tracing lines to what connects me and binds me to (pt. II)

Picking up where we left off...

[Help] Crimson-Darke: Because they made a product that millions wanted to use
[Help] Crimson-Darke: That is why they are number 1

True, and even with their flaws, companies like Blizzard are success stories that all game companies want to have. They want their game to have the unpredictable, magic something that makes millions want to play that game over all others...at least for a while.

[Help] Metal Raven: I don't like Blizzard because they don't seem to grasp the concept of "Our customers got us to where we are now, why is it a bad idea to gouge them and throw away our core fanbase for the crowds that give us more money"
[Help] Ambient Light: You mean a product that's been done in dozens of iterations before?
[Help] Metal Raven: They got to where they were because they disregarded everything their core fanbase said in favor of the crowds that said "we have more money!"
[Help] Firebomb: And they know it, and they treat you like it. "We're the ebst. You wanna leave? We don't care. We have millions of you.
[Help] Temporal Surgeon: Why do people always beeline for "jealousy" to explain why people dislike something? Jealousy only occasionally factors in to complaints about something

Yeah, that confuses me, too, but it's another common understanding trope--"You don't get this thing/you're talking down this thing, so you must be jealous of it". That doesn't always work, yet a lot of folks fall into this conventional thinking rut anyway.

[[Help] Temporal Surgeon: Since we're playing armchair psychologist I strongly suspect people claim "jealousy" in order to try to summarily discredit complaints and act like they're doing nothing wrong

I think that's a fair assessment, too. It's always easier to shift blame; some folks are very, very good at that. (It's my biggest personality flaw, I openly admit this--it's very easy for me to shift blame, and it's been the constant struggle of my entire existence to accept when I'm at fault, keep that fault, and apologize if I need to.

But it's far from easy, and I'm speaking as someone who (possibly overly) analyzes her actions. What about everyone else, who usually don't bother--or don't have the life skills to analyze their own actions, anyway?

[Help] Damgun: Bliz WAS a great company. Now they're just a division.

Of who?

[Help] Third Discipline: And if they did, so what? Why hate them for it?
[Help] Temporal Surgeon: Third Discipline - What people are doing here isn't "hate." You are throwing out ad hominem attacks like it's candy to try to shut down discussion.

This happens a lot, too.

[Help] Third Discipline: Who's devils advocating? All I asked is why you guys are wasting time hating on a company when all you have to do is simply not pay them money. Like I do.
[Help] Third Discipline: Learn what ad hominem is. I haven't insulted anyone
And, as with every internet discussion, the conversation has turned from game debate, to actual debate debate, with tactics and definitions. You'd think folks would have tired of this long ago, but it keeps coming up.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: People here aren't "hating" or "jealous." They are making some pretty reasonable criticisms of Blizzard.
[Help] Metal Raven: There's honestly nothing to be jealous about when it comes to blizz. Are they rich, rolling in money and arguably doing fairly well? well, sure.
[Help] M'rtin of Mars: If this argument gets any more meta it'll start eating its own tail.
[Help] daedrius warbrand: and there goes help chat again, lol

Oh, it was there long ago.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: Ad hominem is not an insult. Ad hominem is an argument that targets the credibility of someone on the basis of some personal attribute.
[Help] Vibrobeast: ok fine. they somehow turned gold into paper
[Help] Metal Raven: I'm bowing out of the argument and going back to actually helping people :p

You are wiser than most of us, gentlebeing.

[Help] Third Discipline: You are correct, "I wouldn't trust Blizzard with my granny's ashes" isn't hate, it'
s just a legit argument
[Help] Metal Raven: Sure [Help] Third Discipline rolls eyes
[Help] Touchup: Yes--can you guys go argue this in a private channel labeled "Debates Etc"?

Wait, we have that channel??

[Help] Rita Ramjet: I don't think CoH is going to last, its just another WoW clone.

And now we've reached the level of players trolling the channel. Because, seriously, that's not even close to accurate. While both games premiered the same year, City of Heroes launched in Aprille of 2004, with WoW following in November.

