The Spider Love Summer Tour '10 continues

I'd been trying to form a team that barnstorms around the different PvP games every month until a real game comes out. This plan fell short when I realized it would be impossible to form a squad like that for one key reason - people do not like me.


This isn't happening.


So, I've just been playing with myself.

First there was some casual WoW tourism that left me a tad seasick. I jetpacked around Global Agenda for a couple hours. What's surprised me is that I actually haven't hated playing Champions Online at all yet.

I've built a new, improved version of my ol' run-and-gun Goblin Squig Herder, now cybernetically augmented to rain down explosive arrows of death & be-daze-ment while I teleport around in puffs of green smoke. I also picked out the stealth-evade skill, just so I can backflip into that cool cloaked mode, like I'm the fucking Predator.

So, there's that.

Just for those keeping score, I've made a full Family Tree of my Goblin babies.

Pictures of the Day

playing Champions Online. forgot how much I liked the character creator! so fun. that was worth the $7 alone. also got a little cyborg midget pet 'cuz i bought it off Steam.
did i mention i'm drunk?
i'm drunk

What WAR could steal from the WWF, part I

WHILE I'm on the subject of BSD's ideas, let's talk about 2 other things real quick.


Firstly, I was disappointed the 6v6 Tournament didn't pan out. Not surprised, given the state of the server (Iron Rock is a tremendous clusterfuck of pricks, vaginas and anuses) and also not surprising given the general state of the game (guys were actually bitching that they didn't even have enough guildies left to field a 6 man).

It's a shame, 6v6 really shows off different group dynamics and solid group play, which is what the game is about.

However, switching to 3v3 / 4v4 Tournie would be probably easier to schedule and does add more potential teams to the pool. I don't know. It's hard to organize things. That's something I've learned from firsthand experience as a professional fight promoter. I have a successful NMA* company in Japan and run a very popular XTCF** league in Indonesia.

What WAR could steal from APB, part I

AKA What Spider Love could steal from BSD

I don't know a whole lot about A.P.B.'s mission system. I watched a demo video, and what I learned about missions from that is you hop in a car, briefly drive around like a half-blind old Chinese lady who's been drinking Cuervo all night, jump into another car, then jump out and immediately die.

No?

It's basically Open Group PvP questing with opposing objectives and conditional stages. Like a PvP PQ, sort of. Like the city siege!

I like the idea as an idea, but as a generic concept for Warhammer it doesn't do a whole lot for me at the moment. I think any new tweaks like that added to the game should be solely focused on augmenting the one central idea in the game (oRvR), not add more extraneous mini-game type horseshit like scenarios or arenas or pve loot grinds.

It needs to get players involved directly in the ORvR campaign, not distract from it.

What WAR could steal from Twilight, part I

I think more people would be playing Warhammer Online if teenaged inter-species love triangles were allowed in the game.

Here's a typical Warhammer fight scene now:
A Goblin Shaman heals a Witch Elf, the Witch Elf is attacking a Dwarf Rune Priest.

Boring, right? I fell asleep just thinking about it.

Proposed Twihammer fight scene:
A Goblin Shaman is totally conflicted about healing his Witch Elf girlfriend because she is totally conflicted about attacking a Dwarf Rune Priest. The Dwarf Rune Priest now looks like a tall, shirtless, exotic young bad boy who has a sensitive side.

I just made your game 80 trillion dollars, real money. You're welcome.

Mental Exercise of the Day

Come up with an idea for a MMO that would have the potential to be either the best or worst game ever made.

Example:
"game where you have to travel back and forth through time to either hunt and kill or serve and protect Lady Gaga and her evil minions as she continues along a path to conquer the universe".



*UPDATE: Submissions so far include -

"a XXX-rated sequel to Hello Kitty Online"

I smell potential.

"a MMO where you do nothing but troll messageboards in-game"

That would be something.

"Charlie Sheen Online"

/\ Winner.

All is lost for us if heaven fails

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

If SWTOR sucks, does that pretty much kill the MMO genre / industry / movement as a whole?

Would we all just completely lose faith in humanity and quit working, quit trying, quit living? Would we shed our civility like so much dead skin and riot in the streets, burning, pillaging, molesting old men's mustached faces?

WHAT HOPE HAVE WE IF THE OLD REPUBLIC FAILS?

World Exclusive: Star Wars Starship Housing in Action

*Companions may vary by class.

Story of the Day

EA / Mythic laid off producer Josh Drescher.

That's awesome timing. Just to sum up the news week now:

The Old Republic is setting off dork quakes in Los Angeles.
Vigil popped eyes open with the Warhammer 40K teaser.
Announcements were made for WoW's expansion, GW2, Rift, LOTRO, DDO, FFXIV + XI, TERA, DCUO, CO, CoH, MSHS, Black Prophecy, JGE, BGO, Allods, Aika, EoN, The Agency, GA, Taikodom, MMGK, Swordsman, Zentia...
And
Warhammer made headlines by.... shitcanning people. Again.

