Looping the Hen

More BF2, Less Civ...

Score another one for the benefits of video-gaming.

For Once My Timing is Impecable

Ebay has banned the auction of in-game items. I think this is a little bit ironic, since the sales of my two Eve Online characters elevated me to 'Power Seller' status just a few days ago. I must say for once I have good timing!

Sweet!

G-max, his brother, sister and I spent many (many) hours playing the original in the early 80's.

Let's hope it is as good (or better!) than the original!

I actually have his copy of the game at my house; I keep hoping someday to do it in place of a regular gaming session. Maybe I can convince Mama and Little B (and my honey!) to give it a whirl!

I'd Be Scared to be the Lorax Here

G, for you and all your tree-loving goodness, finally a game for you! You might need to go look up 'furry fandom' on wiki to fully comprehend the possibilities. Creepy!

Actually, let's sign up and at least try this. It can be pre-ordered Feb 1 and the beta characters can be rolled over (very unusual, and if I had to guess, they could be sold on the release date for a bunch if one chose).

Game Your Pain Away!

Honey, the list of uses just keeps growing!

For those inclined, Child's Play really is a great charity, and the folks at Penny Arcade are the definition of civic-minded gamers and set a great example of putting their money where their mouth is.

Down with Sony

Good news for Microsoft and their HD standard here.

More good news for Microsoft (and Nintendo) here.

It has become something of a ritual to miss production marks for a new console. Sometimes it looks like it is to drive buzz, such as the Xbox release last year. However, with Sony coming neck-and-neck to the market with Nintendo's Wii, they needed to avoid this.

It sounds like all Playstation 3's aren't sold out in the retail channel (either that or they greatly missed their target production), which I have to take as terrible news for Sony, as they insisted their $500-$600 price point wouldn't scare away consumers. Microsoft had a banner month for the 360, and Nintendo had a better launch than they hoped, selling more than double the number of PS3's.

I don't honestly believe any of this forbodes doom for the Sony juggernaut, but I can hope.

Firefly Redux?

There are a lot of bad MMOG's out there, but I hope this doesn't end up being one of them.

Mama B and Daddy B and Tammy and me and the Tarpster could all play and be geeks together!

A Pox Upon My house!

As usual, Tammy isn't too thrilled with my latest addictive timewaster, a little game I've seen ads for on some websites as well as in some RPG magazines. It is called Poxnora, and it is very much a cross between Collectible Card Games like Magic the Gathering (where they obviously stole a good bit of their material from), DDM, with a smidgeon of your average Role-Playing Game thrown in. I only post about it here instead of over on the gaming side as many of my friends who stop by here once in a while would probably enjoy it. And MamaB, it might be something LittleB (and maybe even BigB) might like.

The demo of the game is free, and you can play as long as you like to determine if its something you'd like to pay more for for the better options. I played all of two games of the demo before I decided I loved it. (even though I lost both) The learning curve for anyone who is a regular game player is very low, and if you ever played (or play) M:TG it won't take you 5 minutes to 'get it'.

You start by building a deck of 'runes' which are cards that represent Champions (heroes and monsters), spells and equipment. As you play the game, you build up Nora (read: Mana, or magical energy) that you can use to either deploy your Champions, cast spells on yours or your opponents Champions (among other types), or add equipment to creatures already on the board. The object is to destroy your opponents home base, called a Shrine. Each board has terrain features, such as water, lava, or cliffs which you have to maneuver over or around. (One game I managed to ground an enemy Pixie (with a spell) that was flying over lava and it poofed! Very fun!) Generally, the more mana a creature costs to deploy the better it is.

The part that I really love and which has addicted me is that whenever you play a game, the Champions you deploy during the game gain experience (a la a RPG; creatures get more experience when they win but they still get some when they lose so playing is never a waste) which you can then use to upgrade those creatures. Some creatures can only have their base stats increased (Attack power, defense power, or damage for example) while others can gain brand new abilities such as healing spells, the ability to lay traps on the battlefield, or the ability to summon other minor creatures. However, to balance the new abilities and stats, each bonus you add to a creature makes it cost more Nora to cast. Thus, even though the rune pool is only around 250 now, with the ability to customize your critters there are near endless variations in what you can field. (and face)

In the demo, you are given a set of predetermined 'decks' you can play with, some of which are pretty good. You can also buy rune packs, exactly the same as booster packs in Magic or DDM. For those who know the cost of ownership of your average collectible game know it generally takes at least a hundred dollars to field a good deck, and probably $400-$500 to field more than one competitive deck, and sometimes over $1,000 for a top-tier deck. For $25 I bought my first 100 runes (you can buy packs of 30 for as low as $8 but there are more rares and exotics per dollar in the larger pack), and was a able to field my first deck that went 4-0 in my first 4 matches I played. Had I known at that point how to trade well, I could have easily gotten over 75% of all the runes available by trading off one of my Exotics I received in that first pack. (there are 4 levels of rarity: common, uncommon, rare, exotic)

In any case, I am in for a total of around $80, and I have 2 or more copies of over 70% of the set (you can put up to 2 of each rune into a deck) and at least 1 copy of 90%. I am only missing around 10 of the 'exotics', which although are powerful generally, are absolutely not necessary to play. There is a decent trading system that allows people to barter runes or credits for what they need. The nicest part (as with most things I get into) is that my runes will probably fetch around $100 on Ebay whenever I decide to stop playing.

There is also a ranking system where you can play 'ladder' games, which increase or decrease your standing depending on whether you win or lose. In the last week since I've started I am currently ranked 213 (out of probably 5000-10000 regular players) and am 21-7 in wins/losses.

Anyhoo, if anyone is bored, give it a try and you may find you have a new game to play. Generally games take from 30 minutes to an hour to play, and each player has timed turns, so it definitely moves along. My name there is Queequeg for anyone who wants to play me!

Pox on!

Cometh the Taxman

Uh-oh.

Laptop experiences, anyone?

My newest goal is raising around $3,200 cash for a new high-end gaming laptop. I've never used anything but desktops, but some changes in my life habits are making me think a laptop is finally right for me.

I'm hoping to get around $1,200 for my other Eve Online character and $1,000 from other random Ebay stuff; the rest will come out of my regular savings. With hope I'll have it in time for Christmas.

Anyone with any advice it would be greatly appreciated! I am looking at this Dell XPS Laptop. Looks nice with a 17" monitor and 512 meg video card; I'd upgrade it to 2gb RAM. I am also considering an Alienware (also now owned by Dell I think) laptop; it has an AMD processor, but I'm not really sure which is better, the AMD or Dual Core Intel chips. It's around the same price tricked out as the Dell is. It also looks like it might have a better wireless card, which will be beaucoup importante.

I think my honey is going to get a laptop too, as she is becoming slowly addicted to the box as a device to help with everyday things instead of something mean and scary. And neither of us are good at sharing.

Anyhoo, anyone with any thoughts to share, please drop me an email as I'm flying blind in the laptop department!

I was planning on buying this game...

I don't let Sony put spyware on my PC; I certainly won't let EA try the same.

A game that costs me $60 is now going to have in-game ads targeted to me and written on my hard drive 'temporarily'? Please.

Holy Y Chromosone!

