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Stick and Rudder: How dare you spend money on Star Citizen!
I've got to perform a public service this week because there's a certain subset of our audience that simply doesn't get Star Citizen. Granted, taking the time to explain things to trolls may do nothing but invite additional trolling, but hey, at least now I'll have a handy link to copy/paste any time I see some of the how-dare-you-bankroll-Star-Citizen bellyaching going forward. And no, today's column isn't addressed to you personally. If you think it is addressed to you personally, though, that's probably a good indication that you should do what well-adjusted people do and refrain from continually posting about games you don't like!
Storyboard: Roleplaying hasn't gone anywhere
Certain phrases just tend to stick in my craw. For example, the idea that back in the day MMORPGs really supported roleplaying, but now they don't any more. You can't really lose yourself in modern games. You get the idea; I've talked about this before. The calls that roleplaying is dead are quite convincing except for the fact that roleplaying continues and does not appear to be going anywhere. If anything, I'd argue (from anecdotes, so without much scientific merit) that roleplaying populations seem to be expanding, which makes sense, since with more and more people playing games online, more and more of them are going to be totally keen on pretending to be an elf. But I can understand the sentiment because from another perspective it can seem totally on the mark. So I'm going to just go for the simple version and discuss the ways in which things haven't changed all that much after all.
The Mog Log: Roleplaying (community) drama
Well, the show's over, everyone. Nothing you do in Final Fantasy XIV matters any longer, in both the cosmic sense and the more immediate one. I hope you got what you wanted to get finished all done! This does not mean that what we do as a community doesn't matter; it always matters. It matters whether the servers are on or off. And that segues nicely into the latest community brouhaha that I've been witnessing, which is essentially a roleplaying schism handled in the way that only roleplaying schisms can happen. Roleplayers are one of the only groups that can still be just as active regarding a game we're not currently playing, odd though it might seem. I've touched on the Final Fantasy XIV roleplaying community more than once in the past. For some of you, I'm sure this is more or less irrelevant. But seeing as how the game's last save has taken place and there are no more relevant discussions to be had regarding drop rates, quest difficulty, or anything else, would it really be so bad to take a step over and look at how the character-building half lives?
The Soapbox: Rooting for the fail
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. I'm going to start this with a strange admission: I love MMOs. I love them as a lumpy, imperfect collective; I love specific ones immensely, and I love being a fan of the genre. I feel that I have to clarify my stance when I sometimes -- often -- see people who apparently follow MMOs quite closely become a neverending fount of bile and venom toward these games. Apparently, not all MMO fans love MMOs, and that perplexes me. Odd as that may be, whatever, I can accept that we live in a topsy-turvy world. What I really don't get are the folks who hate specific games so greatly that their entire bodies and minds have been honed into a dedicated game-loathing entity. Mention that title anywhere on a forum, a blog, or in a post, and these people come out to scream through clenched teeth how this MMO sucks beyond the telling of it and that we are all fools, fools for getting anywhere near it. They aren't just content to say their piece and be done with it, oh no; their vitriol literally knows no end. They will rant, they will attack, they will laugh with derision, and above all else, they will root for the fail. Their greatest desire in life is for this specific game to die so that they can rend their clothes and let out a blood-curdling victory howl. And I don't get it. I feel like an alien in their presence, perplexed at their rage and fixation. Why do people root for MMOs to fail with such intensity? What motivates them and what do they hope to achieve?
The Mog Log: Not the happy fanboy
Imagine, if you will, that a nice man comes up to you and tells you about a fantastic room. He leads you to this room, and at the far end of the room from the door is a cake. That cake is clearly delicious, and you're told as much. Unfortunately, in order to reach said cake, you have to walk barefoot across an entire room full of rusty nails, broken glass, and scorpions with a serious hate-on for human beings. But then another nice man runs up to you. He says that he has excellent news for you about this cake, that it will make you very happy. "So I don't have to walk through all this broken glass and stuff?" you ask. "Oh, no, you still have to," replies the man. "But we've made the cake at the end taste even better. Isn't that awesome!" And at this point, anyone in the world would turn around and walk away. I don't care how much you like cake, that cake just isn't worth the trouble. That, in a nutshell, is how I felt while looking at the announcements for VanaFest 2010. Because they're going to make that endgame cake taste ever better, and that's great. But that's all the way over there.
