happiness
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Study suggests Facebook users are happier if they leave for a month
You've no doubt heard anecdotal evidence of Facebook users feeling better after they've quit the social network, but how often does that help, really? A fair amount, according to researchers. A study (PDF) from New York University and Stanford showed that Facebook users were happier, more satisfied with life and slightly less likely to feel anxious, depressed or lonely. They also used other social networks less, and used Facebook less when they came back.
The Daily Grind: Why do you love your favorite game?
Yes, we know what's coming. But we don't want the next few days to be a cavalcade of sorrow because this is a site and a community built around our shared love of MMOs. So let's spread some cheer today. Why do you love your favorite game? I make no secret about my affection for Final Fantasy XIV, obviously. It's a great game that fuses progress organically with stuff that you'd have fun doing anyway and gives you no shortage of freedom in what you want to do in the game. It's a great time. But my favorite game might not be yours. So let's share. No bashing, no whining, no complaining; let's make this a positive time for everyone. Why do you love your favorite game, be it a critical darling or a title you feel doesn't get nearly enough love? 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!
iPhone waltzes into top spot of US phone satisfaction index, small carriers trump the giants
We know almost too well how smartphones perform in US market share; what we don't usually see is how happy customers are once the shrink wrap's off. Going by a newly-expanded American Customer Satisfaction Index, it's the iPhone that most scratches the itch at a score of 83. Despite having just been added, Apple was noticeably ahead of a three-way tie between HTC, LG and Nokia at 75. You might not want to look if you're a freshly-minted RIM executive: the BlackBerry made its freshman debut on the charts at the bottom, or 69. Big carriers have their own reasons to wince, too, knowing that smaller carriers like US Cellular and TracFone scored higher on the happiness meter than incumbents hiking service fees. While there's definitely some wiggle room for your own experience to have been better or worse, if you were an iPhone owner on a regional carrier in the past few months, you were statistically the most likely to be on Cloud Nine.
Scott Hartsman: 'Happy customers stick around longer'
"Here's the overall philosophy behind all this: Happy customers stick around longer," Scott Hartsman said in an interview with Gamefront. "That's what we think. That's the beginning and end of it." It may seem like common sense, but for Hartsman and the team at Trion Worlds, it's a lesson they feel is easy to forget. He cites this as the driving force behind one of the game's major upcoming changes: the ability to transfer characters between servers for free. Trion hopes that the character transfers will help friends connect without the obstacle of separate servers getting in their way. Hartsman said that the tech behind the transfer is impressive -- not to mention "instantaneous" from a customer standpoint. Hartsman says that the team places a premium on talking frankly and frequently with players. If Trion doesn't always come across as perfect, he hopes that the company makes up for it with communication and sincerity: "We don't want to hide behind a big wall, and we don't want everything to come through a formal mouthpiece. I'd rather have us all out conversing with people and occasionally making a mistake here or there on the assumption that because we are talking to people more means that overall, things are going to be better." The lengthy interview covers a wide range of pressing topics, from the "bumpy" River of Souls event to the LFG system and the free trial program.
Breakfast Topic: Moments of pleasant surprise
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Everyone who plays WoW has horror stories. Awful PUGs, bad groups, guild drama, the time you got that item ninjaed. We often pull out these horror stories in games of one-upmanship about who has had the worst experience with friends and guildies. Or when recruiting a new member to your guild, the bad memories often outweigh the good when it comes to certain players. However, if WoW were merely a collection of awful experiences and drama, there would not be millions of people paying 15 bucks a month to keep playing it. This is about those moments in which you were pleasantly surprised. I have had several throughout the six years of WoW, varying from random, in-game good luck to things that resonate in real life. One of the most pleasant surprises for me was meeting an-in game friend during a dungeon, eventually joining his guild and becoming a main tank for that guild -- the guild I still raid with to this day. I also got Undying on an 8-man Naxx run the day I turned 80 on my paladin tank alt. Friends of mine met through WoW and are now married. One of my relatives went to BlizzCon only to find a coworker also there; neither of them had known the other played, and they found out they are on the same server. Even recently, a doctor of mine saw a WoW shirt I was wearing and asked what server and faction I was, then made a joke about not knowing if he could heal me since I play Alliance. So what are your moments in which you were pleasantly surprised? What moments have made your day or left you feeling relieved and happy? Have you had the simple, in-game moments of joy that bring a smile to your face, or have you had in-game moments that affected your real life as well?
