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When Allods Online announced their cash shop prices, the swath of complaints would have cut through solid steel.  Now, as we all know (at least those who read the news service that carries the No Prisoners, No Mercy show – Virgin Worlds) Gpotato announced changes to their cash shop for Allods Online:

 Dear Allods Community,

We are happy to announce that we will be making revisions to a majority of the Allods Online item shop. These changes will go live sometime during the week of March 1st.

We would also like to extend a thanks to all of our players who have submitted constructive feedback through email and the forums. The team has reviewed each one of the hundreds of submissions we’ve received. We’ve restructured the pricing based upon your feedback in conjunction with the data we’ve reviewed and communication with our developer. Consequently, we’ve revised pricing so that more people can participate in this feature of the game.

Thank you all for your constructive feedback and support. Please continue to send us your thoughts to allods_suggestions@gala-net.com, and we look forward to seeing you in the game!

Sincerely,
The Allods Team

As nebulous as the wording of the announcement is, this just may be good news for all of you Allods fans out there.  On the other hand (see hand reaching out of toilet in the picture above) I wouldn’t exactly call this a matter of “being responsive” to the community.  This is the same “Allods Team” that originally announced the drastic increase in prices was intentional, despite the general outcry.  No doubt somewhere back in the home office, someone on the Allods Team that holds the purse strings saw the very real possibility of the game going down the toilet and decided that maybe…just maybe…they shouldn’t flush an otherwise great game down the toilet.

Thereby hangs a tale…

And thereby hangs a tale, as the immortal bard would have said.  Imagine if you will you walk into a auto dealership, or perhaps even the home office in Detroit.  You march in to the office of the president of General Motors – no appointment, no pleases, no “mother may I” and plop yourself down opposite that is, no doubt, an expansive desk so large that you could easily build a football stadium on it and still have room left over to subdivide lots.

Pointing out of what just may be a window with a view that shows the factory below it  stretching out like a vast kingdom, You look the  CEO dead in the eye and say the following…

“You see all those red cars down there, coming off the assembly line?  I don’t care if you have already run 10 thousand of them off the assembly line, call them all back. I don’t like the slope of the roof and I want you to change it.”

No, of course, there is a very real possibility that you would have been arrested simply for trespassing.  That is, of course, unless you happen to be the government representative that has been in charge of the last two bailouts of General Motors.  Other than that,  the only way you are likely to get off of the trespassing charge is by pleading not guilty by way of insanity - and the simple fact that you just suggested changing the design of a car after GM ran off 10 thousand of the same model means you just might win your case for mental instability.

Lets take it one step further, and closer to home.

Most people are acquainted with the term “buyer’s remorse”. For those of you who are not, that is when you buy something and find out shortly thereafter that the same item went on sale.  In fact, there are many people who seem to enjoy buyers remorse because you often see the same people (and sometimes across the breakfast table on Sundays) looking through the advertisements trying to see if your recent purchase went on sale.  Some retailers have become so conscious of this that they offer price guarantees.

Now imagine if you will that you have just purchased that shiny new computer.  You know the one. That same computer you have had your eye on for the last month. Yes, thats the one…the  one with speed that rivals a Cray supercomputer and more ram than the Sahara desert has grains of sand.   You finally decided to break down (and believe me at the prices most retailers offer you would have had to have a breakdown) and you buy it.   You take it, and the second mortgage that was necessary to buy it home.  The next Sunday you are in the mood for some angst and you purposefully go looking to see if it is on sale.   The results of your search show that in the ensuing week since your purchase, the pace of technology being what it is, your brand new computer, your brand new expensive computer has been replaced by a pocket calculator with more computing power.  Later that day finds you marching into the office of the store manager demanding a refund…

Only to be told that the reason you got the computer at such a “reasonable” price to begin with was that it was on sale.  Now you realize at this point that the whole reason your shiny new computer, which is now more useful as a boat anchor, was that the unscrupulous store manager was trying to unload them because he knew that in one weeks time they would be worth a load of dingo dung. Now in the real world, if the purchase really did cost the same as a second mortgage, and the retailer under such circumstances refused to refund your money, he would soon find himself charged with fraud by the local attorney generals office so fast it would set land speed records.  In more reasonable circumstances you simply found the computer that you bought for $900 dollars went on sale the next week for $850 dollars and there are a good many retailers that would give you store credit for the difference.

