you and me, we're going nowhere slowly, and we gotta get away from the past

Last bit on Perfect World, I promise.

I retreated back to a safe position while I tried to figure out what I was trying to do, and how to do it. I noticed some lumbering beetles, and made my way towards them. I had eight minutes to kill ten of the things; fine, I could do that.

(from the games album; wait, what are they talking about?)

It was then that my eyes were drawn to the bright yellow text of the chat...and I felt them promptly fall out. WHAT were they talking about??

Plus, they spelled "bestiality" wrong.

(from the games album; wait, what are they talking about? AGAIN??)

And it didn't get better. After this, there were a few minutes while I was tying up the killing-random-things-for-no-reason quest, and trying to figure out how to pick things off the ground, because none of the standards I was used to seemed to be how, and the conversation just kept going downhill.

(from the games album; the I-have-had-it point was reached)

And this is the final image I saved, the one where I decided there was no future for me in this game. Rampant typonese: check. Underage Visigoths cursing each other in open chat: check. No clear tutorial instruction: check. Avatars for the game I actively disliked: check. Timed quests when I don't know what I'm doing: check. (Oh, and on my way out, when I decided to turn the quest in, and got immediately handed a quest to kill the ten other kinds of low-level baddies in ten minutes? Check and mate.)

And after all that, the fact that they implemented cute little animal emotes in chat, over actually fixing the damn game--that chat was more important to them than game mechanics--I literally sighed, logged out, and uninstalled the game on the spot.

Was the experience worthwhile in any way? No. Did it at least convince me that Champions could be worse? Sure, but after the "Blood Moon" event tied up at the end of October, I haven't been back to Champions, so obviously, it's not a draw either.

Back to the MMO drawing board.

Seen in passing from someone whose name was a badly mispelled variant on "I love trolls" (not even kidding):

WARNING: You have the right to shut up and if you give up that right anything stupid or mean you say will be recorded and used against you. I am the master of copy and paste! You have been warned.
TOS conditions met. :D

Yeah, no, see, you're an idiot. The ToS doesn't say that.

And I'm not entirely sure, because I haven't seen everything out there, but this may be one of the ugliest mesh avatars in existence. If not the ugliest, hands down.

On the mesh front, Danae Adjani has decided to turn over part of her Flickr stream to documenting cases of copyright infringement from other 3D programs, into SL. There's a variety of sources listed, and she's got good side-by-side comparison shots. It's something to keep checking, if you're in doubt (especially if you're buying templates, and not actual clothing items).

and sit back while we attack the utter lack of our enjoyment

Suffice it to say, I wasn't in the best mood for all of this. I was still massively depressed over the (then upcoming) closure of City of Heroes; I was (still, am, will be) dealing with the mysterious departure of an otherlove (at six months and counting at that point, longer now); and the hoped-for 'spark' of sudden liking for Champions had utterly failed to manifest.

And now I was in a game I was already regretting downloading, trying to come up with a character I could bear long enough to figure out the tutorial. Gah.

As the least objectionable of the options offered, I finally went with one of the "cute" presets (each preset had two: you've been seeing the better of the two options in each case. No, seriously), which...left me with pink hair.

(from the games album; the pouty elf from PWI)

That had to change.

I found there was a surprising amount of variability settings for the eyes. As you can see, I went for a more anime look, because she just wasn't looking any better with more realistic options.

(from the games album; now, she's a pouty goth elf)

I mucked about with the colors until I had a vaguely hazel eye and vaguely dark hair (I ended up changing to the Thai-inspired filigree head-bun cover, for the second "cute" preset; it didn't help, but it helped more than the first caged-bun option did). I found a purplish-black for lipstick, and figured that went. There are a few face sliders (not featured), but none of them work really well. How'ver, this was my first solid, not budging, complaint: the body sliders.

There are six.

None of them deal with the aberrant size of the gangplanks she walks on, nor the huge and ungainly hands. Apparently, those are stuck for all time being larger than some of the monsters I was about to fight.

Great.

And then, I entered the game. I picked a generic fantasy name after a surprisingly brief amount of thought; I think I'd already decided she was just a run-through character, and I'd make a new one later. I was ready (or so I thought) for the tutorial.

