21 January, 2012

when present tense gets strangled in the woes made of our future foe scenarios

I swear to you, my jaw has just dropped completely off my face. WHY, why why WHY do people do these things?!?

And "Because Skyrim" is no longer an acceptable answer!

So, a new Evony bracket-ad popped up on one of the sites I went to today:

(from the Games album)

So...granted, this is a composite image (noticed after the fact I hadn't quite lined everything up perfectly, argh) featuring both sides of the braced ad background. Understand that, even as wide as I could get my screen to display, I couldn't get both sides of the complete game name.

But does that really matter? It has the three signature focus points of nearly every Evony ad:
The problem? Actually playing in the Evony game world, you never see the girls again. They're bait-and-switch for standard top-down castle tanking, like Lord of Ultima, save that Lord of Ultima never seduced anyone in by ads that indicate lots of semi-naked women calling players "My Lord" in breathy seductive voices.

And even worse? They weren't the first, they're not even close to the last--as competition, they've got War of Legends, AQWorlds, 8Realms, the aforementioned Lord of Ultima, Dragons of Atlantis, Illyriad, down to such low-tech 16-bit games like Castle Defender and Castle Wars--most of which are free-to-play, or planning on heading that way soon. (And believe me, there's tons more I'm not mentioning, because frankly, no one has that kind of time.)

And that's not even the worst of it--trying to game the lust quotient of young male gamers (they hope with money), as well as photomanips of stock porn models (I'd suspect without paying for the original shots, and no, that's been proven since 2009) and above everything else, is so closely modeled on Civilization that it used to be called Civony. The hell?

(Update: apparently LOCO will be giving Evony serious competition in the cheesecake ads contest. And, if you take a look at their trailer, it also seems like your prototypical Asian MMO--no explanation as to why some characters are made of boobs and others are [fairly] modest [but then again, they find a way to make that creepy, too]; no explanation for the hairstyles; no explanation as to why some swords are longer than the fighters using them and others are cartoons, even down to hair colors and spiky Sonic-hair protrusions. So we're back to the hell, people.)

Video game characters apparently fall into fugue states with great ease.

And there's another Marketplace fail, and this one is bizarre. "PE", just that, those two characters, changed a listing without a single hint of adult content into an adult-listed item. So what are the Lindens trying to prevent? "Penis"? Well, sure, but that's automatically an adult listing anyway. "Pee"? Okay, but that would also be understandable as an adult listing in the first place.

Anyone feel like testing if it's just 'pe' as a word part, or would it scotch other words? Like "pen", say? Or "pencil"? Or "peerless"? How about "pew" or "peril" or "pentacle" or "pendant"? How far does this go?

Apparently Congress now has the power to re-copyright public domain works. Yeah, I really have nothing to add to that that wouldn't be more baffling. This pairs rather unfortunately with

Russia wants to build a permanent moon base. I'm fine with this. Not only because we need to be in space--NEED! To BE! In SPAAACE! People, get on this--but because I've read so many dystopic future tales that feature a Russian moonbase. So to my way of thinking, it's another step towards...the FUUUUTURE!

I am sorry for the potential mental scars from these next links. I'll make them quick. First, the chibi Disney princesses, which scare me to death; then Disney-inspired (apparently) wedding dresses; and finally, Disney princesses of the Sith.

And I leave you with the "Dark Water" carpet collection. Yes please.

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hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...