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May 18, 2005
Dumb mud-dev thread
Sony recently decided to start facilitating the trade of real monetary resources for game objects on certain EverQuest servers. Now, before I go further, I'm sure there are some people who absolutely cannot fathom the motivation to spend real money on a game resource.
I haven't myself, that I can recall, but it goes a bit like this. You play a MMO game of whatever sort as much as your time permits (either a MMORPG like EverQuest, or maybe a MUD). It's a traditional sort of game, in which the point is more to level up a character, get it gear, fight battles, and explore areas (for those of you not into the scene, Diablo 2 is rather similar. Or Baldur's Gate if hundreds of others played at the same time). Now the game designers for these games don't want to have to keep creating ridiculous new levels, so they use an exponentially increasing set of experience point values required to level. Thus they have the hope, maybe, of slowing a real teenage crack-monkey playing 8 hours a day (or way, way more) down to reaching the maximum level for a character in a reasonable period, say maybe a month. Given multiple character types and player versus player gaming, and there's a chance of keeping your user base from churning massively.
There you have what's referred to as a treadmill... but it's tuned for people with large amounts of time. You enjoy the game, but you're a working professional and it's hard to get more than an hour a night to play, or a few more hours on the weekends. You start getting tired of spending a month on the same level, with the same powers, seeing largely the same area. BUT, you enjoy the game, and you become willing to trade that which you have in excess (cash) for that which you don't have but which might make your play more profitable and rewarding (gear, gold, whatever). That is the motivation behind paying for game items.
Moving along, Sony deciding to support such interactions (which have traditionally been frowned upon) is laudable and was almost inevitable. It's laudable because they are a large company, and this feature will perhaps pressure other companies to try such a setup out. It was inevitable because such trading was happening anyway. It was like sharing music except instead of suing someone, the most you could do was cancel their account... thereby depriving yourself of a customer and money.
This is a thread that developed on mud-dev from the announcement. My personal favorite message from Jaycen Rigger who is, apparently, an idiot. He shows an ignorance of the very game in question when he claims that "customers decide what cheating is." I say this because I remember quite clearly instances when EQ came out of beta where you could take advantage of the formation of a zone to kill certain mobs with impunity. EQ decided this was cheating, not the players, and punished people accordingly. Those who forget history, etc.
Posted by jeff at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
So that was weird
Just an odd mini-dream. Coming soon, Ozarks trip report.
I had a dream about dynamic web coding. Which I think is pretty odd to begin with, BUT it led into a mini-dream in which jgsmith was explaining to me that he'd managed to make pckizer finish up the last 5 hours of his civil engineering degree (I honestly have no idea if that was ever phil's degree plan in any decade) or he'd volunteer him into the Army. Then cut to me talking to Phil who was confirming it. He had some weird mic pickup for his cellphone attached on the bottom left of his eyeglass lens.
Not a nightmare, not by any stretch of the imagination (for me, who knows what pck or jgs would say :) ) but it caused me to almost instantly wake up and go "shit, that was an ODD dream".
Posted by jeff at 04:40 AM
May 06, 2005
Unitarian Jihad
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: The Machine Gun of Sweet Reason.
Posted by jeff at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)
New compy!
So, a few hours after noon today, my new motherboard, processor, and RAM arrived. I ended up going to a local shop for a CPU fan, but I am now up and running on my new machine! (Well, the case and hard drives are exactly the same... but I notice the difference...)
Some minor annoyances, but overall a darn smooth upgrade.
Posted by jeff at 04:20 AM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2005
Night Cross Country
Hmm, so a few days back I made my "long distance solo cross-country". That is a cross-country trip with more than one stop. There's a distance requirement for defining exactly what is cross-country, but I can't be buggered to look it up for my internet friends. Anyway, that LDSXC (haha, a new acronym!) was from Easterwood to Waco then down to Taylor and back to College Station. It was in N9925Q, a very nice plane with an IFR-approved GPS. Flying with a GPS was sexy after doing my first solo xc using ded reckoning and waypoints. So anyway, very few problems indeed. I wouldn't say I was competent on the radio with Waco approach, Gray approach, or really anyone in-between, but I got my point across eventually and they didn't curse at me.
Tonight, I went on my night cross country with an instructor named Mick (Bill was a bit tired from students during the day and begged off). It was a simple straight shot from Easterwood to Austin-Bergstrom. I flew visual waypoints to AUS, which sucked mightily. It sucked even writing them down. "Well, I assume and hope this city will be visible at night." Made my first couple of checkpoints (and verified I wouldn't be far off the time estimate in my filed VFR flight plan) and then rode the GPS into AUS. Mick was great at helping me get ready for my radio calls, although he fiddled with buttons quite a bit (dangit, I like to fiddle with the buttons grin ). He mainly teaches and flies IFR, so he had practical tips for the various callups that I wouldn't normally get. It sounds like he'll soon be leaving for the high-stakes world of regional jet piloting.
The landing at AUS stank. The FBO was nice (I got a coffee, Mick got popcorn). The return trip was all GPS (because I didn't feel like fiddling the radios for a VOR trip) and wildly variant around the intended course. The landing at CLL wasn't terrible.
Now that that's done, I mostly need to get my solo flying out of the way before my checkride. holds hand over head mysteriously I foresee... lots of turns about a point... in my future.
Posted by jeff at 02:06 AM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2005
Blogroll readded
I went ahead and readded the blog roll from my previous blog, and linked to my old blog. Stuff that was dead or no longer being updated got omitted (including Micah's blog, unfortunately). Added some personalities because I hated having a category with one link. Linked to my OpenBSD resource and rant page, because I'd like for Google to index that some day.
Posted by jeff at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)
Shipment tracking...
May 2, 2005 8:52 pm Left FedEx Sort Facility NEWARK NJ
6:58 pm Arrived at Sort Facility NEWARK NJ
11:06 am Left FedEx Origin Location EDISON NJ
10:27 am Pickup status EDISON NJ
Yay (this is faster than I was expecting!)... keep 'em comin'!
Posted by jeff at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)