The words of doom and gloom. The day where nothing posted online can be believed... The day where if you have something exciting to share, you have to wait because nobody will believe you anyway. The day where you not only fool others, but make yourself look like a fool in an attempt to mislead as many people as you can. Where the best way to mislead them is to take something they wish for the most, and tell them that it's actually happening, only to blast their hopes with the two words of doom and gloom: April... Fools...

I don't participate in this silliness. In fact, this is my annual "don't even bother getting online because there really won't be anything worth seeing" day. As of right now, due to the fact that I know several people in many different time zones, I will not believe anything anyone says unless they have undeniable proof from articles predating April 1st. I'm sorry, but that's the way it's going to be until April 2nd. I may not even get online, as I have been known to do in the past, and I will not post anything on my blog. April Fools Day, for me, is media blackout day! I shall be doing school and watching Stargate SG-1 until it's safe once again.

I've posted about it before... I'm going to again!

I was listening to the Developer Q&A "podcasts" (although, technically, they're not podcasts, because I can't actually stream them into iTunes with a subscription list) and I've got a better idea for the way the game is being designed... And, to be perfectly honest... I LOVE IT. If you don't want to listen to the audio yourself, I shall give you a quick overview!

First off... Levels. I believe, if I recall correctly, that there are only 50 levels. People have been concerned that this might be a little quick and not provide enough time to experience content and playing habits. Luckily, levels are far different than what we have come to expect from levels in an MMO! Basically, they say, levels are more for giving a general idea on what kind of skills and technology that a player might have access to. It doesn't at all affect how strong a player is... Like, say, with hit points and statistics like that. Strength will be determined solely by equipment! They gave this example: There's a level 50 with some major strong armor and a tricked out Asgard weapon that can seriously hurt some Goa'uld ego. He's chugging along and he meets this little level 10 with a P90 and a flak jacket. Who's going to win? Obviously the level 50... But only because he has superior equipment. If the level 50 put on exactly what the level 10 was wearing? He would be perfectly on par with the strength of the level 10. This completely overthrows the idea of levels as presented by World of Warcraft! In WoW, if a naked (as in, no equipment... Don't get gross, okay?) level 70 player stands in the middle of the street and lets a level 10 pound on him? The level 10 is going to miss well over 90% of the time just because of the level gap. Like the developer of SGW said, there's like some sort of... Aura of fear that the level 70 must give off to make the little guys miss their strikes. But, no! Stargate Worlds isn't going to have that. If a level 50 and a level 10 meet on a deserted planet, and each has naught but a P90 and a flak jacket? They will be perfectly equally matched and the level 10 will have every chance to kill the level 50. That... Is amazing.

Also, the Q&A session on the 28th, which I didn't listen to until today, confirmed my hypothesis about the Goa'uld guarding a Stargate! Say you're returning from a mission and there's a group of three Jaffa walking down the path. They see you and the leader gives the order to fall back and take defensive positions. You then have to use strategies and skills to figure out how to get rid of them, by crawling around... Crouching... Using cover. You can actually reduce damage by taking cover behind, say... A rock. It won't reduce all the damage, but it will reduce a lot. It would be, quite literally, suicide to charge up to a Jaffa in the middle of a road and try to gun him down. He, being much more strictly trained in warfare, will more than likely lay on you a smackdown of epic proportions and present your head to his Goa'uld leader. They even said that they want to design playing fields so that you will soon come to realize what areas would give the best cover, and you'll go "okay, that looks like the best spot, so let's head over there". Anyway! That was a small distraction... You get rid of the Jaffa on the road and you go home. For some reason, say... The server crashed and you have to do the mission all over again and you have to meet the same three Jaffa again. What will happen? Well, in games such as WoW, the same thing will happen... Not the case in Stargate Worlds! What was first a fall back into defensive positions could just as easily be a flanking attack that pins you down and gets you captured. Same scenario... Different approach by the artificial intelligence. This, they say, is what will make SGW never get old and I am inclined to agree.