Honey, you need to join the mainstream and play more online games!

Working at Romanian wages...

Okay, so not everything goes as smoothly as I expect. Err...or even close. So much for getting rich on little people. I finally sold some custom figures for Heroscape, and at a decent rate in comparison to what I would have gotten selling them for my game. However, the time expenditure was huge and devalued the project as a whole. I've probably spent 60 hours or so working on this project all told, and the total return so far has been around $40 after auction and Paypal fees. Sounds like $.75/hour. (hey, it was $.33/hour two weeks ago...Tammy asked if that meant she could buy three hours of girlfriend time for a buck!) I could probably do better than that with a metal detector at the beach. And that doesn't count the initial outlay on supplies like photo paper, ink, and the like. So I'm still waaaaaay behind.

Still, it's taught me some good things. The best of which is how to use Gimp,(yes, I think it is a reference to Pulp Fiction) a very powerful photo/image editor, near in functionality to Photoshop. And it’s free, while Photoshop runs around $700. I'm not an expert by any means, but I'm steadily getting better at it. The bulk of the 60 hours was spent creating custom artwork. I'll write it off as a training class or something!

The other main positive takeaway is actually completing a project. Sometimes I am more like some folks in my family than I will admit. I think about doing a lot of things, but rarely follow through. From starting this project to first auction was all of 7 days, and I am a little proud of that.

Still, I probably have another 10 hours worth of work before this project gets to go on auto-pilot. When that happens I will probably make more in the $10/hour range. So to make more than minimum wage over the course of the project, I will need to sell something on the order of 150 auctions. I feel compelled to at least make enough to cover my out-of-pocket costs. Once that happens, I will actually be ahead slightly, as I will have the top-end Dremel I bought paid for by little people, as well as a nice Exacto. If things are humming along smoothly when that is done, I might try to sell enough on top of that to pay for the $400 camera I bought partially to be able to take pictures of stuff to put up for auction. (Though not just little people)

Now I can get back to some other projects that were put on hold due to budget time at work and little people! (Sorry G!)

New Economy I: Virtual Worlds

For those who have not recognized it, in the past 5 years or so gaming in general, and video-gaming in particular, has gone mainstream. Revenues for the video-gaming industry rival those of the motion picture industry. The average age of video game players continues to increase as those who spent time in the 80’s on their Atari 2600’s and Colecovisions come into their income-earning prime and drop significant dollars on what used to be a childhood hobby. They play with their friends, and pass the hobby along to their children. A single game, World of Warcraft, has become a phenomenon, with over 6.6 million players, more than 2% of the population of the US, generating revenues for Blizzard (one of a handful of premiere video game companies) of over $1 billion annually.

Video games are not just for kids anymore. As huge as the World of Warcraft number is, many times that number of US adults regularly plays online games such as Tetris, Bedazzled, Scrabble, Solitaire and Backgammon online at sites like MSN and Yahoo. Add in another couple of million who play poker online, and it is easy to see that gaming is in our blood, and we’ve proven our dedication with huge tithes to our digital deities.

In 1972, playing pong with one other player was the dizzying peak of technology. Now, that peak is more like Richard Dreyfus’ pile of mashed potatoes compared to the mountain Spielberg’s (a side note on pop culture: Word’s spellchecker recognized that I spelled ‘Spielberg’ wrong) alien ship actually landed on. The average online game (MMOG) has 2000 people playing on a single server in one ‘instance’ of a game, and gaming companies have dozens, hundreds or sometimes thousands of servers running; Eve Online has gone one step further and has single shards, or unique universes, with peak concurrent records of over 30,000 players.

Those types of numbers are easy to read and say ‘neat’, but visualize what that really means. I grew up in a town of 5,000. My high school graduating class was a paltry 189. It is hard to imagine, but more people than the population of both Tennessee and Connecticut combined plays World of Warcraft daily. The equivalent population of the entire county where I lived most of my life plays Eve simultaneously.

Is it surprising then that these digital worlds that draw such huge populations, should witness the development of vibrant and sophisticated social conventions, such as language and economics? Each of these may be limited by the constraints of each game, but they are by no means simple. That they do develop as fully functioning economic microcosms is beyond question, but let’s take a look at why. From there, we can go into how in-game stuff comes to involve real-world bucks.

Remember Monopoly? If you do, then you have the basic formula for every Massively Multiplayer Online Game (From now on abbreviated MMOG). In Monopoly, each person starts with basically nothing, and through time and effort, begins to acquire. St. James Place, Marvin Gardens, Waterworks, Boardwalk. Those were a great start and generated income if another player landed on them. However, the real magic began when you owned a ‘set.’ Boardwalk and Park Place. Illinois, St. Charles and that other purple one. And my favorites, Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues. Once you have a set you receive a bonus, and get to charge double rent when someone lands on it! Great! However, it gets even better. When you have a set, you get to put up houses, and then hotels, which generate the most income.

Online games work almost exactly the same way, even if the window-dressing is more intricate. Let’s presume you start as a lowly knight. Your goal is to acquire the best imaginable armor and weapons (like individual properties in Monopoly; like Baltic vs. Boardwalk, some are better than others) and the prettiest horse (sets of properties) and a castle (houses and hotels). That is greatly simplified and I am stretching with the metaphor, but there it is.

Just as in Monopoly, the overriding motivations for each player are all in MMOG’s as well. While little Johnny might play to win and stomp on his little sister Sara; Sara’s motivation might be to neatly line up her houses on the colored lines, not really worried whether she wins or loses. Mom and Dad play to socialize and spend time with their kids.

The equivalents in World of Warcraft and Eve Online would then be power gamers (Johnny), paper-doll players (Sara), and social players (Mom and Dad). They all play the same game, but each has an overall motivational component that it indivisible from the game; once that motivation (or motivations) dissipates, they will eventually lose interest in whatever game they are playing. The best MMOG’s are very good at pushing these buttons and maintaining or shifting these emotional drivers, in a suspiciously Pavlovian fashion.

So how does our new knight begin to acquire these things? Well, he generally starts small, killing rats (for fun, easy reading about a number MMOG’s, including Eve, check out the appropriately named KillTenRats), or goblins, or other not-very-challenging or interesting critters. Each kill grants the player a few Experience Points as well as a tiny bit of treasure, like cash, fur or bones. I’m not exactly sure where these rats get silver, but it’s best we not worry too much about suspension of disbelief at this point.

When the knight finally gets enough Experience Points by slaying the many rodents terrorizing innocent civilians, he ‘levels up’, or ‘dings’. This means the character becomes a little stronger, gets a few more hit points (how much damage he can take before he dies), and often means he can carry a bigger weapon. With all the fur and money he collects, he can go to the local merchant, or another player, and trade for or buy a stronger weapon.

This acquisition of better weapons and armor is one of the focal points of the game for many players. Of course, for those who want to nitpick, this is a much-simplified version. There are other things players can do to get Exp (Experience Points) and cash, such as going on quests, crafting items (creating in-game items such as clothing) and trading. However, the over-arching goals all typically involve increasing a player’s power (either physical or social) in the game.