Way to make an impression. They should've gotten a booth at E3 for that.
"OKAY WE DONT HAVE SPACESHIPS BUT WE'LL HAVE OUR PRODUCERS IN A DUNK TANK AND IF YOU CAN HIT THE TARGET, THEY WILL GET DROPPED INTO A VAT OF WATER AND LOSE THEIR JOB."

Congrats on being the least-possible appealing MMO on the entire market. Warhammer is officially the Fat Ogre Kardashian Sister of MMOs.

Do you think they determine who gets laid off at Mythic by using some hidden contribution system and then a Vegas Roll of the dice?

Dark Millenium trailer

I want it.

I'm Afraid

VIDEO: SWTOR Announces PvP 'Warzones'

"In the Old Republic, players battle it out in warzones. In these warzones, players will experience fierce battles that evoke memories of famous Star Wars ground conflicts."


Which famous Star Wars ground conflicts? The one where the teddy bears beat the shit out of space marines with sticks and rocks or the one where the army of Jar Jars threw giant marbles at the retarded stick figure robot army?




*Quick update:
Massively Interview

Massively: Now with the PvP War Zones, they are going to be instanced as well?

Rich Vogel: The PvP War Zones are very similar to what you see in WAR and WoW.

(*ie instanced Scenario / Battleground team vs team Capture the Flag type bullshit)

Massively: Will there be any instances of open PvP or is that something you have on your map?

Rich Vogel: Well, we haven't really talked much about that yet, but I'd rather not say much about that. But since other games have that, it's a likely assumption.

This is what scares me about features in this game (and most MMOs now)... the "since other games have that, we should too" philosophy. It's nice to have lots of stuff in a game, I know everyone wants this to be the Dream Game that is all things to all people. But games go horribly wrong when they go all Kitchen Sink mode and try to please everyone. You can't do it. Look at WAR. Hell, look at WoW. Read that quote again. We didn't engineer the game and classes and balance around it, we just added it on.

Massively: So you are looking at it?

Rich Vogel: We will have open PvP play and we will have instances, I'll just put it that way.

So long, suckers

My WAR subscription expires tomorrow. Just want to take a personal moment to thank all those I've played with; especially Fate, Illuminaughty, Jaded Souls & friends. I don't think I'll miss WAR much, but I do miss having guys like you around to make me look good. Or less bad. Whatever.

I hope we'll get a chance to kill dudes together again soon! If anyone cares, I'm still dicking around with Allods and WoW and also may re-sub AION &/or Champions for a month or two, just for lols? I don't know.

The Spider Love Affair will most likely continue as my "PvP Game" blog for the 5 people I know that actually read this.

Oh no, it's the weekend.

Nothing spells excitement like a weekend of non-stop Reject Scenario action.

Someone make it stop.

Interview: Some Person

The Spider Love News Network was kind enough to spend some time with a random Mythic producer, a person by the name of "Carrie Gouskos". The interview was brief, as I do not like other people and their presence tires me. Enjoy.

Spider Love, Lord of All Bloggers: "Who are you?"
Carrie Gouskos: "I'm the executive producer of-"
Spider Love: "YAWN."
Carrie Gouskos: "What are you doing?"
Spider Love: "I'm putting fun pictures here otherwise everyone's just going to fall asleep. Interviews are boring."



Spider Love: "I've been playing the game again and I'm noticing a trend, you guys started selling pink dyes and pushing some sort of "breast cancer awareness" agenda with everyone in the game looking like Strawberry Shortcake. The new mount you added is a pony. A pony with jewelery. The new emotes you added in the last patch were /hugs and /gayhighfive."
Carrie Gouskos: "That last part isn't true. That's a falsehood."
Spider Love: "The question I have to ask is this: Is is true that you are a, I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly, is it true that you are a woman?"
Carrie Gouskos: "It's true."
Spider Love: "A-HA! Is it not also true that you were intentionally put in this postion to destroy Warhammer Online because the game is horrible and needs to be put out of its misery?"
Carrie Gouskos: "No, we're improving the game. You said you liked the changes. And we just did that thing you wanted for Serpent's Passage. The boat thing."
Spider Love: "Fuck your boats. You've mentioned that Open RvR is your top priority and you think the key there is adding more incentives for that. What sort of incentives were you talking about?"
Carrie Gouskos: "Pony of the Month Club."
Spider Love: "No, seriously."
Carrie Gouskos: "What would you suggest?"
Spider Love: "Cloaks that don't look like dirty shower curtains. Enchanted Glow-In-The-Dark Dyes."

