explode? As a taxpayer, I unequivocally do not want my money going to some stop-gap measure to fund the furtherance of retarded, wasteful, gigantic American cars. The “big three” are the same big three that made the SUV one of the most popular gas-guzzling monstrosities, and I have to dodge screeching soccer moms on cellphones in their SUVs everytime I venture out of my suburban hidey hole.
Has Ford actually made anything lately that wasn’t a big ass truck? Have you actually seen the F250 on the road? Usually they are driven by testosterone-ladden rednecks with little to no actual towing necessity short of a jaunt to the local Walmart. I saw one of these CEOs on CNN the other day who actually had the gall to mention the EV-1 as part and parcel of the failings of the car companies. The EV-1 was a fully functional completely electric car that one of the big three put together. They killed it mercilessly despite owners going to almost criminal lengths to try and hang on to them. This was like 10 years ago. Then they claimed “lack of interest” in cancelling production.
I don’t care how many millions of jobs are lost. I don’t care whether or not Detroit is wiped off the face of the planet as a result. The auto manufacturers of this country have been culpable in nearly every possible worst way at aggitating not only our addiction to oil, but resistant to safety concerns and environmental standards. They need to die and be reborn as something modern. Maybe the ultra-billions the pansy-ass Democratic leadership in Congress right now are wringing their hands over should go as full grant subsidization of fuel cell or wholly electric cars.