Last week on Massively: WoW-related stories
by Krystalle Voecks 
Apr 29th 2008 at 10:30PM
This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed. Also be sure to read past the break, because there was an extra-special heaping lot of WoW-related goodness on Massively this week!
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Player vs. Everything: Playing with your friends Players often venture into the wilderness of online games alone and friendless, seeking out allies in the worlds they inhabit and making friends as they go along. Some games are better at encouraging players to work together than others, too. |
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Changes to WoW arena ratings mean no more 'welfare epics' While no more major patches are expected to hit World of Warcraft before Wrath of the Lich King is released, we'll probably see quite a bit of tweaking between now and then. The next patch due for the service, numbered 2.4.2, makes some major changes to the way that Arena battles rewards PvP players. |
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What makes games addictive? (Hint: It's not the taste!) Video game addiction is a topic that tends to occupy the attention of the mainstream media any time there's a slow news day, and even sometimes (like yesterday, for instance) when it's not. Videogames; how they're making junkies of your kids, news at 11! |
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The Gaming Iconoclast: Whither Shortcomings? Many MMO aficionados cut their roleplaying teeth on one of the many pencil-and-paper titles that formed the early generation of multi-player gaming. In addition to rolling (and rolling, and rolling, and rolling) some dice to come up with their basic stats and traits, character generation involved a lot of "wet work" when it came time to acquire skills. |
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MMOs are tools for more than just gaming "A 33 year old playing video games means neglected children and a very irritated wife." What? We call shenanigans! This is blasphemous and the speaker must be confronted! Someone else out there thinks the same thing. |
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The Daily Grind: What does WoW do better than any other MMO? We try very hard not to be partisan here at Massively. In our efforts to bring you the latest news and features for the entirety of the world of MMO gaming, we can't afford to show favoritism for one title over another; we love all of our virtual children equally! |
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MMO MMOnkey: MMOs as Conditioned Learning Engines (Part 1) The behaviorists were like the orcs of psychology. Limited in vision, arrogant, belligerent and intolerant, they ruled the world of scientific psychology with an iron fist from the 1920s through the 1950s. Many of them were very capable scientists, however, and much of their work, especially in their signature area of learning, has stood the test of time. |
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Behind the scenes with the men who brought you Sunwell The Blizzard team has learned a lot from their experience with The Burning Crusade, and in a recent interview posted on their official page, producer J. Allen Brack and art director Chris Robinson lay out exactly which of these lessons they're following through on for the new Sunwell Plateau instances and Wrath of the Lich King further down the road. |
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What's your favorite kind of dungeon? What's your favorite kind of dungeon? Do you like instances so common in the World of Warcraft where it's just you and a few trusted friends alone against the millions of slavering enemies? Or are you the social type who prefers the EverQuest-style open dungeons... |
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Behind the Curtain: Taught to Play? On the first episode of Massively Speaking, Krystalle mentioned that she joined the EVE University in EVE Online. For those of you not in 'the know', EVE University is a neutral training guild - or corporation - which takes new players, trains them in how the game works, then sends them on their way. It's a laudable endeavour, and one which I have, sadly, yet to see in World of Warcraft. |
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IGE founders settlement in doubt, Judge asks WTF District Court Judge Manuel Real has ordered IGE's Debonneville and Pierce to a status conference at 10AM US Pacific time tomorrow morning (Friday, 25 April). As you may recall, Debonneville and Pierce were settling and had until 14 April to finalize that. |
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Player vs. Everything: Maxed out and bored Congratulations! You've hit level 70 (or whatever max level is in your favorite game), and you're officially a badass. For many players, this is a goal they've been striving towards for months -- even years in some cases. |
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Character planning in World of Warcraft The building of a character in World of Warcraft can be just as painful as balancing a budget by hand without a spreadsheet. The number-crunching side of the game where you have to figure out hit ratings and mana regeneration rates and dodge percentages is something that few people can say they really enjoy. |