[Help] Touchup: *tabs out of help before eyes bleed*
[Help] Vibrobeast: o.0 CoH came first
[Help] Wrath Talon: coh is a wow clone?????? since when????
[Help] Ambient Light: Rita, I... I really hope you were being sarcastic there.
[Help] Rita Ramjet: Wow was the first MMO

Not even close to close. Mazewar was the first graphical-based cooperative experience, being introduced in 1974, but it was pretty much cable-spined to the early ARPANet, and was close to being another form of online bulletin board, really. There were various MUDs in between, which were, again, essentially just online roleplay bulletin boards. The first quote-unquote "real" MMO--in sense of scale, at this point, the "massive" in "massively multiplayer role-playing game"--was Neverwinter Nights, which premiered in 1991.

[Help] daedrius warbrand: ...... don't take the bait

Yeah, because seriously, they have to be trolling.

[Help] Wrath Talon: Rita stop trolling
[Help] Rita Ramjet jiggles the bait

And now we have the admission.

[Help] Third Discipline: I'm not talking about legit or people talking about why they don't like a Blizzard product. I'm strictly talking about people who say things like "I wouldn't trust Blizzard with my granny's ashes". If you have legit complaints, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking about those who simply hate.
[Help] Damgun: I'm sorry, but Pandara or Pandarin or whatever is worthy of a good mocking.

That's actually a fair point.

[Help] Damgun: That's like saying every FPS is a Wolfenstein clone. There is no MMO quite like COH.

*snerks* No, but seriously, that's just an amusing concept. What if everything was a Wolfenstein clone? How often do we have games that are now throwing back to the days of the side-scroller? Both Minecraft and Trials: Evolution have player-made maps that make both games side-scrolling--to a limited extent in Minecraft, a much larger extent in Trials.

[Help] Techpoison: what clone do you call champions online?

And that one gets weird, because Cryptic--the company that runs Champions--sold off City of Heroes to NCSoft, who now runs it...but then ran off and created Champions. So...in essence, Champions is a clone of City of Heroes.

tracing lines to what connects me and binds me to (pt. I)

Somewhat in response to the news that Blizzard's North American servers had been hacked, the City of Heroes team installed a pop-up that warned to keep player information secure, and change passwords often. Of course, this caused some controversy for those who didn't know about the hacking of Blizzard's WoW servers:

[Help] Aeon Emperor: what recent events caused the personal info popup?
[Help] Fire-kissed: Blizzard lost a bunch of personal details
[Help] Fire-kissed: To hackers
[Help] Fire-kissed: Nothing to do with NCSoft
[Help] Aeon Emperor: ok. thanks.
[Help] Firebomb: If you think Blizzard is gonna be secure with your personal info...then you're gonna have a bad time.
[Help] Demonlord Mephiles: it's just in case you played WoW and use the same password on both games
[Help] Bonnie Beatdown: really makes you want to use their real money auction house now doesn't it
[Help] Kneecapitator: I wouldn't trust Blizzard with my granny's ashes, much less my credit card number.
[Help] Third Discipline: credit card info was not compromised

Well, that's actually tricky. Non-matching encryption-secured passwords were compromised, along with identifying information (including emails and security question answers) for credit card data, so...I think that's about 50/50. Actual numbers? No. Everything a thief might need to change your security question by use of your email? Seems likely.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: I thought NCSoft did suffer a breach
[Help] Vibrobeast: yeah. once that annual pass is over i'm done with wow.
[Help] Firebomb: No, just your billing adress. I'd sooner give a stranger my CC number than my adress.

Not entirely sure that billing addresses were in the data grab, but bank information was. So again, I'd say that's about 50/50.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: anyway I wouldn't trust Blizzard with personal info anyway but in a pretty dramatic way anyone who plays WoW trusts them with a LOT of personal info due to Warden
[Help] Demonlord Mephiles: maybe this helps to pry a few players away from wow
[Help] Kneecapitator: They don't need help driving off their own players at this point, really.
[Help] Damgun: How have things been going since the whole panda jumping the shark thing?

