It's Not Easy Being Red

It's not that easy being red
Having to spend each day the color of blood
When I think It could be much nicer being yellow, or blue
Or something much less colorful like that.

It's not easy being red
It seems you stand out from so many other ordinary things
And people tend to kill you over and over 'cause you're
Not standing in the guard zone
Just out under the sky.

But red's the color of Life
And red can be cool, and friendly, too
And red can be big like a zerg, or important
Like an epeen, or tall like a tree.

When red is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am red and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be.

This parody of "It's Not Easy Being Green" was written for the boys and girls of #mortalonline, and was brought to you by the number 3, the letter B, and the concept of satire.

Tags: Mortal Online

History: If It's Not Worth Writing...

If it's not worth writing, it's not worth writing well.

Once upon a time, I had permission and encouragement to write for the Mortal Online Chronicles. For a few and slightly various reasons, I never did:

I didn't find much to write about that wouldn't have violated my duties to Wessex

or that would not have constituted mere opinion on my part.

For all the good that writing the history of the world... of Nave... does, it should not be done under the auspices of Star Vault itself. It can never be unbiased enough to deserve any imprimatur but that of the guild to which the writer belongs.

<channel style="rant-type: Rathius;">Furthermore, and I am prematurely a bitter old woman for saying this, the community at large hardly deserves chronicling.
</channel>

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Tags: Mortal Online Chronicles, Rathius

I am not your Content unless you are also mine

Responding to a post by Skalicon on the MOFOs, my conclusion is 'I don't want to be just your content'.

Skalicon said (among other things):

...they should place little camps like "extraction camps" similar to the one in cave camp near animal spawns and remove butcher benches from towns. New players who could not afford the risk of using the butcher benches could use the skinning skill intown with little risk and little reward.

My reply, in part:

Only if I can build a town with deluxe butcher benches, and defend it. Not unless, and not until then. Otherwise, it's just another way of making my butcher into your "content", with no content added (and, some removed) for me.

Stuck: A Poem, by Kha

Screenshot from Mortal Online, Poem from IRC.Stratics.com, both by Kha

Fast night approaches;
my old bones ache, 
still no news from afar.
My death shall be storied in Talar Matar.
A cold and lonely night for me, 
two cliffs around with me in between; 
I have lost faith and in tears I weep, alas!
There is still light so sweet.

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Tags: poem by Kha, Talar Matar Academy

Forums and Rule 8

This post refers to the wit and wisdom of The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth, copyright 1967 by Anton Szandor LaVey. If that source daunts my faithful reader, please try considering them (as I do) as 'commonsense' suggestions, with numbers One and Eight being more especially sensible than ever has or probably will be common.

Not to violate Rule Number 1

("Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.")

requires that Twitter tweets be treated as cries for comment (opinion, advice), and not to violate Rule Number 2

("Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.")

requires that reading a Twitter stream be taken as proof that you want to hear the troubles of others.

I don't have a problem with that. (If I needed to think about it, I also cannot be the only one who doesn't.) Thus my response is offered in the spirit of implicitly asked-for advice from someone who wanted to give it.

Someone tweeted that she was so sick of reading little cry baby posts all over the official RIFT (http://www.riftgame.com/en/) forums (http://forums.riftgame.com/) about (something).

It doesn't even matter what the something was. We've all seen the like. Usually, none of us have anything more (some of us, much less) than a grownup tolerance for the complaints of others about things that either do not affect us or that for any other reason are not the complaints we suppose we would make in a similar situation.

In practice, this response is mostly displayed by adults toward children, and not toward what we think of as 'other adults'. It must be very difficult to extend this response, even for one's own peace of mind; and, yet, it would be very worthwhile to do so.

In face-to-face interactions, all but the most brazen folks who are old enough to be considered adults will curb their complaining somewhat, afraid of being judged as immature by others. This inhibition is missing on the internet. One in a thousand curbs his complaining because (simply stated) he wants to be mature in his own judgement, or even because he prefers or has gotten good at quietly reflecting instead. These are not the people whose "whining" we are reading.

This basic discomfort with the expression of distress by others, with or without the learned response of not being fully aroused (to anger, to annoyance, to unnecessary action) by those distress calls, is natural, normal, and forgivable. But on the Internet, the annoyance response is still a waste of one's own time.

The expression-of-annoyance-hoping-for-being-told-in-response-that-you're-not-the-only-one reaction is equally a waste of one's own time, and also silly. Can you possibly not be sure that if you are annoyed by someone's complaint, you're not alone? Is there anything more nearly universal except the fear of smothering or of fire?

You can be sure that if you're reading game forums (or Twitter) you're going to hear distress expressed by those that it would seem have no good reason for the degree of their distress and no excuse to express it in the terms they use. This is useful grounds for amusement. Annoyance of your own should not, for your own sake, enter into the cycle, as it is a waste of energy.

MMO Success? I scoff in your general direction

Would you consider MMORPGs who had their player base leaving in droves at launch, still alive but never really recovered their subscribers number, successful?

I don't feel like answering. I do feel like spiking the question. 

"Success" is always reflexive or referential, in that it pertains to some other action. "Succeeds at what?"

