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Wasteland 2 first look.

It's looking pretty good.

Wasteland 2 video moved to Youtube

Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter already founded.

A French-language article on sexism regarding "Geeks" : http://cafaitgenre.org/2013/03/16/s...unaute-est-malade-et-comment-y-remedier/
Unfortunately I don't understand much from it, but the pictures there illustrate the problem very good nevertheless !

Yeah, I've been reading a few things about this recently, Alrik. Makes for some pretty grim reading.

I've been a gamer for quite a while now, but never really a part of 'gamer culture', so I was unaware of all this until very recently. And absolutely horrified when I found out.

There is just no excuse whatsoever for the kind of attitudes that are far too prevalent in much of the games industry.

I could shrug it off as a minority of idiots if it was just gamers, but the worst of it seems to be inside the industry itself. I don't think there's any excuse for that whatsoever.

Get back in the kitchen Alrik and make me a sandwich! I'll expect to be able to download it within a hour. There will be serious repercussions if it's not ready by then and sent via an attachment. I'm not a patient man!

I'm not a patient man, either !

"Fantasy Tropes that need to go away" , a very interesting discussion, imho : http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20350

Started so well with Hippy Elves, then went almost totally off course. Is that guy even a role player? I have my doubts.

The inclusion of Clerics on that list just shows the guy has never managed to actually play one. A well played Cleric is far more than just a walking healing potion. As a living extension of their god's will, they are a very variable class. As for the inclusion of the Undead - and as a single entry, yet! - no thought went into that one at all, clearly. HOW many types of Undead are there? All different...

If he said he was tired of 'Vampire as Eternal Lover', I'd have to agree. But much beyond that, the Undead are if anything under-utilised.

Druids he might have had a point with if he'd MADE a point rather than coming out with 'as an archaeologist' which is completely irrelevant to Fantasy as a genre. And as no-one has the faintest idea who built Stonehenge or why, I find it very interesting that he can claim with authority who didn't...

***

Agree with a lot of your list, though.

Oh, and that book you are looking for - probably Spellwright by Blake Charlton. Very good book

On the topic of sexism in video games:

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/hawken-office-prank-replaces-scantily-clad-female-with-male-hunk-6408384

Yeah, that's brilliant. I was laughing my head off at that earlier.

Did you find this, Demonic?

the Hawkeye Initiative.

Nearly laughed my head off with some of those

Oh my God, my rib cages hurt.

I have severe problems to get tht grin out of my face now



I just wanted to give an update on how I play SWTOR - I was looking into the PvP part there.

When I entered it, I was thinking/hoping of a challengibng combat.

How wrong I was !

Now, in SWTOR (of which people repeatedly say that is is *very* close to WOW in some aspects - maybe the dev team shouldn't have "used" WOW fans for betat testing & advice ?) , PvP is beginning low, then you get Medals for each played PvP Match (which are always in some kind of "Arena"), from which can buy yourself better Gear, which gives better protection - and more of what's called "Competence". This is a kind of buff which is built in into PvP-Gear, which helps you - but only within these PvP areas.
And the goal is - it's called "item progresssion" I think - to get better gear with the highest amount of "Competence" - so that you are at one point the "top predator".

So, before Patch 2.2, one got in at level 10 or so - and gets roflstomped by level 50 characters there.

Since 2.0, there are brackets now : 10-30, 31-50, and 55 alone (which is the current level-cap), as far as I can remwember.

So, the situation isn't as bad anymore.

What's new with 2.0 is what's called the (still seemingl a little bit buggy, and not transparent at all) "Bolster".

The idea behind the "Bolster" is to give temporarily "level up" PvE players so much that they will have a chance in PvP against pure PvP players - to some extend.

Before 2.0, a similar system was there, called "Strengthen" or so, but it - imho - largely failed.

The new "Bolster" "levels up" PvE gear so much that it at least matches with the lowest PvP gear there is.


Now, usually, PvP players & PvE players wouldn't mix.

Bioware seemingly tried to change that with placing a few of the daily quests for the so-called "Gree Event" (the Gree are an obscure race in the Star Wars Universe) into an (un-bolstered ?) PvP-area.

And THAT was the IDEAL occation for PKs to come out from their holes !

I got fairly cynical ver PvP in the recent months. But this topped everything else.

There was a quest which required to give "Energy Balls" into a kind of pillar, jhich would be activated through these "Energy Balls".

There, PKs and whole groups of 4-8 people camped there. They were waiting for PvE players (and for PvP players, too).

Because everyone entering this PvP area got automatically flagged for participating in PvP, the pure PvE players got flgged, too.
And they had no "Competence", and if I understood this correctly, then there wasn't even any "Bolster" there.

Easy prey.

Especially is the campers had maxed out their PvP gear.

What they constantly defend their deeds with is just saying : "You idn't have to enter this area" (which is of course right, because the quests in this PvP area were only a part of the Event-Quests) and with "if you enter this area, then you are very likely to meet another PvP player", and some simply say : "red = dead" (the PvP marking is partially red).

PvE playrs were not amused.
PvP players, gankers & campers said : This is pretty normal, what's the fuss ?

One of the better thread explains things (was closed) here : http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=644321

A thread which is a pure mixture between fun & sadness : "THe 9 layers of PvP hell" : http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=323501

To me, PvP was a horrible experience. I did it for some time, but what *really* puts me off is the amount of aggressiveness I find within the PvP sub-forums. The worst are those people who don't really want a *challence* - but prefer to do ganking & roflstomping. And worst of all, my personal impression is tht they are more or less tolerated within the PvP community.