Based on the conventions of one of the original Granddaddies of all MMOG’s, Everquest, most fantasy-based MMOG’s allow players to gain between 50 and 70 levels, or ‘dings’. Sound time-consuming? It is, and this leads me to the point this very long post. In the beginning of a characters life, it might take only 30 minutes to Ding, but the higher one goes, the longer it takes. Going from level 39 to 40 might take 2 weeks of playing 2 hours a day. (No ‘get a life’ comments please!)

Due to the way these games are structured, that often means much of the content (read: fun) is specific for higher-level characters. There is even a term for the often tedious, repetitive leveling of a low-level character: Grinding. Yes, it’s often as boring and obnoxious as it sounds.

Now, let’s imagine two scenarios: the first, a father who likes to play this game with his son when he can. However, while the father is at work, the son is Grinding away, and after 3 weeks the son is level 25 while the father is stuck at level 10. Although sometimes this isn’t a problem, often a large level difference makes it hard on one or both players. The father will not be able to participate in more challenging quests, while the son, if he adventures with his father, will find things too easy.

In the 2nd scenario, instead of Grinding and leveling his character, the son decides to become a merchant and spends the extra time in 3 weeks making a ton of gold and buys the very best armor and weapons in the game. Although he is still technically level 10, due to the great equipment, he can take on challenges like average level 20 characters.

In either case, there is inequity between the father’s character and the son’s, but they still want to play together. So what is the solution? There are several. However, one that becomes more popular by the day is the father pulls out his credit card, spends $50 on Ebay, and buys a full suit of Zeutronium armor and weapons, which are as good as his son’s. The father meets the person he is buying from in-game, where the weapons and armor are transferred to his character.

Now, before any gamer purists have a puppy, I am not here to discuss the ethics of purchasing in-game items for cash. If there is any interest, I could do another similarly long post on that topic alone, but it is too much of a knee-jerk subject to work in here.

Anyhow, problem solved, and the father and son set off happily again, mowing down Orcs and Trolls like Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson.

So what makes Zeutronium armor worth $50? I am probably on the verge of losing some of you who still can’t fathom anything virtual having that much value. To simplify, let's convert the Zeutronium armor to what it really is: time.

The father is really paying $50 for time. Time to socialize and adventure and laugh with his kid. If the father wants to be at the same level and power of his son, he really only has a couple choices. He can play for 25 hours to get his character up to an appropriate level, or be a trader for 25 hours to make enough money in the actual game to match his son’s equipment. So, for $50, he has purchased 25 hours of someone else’s time.

At $2/hour, does this purchase seem so crazy? Let’s assume the father is an investment banker and makes $300,000 a year working 60 hours a week. He gets paid the equivalent of $100/hour. His time is then worth just that, $100/hour. He doesn’t have 25 hours just to get to his son’s level in-game, let alone the desire, so he pays someone else $2/hour for theirs.

Still doesn’t make sense? How about this then. He pays a maid $12/hour for 2 hours a day to clean his house so he doesn’t have to. He pays his CPA $125/hour so he doesn’t have to keep his own books. He pays the lawn guys $10/hour each. He pays the daycare people $75/day to take care of his infant daughter. He pays his auto detailer $35/hour. Many people regularly pay for other people’s time.

Could the father do all of those things? Sure he could, if he wanted to spend all his free time doing so. However, he places an inherent value on free time, and he would rather spend it socializing and slaying dragons with his son, and to him that time is worth much more than $2/hour.

For those who have never considered their free time as having monetary value, think about it a little. You are here reading this blog post instead of working a minimum wage job (well, some of you may be reading from work, but you know what I mean). So I would make the argument that your free time is worth at least $5.15 an hour. More likely more. I know that after my regular job, I could work part time doing various things for at least $10.00. As I choose not to, I have to assume I value my free time at more than that.

So it’s possible Zeutronium armor is actually a bargain!

Let’s look at another example. A 35-year old Purchasing Supervisor decides he wants to play with his friends an hour a night in one of these games. However, his friends are all 40th level. Gadzooks, it would take him 300 or more hours to get to 40th level, almost a year of his available play time. In this example, the value of the game is $0 if he can’t play with his friends, and he really wants to play with them. He takes out his credit card and buys a $400 41st level character. Again, many people are thinking this is pure craziness. Really? He just paid $1.33 an hour for someone else’s time. In my book, that’s a steal.

Now, we get to one of the more interesting aspects of all of this. The dad in the first example, being an investment banker, doesn’t throw money away easily. Due to his schedule, he soon finds himself behind the power curve again in a few weeks. Also, an in-game event during those weeks has made Zeutronium even more rare than it used to be, and thus more valuable. He manages to sell the original set of armor he bought for $60, making a profit of $10, and buys a new set of more powerful armor for $100.

In the best games, in-game items are consistently valuable. They are assets, just like a diamond ring or grandfather clock. It is true that often these items lose some of their value over time as a game becomes less popular or the population of the game becomes more powerful overall or when the designers of the game introduce new and even more powerful items. However, say the father only manages to get back $40 on his purchase of the Zeutronium armor. On the other hand, he got 10 hours of good time with his son before it lost its value. His total cost for that? $1/hour (($50-$40)/10 hours). Movies nowadays set us back $4/hour. Playing pool can cost $5/hour. An amusement park can be up to $10/hour.

Who wouldn’t (or doesn’t!) pay $1/hour for quality time with their children?

I haven’t even taken into account the actual entertainment value of the game itself. We have already determined that our free time has value. Does that not mean that the things we do during our free time have inherent value as well? Let’s say I purchase a new videogame for $40, and I play it for 20 hours before I complete it and put it on a shelf. That means the game provided me $2/hour entertainment. Again, in comparison to your average movie, not too bad.

Now let’s look at World of Warcraft. Not only do I have to pay $40 for the game, I also pay a $15.00 per month subscription fee. This is another one of those things that some people may scratch their heads over. Who on earth would pay a monthly fee for a game they’ve already bought? (Never mind those 6.6 million folks who do exactly that) Assuming someone plays the game 2 hours a day, the first month they bought the game they are paying around $.91 an hour for their entertainment. However, during the 2nd month they also play for 60 hours but only pay the $15 monthly fee. Their entertainment cost has suddenly dropped to a mere $.25/hour. Anyone else know someplace other than the local park you can go to for $.25/hour? Heck, at $3.00 per gallon gasoline, even that might cost more than a quarter per hour.

I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but next to my family and my honey, my free time is the most important thing in my life. $500 or $1000 is a lot of money in terms of pure dollars; however, when you equate it to how much time you are buying, the numbers don’t seem so out of line. Not counting food or other tangible purchases, my trip to Vancouver cost me $6.00/hour, even the time I was sleeping.

And my most brutal example? My skydiving experience cost me the equivalent of $3,600 an hour, and it was worth every penny. Many, and I would venture to say even most, already spend more money on a per hour basis for your entertainment than the person who paid me nearly $1700 for a character I put 3 years of my time into. (Try to figure out the per hour cost of this one!)

Personally, I think they got a steal.

