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The Daily Grind: What grosses you out in MMOs?
Most of us have squick lines in life that totally gross us out. Whether it be changing a dirty diaper, watching someone pick their nose, or hearing someone attempt to parody Rebecca Black's music, there's always something that can make us go "EWW!" and flap our hands around like grounded birds in distress. But what about MMOs? Is there anything in them that can actually gross us out? I'm willing to bet there is, considering that I've seen a few things that have given me the willies over the years. The biggest gross-out for me are decaying corpses that are detailed in ways I wish they were not. The above picture grosses me out, and that's just a dead cow in Lord of the Rings Online. So what grosses you out in MMOs? Is it the squashing of bugs, the terrible fashion sense on display, or something else entirely? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Storyboard: Red light
When it comes to roleplaying, we've got more than our fair share of elephants in the room. Things we all know are taking place, that fall under the same aegis as the rest of the hobby, but things we don't really want to acknowledge publicly. Partly because you can have good roleplayers, people you know and play with, who have some less-savory elements lurking in the background. It's hard not to notice that a fellow roleplayer is cliquish, isolationist, and condescending... but it's very possible for a friend to be heavily into erotic roleplay (ERP) without you realizing it. And it needs to be talked about. It needs to be addressed, because there's something strange about the entire roleplaying community pretending that it doesn't exist. From a combination of factors -- squick, inappropriateness, and just plain disinterest -- we've allowed a shadow community to grow up in the space around roleplaying, with the tacit hope that if no one mentions ERP as if it were a part of roleplaying, it'll just go away and we can go back to what we were doing before. Before I go any further in this column, I'd like to note that some stuff in here might be squickworthy. It's the nature of the beast. Please tread carefully, and I apologize in advance to anyone skeeved out.
