It’s fantasy, and I can indulge in it

My Avatar -- 100% not like me and 110% impossible IRL

After writing this week’s Anti-Aliased and looking at all of the comments (and how many hits it’s getting, hoo-boy) I started to think about how all of this pertains to me as a person.  Why did I choose this argument?  Why am I not offended by women with huge knockers?  What does this say about me as a trandgendered person?  Do I want to be like those women on the video game boxes?

When I looked into myself, I found my answer.  I back up these unrealistic depictions because they are unrealistic depictions.  Shit, I’ve even wrote some into my stories on purpose and I’ve certainly made my share of breast-tastic characters.

In short, I like fantasy because it’s fantasy — nothing more.

I wouldn’t want a cup size of 34FF in real life, but I have to say it’s fun to be able to create something like that and enjoy it temporarily in a virtual world.  Just like I wouldn’t be an extreme, cold-hearted bitch in real life, yet most of my MMO RP characters are cold-hearted bitches.

It’s an escape, and it’s a fun escape.  When we keep trying to see something bad in these things, we’re only really destroying the dreams of ourselves and others.  I guess I put it on the same level as someone who tells me not to read Harry Potter because it’s about witches and warlocks.  It’s silly.  Certainly you may not like it, but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t read it / make avatars like that / enjoy my imagination.

As an aside — one of the commenters on this week’s Anti-Aliased said that I would be offended if transgendered people were shown in an exaggerated manner in video games, simply because  it would “finally hit home” that exaggerated depictions are bad.

To answer that, um, isn’t that how transgendered people are normally portrayed in the media?  We’re always these super sexy girls who try to lure men into dirty, penis filled traps.  We’re never normal women.  Yet, you don’t see me rioting in the streets over that issue.  Honestly, I’m usually the first one laughing at those jokes because I know it’s exactly not how it is depicted.

Maybe I’m a weird person who isn’t easily offended by anything.  All I know is that I love fantasy.  I love using my imagination to draw up fun characters, and I never, ever want to sacrifice my imagination simply because the masses say I’m wrong.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! (A Modern Warfare 2 rant)

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.....

Ok… in short… if you guys don’t follow me on Twitter… WTF MODERN WARFARE 2?!?!

I’m not going to ruin the storyline for you guys, because honestly it’s pretty awesome in my opinion… until the end.  At that point, I think the entire writing staff went to sleep and brought in guys from crappy summer Hollywood blockbusters.  Why do I think this?  Well… it’s quite simple…

THE GAME HAS NO ENDING.  No, they pump you all up for what… AN OBVIOUS CONTINUATION TO MODERN WARFARE 3.

I really hate this jumping the shark bullshit.  MW1 has this great and epic finisher that really made you feel proud of yourself.  Hell, even MW2 has these seriously sick moments during the single-player that makes you squee with joy.  (Even though one of the “twists” is easily callable.)  But no, the ending is not only horribly contrived, but it doesn’t actually end.  It just sets you up for the next game in the series, because that’s apparently how Activision wants to roll, so sayeth Bobby Kotick.  Push the games that are doing well down our throats, and make sure they never, ever end.

Plus, Soap is apparently Iron Man, as he can take shitloads of punishment without dying.  Just saying… just saying.

I HATE INCONSISTENCY

Ummmm... what?

Hey everyone!  Sorry guys, I’ve been so busy with project for Massively and other sources that I just haven’t had time to blog!  I feel bad, because I have a couple things I really wanted to talk about, but I felt that this topic was the best thing I could vent on to get me back in the mood of talking again — Champions microtransactions.

But, I’m afraid that saying that line is surely a misnomer.  I’m not for or against the Champions Online C-Store at heart.   I don’t intend to buy anything out of the shop, even when they gave me 400 points to spend in it thanks to my GameStop pre-order package.  Likewise, I’m kinda happy it’s there, just in case I do need an emergency respec and I don’t feel like earning one or waiting for a free one to be handed out.

No, what I’m pissed about is the inconsistency of people regarding microtransactions.  Specifically: World of Warcraft versus Champions.

I alluded to my opinion briefly in my last Anti-Aliased, but I’m so fired up about this issue that I think it really deserves its own blog post.  I hate the fact that people let World of Warcraft get away with fucking murder while they go off and rail on Champions.

To give my case a visual illustration, I like to compare this to the South Park episode where Cartman tries to use “psychic powers” to catch a serial killer.  While he tries to help the police department, the South Park police keep missing the HORRIBLY CREEPY DUDE standing in the bikini and blood covered poncho at every crime scene.  They even sometimes stare at the real killer, only to brush him off while they persecute someone else because Cartman said they were the killer.

Warcraft has come out with 10 dollar pets.  10 FUCKING dollar pets.  Not one dollar, not two dollars, no 10 fucking dollars.  I don’t know any virtual pet you could possibly offer me that’s worth 10 dollars of my cash.  It’s a disgustingly high price point, yet people are sitting there and staring at these stupid pets saying, “You know, I really kinda want that.”  Warcraft’s allure and “OMGMMO” status are somehow blinding people from noticing how ungodly expensive this is when compared to…

Champions Online.  The same Champions Online that outraged people when they offered extra costumes at 3 dollars a set.  Or action figure vanity pets for 2 dollars.  Or, even worse, the favoribly priced $12.50 retcon.  No, somehow this game is trying to steal all of your hard earned cash so Cryptic can roll around with it in their pool of money.

No one seems to notice WoW sitting over there, happily peddling 20 dollar server transfers, 30 dollar faction changes, or these stupid 10 dollar pets on top of their 15 dollar a month subscription.  Everyone’s too busy being outraged over Cryptic asking people for 2 bucks on top of their subscription fees.  I even brought this up in Anti-Aliased, and people were blinded enough to tell me that “What WoW offered wasn’t the same as microtransactions.”