The New Economy: Prologue

More than 100,000 people worldwide make their living off of Ebay. Many are ‘game merchants’, peddlers of magic swords, virtual real estate and bags full of gold coin. More than 30,000 people (in the US) make a comfortable living playing online games full-time and selling their in-game loot, gold, or credits for the real-world variety. In Eastern Europe and Asia, ‘game farms’ employ thousands of people who instead of sweating it out stitching clothes or sweeping streets, work 12-hour days swinging cartoon axes, collecting treasure, and turning it over to their boss at the end of their shift. Most work on a quota; occasionally, the best (or the lucky) find a way to ‘embezzle’ some of it and convert it into valuable American currency.

It boggles the mind of many folks I talk to that can’t comprehend paying real money for virtual goods, or even that virtual items can have value. I hope this series of articles may give them a little more understanding of those of us who find real worth in things that are ‘unreal.’ This will be the first of a two or three-part series breaking down and explaining a cultural phenomenon that has the potential to allow many of us who have nothing more than an idea, a little faith, and a dollop of luck to live well above our means, either by fully embracing the New Economy, or using it to increase our standard of living.

The first installment will focus on the development of virtual economies: what they are, how they develop, why they work and are important, and both the opportunity and dangers they represent. The 2nd will discuss the rise of Ebay and the auction economy, and its potential to create a new middle class. We will touch on what Glenn Reynolds calls the ‘Army of Davids’, empowered individuals who ‘punch above their weight’ by leveraging technology. Everyday folks now have the ability to do many things that not so many years ago were limited to the commercial or governmental sphere.

I hope that I can get people as excited as I am by the prospect of having a huge portion of the economy run by us, by entrepreneurs, many of who are our friends and neighbors. Nowadays, no one has to accept living an ‘average life.’ This means you (and me!): Tammybaby, Lilly, Mom, Dad and Anne, Tom and Dagi, AKBar and WCB, Todd, Gribblet and DarkElf, Gibb and Saint, Tarpy and MamaB. And everyone else who may stop by! People are not limited now by high costs of owning and starting a business, by blindingly obtuse regulations, by taxes, or by ‘the Man.’ People are limited or not only by their own willingness to take a risk. And in some cases there is almost no risk involved, as we can now easily convert our entertainment to extra cash.

So let’s start with the area of the New Economy that has done so well by me: virtual worlds and their associated economies. Be warned, some of these articles will be long. However, I hope most of you will engage with me if you don’t understand something, or would like to add your insights, either in the comments, by email, or even by (gasp) phone. I hope to have the first installment up tomorrow!

The Eve S+L Crisis

This article describes a fairly common occurrence in the Eve universe (the game where I sold that character for all that kayle). The total value of the embezzlement, at Ebay prices, is closer to $80,000 than the $170,000 posited in the article. Still, not bad for a few months work.

As always, a few whiners wonder whether they can sue in the real world, or perhaps even call the police and try to prosecute a crime. Personally, I've always liked Eve because it is truly open-ended. CCP has a long tradition of not attempting to stop incidents like this in an attempt to have the game player-driven, in contrast to Blizzard and most of the other MMOG-running companies. It is immersive in ways that most other online games can only hope to be.

In the beginning it was a little hard, as many players had a hard time of creating their own 'content' as they were used to developers spoon-feeding it to them, but now it is becoming one of the more successful games and has a huge cult following. In fact, their China server opening broke records for concurrent players just a couple of months ago, and there are now more Chinese accounts than total 'Western' players.

Holy Lap Dances Batman!

I may not be able to get one G, but how I about I buy you two. I had hoped for $1300!

;) Go me! On top of that I sold a set of Little People also for another $170 or so.

Gonna be a good vacation!

And Tammy, we're getting you some shoes!

I'm alive...barely

Sorry posting has been light, I've been having some blogging ennui. Hopefully I shall overcome!

Here is what I am doing tonight...it would be nice to pay for my trip to Vancouver next month with this auction!

Not bad for something so 'non-real world', right honeybuns?

More Ebay goodness, let's say a prayer for the Little People! Tammy would miss them!

Even though certain folks hate Pokerblogging...

Let's not pass this when I'm finally winning more than I lose!

Too Many Spiders!

New post on the War of the Dragon Queen pre-release over on the other side; all non-geeks stay here!

It's Real in Its Own Way Honey

Waking up two weekends ago, I did my morning Saturday ritual: put on the coffee, check Ebay, walk around like a zombie, and feed Gruffleen. Gruff-who? That's what my lovely girlfriend (two months today!) asked me, right before she hit me with another WDYGU moment. Gruffleen is of course my Neopet, and this time the question was more 'Don't you want to spend time in the real world?'

Which of course to the tens of millions of us whose lives are spent on cellphones, working on laptops, listening to their Ipods, or watching 24 and Survivor, is beside the point. The two worlds are fused to a great extent, and inseparable. However, I thought it especially interesting as I regularly work out, run, spend time with friends, among other 'live' activities which will soon include skydiving and travelling. She felt that feeding a computerized pet was crazy, or something. I guess she has never had a Nintendog or even a pet rock.

I also thought this ironic coming from a woman who spends more time watching 24 and reading fantasy novels in a month than I do playing Neopets in a year. Escapism is escapism, no matter which poison, be it hemlock, arsenic or poisonous lollypops, one chooses. Heck, it is even big business, which several of my posts here about selling online currency supports.

So who here thinks the real world is better? Even us nerds and geeks would probably attest the real world is pretty cool, and no one I know is addicted to virtual anything. However, I would contend that our fusion of reality and 'unreality' is better than a limited existence in the corporeal world. Online I can entertain myself, learn, read, write, earn money, buy groceries, sell real world commodities, buy virtual world commodities, fight orcs, cast spells, fly enormous starships, and literally limitless other things. I would suggest access to extraordinary things is more readily available in the ether of the Internet.

Jumping out of a plane will be great, but for a 5-minute experience I will spend 8 hours driving and 2 hours training. Yes, I think it's worth it, but those type of events certaintly don't fall into place all the time, or even much of the time. And yes, I also value the 'everyday' experiences of walks in the parks, supper at the dinner table, and kissing my Honey. However, at this point, I would have a hard time giving up either aspect of my life, and I suspect much of America, Japan, and Europe feels the same.

Cash over Glory...

Well, was a good day of pokering!

I played in both the big Pokerstars Blogging tourney mentioned below, plus a $20,000 tourney I qualified for playing on Poker.com.

The Blog tourney ended up with their prizes being a lot of slots for other big tourneys, so when it came time to focus my attention, I ended up picking the $20,000 tourney (plus the Pokerstars GUI was confusing me; it's cool, but I just wasn't used to it). I ended up going all in in the Blogger tourney with Qd/10d with a queen on the board, flop was rainbow Q52. I shouldn't have even been in the hand, and the guy flipping AcQc showed me why. Ended up 909 of 2500 players.

In the cash tourney, I swore I wasn't going to play stupid like I had been, and cranked down on my game, only playing pockets or other premium hands. A couple of early good hands (including AA my 2nd hand, and a 55 where I hit my set a little later) put me in the top 5-10% of the 761 field for at least the first half of the tourney. Of course as the blinds start going up, even a good size holding can get eaten away fast. At the 2nd break I was sitting in at 49 of 49 remaining (well into the money at this point, which I was very happy about, but not so much about being in last place with 1940 chips, average was over 10000). Talked to my honey for about 3 mintues, and came back to a string of breaks.