And, as a last note : Because of my so much different views on PvP, the German-language PvP players in the SWTOR forums regard me as a Noob (in its negative sense) troll now. During that Event a few players even called themselves being "fans" of mine, whereas they *acted* like stalkers. Real stalkers. And probably the worst thing was an impostor calling his character "alrikfassklauer".

Now I'm a Troll. Finally.

Just wanted to drop in and say that I'M more active on RPGWatch & in the (quite unpleasant) SWTOR forums ...

Within the SWTOR forums, people argue in an quite harsh manner ... I wonder whether this is so with all RPGs ?

And the usual stuff ... Eliticists, both on the sides of PvP & PvE ... gear requirements for raids ... people argueing over class balance ... And I've learned a new term : "L2P". Ands "squishy". But I knew that before.

I was witness to see the new meme of "heal to full" arise there (a bad, bad wording in one answer to a question of an "class representative" led to this - it basically said that "damage classes" could not heal to full, and that the squishy "Sage" / "Sorceror" healer class should "make them pay for attacking you" - which isn't that easy, because they are squishy in the ffirst place ...)

If someone was studying sociology : These forums are THE perfect place to see all of the internet "soacial frwaking" come into one place ! It is simply astonishing, how people behave in the internet - the prospect of sheer anonymity lets them do things they would never ever do in public !

It's frightening to see how much humanity can degenerate in internet forums.

And the worst of that I have seen is something they call "forums PvP2 and/or "trash talk" - euphemisms for bullying, insulting, bad-mouthing of the worst kind. Hooliganism, so to say. Especially driven by PvP players.

Eliticism comes in a lot of flavours :

- those who have the Collector's Edition demanding more goods being sold by the in-game CE vendor
- raiders who are doing everything undergeared in the first place - and then, when they've "cleared content", they often include "gear requirements, without which they are simply not accepting people
- people sticking to their "closed circles" aka guilds. They are not PUGging at all, due to both prejudice and/or bad expetiences (PUG = "pick-up-group", meaning that people are randomly put into such a group by the so-called "group finder") - both in existence for PvE & PvP
- PvP players who claim themselves to be superior - and the 99 % of all other players are simply called "[the] bads"
- Progress Raiding : World Leaderboards, and "I am the first !" groups who loudly state in the forums that they've "content cleared" a part, or defeated a special beast / enemy - it's like defloration of MMO content. "I am the first !" or "We are the first ones !"

Seemingly MMOs generate a high tendency towards elitism.


Personally, I've become angry and biased as well : My personal impression of the SWTOR "class stories" are, that the "evil" faction of the "Empire" ( remember, this is 3000 years before Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader ! ) are much better, had more free space to fill, and are in general much more creative than their "Republic" counterparts. The sheer design of both of their main hubs (simply called "the fleet"), which are huge space stations, were summed up by me in these words :

"The Empire has style; the Republic has advertisements."

And that's how it looks like. The Empire's designs are very good, because they indeed create that "fascist regime" feeling of the Star Wars movies - only with much, much more red added (as a "design colour".
The Republic just has lots of colourful advertisements, but apart from that, their space station is not coloured white (which one could perhaps expect in contrast to the blacxk-red-white design of the Imperial space station) - no, it is mud-brown, to put it mildly. "Shit-brown", to put it down with more vitriol.

If I'll ever quit SWTOR, then it's because of my bias - which is, b the way, supported by TVTRopes :

"Good is boring" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodIsBoring
"Evil is cool" : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsCool

Bioware - as I put it - "totally fell into the pit of these tropes", so to say. They totally became prey of them. And in my opinion, it shows.

The best class story is that of the "Imperial Agent", everyone says (I can't say, because I'm not playing imperial classes, because I just can't stand this "evilness" - and therefore have created only one Bounty Hunter, who is connected to the Empire, but still a relatively free person).

The republic stories are all very dull - that's my personal, biased view - at least within chapter 1. Only the conclusion of chapter 1 is good - the rest is not.

The class stories - which are said NOT to be extended in the future - consist of 3 chapters - with the chapters 2 & 3 being considerably shorter than the first one. Even the Prologue is VERY long.
Instead, they are planning to do rather "planet stories".

Okay, that's it for now. I fear that my writing here somewhat reflects my own frustration with SWTOR - for story players, it is great, but it has the great disadvantage that itis an MMO. With all of this hack & slay involved.

And, last : Polgara one day contacted me through the forums. She is on the server called "T3-M4", and her in-game name is "Eandrae". Her forum name sounds a bit differently, but I don't think that I should give it away here. Contact me if you want to learn it.

Alrik

The kind of forum you describe is the kind I absolutely and always avoid, Alrik, honestly. I just find them too wearing. Being screamed at for having a slightly different opinion is just not something I enjoy.

Yes, it's right.
I often wonder why people are this way.

I suppose they must enjoy it, somehow. Beats me HOW, though.

By the way : The pre-pre-pre-production ( ) towards an 5th edition of TDE has begun in September (or was it already August ?).

I do wonder where this might lead to ?

Apropos TDE : There's a sequel to "Satinav's Chains" out there : "Memoria".

Just wanted to say "hello" !

I'm still updating my own almost blog-like thread "A Thought" on RPGWatch. http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2602

Private life has changed a lot, so I don't go online much anymore - except into RPGWatch (still a little bit) and into SWTOR (on Server Vanjervalis Chain) - there, however, my characters don't sound like "Alrik Fassbaur" not even the tiniest bit. I once saw an impostor calling himself "Alrik_Fassklauer", but I think that he was gone at one point.

PM me if you want to know my main characters' name there.