Yeah, about that...Watching the official World of Warcraft trailer for the Pandaria expansion makes the class seem epic beyond all boundaries...at least until 1:37 in, where the first Pandaran is revealed. Almost instantly, though, an entire slew of Kung-Fu Panda parodies involving the class arose on YouTube, and even now, it causes a lot of head-shaking, both from those who play, and those who don't. The news that Blizzard was widely hacked--even for Diablo information, not WoW info specifically--was pretty much just the cherry on the rancid sundae, frankly.

[Help] Ringmaster Diablos: Weren't pandas always in warcraft though?
[Help] Vibrobeast: they jumped that shark over 10 years ago. seemed fine for awhile.
[Help] Kneecapitator: No clue, quit back in November and never looked back.

I suppose that's one way to deal with the problem, but it seems somewhat severe. And yes, to answer the first question, Pandarans were in WoW before, but never as player characters. They were always these round, generally happy mockeries of Asian culture. It's just that with the new update, they can be round mockeries of Asian culture that players can play.

[Help] Temporal Surgeon: I tried playing WoW a few times. It seemed like an OK game and (at the time) a lot better developed than CoX on a number of fronts but a huge amount of people I encountered were completely socially retarded

That, too. Just like any other wide-spanning MMO, there's a lot of folks who are there just to kill things in any way they can--and some of those ways include insulting other players, sexually harassing female players, and in general being utter complete idiots online simply because they can. WoW isn't the hate-spewing visigoth of stunning emotional upset that games like Call of Duty or Battlefield can be. (And I still remember what happened to Anita Sarkeesian when she dared to use Kickstarter to fund a series of female gaming tropes for public dispersal. And do I even need to bring up Borderlands' "girlfriend mode option?)

[Help] Third Discipline: So what is it about Blizzard that attracts so much hate? It almost has to be jealousy or something, because I generally don't get upset about companies I just don't care about.
[Help] Vibrobeast: then they literally defaced the diablo franchise

Oh, in so many ways...

But I don't think it's jealousy, actually. I think it's comprised in equal parts of the filtering gloss of nostalgia, combined with what folks believed about the Diablo property, itself.

While there are a lot of games (more than I can even go into) that feature dystopian futures, Diablo managed to find a way to combine leveling, gear advancement, and character interaction with the "it's all going to end in tears" mentality--and I won't lie, something about that combination was magic, because the first Diablo game was insanely popular. Then came Diablo II, and the introduction of Battle.net. Now, we had a bigger world to play in, more options, and we had two forms of playing with friends--locally, via a LAN connection, or online with several other players. (I've played Diablo II on LAN mode, but never played Battle.net--I favored a mod that was legal--basically, a way to keep both life potions and mana potions at the same time I could keep large and small combined potions--but when applied to a Battle.net connection, would revert everything to either large or small combined potions. I wanted to be able to carry all three types if I wanted to, so no Battle.net for me.)

Between Diablo II--and its expansion, Lord of Destruction--and Diablo III came several intervening years that saw the development of World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and several other games from the folks at Blizzard. This--undeniably--influenced the art direction for Diablo III, and that was my single biggest complaint with the game.
Unfortunately, there are other complaints at this point, like the always-connected-to-the-internet angle, and even worse, the fact that there's no desire to replay after reaching endgame. The first is bad enough, but the second is going to cost Blizzard revenue, community good will, plus future sales of both the Diablo product, and new games or expansions they may come up with. The second is the death knell, frankly.

[Help] Firebomb: Because no one understands how a company with pisspoor customer service can be #1
[Help] Victory Bolt: To be honest... I have never gotten any good customer service from Blizzard when i played for a few years..I think that's where the bile comes from

Well, that's part of it, too. But hey, Second Life has abysmal customer service, too, and...oh. Right. Yeah, that's a really bad thing for a major company.

[Help] Calefact: Sometimes people come into this game expecting something like WoW, which can cause resentment in the vets

Isn't that the problem, though? Because I'm sure some did come in expecting a WoW-like environment. And that's exactly what they got.