On my Big Blind (800/1600 by this point) I called my last 340 in showing 6c4d offsuit versus a pair of black jacks and I figured I was out. 4 diamonds later my 4d won the day and more than doubled me up. I won 3 or 4 more all in's and ended up 10 out of 41 at one point in chip stack.

My luck ran out as I put my last 10k in on my AK offsuit and my opponent shows QQ. Still, I lost on a break point and picked up $200, ending up 20th out of 761! Not a huge amount, but it puts faith back that I really can play this game, which I wasn't so sure of when I got wrecked rapidly twice in a row last weekend by the Mafioaza crew. That puts me at +$56 lifetime online poker winnings, go me!

Tammy baby, let's get you some shoes!

BFD...Blogging For Dollars?

All Hail our new Poker Overlords!

So I was tooling around my new online poker site (Poker.com) and I found what seemed to be the perfect mix of form and function: The Blogger Poker Tour!

I have put in my application, so if any nice folks from Poker.com come by to certify me, greetings! Not alot up for June, but you'll notice a few posts down that is due to my evil computer dying! All is back to normal, nothing to see here, please move along.

Now I need to figure out how to go put in the little logo I need to have up in order to be eligible to play in free Blogger Freerolls. Doh.

In the Cards?

I have always wondered whether I could make a living at gaming. Once upon a time I used to think it would be by playing Magic the Gathering. Lately I wonder whether I could play poker. Usually I drop my $50 a month into my online poker account and rapidly lose it. This time it lasted the whole month (if I can go 3 more days!) and then some. I'm sitting at $227 due to my first good finish in a money (cheap money, but still money) tourney (2nd out of 188). As of this moment, counting all the times I have put in and cashed out, I am +$77 (yesterday I was around -$50).

Believe me, I understand that luck has much to do with poker, but I think being able to last long enough in a big tourney for it to work for you can make all the difference. I had 2 hands that made the tourney (well, it was over 300 hands long or more, but 2 that put me into a position to play and not get blinded out.) It was about 6 blind levels in (200/400) and my stack was sitting at around 2300 chips (everyone starts at 800), and I was about 5th stack and starting to get worried that the bigger stacks were going to start pushing me. A pair of kings let me push all in, and everyone folded but one (Ac Qs) and let me double up (to around 5600, as I got some blind money and early callers also). Unbelievably the next hand I was dealt Bullets (AA) and I got another all-in caller and ended up at over 13,000.

From there it was one of the more interesting experiences I've had playing poker. I've never been big stack in a large tourney, and I found that I could sit and wait for my hands or if I sensed weakness could buy the blinds (though I did that rarely, need to work on that part of my game). During one hand I called 3 or 4 all in callers one before the little blind with AQ offsuit. My archnemesis of the tourney (who I ended up losing to) triples the bet, and thinking he is just trying to push me out, I call. The flop comes AQ7 rainbow and when he pushes again I try to put him all in and he backs off. My two pair sticks and I am the overall chip leader for the next 20 minutes with over twice the chips as the next player (35,000).

At the intermission (play for 55 mins then 5 off), I found I had actually got into the money of my first big tourney. (19 players remained, money goes to top 20) I could have lost then and still been thrilled! I tightened up my game and grew my stack slowly by re-raising people trying to steal my blind. When we got to the final table I was alternating between 1st and 2nd stack against more than a few folks still holding on for dear life. We let them blind out and at 5 players left the table stabilized with me in 2nd. A few good plays later by the chip lead (the only player at the table playing tighter than me) and there were 3.

We played almost 100 hands between the 3 of us, trading blinds and pushing all in to steal them on occasion. To be honest, this is the weakest part of my game and always has been. I don't know what to do when there's just a couple players left; I kept hoping the big stack would take out the 3rd stack so I can make more money, but that is not to be. Luckily, we both hit a hand (finally!). It was pretty anti-climactic as I called his all-in queens with my pocket aces, and that put me back in the lead (temporarily).

I duked it out with the other guy for a good while, but he was just better than I was. When it became clear I was losing ground I called all in for $45000 with my 82 offsuit (trying to steal his blind). He calls with pocket 3's. An 8 fell on the flop and I thought I might actually take it, but he whacked me with a 3 on the river.

In the scheme of the universe $94 is not a lot to win, but it only cost me $2.50 to play, and after more than a few tourney losses gave me some hope I may have the instinct in me. I became comfortable enough with odds and playing fast that I started playing two tables last night also: one tourney table and one limit .50/1.00 table. Over 4 hours today I took $12 to 51 and yesterday went $12 to $43. (Those had been covering the bigger tourneys I was losing)

It may end up just being another one of my hobbies, but I've decided to put some effort into learning as best I can to play the game. I've bought a couple of books (Brusnon's Super System and Phil Gordon's Little Green Book) and Gordon's book so far has helped me be a little more aggressive, with some more unusual pot selection (easier in the limit game because you can't go 'all-in')

At worst I end up playing poker and making $20/day (Which is my 2006 goal for 'non-work' income) online. I am fairly certain I can do now if I just played Limit .50/1.00, and if I place in a tourney once in a while like tonight, more power to me!

Update: Not too bad, did another tourney, 220 peeps, and ended up in the money again (lol, that means I made 50c more than I paid in) at 22nd. Whee!

Deep, Dark, Pitch Black

Bethany's right, I get more blogging done when everyone leaves me alone! Or I just got home early tonight...last one!

A certain person I know has dark fetishes also...Look Tammy, your true love needs to grow up too! Keep your pants on!

Geekdom Update

For my D&D folks and the DDM folks, I know I haven't posted in a while on the gaming side. FYI, I am starting work on my DDM campaign. Go here for more details.

One of my other dark fetishes is Gilmore Girls...mmmm....

Gaming friends one didn't pick on...

My friends love to pick on me for my hobbies. Good-naturedly of course. Well, except in the case of those who feel my time would be better spent growing up *cough*...but enough of that!

Many years ago, I guess around 11 or 12 (may have been as early as '92), I met a couple folks playing cards at a little shop in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. (Magic the Gathering to be precise) Definitely not your picture of average gamers, as they both were as comfortable in a bar fight as at a gaming convention. If we could have figured out how they could do both, they probably would have.

Ed had (and by the looks of his Myspace, still has), a huge vocabulary of 4 letter words. Still, there are no people (except for maybe Eric) that I would rather have been with walking the streets of New York City at 2am (and we did that at least a dozen times or more). If they said 'I got your back', they meant it, come hell or high water.

Ed is a little older than I am while Rod a little younger. When I first went exploring Myspace, I noticed the dearth of folks over thirty, so I never thought to look for either there, though I have Googled them once in a while. Just on an off chance, I looked up one late last week, and through his friends list, found them both. They are both in Maryland doing well!

Meet Rod.

Meet Ed.

Good to see y'all again! I think I may relate the tale of the burning couch later...I bet Rod remembers that one!

You want to go on a date? Are you crazy???

Me and my friends after three weeks of no game........(Hat tip to Rodney!)

"So when do you grow up?"

I guess it is only fitting with my theory of balance that the person who said the sweetest thing to me recently also said the not-so-sweetest. Personally, I didn't think anyone was going to be able to top 'We can still be friends' for at least 6 months.