(from the games album; Director Tsan, teach me!)

That tutorial? You're looking at it. I'm not kidding. I walked into the world, immediately saw a hovering icon over Director Tsan's head, and trooped over to talk with her. The first things she tells me make no mention of how I access world features, game features, or explain the HUD settings in any meaningful way. Oh, who am I kidding? There's no reference to these things at all.

The only thing I can think of, is that PWI is such a bland, flavorless clone of other Asian grinder MMOs, that everyone used to the style automatically adapts to the HUD controls and off they go. To grind for hours for...how is this fun for anyone, again?

Also, this is the first mission given. And that mission is to kill ten of a type of monster and report back. There's a time limit. Thankfully, they're a) everywhere and b) easy to kill, but seriously, people--I didn't know how to use spells, how to cast them, how to attack in the first place; I barely knew how to move, and now they expected me to squeal in delight and go pound beetles into dust?

Cue dispirited 'yay', but off I went.

[Insert from the Editrix, later: a friend of mine also dipped into the collective pond of PWI. She says, after one performs the initial two quests, Director Tsan then explains how one uses their particular set of powers and abilities, and also how to move and pick things up. You know, the basics that should have been outlined before combat in the actual game. I wouldn't know, because after I returned to Tsan, double-batch of stupidly easy local wildlife vanquished, she told me she had more instructions for me, which I assumed meant "I'm going to give you yet another meaningless time-waster. Off you go!"

[So I quit the game. But that's still to come in future entries at this point.]

and though we're coping, I just hope it's not contagious

Picking up where we left off from my (limited) experience with Perfect World International, we're now at the "noble" preset for Winged Elf female clerics:

(from the games album; the "noble" elf)

And I'm still baffled. What makes this "noble"? The hair jewels? The brown hair? The stance? What?

(from the games album; the "proud" preset)

This is the "proud" preset, and...at this point I was losing the ability to do more than sputter incoherently at the screen. She had hair wrapped around a bulbous brain worm. Or she was secretly hiding her dual identity as an elf/Alien cross.

(Bizarrely, when I went off searching to see if any luckless artist had drawn an Alien/elf crossover, Google led me to Lady Gaga. Now I have fear.)

(from the games album; the "stylish" elf)

I think the "stylish" preset simply means "she has white hair".

(from the games album; they're getting worse.)

And this was the final preset, "wild". Trust me: you didn't want a view from the front. It made my brain scream. Also, it took me working down to the very last preset to realize by "Winged Elf", PWI means "head wings". Why did I notice now, and not earlier? Because the "wild" spiky hairstyle manages to completely swallow the head wings in those ginormous, unsettling spikes.

But there were other problems. Like the giant gunboat feet:

(from the games album; Perfect World's default feet.)

Seriously, each foot was the size of her total hip width, easy. The hell. And there were no sliders to resize the feet from "pontoon" to "humanoid in scale".

(from the games album; the giant hands.)

It still got worse--these are their distorted meathook hands, on what limited close-up action I could get whilst building my cleric--and an even closer shot of the gunboat feet, and how they're actually constructed. (Which is to say, wrong. They are constructed wrong.)

Next up: what eventually drove me from the game (in two separate directions, even).

trends come and go, and your friends wanna know why you aren't just happy making crappy little gizmos

A while back--before City of Heroes closed--I started looking for another MMO. Unsatisfied with the limitations of Champions, I discovered the same company, Perfect World, had a typical Asian fantasy grinder called Perfect World International. Based--loosely--on Chinese mythology and fantasy-tilted Chinese style, it looked worthy of deeper exploration.

(from the games album; the floating castle in Thousand Streams)

The artwork from the game looked stunning, and--disregarding some of the sexist flash on the main page, at least--the costuming looked reasonably decent:

(from the games album; the archer, or at least an archer, from PWI)

I thought, okay, fine, let's do this. What's the worst that could happen? I was soon to find out that was a question with more than one answer.

(Oh, and if you want to see the two wallpapers linked here larger, go to the game's wallpaper site.)