Carrie Gouskos: "We can look into a glowing pink dye, maybe."
Spider Love: "Also, it would be nice if taking keeps and battlefield objectives was actually fun in tier four. I don't know. Crazy idea."
Carrie Gouskos: "Your suggestions were 'Monster Trucks as Siege Weapons' and 'Giant Dragon That Eats Zergs'."
Spider Love: "Yeah. It'd be like this big dragon that goes "rahhr" and eats a bunch of zerglings and then flies to The Blighted Isle to poop them out. The pooping part could be an animation or a cinematic movie thing, your call."
Carrie Gouskos: "Do you have a disease where you're actually a 5 year old in a man's body?"
Spider Love: "So you noticed my Man's Body, I see. I know it's hard not to, but that's sexist. I'm a serious journalist, not a piece of meat. Alright? I'm a human being, I have feelings, too. God damn it. This interview is over."

Idea of the Day

Regnum, the free-to-play RvR game, is doing a neat World Cup thing in honor of some sort of wacky soccer tournament that is taking place this summer.

From June 9th to July 13th, players can pick a special costume piece that corresponds to one of the 32 countries playing in the World Cup. While your chosen country's 'uniform' is equipped, you earn points for that country by earning points in PvP action.

Warhammer never does cool shit like this, ever.




*EDIT:
Had an idea for the Guild Cup of Warhammer - during this 2 week stretch the guild with the most members on the two big PvP leaderboards, Kills + Scen Wins, would win the Guild Cup.

Not the worst idea in the world, I just hate my server and feel like the official forums are like romper room for special needs students, so, I could care less about trying to do shit like that. Don't know how Ty was able to manage even attempting the 6v6 tournie.

I still want Captain America armor, though. Someone make that happen. With an Evel Knievel motorcycle mount that can do stunt jumps off mountains.

I cope with grief by being a complete monster.

AND NOW for some sorely needed perspective -

a Great Player and a Wonderful Man

"Last night around 10:15 PM Atlantic time a man that some of you know as “Sugbis the Shaman” died of a massive heart attack. He was an avid player and to him keeping you alive to help you win the battle was a matter of honor.
... He always strived to do the best he was capable of doing in order to fulfill his role to achieve the victory of the team.

To me he was Jim, my husband, my lover, my companion, my best friend, and my soul mate; a gentle giant with a heart made of gold.

He was playing Scenarios with some people, and got up his chair because he thought that he was going to pass out. His last words to me were:
“Log me out of the group; I do not want them to think I am leaching”

He did not want me to call 911, he went into the barroom and close the door, and I waited a few minutes, and went to check on him. He was laying face down on the floor and was blue already."

That's heartbreaking. He sounds like a genuine nice guy, and it's a tragedy losing those rare people that really do care about other people.

But seriously, you gotta detaunt and snare Clogged Arteries, you can't just kite that shit away.



Hey, kiss my ass, that's way better than just using
Can I have his stuff? like every other asshole.

LIFE IS SO HARD

I've been suffering from The Great RAGE this past week and playing like total shit. I'm very mad at myself right now, and mad at other players, and mad at Mythic, and mad at thIS GODDAMNED SPELLCHECK




I think some of it has to do with the fact that I'm so close to rank 80 and it's just taking forever in these godawful pick-up groups. I don't really care about being 80, it doesn't mean much or validate anything really. But, now, it's like this symbol of futility. I should be 80, but I'm not.

I really get frustrated when we do badly. It's stupid, but that's why you play - to group up with weird assholes and accomplish meaningless bullshit. And the more frustrated I get, the worse I play.



I felt like I was being successful with the shield-and-sword, but in trying out different things as glaive-wielding 2Htard, I just find myself overthinking things. It's like I'm imagining this class is a Rubik's Cube, and there's some secret pattern that will make everything click together. I don't know. I'm bored with the Blackguard and bored with the game, perhaps I'm just intentionally screwing myself in my own butt hole? OR perhaps it's time for another extended break.

PRIORITIES

PRODUCER'S LETTER, MAY '10

What's due for patch 1.3.6?

Armor Updates? Check. Hopefully. If nothing bugs out, sure, why not?
Zealot / Rune Priest Updates? Maybe sometime? It's being thought about. Pencil that shit in.
Blackguard Update? LOL.
Content? .../cricket... .../cricket...


I DO love the Armor Update idea. I loved it in Lord of the Rings, it's just a very cool idea. One of the things I truly hated about that game (The Purple Pajama Epidemic) suddenly became a huge plus for the game (being able to build and customize your own distinctive, cool look and show off some of the neat-looking crap you've collected).

Not sure it will work just as well in this game (LOTRO had all sorts of decent, different-looking gear found from drops, vendors and crafting, and better graphics) but it's a good start and closure on a sore point with players that's dragged on way, way too long.

