Ask Massively: Go outdoors edition
Here is the salient piece of advice from this week's Ask Massively, right up front and in the intro paragraph -- go outdoors. Right now. Shut down your computer and go for a walk. Take a hike somewhere you've never been. Explore. Take some time to just walk around out in fresh air and sunlight, or heck, enjoy being rained on. But take the time to break from a routine in which you read a whole lot of words on the Internet and just go see what's outside for a few minutes at least.
Really, this column will still be here after you're done. It'll wait.
I'm hoping that the two or three of you that actually listened to that advice enjoyed your walk. For you (and slightly earlier for everyone who just skipped over that paragraph) we've got questions this week about gold farming and the consistent scourge of site bugs. If you've got a question you'd like to see answered in a future installment, just mail it along to ask@massively.com or leave your question in the comments.
Bramen asked: Recently, Scott Hartsman stated that "gold farming hurts our games more than we know." What is Massively's role for combating harmful practices, such as gold selling, in our MMO community?
Peer pressure.
No, really.
Massively, as a whole, does not condone or endorse gold farming. We don't make reference to it in a positive light, we don't advertise it (and if an ad slips through our radar, we try to kill it promptly), and we make it clear through our words and deeds that it's not okay to just go out and buy gold. No matter how much time it takes to get the money in-game legitimately, unless the game itself sells currency (such as the PLEX in EVE Online), we don't endorse it.
Can we do a whole lot to fight it? Sadly, no -- we're not a developer and can't try and constrain the practice in our own games. But we know that all of our readers are people who are better than that sort of unscrupulous activity, and we don't take kindly to it.
(Unverified) asked: Can anyone possibly tell me how to comment here without it showing (Unverified) as my name?
This is one of those times that I feel the need to stress that the coding of the site is handled by a team that does not include the writers. We're aware of the bug and we've done what we can on our end to fix it, but we've been waiting on a conclusive fix pretty much since the site redesign.
Our recommendation is to try signing in at Joystiq proper, which should allow you to handle the verification process normally. If that doesn't work... well, I hate to say it, but we're just as unsure as you are. Rest assured that we're doing everything we can to get it resolved, and your prior name does still display on your post history page. (Why didn't I do that for this question? Because this way works better.)
PrimeSynergy asked: Playing some Catherine?
It appears that in the months since I last played one of the team's Persona games I had forgotten how spine-shatteringly difficult this team likes to tune things. So I'm not so much playing it as being played by it.
Looking for some advice on which class is best for soloing in Aion? Not sure who this Raph Koster fellow is? Curious about the release date of NCsoft's newest MMO? You've come to the right place! No one knows MMOs like we do. If there's anything you'd like to know about the MMO genre or the site itself, Ask Massively is here to help every Thursday afternoon. Just ask!