The Daily Grind: When has an MMO bolstered your spirits?
We've all had those days. You're sitting in traffic for hours on your way to work, you have a huge pile of things to do when you get there, you stub your toe and scrape up your arm. Even when you get home, the house is a mess and you're exhausted. Then you log in to your favorite game, and you agree to do something more or less out of a sense of boredom... and lo and behold, everything suddenly goes perfectly for you. Everything you want drops, you enjoy yourself, and you log off with a sense that the day wasn't all that bad after all. Right when you needed a shot of good luck, you get it. Many of us use MMOs as stress releases, but when has one actually helped turn what was a boring to bad day into a good one? When has playing the game made you feel happy, renewed, and inspired? Was it a series of lucky drops, or finally managing to finish a difficult quest, or even just getting sympathy from your fellow players when everything went wrong? What sticks out in your memory when you think of dark days a game has brightened?
A new animation for Feed Pet
Well I grabbed my own video of the new Feed Pet animation, but it turns out that Lougara on YouTube did it much better, so that's their video you can watch above. Yes, as hunters everywhere have noticed, Blizzard has added a brand new animation to the feeding of a hunter pet -- you can actually see your hunter toss a piece of grub to the pet, who then catches it and noms away.It would be cool to see it go a little further -- maybe have the pet claw and chew away at it for a moment -- but then again with so many different types of pets out there, it's probably tough for Blizzard to make them all look good. Still, it's a nice little touch for immersion, and it has the added bonus of showing other players when you're tossing food to your pet as well. Of course, with Bloodthirsty as a pet talent or the Glyph of Mend Pet going, you may not even need to feed your pet any more, but if you do, that's what you'll see.
Scattered Shots: Pets at level 10
Every week, Brian Karasek and David Bowers bring you help, tips and advice for the leveling Hunter in Scattered Shots. For those veterans looking for high end Hunter goodness, BRK is back on active duty. This post is part of the Hunter Leveling Guide. You probably know by now that Big Red Kitty refers to himself as "we" in all his articles. For the longest time I thought this was just him being silly, but with his return to WoW Insider after a long hiatus, he explained that this is actually a kind of philosophical statement as to the oneness of hunter and pet.You needn't worry that we (being Brian and I) will start trying to mimic him, but he really does have a good point. When a hunter reaches level 10 and gains his or her first pet, your pet becomes an extension of yourself, and an incredible source of power. The game suddenly gets very easy, and enemies start dying very fast. In effect, with a pet at your side, you become your own tank-damage-healing group all by yourself, able to finesse the control over your character and pet alike to achieve all sorts of neat stuff.
The trouble with happiness
In certain ways, playing a hunter is about depletion. You have to worry about running out of ammo, running out of mana (although not as much since Aspect of the Viper was introduced), running out of range to fire your weapon (though thankfully there's no longer a dead zone), and of course you have to worry about your pet running out of happiness. Which means we have to carry around stacks of food in our bag space, which let's not forget is one bag smaller because every hunter needs an ammo bag, and often some extra ammo on top of that. For some reason, I've never thought about this before: why do we need happiness at all?Sure, it's a nice mechanic at first, adds flavor to the class, but I really like this suggestion by Killernuts (*cough*) of Arthas-H: remove happiness once your pet reaches the top loyalty level. After a while it just becomes a pain; at best I click an AddOn button every once in a while when the alert pops up, and at worst I have to take a break from what I'm doing to scrounge up some food. Or instead of removing it based on pet level, how about based on player level? Make a trainable skill at, say, 30 that keeps pets happy. You can use food to boost their happiness faster (useful with a newly-trained pet), but you don't have to. At least one nice change is already slated for the pet feeding department: pets will be able to be fed in combat "at some point in a future patch" (Nethaera). So I guess that's nice, since indeed it does suck to lose what can be a significant portion of your damage just because you haven't been obsessively monitoring that little smiley face. Prior to 2.3 it was possible to feign death and then feed one's pet, but this has been "fixed".