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The Digital Continuum: Macrotransactions The subject of microtransactions tends to bring out a lot of different opinions in people and sometimes harsh words are exchanged. I've never really taken a stance on the matter, as I've always been a bit unsure of which side of the argument I fell on. |
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Player vs. Everything: What if WoW sold its code base? I could bore you all today by starting my article with a lengthy story about the pre-history of your beloved MMORPGs, but I'll cut to the important part: Once upon a time there was a little game called DikuMUD. |
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Player vs. Everything: Gaming with a disability Stephanie Walker was a gamer who had never expected to have to deal with a disability. She was 23 at the onset of her condition, a college student who also worked a full-time job. She liked to spend the little free time she had unwinding online. Initially resistant to the idea of playing EverQuest... |
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Blizzard may be considering granting levels to recruit-a-friend users We've been wondering for months now what Blizzard is holding back. Wrath of the Lich King seems like a very competent, well-planned addition to World of Warcraft, but it's all so samey. More zones, more loot, more content, the usual. The addition of the Death Knight and a PvP-focused overland zone are interesting, but hardly revolutionary - Burning Crusade changed so much about the game that it's been hard not to be a little disappointed. |
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Anti-Aliased: I wear funny hats and I'm proud of it Since when did role-playing become a dirty word? Apparently even mentioning the initials of the dreaded "RP" is enough to make people want to prove John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory as loudly as possible. Players go out of their way to make others feel uncomfortable... |
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TurpsterVision: Return of the King Howdy folks, it's great to be home. Sorry for my prolonged absence. I would love to tell you why I wasn't able to produce the internet's favorite 'funny' over the past 3 weeks, but unfortunately if I told you I would have to kill you -- and I am far too busy "killin' mofo's" in GTA 4 to have time to kill you all as well! |
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Features
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Badger Apr 30th 2008 12:40AM
Ah, yes ... I see that the author of the very first article on this 'round-up' decided to give even more attention to the Frag Dolls, one of the most fake, over-rated, and over-paid 'professional' gamer organizations in the world.
Framulous day, caloo-calay.
Now even more dudes can learn about ridiculously hot women they'll never meet without paying a fee for autographs, and who can barely Blog about anything other than 'Why Gamers Need To Lose Weight' or 'How Great My Life Is, Part XVII.'
Treima Apr 30th 2008 4:50AM
So those are actually gamers? I thought Massively was just trying to increase traffic by posting a picture with marginally attractive women in the article.
On looking at that picture again, I can smell the collagen, silicone, and totally obnoxious red hair dye from here.
Badger Apr 30th 2008 11:08AM
Treima: Stand by for potty-mouthed tirade in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
< /tirade on >
The so-called "Frag Dolls" are a Goddamn joke. Yes, they're "gamers," and they've been discussed almost obsessively in pretty much every respected gaming publication (SHAME on you, "PC Gamer" magazine!) - but they're only "gamers" by the wildest stretch of the definition. They're good at three things: Playing games, looking hot, and breathing.
Do they win tournaments? Yes, they do. Frequently.
Are they cute? For the most part - Hell, yes.
Do they work for a living, like most other normal (and socially approachable) human beings? Probably not.
They're certainly not good at writing and - God forbid - actually THINKING. Want proof? Try to sit through any of their Blog entries, which are - I shit you not - literally relegated exclusively to the same material I joked about in my original post. They can talk about why their lives are fantastic - to which I reply: "You get paid to play video games, brag about your trophy husband who might not even really exist, and talk about nothing of any consequence; of *course* your life is fantastic" - and what's wrong with other gamers.
I'm especially fond of the recent entry on why gamers are usually fat. There's some real substance there, let me tell ya - excuse the sarcasm and the inevitable pun.
Basically, some clever asshole at Ubisoft (a French company - go figure, this comes from the country that once spent millions of dollars to craft the world's largest bar of soap and called it "art") thought to himself, several years ago, when organized online play was really beginning to take off, that it would be an equally clever and fitting marketing decision to create a sponsored and massively over-endorsed gaming team composed exclusively of hot girls.