So my Match.com girl and I were out tonight, and our original plans were cancelled due to construction or solar flare or something. We ended up instead eating a great, simple meal at Cheeseburger Charlie's at Green Hills, with much dead animal flesh, curded cow milk and fried potato product. We then went to Davis Kidd for coffee and book-browsing. (Wow, that's about as good a date as I can think of, and I bet half my friends think so too!) So we wandered through the sci-fi and fantasy section, me showing her what I like, her showing me what she likes, and we park ourselves on the little couch across from the D&D books. (You all can see where this is going right?)

So I try to start explaining D&D to her, and how it's played and the like, and she stops, looks me in the eye, and says the title of this post to me.

To be honest, it took my brain a few seconds to interpret and recognize what exactly was said to me. *Blink, blink* I didn't realize that I could still be sensitive to things like this, and I could feel all of the old defense mechanisms kick in. (Those who have played D&D since the 80's know what I am talking about) Heck, AKBar makes fun of me all the time about it. However, I think it was one of those things that comes from soooooo far out of the blue it is like a bucket of ice water being poured on one's privates.

Those who know me know that games in general, and D&D specifically, are almost beyond hobbies and extend into the 'integral part of life' category. And I am as likely to give them up as I am to pick up a pack of Marlboro's on the way home from work. (*knock on wood*)

Yes, I know she didn't mean anything by it, and I know she certainly didn't intend to offend me. She is very sweet and makes me laugh regularly. But yes, it still hurt my feelings, because it doesn't just say something about me, but about many of my friends also, and about the way I choose to live my life.

Unless she cancels on me after this post, we're going out Thursday, and I should be chill by then.

I think next time I'll just ask her to make fun of my car or something.

For those ladies needing advice on how to relate with gamers (generally a very sensitive group), please refer to this post.

My Ideal Girlfriend, Take 1

Thanks to G-Max for turning me back on to the Dork Tower strip. I've been reading and laughing through some backlog and found this...even AKBar couldn't have done it better...:

Looping the Hen Games now online

Cool: Looping the Hen Games is now online. This will be particularly for my D&D group, but on occasion I'll have DDM stuff up there as well, plus any other ultra geeky entries no one else will want to read.

Update: Hmm, not sure, but seems the subdomain is automatically redirecting back to my main site. Working to fix...I'm not sure, but I think typing the url manually (http://games.loopingthehen.com/) might get one there in the meantime. Ugg...or not. Not quite sure why this isn't working. Going back to the drawing board...

Update Update: I rock! Well, no, I'm pretty sure I don't rock (at HTML) and I think I have a horrible file hierarchy system, but it looks fixed. Like a dumbo, when I set up the Looping Games blog, I told it to put everything in the /.../.../.../games folder. But of course, that was really one of my category folders (duh), so I moved everything out of my games category and put it in the gaming category, leaving the games folder for my new blog. Makes perfect sense. Really.

This one is for G-Max

To be honest, I don't know why ET for the Atari has such a bad rap. Although I never completed it, I enjoyed playing it at G-Max's house quite frequently, and he probably finished it 10 or more times I would guess. For us, it was almost like the first RPG, even if we were just a lil alien guy with a jack-in-the-box head. Although Tunnels of Doom for the TI-99 4Awas our first real RPG, ET was definitely ahead of it's time.

Ars and Escapist: Anti-Capitalist?

I found several articles a couple of weeks back regarding the evils of RMT, or real money transfer, i.e. selling in-game items or credits in MMOG's for cash. For those who know me know or read other parts of this blog know that I have sold Eve ISK on a regular basis. Although I've never done it on a large scale, it's been a decent source of income for the last year or so.

Having once been in the 'anti-RMT' camp rather zealously, I understand this Editor's Note at the Escapist and the accompanying rally cry. Having read on the issue for a while, and being on both sides at different points, I don't think I have been confronted by any persuasive arguments against it. I almost joined the flame war on this post at Ars, below was the response I was thinking of entering into the discussion. Since I don't think anyone ever changes anyone's mind in comments sections (generally), I figured I would be better off posting it here:

I am always slightly amused when I read the anti-goldfarm crowd decry the evils of goldfarming. I do understand their point of view, as I used to be a 'purest' gamer. I abhored currency selling in all its forms. I wouldn't even put an extra quarter in an arcade video game because I thought that was cheating. I look back now and wonder how much interesting content I missed because I refused to do so? I still spent the quarters, but all I ended up doing was seeing the same early levels over and over.

How many people who say goldfarming is cheating save their games in single-player RPG's just before a big combat? And how many reload and reload and reload until they make it through without losing any of their characters? One person's cheating is another person's opportunity.

One thing I try to keep in mind is that there are two sides to every discussion. I understand the anti-farming point of view, because I've been on it. However, I don't think the anti-farmers put a lot of effort into understanding the other side.

Today, I am a casual ISK seller in Eve Online. (Flame on!) For those who say that people who buy gold (or in this case ISK) 'don't really like the game', I have to say that is absolutely not the truth. There are so many people who are incredibly excited to play a game, but have such a hard time getting over one hump or another, or find the game simply overwhelming, that without the measly amount of ISK I sell them, would most likely quit the game.

I know there are many thinking 'good riddance', but from what I have found for the most part, people who buy ISK from me are good people, with good social skills, who really want to play the game. They are not buying from me because they want 'uber' anything; they just want a little help, but hate begging in-game. When I stop and chat with them for a half-hour or so about the intricacies of Eve and how I made (and have just about sold through) my fortune, they often sign off by telling me they learned more about the game in that half-hour, than in all the days and weeks prior.

The funny thing was, at one point, Eve was no fun for me. It was a grind, because I couldn't seem to get to where I wanted to be. I quit for months and months, and would come back every once in a while to give it another whirl, because I knew somewhere, there was a game I wanted to play inside its huge, complex shell. Then I'd get discouraged and quit again. One day, I was browsing Ebay for something or other, and saw minerals that I hadn't been able to acquire ingame very successfully. I bought just two lots of minerals for around $15, and have been hooked on Eve ever since. It finally got me over my 'hump', to the point where I made enough that I could sell ISK to get others over theirs also.

And guess what? I don't steal anyone's loot. I don't camp anyone's spawn. I trade. I buy low and sell high. Most of the time, I don't even leave the station I am in. You may not like it, but I sell some of those profits, and in doing so, help some people out while at the same time helping me balance my checkbook. Most of y'all demonize people who buy and sell currency, but I know 80% of you play with and are friends with people who do one or the other; y'all just don't know it. I sell to players in the largest guilds and alliances in my game; people who don't want to feel like a drain to their guild, but want to feel like they are contributing. I help them do that.

If gold-farming rules were enforced 100%, I bet the impact would be a far greater negative than most realize. Good people who could be good friends would quit before we get a chance to know them. Good ideas would never get implemented due to lack of resources. Many of you think you have it all figured out. However, after being on both sides, I have to say that at least in my case, RMT really did facilitate fun far more successfully than grinding and quitting ever did.

Sometimes people just don't get gamers...

Courtesy of AKBar, who kindly put this up on our department white board yesterday after I brought in some D&D Miniatures *G*:

Political rant at the Escapist

As I noted in an earlier post, the quality of writing at the Escapist has improved considerably, and the pretentiousness has for the most part decreased. There are exceptions for every rule.