But make the same demand on a nation wide basis?

Well you can just kiss that demand goodbye before the words even leave your mouth me bucko, because the result would then be “business is business.”  But what if the same demand where made of a game publisher (assuming that publisher doesn’t have the name Activision in it anywhere and isn’t headed up by Mr. Bobby Kotick).  Lets say…oh, I don’t know, lets just pull a name out of the air and say “Atari”.   The good folks at Atari know that they are in turn owned by what is (at least in many estimates) a French company that just happens to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the world.  Now they know that the people who own their company didn’t get to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the entire world by putting up with low profit margins.   Needing to make a few more dollars to reimburse what was no doubt a very expensive game to produce they decided to have a sale, and as a result offer sixty days of free game time along with it.

If this where any other industry other than the video game industry this would no doubt be considered par for the course.   But if there is one thing that the Allods debacle has given us that is that when players really do speak their mind as one and demand that changes be made they will be made…for better or for worse. 

But what if Atari didn’t back down? What if all those Star Trek Online players out there decided to raise so much hell that Satan himself would have decided he didn’t like the competition? What if they simply decided to say “O.K. everyone out of the pool” and pull the plug on the game? Never happen? Think about the game “Gods and Heroes” that was already in closed beta and being developed by Perpetual Entertainment – you know those people who were originally developing Star Trek Online – Perpetual Entertainment pulled the plug. 

I am happy that companies like Cryptic listen to thier target market; and that they are doing no matter what some detractors may say.  It’s great that game developers take action on when demands are made.  But it can go to far, because game developement by committee doesn’t work when most of the “committeed members” don’t work for the developer.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Sister Frances has an expression that has always held true…if you want to know who your friends are, ask them to help you move.  Not only has it held true, but when I first became a nun, someone I had only seen at Sunday services, someone whom I barely knew, showed up on moving day and simply said, “I heard you are moving, I’m hear to help.”

That is a true friend…

But there are many other types of friends that pass through our lives, making impressions – and to them I raise a cigar (if only a virtual one at the moment) with a cheer of “Absent friends!”.  Why a cigar? Thereby lies a tale…

One of the friends  I had once we shall call Harry Yablan, mostly because that’s his name.  I doubt Harry is reading this at the moment because when I asked Harry about the internet his typical reply was, “the internet is a place for scammers to scam other scammers.”   While I don’t agree with Harry, I will say that there was, believe it or not, a time of my life when my hands rarely touched a keyboard that wasn’t connected to a word processor – and the time in my life when I knew Harry was one of those times.

For those of you who still have an imagination, and have not been bereft of it by game developers who are wont to do our imagining for us, think of that place where you have been most comfortable.  Now add to that place a ray of warm sunshine and perhaps even in your pet sleeping in the sun.  Now surround yourself with good friends and good conversation – that was Harry’s Place.  

Harry’s place was more than a cigar shop, it was a cross roads of humanity. More, it was a symposium for conversation, wit and philosophy that even the great Plato would have been proud to call a second home.  Some people have back fences, others have bowling allies, I had Harry’s place. I can think of no other place where I would be able to spend an evening with an Air force combat pilot, the Chief of Patrolmen for the City of Chicago (retired), the commissioner of Streets and Sanitation for the City of Chicago (retired), and a rabbinical student all in the same room. Each night Harry would put on a fresh pot of coffee, cigars and pipes would be lit with carefully practiced precision and ceremony, and the couches surrounding the big screen television would be occupied by people from all walks of life.