"Every 'good' video game is filled with hot women," he thought. "Gamers love hot women, because they're all guys. Why not take that element out of the game and into the real world, where single young male gamers, in all their pizza-faced social withdrawal, pretty much run the show? Better yet, why not use T&A to sell our shitty products? They'll never know the difference!!! We'll make MILLIONS!!!!1!!1!2!!one!!"
Well, Ubisoft made it happen. And it succeeded, much to the chagrin of outspoken, reasonable adults like myself. So now, the predominantly male gamer community that I've supported for years gets to interact (read: "loathe") yet *another* crowd of attractive women who won't speak to them once the word "geek" is slipped into the conversation, unless they're paying for an autograph or fawning over their tournament record (or their breasts, of course).
Even better, this behavior is justified - in the Dolls' narrow-minded and self-centered view of the world - by the substantial amount of cash they rake in, and the titanic scale of the publicity the receive.
Here's a little surprise for you: I'm not a complete social misfit, like the stereotypical "guy gamer" at whom this business decision was aimed ... but I find the decision to establish this exclusive little "club" to be chauvinistic and patronizing in the extreme.
Shit, they even call themselves "DOLLS!" Do you have any idea how quickly and how hard I would get smacked (hint: think "just beyond the Sound Barrier") if I called a woman with whom I was not already intimately familiar by the nickname "DOLL?" The term even implies that they are OBJECTS that were SCULPTED - or, in this case, chosen for the way they were "BUILT" (like a brick shithouse, in case you were curious) - for others to fawn over.
It doesn't even bother me so much that they're paid to play games (and win) as it does that their skill at these games was just an afterthought.
People make full-time, well-paid careers out of gaming, from general software development to competitive play to writing reviews as journalists and critics; I don't like it, so much, but I can deal, you know? I work an 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. job every weekday, and I bring home a paycheck every other week to afford my living expenses and occasionally - *gasp!* - do fun things, like shop for music, attend concerts, go bar-hopping with friends, or - *shock! and awe!* - GO OUT ON DATES (though - shameless plug here - I'm currently quite single).
But in the Frag Dolls' case: They were established EXCLUSIVELY *BECAUSE* they're attractive, and attractive people *SELL* things - hence their endorsement deals. Their talents at pwning face and dominating the console wars were a COMPLETE AFTERTHOUGHT!
My point: They do not belong in the limelight of an article about gamers banding together with their friends. They are a corporate entity, nothing more.
Do you think they even realize that the only reason their little "crew" is in existence is so some skeezy middle-aged perv in a business suit can essentially slap the Pepsi logo on their asses and the Intel insignia across their bras while they shimmy their way to the next LAN party?
*FUCK* THAT. I spend enough time dealing with ads in games where the blessed Escape key doesn't let me skip the built-in nVidia plug that precedes the opening credits (I'm looking at you, "Bioshock"). I don't need to be reminded by some patronizing team of "Gamer Grrls" that I have hobbies which some others might view as a character flaw, and I *definitely* am not buying PC components because some glorified E3 Booth Babe says the parts help her "win every time."
Frag Dolls are not girls who are gamers; they are walking endorsement deals means to capitalize on the hormones of the majority of gamers, and who *present* themselves as "average gamers."
You want to see real gamer girls? Look at some of the writers and the commenters on Insider. Amanda Dean, Elizabeth Wachowski, Lisa Poisso (sp?), the lovely Robin Torres. Even better, go take a look at the LiveJournal community, WOW_Ladies. Those are *real* women, with *real* lives, who talk about games because they enjoy them, not because some douchebag in an Italian suit says they're worth the investment. If a member from WOW_Ladies wanted to talk about Theorycrafting and break down the pros and cons in the nVidia vs. ATI battle, I'd sit and listen for hours, chiming in occasionally; the Frag Dolls ...
No. Just no. You're paid to look pretty. Go be a model. It pays better. Get the fuck out of my hobby and stop pretending to be something you're not.
< /tirade off >
Whew ... Sorry for the long post, but the Professed Feminist, the Smart Shopper, and the Devout Geek in me all had something important to say.