Dr. Whippy keeps the soft serve comin' to cheer you up
Ah c'mon, it's essentially a foregone conclusion that ice cream leads to happiness, so it's no surprise to hear of an invention like Dr. Whippy. This ingenious device reportedly analyzes ones voice as he / she answers questions and determines how stressed the individual is, and as you may expect, the more unhappy one seems, the more ice cream is dispensed. Score one for the pessimists.[Via WeMakeMoneyNotArt]
The hidden formula behind pet loyalty
Mania's Arcania continues its look at pet loyalty and the mechanics of how it works. Last time, she found that tamed pets would stick around for 30 minutes no matter what you do, and this time around she went the other way-- up to loyalty level two, Unruly.Basically, using a newly tamed pet, a stopwatch, and a notepad, she determined that in order for a pet to go from loyalty level 1 (Rebellious) to level 2 (Unruly), the pet needs to gain 5% of the experience the Hunter needs for his next level. So a level 11 hunter needs 8800 experience to get to 12, which means a pet (of any level and family) needs to kill for 440 XP (5% of 8800) to go up a loyalty level with that Hunter.Interesting. And the formula apparently works even when the pet isn't actually earning experience (ie when your pet is the same level as you are). However (and this is a big however), time is also playing a factor, and Mania's not exactly how it does-- she let her pet sit happy for a few hours, and then on the very next kill, the loyalty level went up. So it seems to be some combo of experience earned together and time (where more experience or more time can replace the other if necessary), but the exact numbers aren't there yet.At any rate, good stuff, and Mania is being really thorough with it. If you're a Hunter who changes pets often, it's worth a read.
Tamed pets will stay for 30 minutes
Mania's Arcania has been doing some experimenting with tamed pets on the PTR, and she's got a few great tips for all you hunters picking up new pets. First and foremost, apparently any pet you tame, no matter how happy it is or how often its fed, will stick around with you for at least 30 minutes, so if you tame a new pet and don't have food for it, you've got that long to find some. Dismissing a pet or having it die actually stops that timer, too, so if you don't have food and the time is about to run out, you can dismiss the pet, and then recall it when you have food to feed it.She's also looked at some more technical information on how quickly pet health returns after various kinds of dismissals-- in most cases, it looks like your pet actually comes back with a lower percentage of health, which then ticks back up to full in just a second. Probably won't affect most Hunters, although a few of the situation she goes through sound like battleground PvP to me, and it could be that Hunters there are using their pets so quickly that it might make a difference. More testing is on the way, she says.But at least the taming schedule will probably help Hunters who end up grabbing a rare spawn as a pet and then realize they don't have the food to feed them. We've got more breathing room than we knew we had.
Loco Roco Video Sandwich special!
The past few stories about Loco Roco have been a bit too depressing. Let's ignore the low sales and remember the good things about the game: like happy happy graphics and even happier music. That's what this fun, candy-coated Loco Roco fan video does. It showcases some images from the game and puts it to the absolutely fantastic music of the game. If this doesn't make you happy, then you've lost your childhood somewhere along the way.The bottom video of this special edition Video Sandwich shows you how to get every single secret in the downloadable demo. Pretty helpful for those of you that want to earn your Loco Roco Rewards the right way. It's intersting to see the things that you may have missed. (I know without this video, I would've never found that final fruit that I've been missing!)