This is the point at which some of our readers may be looking for a tie in with gaming.  For those of you who need a moral, a lesson or some such purpose other than the simple conveyance of a feeling and tribute to absent friends, here it is…

In one of the Star Trek Movies (I will let you look up which one) Spock’s brother tries to heal Captain Kirk’s emotional pain.  The famous captain immediately protests, saying, “I need my pain, its part of who I am.”  Whether memories are painful, pleasant or simply the remembrance of a feeling, they are part of who we are.  John F. Kennedy once said, “The knowledge of the past prepares us for the events of the future.”  In a very real way that includes all our memories. Like Captain Kirk said, it’s part of who we are.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

*Gets out her professional project manager’s hat and puts it on*

Good morning class,

 Today we are going to learn lessons that even long time professional game developers sometimes fail  to learn. Did you all bring your texts? Very good. Please turn to page 20 of the March issue of PCGamer Magazine.  Mr. No Prisoners, No Mercy Webmaster will you read for us?

webmaster: Yes ma’am.  The article is entitled “Serious Business”. It is part of a regular feature entitled “Dev Man Talking.” This month features Mr. David Brevik, Studio Director for Gazillion Entertainment. (I think he’s a smart man Ms. Whitefeather). Anyway the article is about “How do developers strike a balance between profit and artistry – former Diablo Lead Designer shares his wisdom.

Julie: Very good webmaster. Please  read the last sentence for us all.

Webmaster: Yes Ma’am. It says, “In the end, everyone wants their games to succeed.  Finding the balance between our pure artistic game concept and the realities of business will be the only way to create the complete circle of yin and yang.”

*Julie continues*

Okay class, pay attention. Today we are going to learn about price versus demand.  Everyone knows that factors like supply and demand affect the price a developer can attain for a given product.  In the video game industry, the supply of virtual goods is infinite.  The primary determinants of demand will, therefore be price, and of course the quality of the product.  Look at the chart I have put on the board class.   There you will see where Activision/Blizzard has priced their cute Panderan Monk pet.  Remember a month or so ago when every assho…every person and his brother flew into a rage about the price of a monk costing ten dollars? Now if we have done our studying we know that Blizzard sold enough of the Panderan Monks, that by donating 50% of the sales (which by the way some dirtballs have complained about) that they have raised $1.1 Million dollars for the Make-A-Wish foundation. The reason for this is that by pricing the monk at an affordable level of ten dollars the Activision/Blizzard corporation remained in what is called the inelastic portion of their demand curve. And what does that mean Webmaster?

Webmaster: Inelastic demand is when an increase in price causes a smaller percentage decrease in quanitity demanded.

Julie: Very good Mr. Webmaster. Now take a look at the demand curve for the Allods Online Cash shop.  Note the recent and drastic increase in prices that the developer Gpotato has stated is not an error.  Note the level 10 rune that our friend Keen from Keen and Graev’s gaming blog said cost six thousand eight hundred and ninety dollars.  Can you say six THOUSAND class?

Entire class:  SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS

Julie: Very good class, I knew you could. 

Webmaster:  Times are tough teacher, Gpotato must think we have money coming out of our ass!

Julie: Yes, that’s funny that you should put it quite that way Mr. Webmaster. Now lets look at the price demand curve again.  The Allods Online cash  shop is far into what is called the elastic portion of their demand curve. What does that mean Mr. Webmaster?

Webmaster: That’s where an increase in prices causes a greater percentage decrease in the quantity demanded.

Julie: Very good.  And with such dramatic increases in price where have the profits for Allods online gone Mr. Webmaster?

Webmaster: In the toilet with the rest of the crap.

Julie: And?

Webmaster: And unless they wake up, and pull their collective heads out of their bums, unless they have a parent corporation that is floating in cash, like say a drug cartel, they can kiss their game goodbye.

