Global Chat: Valorie Vamp edition

Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat!

This has been an interesting week, complete with virtual vixens, potentially nervous investors, and not-Paladins. If you've missed a few Massively articles that had some great discussion, this is your chance to weigh in, so follow along after the break to see what the Massively writers liked best in this week's Global Chat.

Justin sparked a lot of discussion with his Perfect Ten column about the people you meet in MMO hell. The list included Valorie Vamp and a link to the GameCrush site. The GameCrush "playdates" had quite a few things to say about this, as did our readers:

GameCrush playdate SNO3WHiiT3QU33N says: "The human is, of course, a social being. Some would consider themselves anti-social yet are a part of various social-networking sites. Although we enjoy the company of the same gender, Humans prefer the company of the opposite sex. A lonely male, really? Fact is, men will pay for the attention of women just as women pay for male attention. A relationship has a price. Call her a whore, she'll call a better man. I can go on and on about this but my intension [sic] span will not allow it."

Playdate Kessel Run says that playdates are "game ambassadors," likening the GameCrush transactions to friendship or courtship: "A GameCrush playdate means that I am compensated by the player via GameCrush to be playing with them. GameCrush uses the term 'playdate' to identify the men and women who are subcontracted by GameCrush.

"So, yes, we are getting paid. And yes, men are paying. But if you saw me in a bar, thought I was cute, and wanted to get to know me, would you buy me drink? Maybe ask me out for a movie? Pick up the tab? If a good friend was low on cash, would you spot them? Do you buy people in your life presents? In friendships and courtship money is exchanged all the time, and no one thinks anything of it. I think that's why I am always shocked at how strong a response paying someone to play video games with you gets.

"I can see how it looks bad to some people at first glance. I can understand if it hits a sore spot. But we're not manipulating men or shamelessly stealing their money. We're gaming ambassadors and smash therapy counselors. We're here to listen, heckle and have fun."

The Massively readers chimed in as well. Tempes Magus had this to say: "Yet you charge people money to play with them. 'Come one come all! You lonely guys out there would love to play a game with a girl, right? Well, here is your chance! Just gives us this small fee and we'll join you in game for this amount of time! Time is up. Bye!' No matter what happens after, you are charging somebody for the 'privilege of associating with me.' You're just obvious about it with charging money at least. The 'Valerie Vamp' thing above is for those who are more sneaky and deny their actions."

Massively reader Zal has a different perspective on behalf of a former playdate: "It's pretty much the same thing except you're not hiding why you're doing it. I have a friend who worked for GameCrush for a short time to see what it was like, but she quickly quit. She said it was pretty creepy and awkward, and even though she was making a ton of money, she quit because she disagreed with the principle.

"And I agree; I think it's borderline unethical. The bottom line is the guys are doing it because they're lonely and get excited at the idea of playing with a girl. So a lonely guy... paying money to a woman to get her to do things with him... things that most guys do (for free) with their girlfriends/wives... err... yeah... Dress it up how you like but we all know what it sounds like."

Moving from small financial transactions to much bigger ones, we had some great discussion regarding EA's history, SWTOR, and how investors might feel about the combination of the two.

Canucklehead says: "Reality check. Investors don't care about SWTOR one bit. When I say investors, I'm talking those that influence the stock price, not fans who want to own 100 shares. Let me explain. A run-away 10-million-subscriber success would impact EA significantly, but no one is expecting that to happen. If they are, then they are idiots.

"SWTOR is not mentioned in EA annual reports or quarterly updates (yup I just checked). EA hovers between $4.2 and $3.6 billion in sales per year. Even at $200 million or more in costs, the fate of the company does not rely on the success for failure of SWTOR. A modest initial launch with a modest subscriber base will recoup much if not all of those costs. The earnings will barely be touched by this. Investors (the ones with money) care about earnings per share, cash flow, and
debt management. SWTOR may be a giant failure or success but will have little to do with EA's share price because of the huge product mix already in the revenue stream.

"The only clarity for investors is to let them know that they can't count on 12,000,000 x $15 x 12 months (aka WoW's $2.16 billion/yr). Let this puppy launch and check back in a year. So my point is, get real about 'investors' freaking out about WAR and what it means to SWTOR."

Finally, the announcement of the Guild Wars 2 Guardian caused a big stir, and comparisons to the traditional MMO Paladin class were almost as common as comparisons to the Guild Wars 1 protection Monk.

Massively reader Irem has a slightly different outlook: "I know some people are underwhelmed by it, especially since the concept looks so similar to a traditional paladin class, but this was pretty much exactly what I was hoping it would be and I've definitely got a class for my norn main now.

"I've discovered that I really like playing support classes; I just don't like being shoehorned into doing nothing but watching bars and playing whack-a-mole. Neither am I particularly fond of the visual and story-based concept of most healing/support classes (flimsy, delicate character in cloth robes who stands behind everyone else). ArenaNet has talked about distilling the essence of healing classes down to the core and finding out what people really love about playing support, and found that overall it's the desire to do whatever you can to help your teammates. I think that's true, and I'm impressed with how well they seem to have incorporated that philosophy into this class. I can't wait to see how it plays."

Whew! Everyone had lots to say this week -- now it's your turn. Hit the comment button and tell us what you think!

Global Chat is the weekly feature that's all about you, our readers. Every Sunday we collect the best, funniest, and most thought-provoking comments from the Massively readers and round them up into Global Chat for discussion. Read over them for yourself, hit the comment button, and add your own thoughts!