Wolfbytes

Teen princess tantrum? Not cute even when Betty Draper does it. And she's way sexier than you are.

So you make a WoW guild. You figure you’ll be reasonable and give teens a shot – you figure if they start making their own rules and invoke the mystic Drama-Llama, you can pull them aside, tell them this is unacceptable, and eventually they will either start behaving or get your boot in their ass. And it shouldn’t be a problem, since you’ll be screening them anyway.

But age limit 16-plus? If you try that, make sure all your mods or officers or whatever are on the same page about what’s kosher. Make sure your other membership is on board with the “no drama, no exceptions” policy. 16 means 2-4 whole years of the age bracket whose biggest problem is whether daddy will pay their WoW bill and if their new school will be hard – and because their lives are so simple, they have silly amounts of time to spend on convincing themselves it’s the exact opposite. Like the ghost told Betty in Mad Men: “You’re a housecat, baby. You’re highly valued, and don’t have a lot to do.”

The thing is, I like cats. They’re adaptable. I’ve never met a kitty that can’t be taught that it should piss in the litter box, not claw shit when it’s upset, and never ever jump on my keyboard demanding attention RIGHT NOW, because the possible destruction of work in progress will be met with loud noise and an immediate introduction to unassisted flight. Cats and teens, both are completely educable. They just need consistent rules.

The other thing my perfect next guild will not have is well-intentioned busybodies who listen to the upset teen kitty yowling when it doesn’t get it’s way – and then ride in on the whaambulance to tut on how naughty it is, making poor kitties cry like that. Seriously, if the kitty makes a pest of itself and then tries to claw my eyes out when I tell it no, it ain’t cruel to lock it up till it cools down and starts behaving again. Auntie Empathy is not helping by being all sympathetic and demonstrating that yes, in fact, all adult humans DO exist to make kitty’s existence comfier.

…in retrospect, I should have locked the kitty out, though, not walked out and left it loose in the house. If I want my guild back from that pair now, there will probably be violence – and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the smell out of the couch even then.

Anyone know how to remove unsolicited drama stains?

So, the mate of a mate got his WoW account hacked. Made me think of a minor server blowout last Christmas, when Blizzard was trying to educate it’s customers on how to keep their accounts safe – and the rant I had back then in my old blog. Translated and updated here for the benefit of foreign devils. You’re welcome.

Blizzard’s anti-hacker advice was good enough, as far as it went. Never share your account information. Change passwords regularly. Buy an Authenticator, if you play at net cafes – that sort of thing. They just completely skipped the most fundamental problem:

The vast majority of MMO gamers are complete muppets when it comes to basic computer security.

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When the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm announcement landed, I quit WoW. Not for that reason alone, but the final straw was Blizzard confirming class restrictions would be relaxed. Most dedicated RP’ers right now are praying there’s some in-world story explanation to this that hasn’t been revealed yet. Because for us, changing who can be a druid or a paladin, let alone having Night Elves abandon the bane on using Arcane magic, is sort of a a big deal.

The pure gamer in me says it shouldn’t be. Players have been clamouring for certain gameplay/class restrictions to be changed for ages, and accommodating them is just good customer service. I’m only shocked here because after years of on/off roleplay in WoW, I finally realised an old friend was right. For all it’s genius in gameplay and design, in storytelling WoW delivers the exact same bullshit quality as any lesser franchise. It tells the same half-arsed stories using the same two-dimensional characters as every other Generic Fantasy Game (TM) out there – and it’s doing it’s damnest to achieve more, not less, genericness.

This also isn’t a big deal. In the world of gaming, only BioWare and Peter Molyneux routinely make story their primary selling point. To the rest “compelling story” is the same sort of non-information press release spin as “action-packed adventure”, “thrilling gaming experience” and “exclusive title”. WoW has never claimed it’s story is all that special, and it’s never claimed to be a RPG, so perhaps it’s unfair to judge it on those grounds (though it does have dedicated RP servers, so they do try to snag that audience too). It was just a shock to realise that though Blizzard does allow for roleplay in WoW, on closer reflection their approach to story seems handcrafted to drive all but the most casual roleplayers clinically insane. Read more…