Also, supposedly they're working on finally polishing the Zealot/RP abilities, so that they can simply "toggle" from healing to damage-dealing at will.

I know that this is a huge relief and I can't wait until more of the Zealots think they can DPS. Should be a big boost for the game. Call Blizzard and tell them to cancel that other new MMO they're working on, it doesn't stand a chance now.

The proposed change to allow for Realm Xfers on the same server is now limited to situations where you don't have other servers to play on.
...I still read that as "Yes, we're going to merge all the servers, you should just quit now and Pre-Order the Collector's Edition of Guild Wars 2". But, that's just me.

Also, fuck you, Blackguards.


Content?
Warhammer will continue to have less new content than the game "Connect Four".
Try back again in another six to eight months, maybe they'll mention something about new content.

I'm being helpful

I've officially submitted a suggestion on the forums! I'm helping!

It's a suggestion on how to buff Blackguards! I think it's a winner, but I don't expect any comments or "KUDOS" because most people are stupid and only care about really simple-sounding, stupid ideas that are easy for stupid people to grasp and understand.

"1000 armor reduction yay! 450 Weapon Skill increase hooray!"
"That's not ever going to happen and would be dumb."
"I WANT TO KILL THINGS JUST BY LOOKING AT THEM! DPS!"
"No, man, you gotta really think about these things."
"SKY CAKE!"

Also, my suggestion is written very poorly, but that is because I just copy-and-pasted it from a private discussion, and also because the subject makes me angry and indifferent and angrily indifferent which I would think is an impossibility but I guess not.

Jaycub also had a really great idea, which surprised me because Jake is a Knight and I heard he is only 12.
Most Knights are 12 and under, that's a fact. I think you can still look that up on that Winkl's WAR stats site, the percentage of Knights that are under 12 years old is 88%

Perhaps the Warhammer 40k game will use that idea, I don't know.
I mean, it's fucking Joe Maduriera, right? Seems like monster trucks + Joe Mad = match made in Heaven. or Hell. Whichever.

My P is better at v'ing than your P

Massively.com gave a weekly column to some guy to talk about Warhammer Online.

What was the first real column?
"Warhammer is full of assholes and I don't like them"

Next week: "FUCK THIS GAME! SERIOUSLY! FUCK THESE GUYS!"




The Elitist in me just wants to say "LOL CRY MORE FGT" and then use his tears as lube as I attempt to molest his sobbing bitch mouth until it bleeds.

But what I want to do is address this in a practical way, and not just talk in broad strokes about Elitism or Carebears or whatever, because it's not even about any of that.

What this debate will always boils down to in life is dicks, pussies and assholes.

"We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And Massively.com columnists are pussies. And other players are assholes. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!"

ISSUE:
"One of the players... refused to heal someone else in the warband... he told me that it was because the person was in another specific guild"

Okay, caring about this makes you a Pussy. Sure, not healing somebody is a Dick move. But, for all you know, that guild is nothing but Assholes that need to be not healed.
Elitism really never enters the picture here. People don't get healed and die everyday, in every game. If you're reading this, you're wasting your time NOT healing kids in Africa that need it. Why? Because you think you're better than Africans! Fucking Elitist.

ISSUE:
"One of the players in the established guild started talking back and refusing to take orders [from unguilded player]"

Again, caring about this makes you a Twat.
I have no idea how "refusing to blindly follow a complete stranger barking orders that may or may not be completely horrible ideas" is somehow categorized as "Elitist".

These two complaints are Pussy Game Theory at it's finest, the idea that if people don't always get along and work together, singing Kumbaya together in region chat, then people in that game are being Elitist Jerks that hurt your overly sensitive Pussy feelings.

ISSUE:
"One of the leaders of a major guild called out the push to the Lord's room ...everyone except that guild pushed up -- completely unsupported by the other guild. The result was wholesale slaughter at the hands of the defenders. ...The leader's response was something along the lines of, "Well, if you want in the fort, you should join my guild."

That guy is an asshole. This is why Dicks need to fuck Assholes and not heal them and Pussies need to stop saying we all need to work together and follow random orders from complete strangers.


ISSUE:
"only a minute and a half from the zone flip, with at least two warbands waiting for the invasion to begin, Zimmeron's Hold was released ...because they wanted to give their own guild membership enough time to get online to join the fray."

OMG those are too funny. Seriously, in the case that I heard about, that turned another ho-hum Order City Zerg #108 that absolutely no one would ever talk about again into a hilariously stupid little civil war that resulted in all that realm's "dicks and pussies all covered in shit", just like the man said.

Can Warhammer be elitist at times? Maybe. Most competitive things are.
Is that a bad thing? No.

Elitism is not a bad thing, it's the American Way. And that's why we're The Best.
Team America: Fuck Yeah.