The Game Dame

One of the best moments in WoW is when a Murloc dies. Not only because Murlocs are evil, nasty, smelly, aggro-loving fishmen, but also because they are such drama queens when they die. I mean, “chewing the scenery” is an understatement. They put their hands to their heads, twirl, gasp mournfully, and then slowly fall to the ground with a plop. Sometimes it takes longer for them to die than it did to kill them. It’s a scene I never fail to smile at — and often laugh out loud.

Well, it’s not so funny when a Murloc dies close to home. My very first WoW guild was for my main, Slig, was called “Murloc Stole My Socks.” I loved the name of the guild so much that I begged to join it and then discovered a bunch of people who played the game like I do — for fun — but without too much sexual innuendo going on. (Since my main is male and I’m female, that kind of thing can lead to some awkward conversations.) In short, I had a blast and loved my guild.

Then about two weeks ago I noticed that my best WoW-friend, Charah, was no longer on the guild roster. Nor was the guild’s founder. In fact, our guild had shrunk in a week from over 100 members to 71 members! We got some odd welcome messages and then some dude I’d never met before became the guild master. Needless to say I felt orphaned. I could never catch Charah online to ask her about it, so while mulling my options, I rolled that BE Priest I told you about yesterday, who is finally high enough to have a page in the armory now.

In the meantime, the new guild master promoted me to Officer, which meant I could recruit. But he gave me such a strict list of guidelines that I could never find anyone who fit the profile. The gossip in the guild was that the original GM started a guild called The Summit for raiding and that we could all “graduate” to go there when we were high level enough. Well, that didn’t make beans worth of sense to me. There’s no reason to form a “sister” guild for raiding. I knew something else was up.

Last night, I was feeling lonely for my main’s friends, and missing my level 50 powers so I logged back in as Slig. Charah was online and I told her I missed my old Murloc buds. She revealed to me that her new guild, appropriately named, “From The Ashes,” was a spinoff of the Murlocs folks who were unhappy with the split. She asked me if I’d like to join and I said, “HECK YES!”

However, it was not all rosy. I felt so guilty and sad to leave the Murlocs. After all, I’d just been promoted to Officer and I think they were expecting me to help solve the attrition problem. However, I knew only 2-3 people who were left in the guild. I felt like an outsider in my own guild. It took several minutes for me to actually press the “Leave Guild” button and my heart sighed a bit. But I knew it was for the best for me. After all, I hadn’t been enjoying playing Slig as much and I dearly wanted to get him to 60. I had to break it to one of my only friends left from the Murlocs (also a recently promoted officer), but he was totally understanding and didn’t hold it against me.

As soon as I pulled up the roster of my new guild, I breathed a sigh of relief. I recognized fully half the names on the list and, of course, Charah was among them. I will probably see if they would invite my alts to the guild as well. It’s so hard to find good folks who play the game your style that I don’t want to flail around looking any more.

I was watching college football today and saw this commercial for Toyota Tacoma trucks. It’s a WoW parody and it’s HYSTERICAL!

You… must… see!

Very interesting that MMOs are becoming mainstream instead of fringe “geeky” activities. Says some interesting things about Tacoma’s demographics, too. I love the fact that Blizzard has a sense of humor about the game. So many people take WoW too seriously but at least Blizzard can laugh at itself (all the way to the bank).

Wow, I guess this stupid little blog could bring down Rockstar. I’m guessing that Wordpress censored the image on my last post because they didn’t want to get in twouble wif da big bad Wockstaw lawyers. (See the censorship for yourself.)

They are even bigger pussies than I thought.

Holy cow. Team Xbox reports that Rockstar has demanded and obtained removal of a Grand Theft Auto parody from The Simpsons Game! I am beyond shocked.

I mean, seriously??

The company that brought you one of the most violent and (secretly) pornographic video games in history is OFFENDED?! You gotta be kidding me, right?

And what about the other side of the coin? The Simpsons is known for its parody of everything under the sun. It frequently bites the hand that feeds it at Fox with impunity! Now the mega-billion dollar franchise caves to the likes of Rockstar?

Have I used enough question marks in this post??? (They were on sale today.)

The main reason I watch The Simpsons is to laugh at our culture. Like it or not (and I don’t), Rockstar’s games are a part of our culture. Newsflash: Part of the price of fame is FAME, people!!! Rockstar should be honored to be parodied alongside the likes of President Carter, The Rolling Stones, JK Rowling, and Albert freakin Brooks. If it’s good enough for those folks, why isn’t it good enough for you, Rockstar? Get your ego out of your poop-hole and have a laugh at yourselves.

And you, EA. Come on, grow some stones. If you take out all the parodies in The Simpsons game you won’t even have a game worth playing. Are you really that indescribably wimpy? If you are, John Madden should take his name away from you. You’ll get massacred in the locker room anyway. Who cares what Rockstar thinks. The Simpsons has taken on Rupert Murdoch for peetsakes! Your reputation as a game publisher is on the line too. Your little Simpsons game is going to tap into a HUGE market that you’ve never even approached before and also get some folks to play video games that would never have thought to do so. You want to throw away your intellectual cred in front of people with this kind of economic clout?

[shrug] What-eva.

What would serve Rockstar right is if some clever game developer at EA surreptitiously distributes the verboten level in much the same way that the sex scene level was “unofficially” distributed for Grand Theft Auto.

Payback’s a beeyotch, boys.

[digg=http://digg.com/xbox/How_to_Prevent_Motion_Sickness_from_Halo_3]In my previous post, I described how I got simulator sickness (a form of motion sickness) from Halo 2. Since then, people have asked about ways to prevent or relieve motion sickness with Halo 3. It seems that Halo 3 is particularly bad for simulator sickness sufferers because of its high frame rate (60 frames per second vs. 30 frames per second for previous Halo titles).

So I’ve done a bit more research on the problem. It seems our friends at the Army have known about this problem for a long time because of their experience with aircraft and combat simulators. They have even developed a set of guidelines for prevention or minimization of the effect. Since it’s a very long, technical PDF document, I thought I would highlight the results for you.

GENERAL STRATEGIES

• Adaptation: The only reliable way to beat simulator sickness is to play often and build up your resistance.
• Play short sessions at first.
• Play only one session per day at first.
• Don’t go for more than a week between sessions when you’re in the adaptation phase because you’ll “unadapt” yourself.

BEFORE YOU PLAY

• Don’t play if you’re extremely tired or if you have a cold/flu
• Turn off all other lights in the room.
• Sit far away from the TV — as far back as you can while still being able to read small text. Try to make the field of view around the TV set as large as possible to give your eyes some “grounding” room.

WHILE YOU PLAY

• Short sessions! Short sessions! Short sessions! I know this is frustrating when you have a cool new game, but try to stop playing BEFORE you get sick. Play for only 10 minutes at a time if you can. As you get adapted, your game time will last longer.
• Minimize your head movements.
• Close your eyes when you press pause and turn your head away from the screen before opening them.
• If you can help it, don’t do too many “fancy” maneuvers like airplane rolls or spinning around excessively until you get adapted.

I hope this helps everyone who is feeling squeamish from their new game! Let me know how it goes.