I was doing a little catch-up on some back issues and ran across an article by Dave Thomas titled 'The Coward.' The issue is dated September 20, 2005.

The article, had it not strayed from the realm of its subject matter to vacuous and partisan political attacks on the administration, would have been a solid read. Dave is obviously a good writer; he is funny, has better grammar than most, and looks like he tries to write about off-the-beaten-path subjects. His unnecessary insertion of politics into an article about people I respect, the heroes of the US Military, utterly cancels any value his article could have had.

To be honest, I had to read many pages before I finally hit the red zone, as early on his partisanship was camouflaged. For example:

In the striptease of saloon conversation, I gave him the OK to let it all hang out. He told me how much he loved his country and how proud he was to serve. Then, leaning forward with the menace of a guy that's at least 220 and built like a vending machine said sternly, "But that doesn't mean I support this administration. That doesn't mean that I'm in favor of what they are doing."

Ok, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but I do understand that even folks in the military don't always approve of the administration's actions, even though the majority support them. However, that paragraph to me screams 'fiction'. Flowery rhetoric followed by a minority opinion expressed as if the author were expressing his own sentiments. His next few paragraphs reinforce this notion:

Then his face fell as he explained how much respect he had for the people in combat, the soldiers that were serving in the line of fire.

So I asked the question.
"How do you feel about a guy like me who never did serve?"

Without a beat, he pinned me with a stare said flatly, "Well, to be honest, I kind of resent that."

Without anger and with very few words, he told me what I already knew - I'm a coward. The only thing that makes this weight a little lighter is that I live in a country of cowards. Being a coward in America is like wearing black clothes at a Nine Inch Nails concert - it's not just a fashion statement, it's a uniform

Umm, really? I'd like to speak with this soldier, because he expresses opinions I have never heard in all the conversations I have ever had with folks in the military (Including 2 brothers, myself, my father, grandfather), and all the reading I have done about them, which in the last 3 years has been considerable. In 1000 anecdotes, letters, stories relayed by folks in the military, I have never once seen any member imply that those at home are cowards. Does it mean that in this case, talking to this writer, it didn't happen? No, of course not, he may be speaking to Pablo Paredes or one of the very few like him. But color me skeptical.

Anyhoo, by this point I'm not sure what the article is trying to say. We're all cowards? Okay, let's tell the folks on Flight 93 that. Tell the tens of thousands of folks who showed up to help in New Orleans that. I believe most people have it in them to be heroes, and in Dave's words, to run up the stairs of a burning building while everyone else is running down. What it seems like Dave would have us to believe is that anyone who doesn't join the military must be a coward, in a country of cowards. Sounds nihilistic to me, and is essentially the same as the chickenhawk theory that only those who have served can speak. It is funny that it is George Bush who actually has given our military the chance to be heroes, to rescue people from tyranny, to 'run up the stairs of a burning building.' In fact, a whole country of burning buildings, human-eating woodchippers, mass graves and rapists. Dave continues on in this vein:

Worst of all, like all the Emo kids who think acting deep means that you actually have anything inside your hollow pubescent chest, the modern American coward thinks they've got it all figured out. They don't call it cowardice; they call it the "American Dream." And only Americans seem to mix up that this dream is just the fantasy of becoming rich and famous. The American Dream is the hallucination of ultimate leisure, of fast cars, early tee times and hot wives spread out across lush backyard BBQs from sea to shining sea.

Really? Striving for the American Dream is now the ultimate expression of cowardice? Wow. So let me ask, if that soldier above wanted to live the American Dream described by Dave a few paragraphs down, would that make him a coward too? I don't know about Dave, but my American Dream, and most of my family and friends' American Dreams have, well, nothing to do with being rich or famous. Sure, that's anecdotal at best, but the author of the article provides no support for his assertion either. My American Dream is to have no debt, a wife, kids, some friends, poker every Friday night, and sex three times a week. And to retire with all my loved ones living within 10 miles from me. I don't know of but a handful of people who long to be rich and famous to the extent they call it their American Dream.

The author continues to blather on for a while about how we are all cowards replacing courage with fey patriotism and some other nonsense. It seems to me that there are more words in the article showing disdain toward the average guy (and not so average guy, as we learn that Lance Armstrong isn't a hero either, just " some super freaky human like the Flash or Wolverine,") than it does exploring what I think is supposed to be the point of the article. I thought he said he was doing an article on the military, but maybe I misread that line.

Finally, we do find some meat in the article, and it seems the author does have some talent for reviewing games.

The second most interesting thing about the game is that it's fun. This is interesting because we assume that the government can't do anything right - at least not as well as the private enterprise of the free market. So, people are surprised to find that AA is good enough that you'd actually think about spending a few bucks to buy a copy. Which leads us to the most interesting thing about the America's Army game: It's free. ...

For example, characters in the game say things like "Range walk," which presumably is something real drill instructors yell at real recruits. If you do stupid things like say, shoot your commanding officer, you'll loose rank and even end up in the brig. (Which is probably something more squad-based online games should consider.)

There is some more good stuff in there worth reading, but it doesn't last even a full page, before we get hit by another rhetorical smart-bomb:

Thanks to a war that nobody really wants to be in, but no one seems to have the slightest idea how to get out of, the Army is missing its recruitment goals by hundreds of thousands of enlistees a year. Politics aside, the arsenal of democracy is running out of floor staff. McDonald's has less trouble staffing the fry station than the Army has putting butts in state-of-the-art combat vehicles.

Hmm...does he read the same source documents the rest of us do? The US Army releases its recruiting figures regularly, and they appear in a number of places:

September’s recruitment numbers for the Army components could indicate a stronger fiscal year in 2006 in terms of overall recruitment. Actual recruitment numbers in 2005 fell slightly short of projected enlistments for all three Army components.

• The active-duty Army gained 8,710 new Soldiers into its ranks in September, exceeding that month’s goal of 8,365 by 345. Fiscal year 2005 active-duty Army recruitment goals stood at 92 percent complete, with 73,373 new Soldiers joining the force. The mission goal was to recruit 80,000.
• The Army Reserve accessed 2,208 Soldiers into its ranks during September, exceeding its goal by 190 Soldiers. At the end of fiscal year 2005, the Reserves Army accessed 23,859 Soldiers, 84 percent of its mission goal of 28,485.
• The Army National Guard gained 6,048 Soldiers in September, 98 percent of its monthly goal of 6,148. A total of 50,219 Soldiers joined the Guard’s ranks by the end of the fiscal year, 80 percent of its recruitment goal of 63,002.

The size of the active-duty Army has increased by 13,000 Soldiers since Sept. 11, 2001. The number of active-duty Soldiers is approximately 492,600. The Army Reserve end-of-year strength was roughly 189,000 Soldiers, and the National Guard’s forces numbered about 333,200.