Maybe these ideas will get "some people" *coughahem* to play MMOs with me? Oh! Also? Plans right now include the fact that players from one country can easily play on a server with their friends in another country. I don't think there's a realm block like World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online. Frankly? I think that's absolutely amazing. With WoW and LotRO arguing the position of "protecting" their players, I say give them the choice to play on a realm that might lag a little more than others! I have friends in other countries that I can't play with because of this very reason... I say give us the choice and let us deal with the consequences of latency. We don't need a company putting software blocks for our "best interest".

Woot! Wordpress 2.5... Major weirdness. So much is different.

But anyway! There's a thread on the Stargate Worlds forums where two people (myself a third) are in a discussion (that I sense is slowly degenerating into a flame-fest) on the differences in styles people play games in, and how we should treat each other. I will try to keep descriptions civil, but I will be telling it like I see it: One side of the spectrum promotes the use of special flags that will tell people that the player is a roleplayer, meaning that he is playing the game like he is experiencing the content as if he were there. There is no "Internet", there are no "bugs". He "goes through the Stargate to P3R-233" instead of "loading the Goa'uld outpost zone". This first side of the issue wants a flag so other people will know that he's a roleplayer and to conduct themselves accordingly... Meaning, please don't talk about anything that you wouldn't talk about if you were actually living the game. It breaks immersion and the mood of what the roleplayer is trying to accomplish, and it's just plain rude. That's the first side. The other side of the spectrum was incredibly quick to pull out the "I'm paying for my game, so you have absolutely no right to tell me how I should play" and that they can do whatever they want and anyone who doesn't like it can just ignore them, but has no right to complain or voice opinions. And I'm going to say right now that for all the talk about not forcing someone to play the game a certain way, he seems awfully closed to the idea that his is not the only way to approach this matter. That alone makes it hard for me to treat him seriously.

This, I think, personally, is a whole side effect to "relative morality". Where everyone is doing what they think is okay, and nobody can tell them what to do because of it. This, of course, is where I am directly opposed. Being a roleplayer, I naturally side with the first argument. I've played games where people just don't care about the impact they have on other people, and they'll do whatever they want without a care for what happens to other people. This, I have to say, goes both ways. Sometimes, you simply have to go "Out of Character" and talk to someone like you would in real life... Some people just don't understand what you're saying and if you intentionally try to confuse them, then you're no better than they are, and I've witnessed this happen, so I'm not saying one side is particularly better than the other, because each side has their fringe weirdos. As I say, an outspoken minority is heard more than a silent majority. While the majority of people go about their own business, there can always be just one who makes himself seen and some people tend to think that he's the only one out there.

It seems that the running example is that there's a group of roleplayers minding their own business, and then someone comes up and yells "lolz" at them. Obviously not roleplaying and, in my opinion, obviously trying to be obnoxious. Do the roleplayers have a right to complain about this action, or does the "lolz" man have the right to do that without anyone telling him otherwise? As a roleplayer, I think it's painfully obvious when someone is roleplaying. They tend to type better... They tend to use emotes (even custom /me ones)... They just tend to be more reserved and calculating than all the masses of busy hardcore raiders who chug along saying "omg I just pwned that n00b in the BGs and I got this leet chest piece from the honor!" Anyone who honestly hasn't noticed roleplayers, I'm going to say, probably doesn't make a habit of running up to people and yelling "lolz", either. In fact, someone who doesn't see roleplayers probably isn't paying attention to their surroundings enough to even begin to interact... So the entire point is moot.

At about this time, the arguments start winding up being insults and I make a parting comment based on my observations. The first side was the first to make a post regarding this problem, and the second made a post in response that took issue with things that shouldn't have made an issue. The second side produced the notion that since everyone is a paying subscriber, that they can play however they want. Wrong. We already know that there are game rules; codes of conduct and certain policies that are enforced to give some semblance of sanity to the realm. We can not do whatever we want. We get warnings to harassing people, we get banned for using bots and buying money... There are rules. Just because we pay doesn't mean we can do whatever we want. Now... As for things that aren't spelled out in the rules?

