Obsession, pt 2

Obsession isn't pretty.

There is a new set of some awesome armor on World of Warcraft that one can get, but only through battlegrounds. I wanted to get a piece of the armor this weekend, so I calculated exactly what I needed and I made that my goal for last night.

When you go into battlegrounds you receive these tokens for the particular field. For example, if you go into the Arathi Basin, when you come out of the battlefield you get the Arathi Basin Token. If you lose the battle you get one token, if you win you get 3 tokens. You are also awarded a numerical "Honor" point for the various actions you made in the battleground.

In order to puchase the gear I wanted, I needed 30 Arathi Basin Tokens and 14500 Honor points.

Now, this is where the system sucks. When you receive honor, it is put in a special slot for that specific day and the honor is just an estimation. The servers calculate your honor at 2AM Pacific time and you seem to lose some of the honor that was estimated. You also cannot spend that honor until this process occurs. Since you cannot tell exactly what you will get, this makes reaching your goals difficult. Even more upsetting is that if you failed to get enough honor, you will have to wait until your next days total is calculated.

Given this idiotic Honor system (I can only assume it was put in to piss off people like me), the only way I could make certain I had enough honor points was by padding my estimate with excessive amounts.

So last night, I originally had a goal of getting 5,500 honor. That's when I found out about the possibility of losing some honor during the 2AM calculations. So to play it safe, I collected 7,000 honor. More than enough, right?

Well, by the time I reached that goal, I was mere minutes from the 2AM deadline, so I stayed online to see how much I would have. I did reach my goal, but I only had 285 honor left. So out of the extra 1,500 honor I collected, I lost 1,215 of it.

Now, this DOES piss me off. However, since I have been enjoying the battlegrounds (it is all still new and shiny to me), that offsets any negative feelings I have for it. I do have to say this to Blizzard (the developers of World of Warcraft):

This is a mistake, you need to scrap this system. It is never a good idea to take away nearly 20% of what people have achieved and there is no reason for it. If I could have counted on the numbers being correct, I would have stopped playing the battleground last night and looked to see if some guildmates needed help or logged off hours earlier.

Obsession

I've been a little quiet of late, and that has to do with my newfound obsession with battleground gaming in World of Warcraft.

In World of Warcraft, you can go to these little team battlegrounds and compete against members of the opposite faction. I just started on Tuesday and I've tried three battlegrounds so far.

The Warsong battleground is a standard Capture the Flag scenario. If you can capture your opponents flag and bring it back to your base, you win. It is a best two out of three game. Quick and easy. [Edit: It is a first to 3 wins, not 2 out of 3, sorry]

The Alterac Valley Battle ground is a large field and the objective is to kill the enemies "boss" Non-Player Character. This will require multiple people because the boss has tons of health and hits hard. You can also capture some towers and bases in the field which gives your team reinforcements or costs the other team reinforcements. This is the battleground that has taken me the most time to finish.

Finally, I've tried Arathi Basin battleground.

This is kind of neat. The idea is to capture these areas in the field that provide your side with resources. The reason this is neat is because it is similiar to the old real-time strategy game Warcraft. So anyway, you just take the resource places then defend them against the opponent.

I haven't played Arathi Basin that much, but I think it is considerably more difficult than the other fields because I'm not that great about defense.

Fill in the blanks

I found the following quote to be very interesting, showing the problems we have when mixing science with politics.

The United Nations' top __________ scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the __________, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

__________ remains a devastating __________ crisis. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding __________.

Having millions fewer people with __________ is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread __________. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the __________ to help gather political and financial support for combating __________.

"There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "__________" "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way."

If you want to know what the UN has been over inflating, here is the link to the story.

However, given that we have already seen alarmist science produced for the sake of fundraising, how likely is it that we might see this news repeated in 20 years?

Far more people die from malaria than HIV/AIDs. You are far more likely to die from lung cancer (the number one cause of cancer death in both sexes) than breast or prostate cancer. Yet, HIV/AIDS and Breast cancer receive far more funding than malaria and lung cancer.

It can’t be an issue of racism or poverty, both malaria and HIV/AIDS are most strongly felt in sub-Saharan Africa. So why does HIV/AIDS research receive greater funding? Because they used alarmist data to inflate the urgency of the research. Yet, since far more people die from malaria, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that the alarmism drawing attention away from the more deadlier of the problems is in fact doing more harm than good?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't fund research on HIV/AIDs, but that using the political tools of fear and alarmism to sway public opinion does not necessarily point us in the correct direction.