From Jadelynx' Perfect World Guide:

In Perfect World, there are five races. They are the Humans, Wing Elves, Tideborn, Earthguard and the Untamed. (formerly called Beastkind) Each race has two classes and each class plays differently. You can personalize and customize your character to an amazingly exacting degree. You can change anything and everything about your character's appearance.....eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrowns, skin color, hair style and color, lip color, eyeshadow color, body shape, the list goes on and on. You can make your character look extremely beautiful, extremely ugly, or make it look exactly like you.

To say this is a stunning confabulation of facts and wish fulfillment really doesn't go far enough--that's rather like saying napalm causes mild skin irritation. (And I didn't correct the spelling, by the way--yes, she typed out "eyebrowns" and never looked back.)

To get access to all the races available, one must be a paid account. For free-to-play participants, only three races are available: Humans, Winged Elves, and the Untamed. I didn't fancy having bunny ears, and humans seemed dull, so I went with the only option left--the winged elves. Who, by the way, at least starting out, don't have wings.

Then I spent two days I won't get back downloading the game. And this on my new (2011) computer. But I was still telling myself that it was worth it.

Then I opened up the character creator.

(from the games album; the basic options for a female winged elf)

This is the "conservative" option for out-of-the-box female winged elf clerics. I must have stared at this screen for five minutes, trying to figure out what made it "conservative". It certainly wasn't the outfit. Or the breast size. Or the hair. What the hell?

(from the games album; the basic options for a female winged elf)

It gets worse. This is the "cute" preset. No change in the outfit; strangely pink hair; pouty little almost-not-there mouth; and the weirdest little caged-bun thing I'd ever seen. I mean, yes, sure, it's not buffalo horns, but it still looked odd. Even worse, I wasn't able to track down the hairstyle within a reasonable amount of time spent on Google. (This doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that double-bun styles show up with far more ease than single-bun styles.)

(from the games album; the basic options for a female winged elf)

Then there was the "elegant" preset. What, precisely, makes this "elegant"? The (slightly) darker skin? The gold hair pins? The fact that she has brunette hair? What?

(from the games album; the basic options for a female winged elf)

And then there was the "exotic" preset. Apparently, two-tone hair pinned back with silver bobby-pins is an "exotic look". Suuuure.

This is all going to end in tears, isn't it?

did you really think I'd let you kill this chorus?

[Looking For Group] Shock and Awesome: Is kickstarter not an option?

I've heard this a lot over the past few days. There are deep and inherent problems in approaching this from a crowdfunded angle, namely: while Paragon Studios runs (or ran) City of Heroes, Cryptic was the first originator, and NCSoft is the holder of copyright on the IP now. Would NCSoft release the IP? It's highly doubtful. So, essentially, it would be almost instantly killed as a concept even were it to make it to the Kickstarter launch post page. Why? Because if you don't control the property, you can't ask for money to fund it, and Kickstarter's own internal rules would knock it down--likely before it ever saw the light of day.

[Looking For Group] Gadgette: Kickstarter is ONLY an option if NCsoft agrees that they'd sell the game if X amount of money was made.

Right, but even were that highly unlikely eventuality to come to pass, they'd have to have either already sold the property back to Paragon, or have signed a binding intention to sell with the company. Neither of these are likely to happen, either.

[Help] Airdancer: It is hard to want to do something when you know it's all pointless now. Still I've been here so long i can't think of anything else to do when I get off work
[Looking For Group] Ecco Dolpheus: is all i looked foward to when i was coming home from work
[Looking For Group] Rita Ramjet: and its all you can continue to look forward to till nov 30

Laugh if you want, but think about this in the larger sense of games. How many people plan their lives around weekly WoW raids? I personally know someone who made the choice to travel to BlizzCon, pay for hotel tickets, and pay for content offered there (signatures, admission, et cetera), knowing she'd be coming home to a house empty of food, with rent paid but not power paid, and hoping beyond hope her parents helped her so she could keep the lights on. It was that important to her. She didn't bring food, either--she was humbly, deeply grateful to a friend that heard about her plans on Twitter, and the first night of the convention, dragged up an ice chest full of crackers, peanut butter, cheese, and refreezable ice packs. She also handed over a shopping back of "just add water" soups--both mug soups and noodle pots. That is how my friend ate while she was there.