Julie: Very good Mr. Webmaster. Go to the head of the class.

Most people have heard the expression “that stinks out loud”.  If you haven’t, now you have – my mother and grandmother used to use it all the time. It’s what I call a “grandma-ism.”   Forewarned is forearmed so the old adage goes. So  here is the warning. If you are a big fan of Star Trek Online (STO) and don’t want to read anything bad about the game read no further.

You have been warned

Now I will continue for those of you who aren’t on the floor.

Say what?

What I mean is this is the point at which most of the forum trolls extol the virtues of “fine whine” (and I don’t mean daddy I want to go to Disney Land).  Ask the typical person who plays on the Klingon side (think horde for all you World of Warcraft players out there) about Federation players who pvp and you will begin to hear how we are all stupid, foolish, unexperienced, and every other denigrating adjective in the book.  The fact of the matter is that I have two graduate degrees and a 126 IQ and I am far from being stupid.  I am also not inexperienced at pvp, having been engaging in pvp in mmos since there were mmos in which to participate in pvp (some time I will tell you of the player who killed me in pvp and upon finding out I was a nun yelled “oh no I killed a nun I’m going to hell”)

At this point I should clarify for those who might not be regular listeners of the No Prisoners No Mercy show that everyone on staff here are fans of Star Trek, Star Trek Online, and Cryptic Studios. We also like the game…alot. In fact I purchased a lifetime subscription and still don’t consider it a waste of money.   In fact because  I care about STO and Cryptic Studios is why I point this all out….

When it comes to “in space” pvp Cryptic Studios not only dropped the ball, it went down into the gutter and dropped into the sewer.

Lets start by taking a look at a typical score for the evening. Note this is Tier 3.  First you will see all the damage done for the blue team on the left.  While the zeros in this case are, no doubt, from players who check “hide” when their turn comes up, this is usually not the only case. There are many times when you will see two or three players doing damage and zeros by the rest of the names.  This is the result of players who have come to embody the famous words “abandon all  hope ye who enter.”  They know, as do most of those interested in pvp on the Federation side, that pvp is no longer a place you go to enjoy yourself.  It is a place where you go for fast leveling and fast medals to get the best gear for your ship.  True there are a few valiant souls who are still stupid enough to put up a fight (my character is one of those with actual damage).

But why the utter hopelessness you might ask yourself?

Lets look at the ebra…I mean epeen…I mean damage chart again.  How nice for us, by the way, that Cryptic has furnished those interested in PvP with the bane of our existence – the damage meter.  Look at the damage done by those still trying on the Federation side (on the left). Now compare that to the damage being done on the Klingon side on the right.  A rough comparison of the ability of Klingons to do enough damage to get through Federation shields would be like someone cutting through a paper bag with a flame thrower.

Even those on the Federation side who care about pvp and care deeply have begun to give up any hope that this aspect of the game will be balanced any time sooner then the turn of the next century.  The executive producer, Craig Zinkievich, told us all he wanted pvp in Star Trek Online to be about tactics and not about a dog fight. 

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but since everyone probably knows it anyway, the fight in pvp (at least in space) in Star Trek Online is, for the most part, already decided before the game has begun. But there is another factor at work there other than merely bad pvp for the Federation side – after all, on the Federation side we still have the pve, and belive me, the pve in Star Trek Online is nothing short of Fantastic.

I pity the Klingons

Even though the Klingons can grind my Federation character in to the dirt I pity them.  Why? Because pvp is all they have. Oh sure, you can go out to the “Kahless Expanse” and complete the one pve quest (one, count it, one).  If the pvp in Star Trek Online remains as unbalanced as it is, the Klingon side, and pvp can easily become deserted.   Don’t think so? Ask anyone who has ever played in the PvP arenas in Everquest 2.  Sure they were a novelty at first.  Now the pvp arena’s in EQ2 are completely deserted.