But the bulk of Diablo fans wanted nothing like WoW. They wanted something like Diablo--dark, moody, dystopic, where the fighters, the mages, and the rogues were roughly equivalent in size, and only the boss mobs were larger, to enhance that sense of power.

What they got? HUGE men with brawny muscles, looking like overinflated bodybuilders; willowy, vacuous females; and insanely oversized, brightly colored monsters to fight. Yeah, that's WoW, not Diablo. And people protested.

[Help] Vibrobeast: it aint jealousy. they just dumbed their design philosophies to cater to the xbox live crowd
[Help] Wrath Talon: pls dont turn this game into WoW, i fled from WoW to here because it is casual
[Help] Vibrobeast: ...you don't know about the xbox live type of gamer do you? ...i live with one. :(
[Help] Vibrobeast: you DON'T want to play with them.

Is XBox the new AOL? I don't own an XBox, though I've watched a lot of the Achievement Hunter vids on their current crop of XBox Live games. Maybe it's just about open accessibility--at the risk of sounding elitist, maybe big MMOs and XBox Live have this in common: the fact that we don't have to be smart, polite, tolerant, respectful, compassionate or even stable to play games with other people. We just have to be breathing and have the time.

And I'm thinking since this one's running long, I'll stop it here and make a second half.

I want a stainless steel road stretching off to the sky

The Behind the Steam blog published an official review of the 2 Cent Show album by Steam Powered Giraffe, and overwhelmingly it's positive. Which is good news indeed!

[Help] Kneecapitator: So what's with this popup as I log in? "Given recent events", watch your info? What happened?
[Help] Hexman: wow hacked... again
[Help] Scourging Gale: presumably a bunch of gullible nublets have given their account info to scammers
[Help] Scourging Gale: oh
[Help] Scourging Gale: I stand corrected
[Help] Hexman: I should say blizzard since it wasnt limited to just wow

In brief: this news has been everywhere at this point, but Blizzard got hacked. Specifically a lot of matching information the hackers can use to access user accounts for Diablo III and WoW (that we know of), so that they can get in to those accounts and change those user passwords.

It's a huge, huge hack, and it's pretty grim in a lot of different ways.

[Help] Kneecapitator: Glad I quit when I did and decided not to buy any more of Activizzard's crap.
[Help] Kneecapitator: Then again, my bank blacklisted them years before that, I was playing on timecards from Wrath on.
[Help] Hexman: I want to return to the days when I could go to the store, buy a game, go home and just play it, I dont want to log into some server, or give my CC# or create an account, I just want to play what was in the frikkin box that I spent 50 bucks on

Yeah. Those were the days.

[Help] Ettu?: amen Hexman
[Help] Hexman: hopefully they will see that you cant have accounts hacked if you dont require your customers to HAVE accounts
[Help] Hexman: with the exception of MMOs for obvious reasons :P
[Help] Kneecapitator: Back when copy protection was "What's the third word in the second paragraph on page 15 of the manual? XD
[Help] Sgt. HellTouched: I was going to say...
[Help] Hexman: I dont believe in copy protection, it simply does not work.

Well, yes and no. Back in the days they're talking to, "hacking" was pretty much "we photocopied this sheet with the flag colors and country names on it, use it when you open the program". Things have gotten a lot more technical since then.

[Help] Hexman: and adds a cost to the product you purchase

Always.

[Help] ThornyDevil: it's like Jeff Goldblum said "Nature finds a way"
[Help] ThornyDevil: except with piracy
[Help] ThornyDevil: and thus better

Or worse, depending on your point of view.

Turning to more personal topics, what do we do when the thing that gives us joy and delight turns into anguish and pain? All the work of our hands turned to dust and splinters, ashes and thorns? If we're anyone else, we start over somewhere else, somewhere that doesn't burden our heart more than it gladdens it.

Ah, but I've always been stubborn.

So I listen to the demon's music, and dance with the serpent of honeyed tongue, and vaguely resent the moon while I wait for a dawn that may never come. It could be a very long night indeed, and I still have no answers. I thrash inside the cage I helped to build and wonder when I'll feel free enough to fly through the open door.