A must read

"Affirmative Action," hyphenated Americans, and other conundrums

Well, go read it!

My favorite part:

It is curious to what extent the passion for hyphenation is fostered more by the liberal elite than the populations it is supposedly meant to serve. How does it serve them? Presumably by enhancing their sense of “self-esteem.” Frederick Douglass saw through this charade some one hundred and fifty years ago. “No one idea,” he wrote, “has given rise to more oppression and persecution toward colored people of this country than that which makes Africa, not America, their home.”

The same can be said about the aboriginals of this land. Instead of confining the aboriginal tribes to certain lands, most of which was selected based on which areas no one wanted, we should have included them in our society. Now, we have the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) rife with a history, extending well before this current presidency, of corruption perpetrated on this nation's Untouchable caste. I agree, that comparison is a little hyperbolic. Just a little.

Sadly, the failings of separating the Native Americans from the US is a concept I and many others realized a long time ago. Yet, no politician has come forth with a plan to invite the aboriginal tribes to dismantle the reservations and become a part of the United States of America.

BioWare Austin - hiring writers

From Penny Arcade:

I got an interesting mail this morning from Daniel Erickson the principal lead writer over at Bioware Austin. He says they have an opening in their writing staff and he's having a hard time filling it. Daniel wanted to know if he could put the word out here on Penny Arcade and I'm more than happy to help. So do you want to write for the new Bioware MMO?

----------------------------

Hey Guys,

So here's the situation we're in. BioWare games require a great deal of writing. Storylines, world building, characters, journals - and about a bazillion lines of dialogue. What makes my job harder is not only does all of this writing have to be high quality - something not always demanded in our industry - it can only be done by writers who understand the complexities of interactive fiction. Take the average screenwriter who doesn't play RPGs, place him in front of the writing tool from Neverwinter Nights and you'll get a linear story with a complete lack of Player agency and no interesting decisions. Just trying to explain the concept behind writing without a protagonist to someone who has never even been a dungeon master can be like showing card tricks to a dog.

Which brings me to the current problem. The BioWare MMO is the largest thing we've ever done by leaps and bounds. We're talking a double digit writing staff working for years (yes we've already been working for well over a year). Now I've realized I need even more writers and I've got no reliable way of predicting where they're going to come from. In the history of the company, we've had published fantasy authors, screenwriters and editors all wash out of BioWare's training program. On the flip side, we've had fantastic kids right of college, an ex CNN producer and a former gift wrapping clerk from Singapore all succeed in the BioWare writer family. Previous job of lead writer for Baldur's Gate 2, the highest rated PC RPG in history? Travelodge manager.

So yes, we're shaking the usual trees and our HR folks are turning over all the rocks they can think of but I had to go through over three hundred qualified candidates to find the team I have now so a lot of those trees have done already been shook. With that level of challenge around finding writers, I want to throw out an open invitation for anyone out there that thinks might be the strange combination of RPG fiend and talented writer to grab a copy of Neverwinter Nights and start putting together a writing sample. I don't care if you can script, just put three guys in a field and attach conversations to them. Make the plot compelling, write the NPCs as real people who could exist in a believable world even if the PC wasn't there, give me an interesting choice or two and you're done -- easily something can be done over a weekend and there's a ton of great community support online if you're really tech deficient.

Anyone out there want to write for the game company with three of the top five rated RPGs of all time on their biggest project ever?

Head here: BioWare Jobs

Cheers,

Daniel Erickson
Principal Lead Writer
BioWare Austin

I've been kicking around an idea for just such a situation. When I get a chance, I'll dig out my notes and post the idea here for MMO developers to steal. Well, I guess it wouldn't be stealing if I want them to use it...

As for myself, I have to admit this is very tempting. I don't meet the requirements, but if the email to Penny Arcade is any indication they may be more lenient than their jobs website state.

I used to spend my adolescence developing RPG scenarios as a DM. I've taken part in developing a few areas for MUDs, when I just got out of high school. I know exactly what Mr. Erickson is looking for.

I've never even played Neverwinter Nights, so I have no familiarity with its toolset. I'm not afraid of the software, so I imagine I can quickly learn.

The question is: Do I want to do this?

The Semantics of Politics

I just read an interesting article that has shown the Democratic presidential candidates are shying away from calling themselves “liberals.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked this summer if she would describe herself as a “liberal.”

The Democratic front-runner shied away, saying the “word” — noticeably not using the word — has taken on a connotation that “describes big government.

“I prefer the word ‘progressive,’” she said. It has a “real American meaning.”