I'm guessing Dave wouldn't want facts getting in the way of a good narrative. The Army isn't even looking for hundreds of thousands enlistees in a year (well, close, at 171k or so). For 2005, reenlistment goals were actually at 108% of goal, a strong indicator of just how much support there is in the military for 'a war that nobody really wants to be in.' Even initial enlistment was off only around 15%, or around 24,000 men, a huge difference from Dave's fantasy. If you count the additional recruitment from reenlistment, it is a total recruiting shortfall of 18,000 or so. I would venture that the additional 6,000 reenlisting soldiers also carry a ton of additional value over raw recruits due to their experience.

We go on to hear Dave drop other hard-left talking points, such as 'Bush was not democratically elected, he's a confused dog owner,' and other asshattery, including a swipe at the Governator.

So I am still wondering, what was the point of the article? Was it to truly provide us a view into the Army's marketing campaign, centerpieced by America's Army? Or was he looking for an editorial soapbox? You can decide for yourselves, but I'll put my vote on the latter.

Okay, that was too long, me and my cowardly dreams are off to watch Smallville!

MMOG Customer Service: Good For a Change!

I have to say that although in the beginning CCP (maker of Eve Online) was a little confontational or secretive about issues (as many game-makers are), since after the first 6 months or so, they have consistently and openly dealt with problems far better than any other game company I have dealt with. The following is an email I received from CCP today and an example of what I mean:

Dear Toby Truman

We have reason to believe that some account passwords may have been
compromised. Therefore, to fully ensure protection of your account, we have
changed your password to:

username: **********
password: *******

As this is being sent through unencrypted e-mail, wed like to ask you to
proceed directly to our Account Management site (https://secure.eve-
online.com/login.asp) and change
your password again to an all new password. This is to further minimize
the risk of security breach

We want to emphasize that we do not store credit card information,
the only risk was concerning password usage and subsequent abuse of the
accounts in question.

Remember: CCP will never ask you for your password.

We thank you for your patience in this matter and deeply apologize for the
inconvenience this has caused.
The EVE Support Team

Clean, no BS, just the facts, an apology, and a fix. I like it.

Good Answer

This is the response I received from the vendor in response to the letter in my prior post. I'm pretty happy with it, and it conforms to how I like my vendors to respond to me and my employer if there is a problem: accepting of responsibility, statement of how they are willing to fix the problem, and offer of reasonable recompense. I am pretty sure we'll work out something that is a win for us both!

This is great. First off let me start with we are very sorry that this happened and are willing to make it right. I have a new shipper and yes if we are going to ship it Priority for free then a free priority box should have been used. The one problem I do have is that (and I know you didn't come out and say it) is we would never open the box and re sale it. Your box was pulled off the self and shipped directly to you un tampered. We do want your feedback and are willing to try to make it right, within reason. Our police is that you can return the product for a full refund or replacement that would be shipped in a box. We normally do not pay for the return shipping but this time we would for you or you could just put return to sender on the box and drop it in the mail. My opening statement of this is great refers to your commitment to communicating instead of just leaving -feedback. We want to make this right and would like to keep you coming back. Once again We are sorry. Jeremy Owner

Buyer Beware!

I very rarely consider leaving negative feedback on Ebay, however this is one case where it was a very close thing. To be honest, the tendency for folks to leave negative feedback in return (even though I paid for my item immediately and did everything a buyer should) is the only reason I won't. However, below is the letter I sent to Neverland Comics, where I bought a D&D Miniature Starter Set:

Ma'am/Sir,

I recently decided to try out D&D Minis. Whenever I am thinking about getting into a new hobby, I typically do a bit of research, as I am one of those that goes 'all out'. I purchased on Ebay a case of Giants of Legends and one of Aberrations, as well as Underdark Cases from another website. I also purchased from Neverland Comics an Aberrations Starter Set. I liked the fact that you had a good price with no huge 'shipping markup' like many Ebayers use.

However, when I received my product I was appalled. Dungeons and Dragons Mini's are a 'collectible', and part of a collectible is the packaging of the product. When I received my purchase and saw that the packaging was used as the shipping container, and that the box not only had labels all over it but was also damaged, I was fairly upset. (I tried to imagine reselling it: 'D&D Mini Starter pack; box is damaged with labels over the entire front image, please bid!) Also, with the way that the item was packaged and taped, there was no way I could tell whether the package had been opened prior to it being shipped to me. (I am not implying it was, but I am unable to determine one way or another). I have read stories of unscrupulous folks opening boxes and resealing them and selling only the ones with a cheap rare.

I guess what I find most disturbing is that with the $3.85 Priority Mail Neverland Comics used to ship the item, you can use, for free, one of USPS's Priority Mail boxes. As a large company with thousands of feedback and probably 10's of thousands of transactions, I am not sure why you would not take advantage of free shipping materials from the United States Postal Service. Even if using a container bumped it up to a 2lb package, I would have preferred to cough up the additional $1.05 for shipping than to receive the item as I did.

I am not going to leave negative feedback, as I know that typically leads to retaliatory negative feedback; however, in good conscience, I can't leave positive feedback either. As a company where most of your transactions are larger than mine, I don't know if this letter will do any good. However, I hope in the future you will package other folks' collectibles more professionally than mine, and realize that it is not only the contents of a box that make something 'collectible'. If I hadn't actually planned on opening and playing with the figures and instead wanted to collect the item, I would have been even more upset and most likely returned the item.

For full disclosure, I will be posting this letter on my weblog, www.loopingthehen.com, and will be glad to post, in full, any response you may send back.

Thank you for your time!
Tobias Truman

Just FYI, to make matters worse, I received the Giants of Legend Case prior to this shipment by 2 days, even though I ordered it 4 days after this one.

Magic Man!

Wow, I haven't been very good at Magic in quite a long time. (in comparison to the Online folks) I've won two straight drafts today, 12-1 in games. I had a near 1900 level player berate me for how horrible a drafter a was, in some colorful terms, as I beat him 2-0.

My Limited rating up to 1742, go me! Drafts are free today other than the cost of boosters, which I'm up 2 from when I started the day. I traded in for a live Darksteel set yesterday, I'm hoping to finish out a Champions set today. (probably not, unless I manage to pull a Cranial Extraction)

Whee!

Update: That's more typical.;) Went out in 2nd round the last 2 drafts. Still not bad, but puts me at 8-2 in matches and 16-5 in games for the day. I opened 12 boosters and it was free to play all day; I also won 12 boosters, so I ended up way ahead. The best cards I drafted were Kagemaro and Keiga, the two together are around $10 on Ebay. Not a bad way to waste a day.

PrettyPonyLady to the rescue

I found this rummaging around a few weeks back, and saw it again today referenced on another site. Most people may not find it funny (or even understand it), but I laughed out loud the first time I read it.

Eve Rising

There is an interesting article about Eve Online in the Escapist this issue. Although some of the nuts and bolts are a little different than reality (according to the founders of ISS), it is mostly on target. I don't generally read the Escapist (though many regard it as a good e-zine) as I often find the writers much too fluffy and self-aggrandizing for my taste. This article though, and another I glanced through this morning, seem much less so than I remember.

Maybe I'll look at sticking around Eve a little longer; its average player count online at any one time is up almost 50% in the last 6 months, and it has received a ton of positive press in the last few months or so.

Update: I take it back. After reading the last couple of issues of the Escapist, I don't see any of the writing styles that drove me away from it in the first place. There are a lot of interesting and well-written articles. I'll keep an eye on it from now on!