Maybe flight is not what I need. Maybe it's not the method of movement that's important, as much as the desire to move. Maybe it's less about wanting to stay, and more about wanting to leave.

Or maybe I'm still falling, and I need to hit bottom before rising again. I just hope I figure out where I need to be, before I crash through bedrock.

I've also realized something else. Over the past five months, I've been reacting instead of acting--to pain, to hurt, to confusion, multilayered and dizzying in scope. And rather than face up to the things causing that hurt and pain, I've been trying to shut them out entirely, desperately seeking distraction, oblivion, blindness...thinking that if I can't see it, I won't hurt over it. Out of sight, out of mind? Or at least pushed far enough away that I start to forget entirely.

But I'm not that lucky. I never have been.

The thing is, I can't do that anymore. I mean, I cannot keep carving bits of myself away, in the hopes that my losses won't be quite enough to kill me before I heal.

And I've always healed slowly.

What I've always done is not the way I get through this. And just because I don't see another path doesn't mean there isn't one. It just means I've been standing in my own way again.

So we start small. Still not up for the rounds of social engagement, but I might show up in Cubidon now and again. And I'm going to make another stab at getting the writing off the ground again. Building things, even if they're just for me and never for retail. Making an effort, as hard as that seems, because waiting for things to feel less stressed and strained is also not working.

At some point, we have to realize that we fell into the hole on the path all on our own, and no one is going to come back and save us. That's not the point of falling. We have to save ourselves.

And if it's hard climbing out of the hole, well, maybe it needs to be. Maybe that will convince me not to fall again.

Or at least, not fall quite so far next time...

and I dream of the sea, broken machinery

"We have found an unknown branch of the tree of life that lives in this lake. It is unique! So far we know of no other group of organisms that descend from closer to the roots of the tree of life than this species," study researcher Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi, of the University of Oslo, in Norway, said in a statement.

Really amazing. And if new scientific advances prove out, they'll be able to cultivate already discovered strains of eukaryotes, and see if they fit this new discovery's pattern.

I came across this post yesterday, which is essentially an open letter to Wizards of the Coast, who are the current publishers of Dungeons & Dragons. And it's a really, really good letter--if you're interested in paper gaming, or even gaming as women in general, it's well worth the read.

But it started me thinking about portrayals of women in gaming, in general. For example:

(from the media album)

(You can see the huge version on Diq's wallpaper site, or you can see more examples of game art on Runes' official site.)

Push aside anything you might know about the game. What are you looking at? Gladiator on the left; wizard on the right; some sort of sorceress in the center. So how are they attired? The gladiator has full golden armor--full helm (with what looks like a dyed horsehair-brush crest), detailed cuirass and pauldrons, vambraces, relief-work tassets, cuisses, kneeguards shaped like the heads of lions in full roar, greaves, sabatons, a relief-work groinguard, and a circular wooden shield. Oh, and those silly little silk pieces fluttering from the groinguard.

Likely he also has a full chain hauberk--it's not visible, but we do see chain hose, so it's likely.

He's carrying at least a broadsword, though more likely a longsword--it looks long enough to qualify as a two-handed cavalry weapon, but this is a fantasy realm, so it's likely enchanted to make him capable of swinging it with one hand, on the ground.

On the right, some sort of court wizard. He's holding an orb of fire and a very ornate staff; there's no visible runes on his robes, but let's assume it has all that metalwork because metal's easy to enchant. He doesn't really need armor (and in many games, wearing armor actually drains a wizard's endurance, so it's in their best interest to ditch as much weight as possible), but he's got a hood to protect against inclement weather, a full robe to cover him in all conditions, and sturdy walking boots.

Which brings us to the sorceress. It could be an energy orb she's holding, or a charged ball of water waiting to be thrown at an enemy to distract or destroy. That doesn't so much matter as what else she's wearing--or not, as the case seems to be.