This, I think, is the missing key to this whole argument. Some games provide separate servers specifically designed for roleplayers that sport a set of rules that help prevent the griefing of roleplayers. In World of Warcraft, for example, there is a rule against names that you wouldn't see in the game world itself. Say... A human mage with the name of "PwnerCake". Yeah... See, what kind of parent would name their beloved child PwnerCake? That would clearly be against the rules and should be enforced and... Everyone in the realm would have the right, as dictated by the rules, to complain about it and report it. The person with that name is a paying customer, yes, but he is breaking the rules and does not have the right to do that. The rules just so happen to limit the name he can pick! If he doesn't like the rules, he does not have a right to complain against them, and is free to choose a Normal realm that doesn't have these rules enforced.

I made a couple of posts to try to put a foundation to some of the arguments, but, as you can see, I am completely ignored, and they go on poking at each other with sharp sticks. I contend that if a roleplayer is playing on a normal realm that does not have rules pertaining to names, then he has no right to complain about a name such as "PwnerCake", because it's specifically allowed. Likewise, nobody has the right to complain about the roleplayer for roleplaying, because there are no rules specifically disallowing roleplaying! It's up to you humans to find a way to peacefully coexist... But... Humans can barely do that in real life... How much less so with the anonymity of the internet, eh? However...

I think that running up to random people and yelling "lolz" can and does fall under the rules of harassment. Personally, I subscribe to the one-strike rule. I'll let you make the mistake of running up to me and yelling "lolz" because, frankly, you probably didn't know if I was a roleplayer or that I'd take offense, and, even if you did mean it to be offensive, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you were making an honest mistake, you would realize that I don't want to interact that way. If you were being offensive, well... You would probably yell it again, and then you'd be harassing by any definition of the term. But! For something with, say... Names. There are rules against harassing, but there are no rules about names. So if someone in Stargate Worlds runs up to me with the name of MegaBlasterAsgardMan and wants me to do something for him, I wouldn't have the right to say "your name is wrong, you need to change that" because, frankly, the name is okay as far as Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is concerned. I might not like the name, and I would think that if someone intentionally picked a name like that, they're trying to get attention, but as far as actually ordering them to change it? Yes, I agree... That would make me condescending.

You can read the thread and see if you come to the same conclusions, and I hope that makes my stance a little clearer, in case... You know... You actually found my site from SGW forums and decided to read this... Which I doubt would happen, because I don't advertise my website! But, uhm... Yeah... Once again, my hobby of politics shows itself once again by giving me some incredibly deep insight into what... Could probably have easily done without! (Although it gave me a chance to test Wordpress 2.5... That's a plus!)

So I reconfigured the computer I was going to buy last year. A snappy little Intel four-core 2.4GHz processor operating at 1066MHz front side bus. The motherboard was from eVGA... nVidia SLI-ready, also operating at 1066MHz FSB. The 4GB of RAM was from Kingston, of course, and also certified to be nVidia SLI-ready, meaning that with the nForce chipset, the RAM would manage to operate far more efficiently. It also operated at 1066MHz FSB. This thing was tuned down to the very last detail, and therefore would have absolutely zero performance bottlenecks that can be avoided.

Without the motherboard, processor and 4GB of RAM, everything else (two video cards, two hard drives, a case, a Creative X-Fi card, keyboard, mouse, power supply and brilliant 24" widescreen Dell monitor) would total about $2,261.91. These are the components that I probably won't change. I'm looking to get two nVidia GeForce 8800GTX and two Seagate Barracuda 320GB drives. As far as I can tell, the 8800GTX is about the best there is. The GeForce 9 series, I've read, is nVidia's attempt to break from the biggest and baddest and shoot for more affordable "bang-for-the-buck" cards. Still good, but not the ultimate best. I haven't done any research yet, but that's what I've read at face value. I may upgrade the drives to larger capacities, but, all in all, the base price is $2,261.91... With the equipment I listed that runs at 1066MHz FSB? That price hits $2856.87.