In short, as it sits right now, pvp in space in Star Trek Online is worthless.

And more is the pity is that this is where one of the Strengths of the game should have been. The saddest cut of all, is that it doesn’t need to be this way.  The game mechanics are all there for this to be some of the best space combat pvp on the internet. Eve Online? Yes, I still subscribe. Yes I have done pvp in Eve Online. But just like a frequent guest and I discussed off microphone, when it comes to one on one pvp in Eve Online the outcome  is already decided before the first shot is fired, and as Mr. Zinkievich pointed out, no one wants to lose their ship after taking 80 hours to earn it.

Mind you we aren’t naive enough to say something stupid like “Gee the game needed more work before it was published.”   First, that is asking Cryptic to repeat the most expensive month of development to begin with.  That, and more than likely that request would have gone over with their publisher, Atari, as well as a request, “Pardon me Mr. Publisher? Would you mind if I shoved a porcupine up your ass? I can only hope that there will be time to fix pvp before it becomes a ghost town. Think that can’t happen? Ask Mythic.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Let's open the news to the back page...

“Flattr is a new thing, now in beta, from one of the founders of Pirate Bay, which would allow readers to pay for content on the Internet. It is a word play on both “to flatter”, and “flatrate”: Users pay a flat rate to Flattr every month….I do not think this will work. From the side of the content creators, this is basically the equivalent of them going round with a tin can to collect alms.” – Tobold,  My Un-Flattr-ing Opinion

Tobold’s complete thoughts on the matter (which you can read at the link) started me thinking about some of our former guests, and one in particular, Mr. Colin Campbell who was the editor for Edge Online Magazine.  One thought leads to another, as they say, and whenever I think about online magazines I also think of the exchange from the Ghostbusters movie:

 Janine Melnitz: You’re very handy, I can tell. I bet you like to read a lot, too.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Print is dead.
Janine Melnitz: Oh, that’s very fascinating to me. I read a lot myself. Some people think I’m too intellectual but I think it’s a fabulous way to spend your spare time. I also play raquetball. Do you have any hobbies?
Dr. Egon Spengler: I collect spores, molds, and fungus.

All the news that’s fit to pay for…

One of the subjects that Mr. Campbell spoke of is the trend for news coming from the internet rather than print.   In the show we talked about what is sometimes a much contested subject - whether or not quality only comes from professional news sources.   In short, quality news, editorial and reviews don’t limit themselves to places where authors are paid in some fashion.  The trend that we can all see is for magazines and newspapers to make their way to the internet from the hard copy presses.  Some, like the New York Times, are moving toward charging for their online content.

But the purview of quality journalism is not limited to the lofty heights wherein reside paid authors.  As we discussed previously on this web site, some of the best authors through history never received a nickle for their work. Big names in publishing that used to grace the streets and bookshelves across the globe, are deciding the place where all the cool kids hang out is the internet.  The fly in the ointment, as grandmother used to say, is that when the kid with the big bankroll hits the internet, they will no doubt find that size doesn’t always count – especially in the area of gaming related journalism.   The problem with gaming journalism is, of course, that by the time the print hits the shelves, it’s already old news  on the internet.  Add into the mix the opinion of the professional developers we talk to who tell us that the people they pay attention to are the bloggers, the community who spends the most time with their product, and I think most of the big kids coming to the internet, who are also the new kids, will find that charging for content will go over like a lead balloon.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
    But, she with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but she would be one
    Who wouldn’t say so till she’d tried.
So she buckled right in with the trace of a grin
    On her face. If she worried she hid it.
She tried that thing that couldn’t be done…

…and she couldn’t do it.

The version of the old Edger Albert Guest poem is from an old Dick Van Dyke show – and in this case came immediately to mind as I faced what is possible the biggest, baddest boss in all of the virtual universes anywhere.  If there was a trick to defeating this thing Jim Kirk sure didn’t share it with anyone.  This boss appears in Star Trek Online somewhere around mid tier 2 as part of fleet action.