Then she expanded the term to “modern progressive,” and, finally, clarified that she was a “modern American progressive.”

Personally, I am very happy that the Democratic presidential candidates have decided that the word liberal doesn’t fit them. In fact, that word has developed a connotation with the average American voter in recent decades that has had the effect of completely reversing what the true word means. Maybe I can resume calling myself a liberal instead of a "small 'l' libertarian." It's a lot easier to type.

The Webster’s dictionary (4th edition paper version, I was offline when writing this) describes liberalism as, “the quality or state of being liberal; specifically a political philosophy advocating personal freedom for the individual.” However, the group that has been called liberal have actually been promoting governmental control of many social responsibilities, thereby limiting personal freedom for individuals. Typically, this would be called socialism, except that term also carries many negative connotations with the average American voter, which explains why it isn’t being used.

In today’s politically correct world, the emphasis is placed more on the connotation of words than that of their actual meaning. Being liberal has changed from “advocating personal freedoms of individuals” to describing “big government.” A person isn’t “black” instead he or she is “African-American” even if he or she has never set foot in an African country in their entire life.

This is precisely why I despise political correctness so much. The PC policy doesn’t affect change, it hides the problem from the truth, therefore preventing honest debate that can bring about change.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

While The Law of Unintended Consequences is most often invoked when responding to governmental actions, there are many times in life when this comes into play.

The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or "unintended."

...

The law of unintended consequences provides the basis for many criticisms of government programs. As the critics see it, unintended consequences can add so much to the costs of some programs that they make the programs unwise even if they achieve their stated goals. For instance, the United States has imposed quotas on imports of steel in order to protect steel companies and steelworkers from lower-priced competition. The quotas do help steel companies. But they also make less of the cheap steel available to U.S. automakers. As a result the automakers have to pay more for steel than their foreign competitors do. So policy that protects one industry from foreign competition makes it harder for another industry to compete with imports.

In the case of the newest Chinese Toy recall, a fairly obvious (at least to me) unintended consequence occurs when two things are mentioned.

1) The news reports almost always mention the phrase "Date rape drug" when mentioning why a toy is recalled.

2) The news gives the name of the product being recalled.

Why do they mention the phrase "date rape drug" in the first place? It might have to do with just how popular that drug, GHB (gamma hydroxybutyric acid) is to media. It is nearly impossible to watch some sort of TV drama for more that a few episodes before finding GHB being used in the plot line. As such, many people know of its effects and how it can be used for criminal purposes.

Still, it can't just be the popularity of GHB in television dramas that cause so many news outlets to mention the toy containing the "date rape drug." So why do they use that particular phrase so often?

This brings us to the next point. I know that during a recall it is important to mention the name of the toy, especially in a case where there are potentially deadly consequences to young children. Mentioning the name of the product is essential, in a case like this. The trouble that I foresee comes about with the combination of the two.

Isn't it possible that by telling the nation that a child's toy contains a "date rape drug" that you might also be mentioning this to people who might abuse the knowledge?

I hold a belief that humans are generally benevolent. If we were all sociopaths, we would never have come as far as we have. However, that doesn't mean that we don't have some truly sick people out there. With the release of this story, we are pointing some of those sick people at a product that makes people incapable of resisting and might even cause them to have memory problem. A fact that is widely known to all the millions of people that watch those dramas on TV.

Wouldn't it have been better just to call the product poisonous?

If I didn't also adhere to the belief of "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity" I would suspect that the news media would love to cover some sort of sensationalistic story about some poor woman being raped because someone used this toy containing GHB.

Further Glorious News!

BioWare has posted a job opening for their MMO/Online Community Manager

BioWare Austin is searching for a Community Manager to lead community efforts for BioWare Austin. The Community Manager position is based in Austin, Texas and will manage the community team and all community efforts for a massively multiplayer game.

This can only mean that they are getting close to announcing their new MMO game. There is a little nugget of doubt in me, despite the fact that I claimed I was "completely convinced of a Star Wars MMO being developed by BioWare." That little nugget of doubt has been whispering to me, "It's too good to be true."

With this news, I know that all my doubts will be confirmed or denied in the next few months. I am going to predict that BioWare will announce their MMO no later than February.

As for the job itself...

I wouldn't touch that job with a 10-foot pole. BioWare is likely, because of the rumors floating around, to attract the kinds of fans that I affectionately call, "raving lunatics." No matter how this turns out, the community over there will need a firm and attentive hand to be kept in line.

I wish whomever lands the job the best of luck! I hope you will be getting paid well for it.