Hello, Dear Reader. It seems so long since we have been here. Blaugust came to an end and so did my posting. I only planned to take a one- or two-day break that coincided with Labor Day and a business flight on Tuesday. Instead, that break stretched out to the weekend, and now it's been a full week since I posted.
Luckily, I managed to avoid the bulk of what has come to be known as GamerGate, an appellation that surely shows how serious it is. Which is not very. Someday, maybe people will realize they should not feed the trolls. And yes, while I do not believe that both sides of the debate have equal merit, I do believe both sides have exhibited trollish behavior, from what I have seen.
Meanwhile, Carbine has created a minor -gate of their own with the announcement of a server restructuring that will leave us with only four WildStar megaservers, none of which are designated RP servers. This caused immediate consternation within the RP community, who had seen WildStar as a haven for RP activity. While I have all my characters on Evindra, a North American RP server, I almost always play alone or in partnership with my beloved bride, Scooter. I usually view RP servers as friendlier and more mature, but many folks are taking to the forum feedback thread to complain bitterly and even announce their /ragequit.
The RPers don't want to be thrown in with the general population, full of players the RPers are clearly superior to. Seriously, they whine about griefers before the problem has materialized. They may have a point, I don't know. But I don't think they really do either. What they were bringing up as examples of griefing behavior seems to be mostly oblivious people going about their business, rather than a malicious attempt to ruin anybody's fun. And of course, the devs are complete hacks (according to some RPers) who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, much less implement the "simple" fixes these armchair programmers come up with. But at this point, we just have to wait see how things shake out. I do hope that the opportunities for RP that these players crave do materialize, though it may take more effort on their part than simply picking a server.
In preparation for the megamerger, Carbine is offering free transfers to other realms. Though I didn't really see the point, this guy totally did. Then again, he transferred all of his characters at once rather than stagger them, which meant two days of down time. In the future, I hope he learns his lesson and keeps at least one character playable until the others are fully transferred.
One last thing the forum RPers were up in arms about is the implementation of second names coming with the megaservers. Apparently, people are so hidebound that they can't even imagine having a surname for their character, and are even willing to quit over it. I, on the other hand, love the idea, having had formal full names for my characters ever since STO (still one of the most RP friendly games I have seen, though some may disagree). Up till now in WildStar, I've basically mashed my character surnames into their given names (e.g, RowanBlaze, LyraSedgeweaver, etc.). Despite some initial confusion on the forums, the plan is that, after the megaserver implementation, everyone will have the opportunity (be forced) to change their name to include two words with a space between them.
As well as the allowance of at least one space in character names, I think the megaserver is something Carbine should have implemented from the beginning. And I am not alone in that opinion. If you're affected by all this and have not done so already, check out Kaelish's digest here. Along with the FAQ, you'll probably get all the info you need there, without developing an aneurysm.
Meanwhile, I started yet another character: Leonotis (Leonurus), pictured above. He's a Cassian Esper, and my first Explorer, as well. He's definitely a character, but I'll have more details in another post.
Luckily, I managed to avoid the bulk of what has come to be known as GamerGate, an appellation that surely shows how serious it is. Which is not very. Someday, maybe people will realize they should not feed the trolls. And yes, while I do not believe that both sides of the debate have equal merit, I do believe both sides have exhibited trollish behavior, from what I have seen.
The RPers don't want to be thrown in with the general population, full of players the RPers are clearly superior to. Seriously, they whine about griefers before the problem has materialized. They may have a point, I don't know. But I don't think they really do either. What they were bringing up as examples of griefing behavior seems to be mostly oblivious people going about their business, rather than a malicious attempt to ruin anybody's fun. And of course, the devs are complete hacks (according to some RPers) who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, much less implement the "simple" fixes these armchair programmers come up with. But at this point, we just have to wait see how things shake out. I do hope that the opportunities for RP that these players crave do materialize, though it may take more effort on their part than simply picking a server.
In preparation for the megamerger, Carbine is offering free transfers to other realms. Though I didn't really see the point, this guy totally did. Then again, he transferred all of his characters at once rather than stagger them, which meant two days of down time. In the future, I hope he learns his lesson and keeps at least one character playable until the others are fully transferred.
As well as the allowance of at least one space in character names, I think the megaserver is something Carbine should have implemented from the beginning. And I am not alone in that opinion. If you're affected by all this and have not done so already, check out Kaelish's digest here. Along with the FAQ, you'll probably get all the info you need there, without developing an aneurysm.
Meanwhile, I started yet another character: Leonotis (Leonurus), pictured above. He's a Cassian Esper, and my first Explorer, as well. He's definitely a character, but I'll have more details in another post.
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STO (still one of the most RP friendly games I have seen, though some may disagree).
ReplyDeleteI will disagree somewhat there, mainly because Starfleet Dental and their KDF sister guild Nerds of Prey (the STO chapter of the Goonsquad) made it their mission to drive out public RP. Even went after some non-public RPers pretty badly too. These days, other than the rare session in Drozana or Quark's Bar, most RP is confined to fleet starbases or other private fleet locations where they can't be harassed.
Goonsquad. That's a group from EVE, no?
DeleteWell, that sucks. The interface showing backstory history and stuff like that plus the ability to have long and short names was pretty awesome. It's a shame that Cryptic didn't or couldn't do more to discipline the griefers. Was this all before or after the F2P transition?
It's been going on for years. I'm sure there are still some blog and forum posts about Dental in particular. They finally seem to have won since they were going all-out against any RPers they could find, including hacking their accounts, hacking their guild websites, hacking their blogs, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, Goons from EVE / Something Awful forums (they're actually a multi-game group, just most infamous for their EVE exploits).
So in other words, complete assholes.
DeleteSo what was GamerGate? I must have slept through that one too.
ReplyDeleteNot worth going into.
DeleteOhhhhhh....that. Okay, nevermind, I was aware of that. ::yawn::
Delete