This is essentially a bikini with ornamentation. For some bizarre reason, she has full greaves, detailed in some white metal and brass with wings--or perhaps, that's white leather. Looks more like enameled metal to me, though. Then, above that, she's got purple enameled pauldrons, embroidered gloves, and...um...what else is she wearing? She's got sort of a companion piece to the wizard's belt, so we'll go with the theory that that's a runestone in both, keeping their energy charged and contained. But above that, she's pretty much got a corset comprised of a center piece (possibly to protect against direct chest strikes, but I have doubt) and several metallic strands. You'd think those would start to cut into her torso if she moved at all during combat.

Above that, she has a formed breastplate...if we can even call it that, because it's essentially two cups, out of either enameled metal, or leather with metal chasing, and a collar. No idea why the collar is there. Is she in service to some court? We can't tell from the image.

She also has some pretty nifty stockings, apparently held up by metal wings, and...a very minimal pair of purple leather panties. Joy. And hanging from either the belt or the back of the bikini are four trailing cloth strips. More joy.

She couldn't have been dressed like the druids, for instance? That's a very feminine outfit, and manages to enhance her waist, hips, and cleavage while being fully covered. Why couldn't that have been the symbol for the game?

(from the media album)

This is the Sorceress class from the Pathfinder RPG. (You can see the full-size version here.)

Now, whether or not this depends on any particular racial privilege, most gamers cut tribal cultures a bit more slack in terms of attire. Tribal societies, in our minds, need to move more, be able to run, leap, climb trees, shoot arrows, kill with hunting knives, track down game...whatever it is that that particular society needs, heavy robes and heavier armor generally just gets in the way.

Plus, as previously established, this is a magic-user. A priestess of her people, one might say. This may be her society's version of clerical robes, or what shamans wear in whatever culture this is supposed to represent.

Save for a couple problems. First, she's not wearing anything under that loose robe. It's held to her body by virtue of a fitted, yet extraordinarily stripped-down corset (which, with those sharp edges, looks positively lethal for bending forward, or even sitting down), a thin black leather belt, and a heavy collar comprised of folds of fabric and, mysteriously, armor bits.

Maybe vampires and ghouls are more prevalent in her world than in most fantasy realms. Consider the left side of the wallpaper, after all.

But everything else is bare--tattooed, but bare. And I just don't buy that the tattoos have to be exposed to air and sunlight to work. That's not feasible.

The other immediate problem I have is the leggings. Or rather, the half-leggings. They look like someone made a pair of harem pants, then chopped them in half, and retained only the bottom legs of the pair. In fact, the same thing's going on with her sleeve--both half-sleeves and half-pants are belted to her, as if having bare shoulders and bare knees is more important.

And yet this is from the same game. There's a hint of cleavage, there's a suggestion of shape; there's a visible (and reinforced, and studded, and belted!) corset; there are attractive little details that both hint at gender, and hint at femininity. But she doesn't have to lose ninety-five percent of her attire to do so!

What about World of Warcraft? Not surprisingly, WoW is rife with examples, both in terms of animation as well as actual costume options. But I'm still mostly talking about what they choose to release as the main images of their game:

(from the media album)

(You can see the full wallpaper version here.)

Again, put aside any preconceptions you may have (if you play in WoW, say). Just to hazard a guess, looking at her, I'd assume sorceress, again, save that she has a tri-bladed weapon. Which makes the standard magic-using lack-of-all-weaponry stance confusing, to say the least.

But let's say magicians in this world can use bladed weapons. Nifty (save that she seems to be wearing it as a shield). What else is she using? It seems predominantly quilted armor pieces--shoulders (I don't quite have the gall to name those pauldrons; they're essentially just archaic shoulder-pads with metal bits), greaves (they at least seem decently protective), high quilted boots with kneeguards...and...yeah, that's pretty much it. Everything else is in the wisps-and-nothingness fantasy lingerie camp.

There's a similar wallpaper out there that seems to feature an elf with slightly more clothing...at least, until we break it down. That high-collared coat only features a high collar around the back of the neck, and the coat itself is comprised of brassiere cups and jeweled straps. We have no idea what she's wearing below the waist, but considering the long arrowing-in along the hips, I'd assume not much.