It is the Crystalline Entity. 

The Crystalline Entity is a boss the size of a moon.  The first time I faced down this monster 20 of us in cruiser class star ships, armed with Quantum Torpedoes, and heavy phaser cannons couldn’t take it down.  The lowest we ever got it down was 28 percent and that is after working on it for a solid hour and 10 minutes.  Of all the boss in all the instances in all the universes, this one is the biggest, the baddest.  My friends…this is one bad mama jama.

First confession…

My name is Molly.  Inside my dog house I have 5, 284 slippers – none of them matching. I am a slipper thief.  I just happen to like slippers and hey, the people I own already have alot of slippers. In fact they also have 5,284 slippers, and incredibly none of them are matching either.

Back when I was studying television directing they always told us that two things really sells a commercial – baby animals and children.  Now not everyone likes children but nearly everyone likes four legged babies.  And so we start out today’s article with the confession of a slipper thief.

Second confession…

Broken Toys calls the move by EA pictured above as “Exploit that IP my lord…discreetly” (read it here)  If I may be so presumptious as to defend EA for the Briefest of moments by assuming their role..

We confess – we are just trying to make a living here.

As much as I love Broken Toys and everything that Scott Jennings writes, and as humorous as the observation is I found myself saying, “Come on Scott,  the people at EA are just trying to make a living you know?”  Now I might sound suspiciously like a Ferengi when I say “What’s wrong with a little profit?”  However, too often people forget that before anything else a video game be it console or mmo, is about making a profit.   J. Paul Getty once said “Money is only dirty when it is someone else’s”.  It used to be that if you had told the average game designer or gamer that Free to Play would be not just accepted but welcome, that you would be looked at suspiciously in the least and more probably taken behind the barn and shot.  Now Free to play seems to be the wave of the future, at least for the immediate future.   The first mmo I ever played was Ultima Online back when you could say “What is World of Warcraft” and have people reply “I don’t know” without laughing afterwards.   I think the concept of  a strategy game set in Britannia could be a lot of fun…and if it keeps some game designers and publishers in business I am all for it.  After all, the more games that are out there to choose from the better off gamers are.

Third Confession…

First Bill Roper is a nice guy and anyone who doesn’t like that I say so can kiss my posterior.  Cryptic, in the form of Chronomancer issues a State of the Game on February 9, 2010 (you can read it here) Champions Online, ask Cryptic. Cryptic says, “O.K. we confess. We’re not perfect we made a mistake. We are listening to the community. You asked for the next Champions Online expansion free and we are giving it to you.” The “Community” (those not actually playing the game and who have likely never played it because “it’s Cryptic”)  basically say “We don’t care you are still a jerk.” (those still playing the game) say “Thank you for listening.”  The simple fact of the matter is that when Cryptic had problems with their “kitchen sink patch” they explained it.  Players wanted the Revelations expansion fee, and Cryptic said here it is…free.  Like it or not Cryptic is listening to the gaming community.

Fourth Confession…

When Tobold is right, he’s right.  Here is an excerpt from his recent article entitled “Working in Eve for $2 per hour” (you can read the whole article here).

“I would say that EVE has two major gameplay parts, one being a PvP game, and the other being an economic game. With me not being interested in the PvP part, I’m looking mostly at the economic part. And I would say that legal RMT makes the economic part look a lot less attractive. At the start of the game, when your character is still very weak and has no capital to work with, you will earn a lot less than $2 equivalent per hour. Thus the temptation will be great to jump-start yourself with the 300 million ISK or so you get in exchange for one PLEX. Thus if you think of your power in EVE depending on your skill points and your virtual wealth, you end up having bought both for real money. Skills don’t go up from gameplay, but go up with the length of your subscription, thus there is a direct skill points to dollars correlation too.” – Tobold

As much as it may irk Tobold, I couldn’t agree more – he has that part of the game “sussed”.   Hard Core Casual (whom the No Prisoners No Mercy team has admittedly run afoul of on a  previous occasion) had this to say:“The major problem about Tobold writing about EVE is the same one I get accused of when writing about WoW; not playing the game.”  He called this, as you will see “How awfully Keen of you Tobold” and followed that up with, “It’s the Keen kind of entertaining if you know what I mean.”