I’m sorry, you’re right.  IT COSTS MORE THAN “MICRO” IN WARCRAFT.

But these are the same people who denounce microtransaction item stores.  The same people who spew forth the notion that MTs ruin the quality of the game because developers are too busy putting their work into making MT items and not the game itself.

They don’t care (or notice) that Cryptic only offered five new costumes and a few icon sets versus the 5 events, new monsters, brand new powerset (Celestial powers), new PvP battleground, and new world PvP introduced in Blood Moon.  Not to mention the changes to the game’s weather and skybox to make the place look absolutely creepy.  Somehow, those 5 whole costumes detracted from Blood Moon’s content, even when Blood Moon offered way more than most holiday events.

Let me be clear — I don’t fight for Cryptic because I’m some rabid fangirl of Champions Online or because I’m getting “paid off” by them.  I fight for them because I think they’re getting the short end of the stick when it comes to public opinion.  I fight for them because I find the lengths people go to somehow denounce them insane, especially when World of Warcraft does the same damn thing Champions did, only 10 times worse, and everyone’s ok with it.

Do I sound like a broken record at this point?  Probably, but I keep saying this shit in different ways because if I don’t, some idiot is going to come in here and attempt to contradict me because I didn’t cover all my bases.  So let me be clear one last time.

HATE THE COMPANY THAT IS COMPLETELY RIPPING YOU OFF, NOT THE ONE THAT’S MILDLY RIPPING YOU OFF.  OR, BETTER YET, HATE THEM BOTH.  HAVE SOME DAMN CONSISTENCY, PLEASE.

*clears throat and walks off*

Dragon*Con City of Heroes Panel — Courtesy CoH Podcast!

So Chooch and Viv from the CoH Podcast have gotten their audio of the City of Heroes panel at Dragon*Con up on their website!  It’s pretty epic, as I got to chair the discussion because I was apparently the most knowledgeable one there about the game.  But, it was an honor to be in a room with so many great people.  The City of Heroes fanbase is TREMENDOUSLY AWESOME, and I can’t stress that enough.

But, before I go any further, I need to get some stuff out of the way:

First of all, GIGANTIC THANKS to Douglas Allan from the Paragonian Knights and Mark Brinkman from Central Nexus.  Without those two helping with the panel, I would have been screwed.  They came on at the last minute, unprepared, and did a killer job with answering everyone’s questions and offering insightful commentary on the fly.  THANKS SO MUCH!!!!! <3

Second of all, big thanks to Chooch and Viv for coming by the City of Heroes panel at Dragon*Con 2009 and recording it.  It was an awesome idea as there was some seriously great discussion during that panel.

So, without further ado, if you want to listen to the panel and pretend you’re at Dragon*Con, go jump over to CoH Podcast’s site and listen in on their latest podcast!

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Squak!

So I jumped into the MAG pre-order beta today.  I can’t say anything about the game thanks to an NDA agreement that’s in place right now, but I can certainly still bitch about the community — an aspect of the game that has really nothing to do with the game.

Raven Corporation.  They’re idiots.  No, really, they are.

Now, normally I don’t believe forumfallout.  People say silly things, like “Raven Corporation really sucks.”  (For those of you who don’t know, when you start up MAG, you have three factions to choose from — VALOR, Raven Corporation, and Seryi Volk Executive Response (S.V.E.R.).  Raven is the technologically correct European faction, VALOR is made up of ex-US Military who are looking for work in the private sector as mercs, and S.V.E.R. is the biggest bunch of rag tag Russians with guns you can get in one place outside of Moscow.)

I heard them decrying the faction I was interested in, but I really didn’t care.  Raven looks crazy awesome technological, they wear all black, and plus you can make so many awesome bird names for your clan.  Steel Talon Company, Razor Wing Division, Blackbeak Company — those names sound awesome.

So I kept reading the forums, like the silly person I am.  I began reading the threads that said things like, “S.V.E.R. stands for Super Vicious, Eats Raven.”  Or how VALOR made sure that Raven remembered they were French.  It was a hardcore hate on Raven fest.  Geesh, why bag on Raven so bad, right?

Well, I’ll tell you why bag on Raven so bad.   Holy. Shit.  Dumb.

Of a squad of 8 people tonight, 3 of us were actively TRYING TO DO THINGS.  The other 5 were picking their noses at the spawn point.  S.V.E.R. didn’t win two matches in a row because they were good — they won because it’s really easy to overwhelm a team when half of their people are AFK.  Crap, I was holding S.V.E.R. off of our position during one match using a sniper rifle at close range, unscoped, while running.  I got five kills doing that.  Five.

This is, of course, not counting the lovely way people would drift in front of our APC when we were driving into the battlefield.  The ones who had headsets would then bitch when we ran them over, and our squad leader would say the same thing every time — “Here’s an idea, DON’T WALK IN FRONT OF THE APC.”  This wasn’t rocket science.  When you hear the loud engine behind you and you hear the horn, you get off the road.  Ta daa.

I would forgive them if they got run over once or twice.  Or if the APC was moving really fast and they couldn’t get out of the way in time.  Nope.  It wasn’t either of those things.  The APC was moving very slowly, sometimes turning, and they would walk right in front of it.  Duh.  Duh duh duh.

So, to be honest, I’m not making this post to scare people away from Raven Corporation.  No.  Not at all.  I’m making this post because I would like SMART TEAMMATES.  So if you think you’re halfway decent at FPSes and you promise not to be a complete tool… PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF CAKE JOIN RAVEN.

That’s about it.

(Also… if anyone wants to make a clan… let me know.  I’d like to make a group of intelligent Raven Corporation players. )