The men of Warcraft get much more in the way of coverings, and I'd even add an additional regarding that particular image--there are at least three women in that picture, or two and a very lithe male; but of those three, the only decent detailing is on the men. The women, all of whom are wearing fully covering robes, or full quilted armor and hauberk, are pretty much slapdash simplicity that I guarantee the player characters are going to want to ditch as soon as possible.

That's the other thing I've learned about fantasy gaming, at least in terms of video games. The higher your character level, if you're playing a female, the less clothes you get. That's pretty much standard across the board, as if your armor class goes up as a woman the less you wear.

Do I even have to mention T.E.R.A. Online? It's become pretty much the laughingstock of fantasy gaming, in terms of how they handle female modes of dress. Watching this video for instance (it's twelve minutes long in total, but trust me, before you're two minutes in you'll see all you need to see) initially displays a male elf character, who's clad in modest, simple robes. Then the gender is changed. While the very next image shown is that of someone wearing a full gown, it's very thin, and cut very close to her figure, showing very deep cleavage. And that's as good as it gets--every outfit on every character class shown after is more revealing, comprised of less material, and involves steadily increasing stripper animations.

In TERA's world, the sorceress wears as little as possible (and rides side-saddle); the berserker wears even less (and prances when she walks); the mystic minces and wears a shift dress; the archer...dear gods, the archer. But the archer isn't the worst of them--the heavy fighter is pretty much a battle poppet. Practically nothing on the fighter is designed to protect or injure save for the pauldrons, and even then, the fighter herself would get more injured by them than any opponent.

(from the media album)

I can't imagine they gained any new female players with this campaign.

Two women shown with traditional fantasy trappings in the background. The one on the left I'd take for a sorceress of some kind, considering the staff. She has horns, she has not-quite-as-huge elven antenna ears, a coat that barely qualifies as "coat", with a strappy set of panties and laced-up, heelless stocking boots underneath. I think we can definitely categorize this under stripper couture.

The second female is even more problematic. She's wearing a catsuit, which my brain refuses to excuse out of some mystic fetish-y fantasy element; it's a catsuit, goddamn it, it doesn't go with the theme in any way. Beyond that, she's pretty much clad just in exotic metal adornments. And while her white lips aren't blowjob-preparation parted, the way she's holding the hilt of the whatever-it-is she's holding (...sword? Your guess is as good as mine), it's definitely suggestive as hell.

But that was just the intro image. What about when TERA formally launched?

(from the media album)

Yeah, that's not better.

(from the media album)

And now we're pretty much talking pedophilia.

Even in Skyrim things get crazy now and again. Note in this video how a character with a high pickpocketing skill can take everything but the underwear from males, but takes absolutely everything from females. Inevitably, this tells the player character one of two things--either women don't wear underwear (thus painting them as sluts or tramps), or women just don't matter enough to leave them with even thin, fragile underwear layers (thus demeaning them as characters worthy in their own right).

Not to leave the guys out entirely, though, I want to bring up Hennet.

(from the media album)

Hennet surfaced in the 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons books, as pretty much the only male who's presented as pure eye candy. He's wearing straps. A whole lot of straps. There's a sketch of Hennet in the same pose that shows the straps off to better detail. There's a lot of straps--straps along his abdomen, straps along one leg, straps along his ankles, straps along his upper arms. But he's pretty much just wearing pants under that, and they look like harem pants, at that, if tied down (and, on the one side, heavily buckled) ones.

They even take it farther, and feature Hennet being seduced by something awful later on. I don't care who you are, having your nipple licked is pretty much a sexualized image. What is unusual is that it's an image of a male.

What does all this tell us? Nothing we didn't know--namely, that games are still being marketed to straight males, and pretty much the female demographic is still mostly ignored. Which is a shame, because we're becoming a vocal--and significantly financed--contingent.

Want to have more females in your games? The best way to do that is to give us costume options. Because if we're being presented with the choice of playing a game that makes no gender choices (like Farmville, like Bejeweled, like Angry Birds, like TripleTown) and games that do (like TERA)...especially if they're gender choices that we profoundly cannot support...guess where we'll be.