To say that someone or some THING is successful is to refer to some explicit or heavily implicit standard, or it is nearly meaningless.

On the internet, where everything is at risk of being more nearly meaningless than elsewhere, the standard had best be heavily explicit or the question of whether a thing is successful-- posed there-- is pretty useless.

What's heavily implicit to you is not necessarily heavily implicit to anyone else who'd give you an answer you had to think about.

If you don't want to think about the answers, there's only one reason you're asking the question: Troll.

The utility of this thread will be found in the discussion of what constitutes success, if anywhere, and the most interest found in those things not mentioned in the OP question, like... Darkfall.

If any one of you were choosing a game to play based on how you'd be judged for choosing that particular one to play, one might have already lost, as in the larger scheme of things gaming itself does not make one cool and can be said (because saying stuff is cheap) to make one definitely not cool.

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Tags: Trollery, spiking

If Black Cats Had Silver Eyes

There is no sign of dawn, yet, not at 3:30 in a winter morning, but the quarter moon is about a hand and a finger over the eastern horizon, shining through a dense high fog and looking like the waking eye of a sleepy, vengeful cat goddess-- if black cats had silver eyes.

I find I have patched the Rift while I was asleep. This is far, far easier than Mortal Online, already, and I haven't played, yet.



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• Perhaps it is better to curse the candles and embrace the darkness?
• Stumbling over an armadillo in the dark... Yikes.
• You cannot see the rainbow forest, but you can see the tree...

Pay no attention. I'm rambling. It's early. I'll make more sense after a shower and a hot bath.

For the record, I wish Rathius Saranoth and the Talar Matar Academy every success and due credit for keeping the Other Spirit of Inquisition alive, even if we could not keep him on the faculty of the Royal Academy of Wessex (here, for those of you with access already).

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Tags: ESES (Every Sunrise, Every Sunset), rainbows

Players At The Game Of People

Originally posted by Najwalaylah

I don't prefer, and I don't despise Human for a Race in an RPG.

The capital H and R are used deliberately because this kind of creature in most MMORPGs is (according to whatever The Story may be) as fantastical, as different from the mundane, as alien in its way as all the myriad of Elf kinds, Dwarves and other Shorties, Big Uglies, and Other are when compared to the RL species to which all players belong. The baked-in differences are only, at best, more subtle. If nothing else, I look around and the heroic Human-oid type that is the standard avatar for the Race in most games is notably rare in Real Life.

Clichéd but true and overheard IRL:

• Normally-Dressed to Oddly-Dressed Person: "Why are you wearing this costume?"
• Oddly-Dressed Person to Normally-Dressed Person: "Why are you pretending you're not wearing one?"

Insightful guildmates past have commented truthfully (and played out the best examples of which I know, to prove it) that to adopt a "human" persona not your own and roleplay it, or to try to simulate a human but alien society and belief system can be more of a challenge to the imagination than it is to play pretend at being something else entirely. Often, after all, everyone knows how a ____ (fill in name of non-Human Race) is supposed to act.

• Corollary: and the majority of those who play Whatever It Is will play it against type-- in other words, be a Drizzt.

If the differences are only in pixels, then it hardly matters, and can be more of a challenge (and therefore, in some sense, more fun) to build a useful, powerful (and possibly colourful) character out of vanilla humanity.

• But... but... I like seeing myself in tusks. In the past, I've even had a sneaking fondness for long ears or lekku. It's all equally good and equally silly.
  

If the lore, setting, rationale, plot, theme, possibilities and potential victory conditions are a lot different than real life, then to assume the rôle of or pretend to be a Human from some other kind of world is as much a stretch, in a slightly different set of directions, as it is to really, really get into playing a Troll.

Be a simple
Kind of man
Be something
You love and understand...

-- Lynyrd Skynyrd

On the other hand, I really enjoyed this take:

I only pick Human if there are no other interesting (to me) ones to choose. I play a Human everyday so when I MMO game I tend to step away from that.
-- Khalathwyr, who with no blame uses a picture of Drizzt as his avatar.

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• Title taken from the name of a book.
  

TERA Tetas

I know where most of the people viewing this banner will be looking. Or focusing. Whatever else it does or does not offer, TERA must be applauded for keeping the fantasy in their MMO.

Mortal Online hasn't really raised the bar on this kind of thing, as full frontal nudity is not as compelling as near-nudity or déshabillé.

[15:46] <[IX]Lerdoc> do you know a single American that tolerates any form of nudity?

[15:46] <[IX]Lerdoc> they all seem to follow Amish culture on this one

[15:48] <[MOR]Cylox> yea like they flipped out when they saw mass effect "nude scenes" :/

[15:48] <[MOR]Cylox> its okay to shoot someone or cut his head off but never show some nudity .. never!

[15:48] <[WSX]Lepida_Nuykani|BUSY> I live not one hundred miles from places where people have been swimming nude for fifty years. (Not the same persons for all that time. If so, gosh, imagine the pruney wrinkles!) But, yeah.

-- Stratics IRC #mortalonline, 2010, April 21, Wednesday 03:51:35 PM