Oh yes we know exactly what you mean when you say “keen” entertaining as in “Keen” from “Keen and Graevs gaming blog.”

The sort of entertaining that’s interesting, witty, well thought out and all around entertaining.  If I may be so bold, the major problem that Hard Core Casual has about Tobold writing about Eve is the same thing he has about anyone writing about anything…they aren’t him.  In the mean time, dear readers, feel free to jump into the Tobold vs. Hardcore Casual fray – if nothing else it is always entertaining. And to quote someone we once read, when ever we read Hardcore Casual we just have to shake our collective No Prisoners, No Mercy team heads.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Just when you think it is safe to go back on to the forums the as…er…unenlightened individuals start creeping out of the woodwork.  (One name that pops into my head is meat head, meat hook, meaty greasy hands – something like that).  In any case, try and compliment the Star Trek Online team at Cryptic for all their hard work and the trolls take it as a personal opportunity to show all around them just how horrible the game is that they are, for some odd reason, still playing.  These are the individuals to whom the glass is not only half full of toxic waste, rather than merely half empty, but for whom the glass is buried somewhere beneath a mountain of crap that would take a team of Shirpa climbers a year to summit. Hopefully the trolls will soon find another bridge to hide under and let the rest of us enjoy the game.

Along with the picture above, I also found a nice little story to go with it.  I wanted to reprint the entire story here just incase it went away from the web site I found, you can read the original story (same as below) here:

Nanny Goat Gruff and the Internet Trolls

Jan 23rd, 2009 | By Stephanie Zvan|

Once upon a time, there was a nanny goat who lived to wander from field to field, tasting the grass and bushes as she went. It was a simple life: wander, taste, chew, wander again. Sunshine and air and a million flavors were her world.

What does it mean to be top dog?

Every industry has them – I had a teacher who at one point could have picked up the phone, called the White house and the President of the United States would have taken the call.  I have known been friends with someone who was once a common sight on television, until one day she “moved on to bigger and better things”.  I heard from her years later, asking for recipes so she could “write a cook book”.  Back in the military a first sergeant threatened to shove a telephone up my ass if I hung up on him, which I promptly did – again. It seems the first sergeant didn’t like me questioning the ability of his commanding officer to bring legal charges against a soldier.  It was a good thing I did.  The first sergeant stole a firearm from the armory – not a happy little thing to do when the armory happens to belong to your favorite “Uncle Sam”.  Twenty Four hours later the first sergeant and his records were spirited away.

There is an expression in the theater that says “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up…you will meet the same people on the way back down.”  How true this is.  In a very real way being “top dog” has a lot to do with karma – both have a nasty way of coming back to bite you in the ass.

Another writer once wrote the following words to me (below). I will save the writer the embarrassment of naming him. With enough digging you can find out on your own.

“If a writer who gets paid to play and evaluate MMO games sees such striking similarities between a promotional video and a prior title, don’t you think the average gamer might have trouble differentiating?”

The writer in question obviously wanted those reading his words to take them as meaning more than anyone else’s.  Why? Because he was (and still may be for all I know) paid to write them.  Ask yourself how much weight the quote above holds.  Do words matter more if someone is paid to write them? Is a game better when it is developed with the force of one of the largest game publishers in the world behind it, or just 40 people working out of their own homes?