People do this for games. They suffer a loss, they think of friends online over friends in RL--and to be utterly honest about this, too, some of these folks don't have many friends RL. For many, the game world is their support network.

How many people play in SL, have lives, husbands, and children, yet ignore the husbands, wives, or children they have beyond the screen? It happens, far more often than you think.

[Looking For Group] Shadow Marshal Luger: it is a little fishy that the other money losing games NCSoft owns arnt being suddenly shut down and CoH that makes marginal profit is

The key word there is "marginal". It was making profit for the company, it just wasn't making enough.

[Help] Screaming Patriot: the horrors of learning to ski at the chalet...
[Help] Grand Grimoire: only winter tho
[Help] Jericho Phears: was looking to do that this yer, got the gold in both last year

Well, the Chalet's open again, for what it's worth.

[Help] Boomtown Titan: I'm downloading CO since it's closer to this but damn those graphics are goofy

(from the Champions album; Annika in Millenium City)

I think I've figured out part of why. There are directly photosourced textures in City of Heroes--usually in caves, which is why they're so jarring when they show up--but in Champions, even the photosourced textures have this odd, clean-edged gloss to them. The entire world looks closer to an 80's comic book at times--which may have been the intent.

The problem is, that's also a heavy detraction. I'm not crazy about viewing the world in Comic Sans, or in looking at SL-style, vintage 2008 trees. It doesn't make me want to play the game.

(from the Champions album; Annika and Nighthawk in a cut scene still.)

Take this, for example. There's still self-insertion into cut scenes as part of the experience--on the theory that we tie better to what we see on screen if something we identify as "us" is also in the scene--but check out the shine on that tile floor. If we look up, there's nothing to cast the reflection lights on the floor. And if it's that shiny, the problem becomes--why don't we see ourselves in the reflections?

SL solves this by having settings that pre-generate reflections and/or shadows, though most viewers just don't bother, thereby solving the problem. In City of Heroes, the only places with high reflection and shine were internally solved--and we've seen this in SL, too, where a 'reflective' floor is reflective because a mirror image of the structures above the floor lies underneath it.

In this case, it's just bad photosourcing, with no attempt to correct it.

(from the Champions album; flying in Millenium City)

I don't want to say it's "too clean", because that's not really the complaint. I don't mind clean lines in a game; hells, I play Minecraft, land of the clean sharp lines. For me, it goes deeper into the entire ethos behind the world: there's very little attempt at complication, by design. It's not stucco on an apartment building; it's just olive paint. The places where they do choose to add detail and visual complication are thus jarring and out of place, like photosourced tiles, or photosourced asphalt by the docks.

(from the Champions album; water off the docks in Millenium City)

Or let's talk about water. Which this is. No, seriously.

(from the City of Heroes album; off Striga Isle)

This is a shot taken when flying into Striga Isle. Even though all the oceans in City of Heroes average about two feet deep, there's still a strong impression that it goes down further, and there are active, ongoing, animated reflections on the surface water.

(from the City of Heroes album; underground lake in First Ward)

Or here, where the source light is an unearthly, ambient teal glow, and the water itself is charged and moving with eldritch reflections and colors. Even given the potential supernatural nature of this water, it still looks like water.

The water in Champions? Looks like someone tried to mix mercury with oil, or made one of those swirling bottles that have glitter blended with dyed water. Save that in this case, the water's just vaguely silvery-grey. This is my alternative??

[Looking For Group] Rita Ramjet: sadly this is the real world...and the villains sometimes win.

Yeah. And for me, the thing is, I liked City of Heroes because I liked the storylines, not because I had a desperate need to be a superhero and fly around the city. I'm currently in the (long, long, SO long, and involved) process of downloading Perfect World International, because I already have a Perfect World account (since Perfect World bought out Cryptic, everyone who had a Cryptic account to play Champions had to convert over to Perfect World), and I'm more interested in fantasy games anyway.

But going through these has generated yet another depressing day. I had about fifteen potential entries saved and titled; since last night, I'm down by eight, because I just selected everything and cleared the space. I'll use the title later, but it's just too much right now.