Many people, like Brenda Starr in the excerpt from this mornings comics (the most important part of the paper) consider the words to hold meaning, truth, or some kind of weight if they see print somewhere.  At this point we could debate how many magazines have closed up show to reopen on the Internet.  I could point out the words of a senior producer of our acquaintance who spoke to us on the subject – explaining to us how developers tend to heed the words of bloggers more often because they actually play the games and are part of the community.  In fact some of the most moving words I have ever read where by someone who was never paid to write them.  In fact they never saw the light of day until well after her death.  Now they have been translated into many different languages and more than a hundred years later are still studied. The author was a french nun, and her words were called “The Story of a Soul.”

Like that nun, someone of the nicest people we have met in the gaming industry, or any other for that matter, or those individuals whose names you will likely never see or know – the “unsung heros”.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Meanwhile back at the Tribble ranch many of the rustlers who where angry and said they weren’t going to play star trek online any more have actually “not played star trek online” any more. Of course there is also the possiblity that they decided to let Klingons be Klingons and let the rest of enjoy our game in peace.  However it works out, the den of inquity that is normally a hive of scum and villany has actually been an interesting place to go for information, especially if you take a gander at the Star Fleet Academy sub-forum here.

The most interesting revelation of late is that it is actually possible to be a Tribble Rancher in the game. All you need is a tribble to start with (the common ones drop at random…I get mine from dead Klingons).  Drop the tribble in your bank vault, leave a little food for them to eat (you can buy it on your ship with your replicator – the button is on your inventory screen).  When you come back a short while later (in my case about an hour) and you have more and varied Tribbles.  Now if the cute little gits had a market value I would be all set.  What I have done with  my Tribbles is give them to members of my away team.  The result is that when the shooting stops, the Tribble cooing starts.

There is a wonderful guide to Tribbles on the forums created by Miuramir and is available  here. In an effort to preserve said information I will also include a copy after the break.  The Star Fleet Academy forums also include links to Suircata’s Ship charts and Suircata’s Star Charts.

I have also found a little gem describing just how to create a Cardassian, in a little guide that was not, saddly,  “Stickied” at the top of the forums. I will include this little gem after the break as well.

But all is not fun and games in Tribble Town…

I am happy to report that in Tier two several times this morning the team I was on where beaten soundly by the Klingons.   Why happy you might ask?  Because that means either 1.) The Klingons are much better at fighting now or more likely 2.) The  Star Trek Online team over at Cryptic has been working at balancing pvp.  And as anyone who enjoys good pvp knows, pvp that isn’t a bit of a challenge isn’t fun pvp.

But there is a dark shadow on the horizon and that belongs to power levelers – team set your phasers on aggravation.  There is a pathetic trend I have encountered more often, and that are teams of suicide intent power levelers.  Since you get some experience for losing as well, teams of Federation players go out to battlegrounds intent on losing as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, once you are in the same battleground with  said cretins you can’t join another if you leave.  So your options is to put up with it, try and fight the battle on your own (five against one odds) or quit the game and log back on to reset everything.

The sad fruit of the power leveler’s efforts were apparent when a group of us where waiting for an instance to restart so we could fight the “Crytaline Entity”.  Before the instance reset, a rear admiral drops out of warp and makes the instance his home…Killing the Crystaline Entity repeatedly before anyone can get in a shot.  This seems to be little more than a player, having reached the upper levels found himself or herself in need of people to impress by their virtual prowess, or should I say stupidity, at having managed to buypass most of the game. Now I could care less how fast players level up, I only begin to care when they begin to ruin the game for other players, myself included, in the process. After all, this may be Star Trek, but there are still plenty of banks to sit in front of – all of which seems nearly as foolish as the spammers who ofter to play the game for me if I will pay them. 

Amazing.

I bought a lifetime subscription because I enjoy the game so much and said spammer thinks I should pay him to play the game on myaccount? Still, given enough time I am sure that the good folks at Cryptic will get the gold spammers/power leveling service spammers to crawl back under the rock they crawled out from under in the first place.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

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