The issue comes from faster front side bus speeds and brand new DDR3 RAM. The current maximum FSB speed for Intel systems is 1600MHz, with 1333MHz stuck in the middle between it and 1066MHz. As far as I can tell, that's the only difference between these new things... The bus speed. DDR3 is overall faster in more ways than just clock speed, but it's same idea. Taking the base price of $2,261.91 for everything but the motherboard, processor and RAM? Configuring a computer for 1333MHz would shoot the price up to a whopping $4,221.87. This is because the only Intel processor running at 1333MHz FSB (that I could find) is part of the Extreme line, which is... Extreme in both price and speed. A new motherboard to support these speeds and DDR3 RAM? Major price increase. Do you even want to hear the price for a 1600MHz FSB system? Taking the base price, it'll all add up to $4931.87. Not much of a price increase over 1333MHz, but this isn't tuned at all for nVidia SLI and certified compatible RAM, which I'm going to consider very important, seeing as how the entire idea of this new computer is to have an nVidia-driven powerhouse.

So my question to all (read: none) of you readers is this: Is there truly a benefit between going from 1066MHz to 1333MHz? What about from 1066MHz to 1600MHz? Would something like this be more like a processor going from 3.0GHz to 3.2GHz and just not make enough difference to justify a nearly $2000 price increase? Would it be worth it to invest in DDR3 RAM? What about 1066MHz DDR3? It would have to be nVidia certified, of course, because I'm obsessive-compulsive like that. The entire point is to run SLI, so... Keep that in mind!

Bush May Expand Help For Struggling Homeowners

Oh boy! Greedy, overindulgent people decide to sell their house to the bank so they can afford that big, shiny new car, and they think they're getting a great deal! After all, they're getting a whole heck of a lot of money. Hey! They could go on a vacation with their new car, too! They sign it without reading all the important information like... You know... When or how you have to buy the house back or move out because it's not their house anymore, and they enter into a binding agreement. Now that the banks and companies are saying, "hey, we want our money now," the same greedy, overindulgent people decided to cry to the government to help them deal with their extremely short-sighted and hasty mistake... And who's pushing for this? Everyone's favorite faction of government: THE DEMOCRATS!

Am I honestly the only one who says that the only way to teach these clearly unintelligent people that there are consequences to their actions is to butt out of the market completely and let the "crisis" continue? The government isn't supposed to be there to prevent citizen stupidity, it's supposed to guarantee freedom. If people realize that the government is going to come running to help them when they make stupid mistakes, is that going to encourage them to learn and grow? Absolutely not... They'll learn that no matter how bad it gets, the government will come to their rescue and make everything go away for them by using tax money.

In essence, YOU, the tax-payer, are helping these stupid people make their mortgage payments.

Hello, socialism?

Wow, even with Uru dead and gone a second time, people are still churning out ideas on what should be changed... Like it still matters? You guys don't move on much, do you? Here's my take on it: Get rid of all the stupid magical Bahro and Yeesha, the two elements that made the Myst universe completely and totally unexplainable and fantastic. With the whole "Bahro can Link themselves and others on their own" is an epic failure on Cyan's part. It's not realistic! That's the entire mood behind the Myst games (up until Exile and beyond, apparently). You'd play along and see something and you could look at it and say "you know, this could quite possibly be explained by real-world science, given enough time". But then you have Bahro appearing in K'veer after players line up in a circle? Books changing Ages in real time? Tablets? Magic... Not Myst.

Anyway, what I want to talk about... is Stargate Worlds. Haven't seen anyone talk about that since its announcement! Personally, I'd completely forgotten about it. I really don't have the time or wish to follow a pre-production MMORPG. I've learned by now that until a game is released, there's a high chance that some shortsighted publisher will waltz along and axe the project in favor of something with a number following the title. But SGW has come a loooong way since I last read the site and forums, and I'd completely forgotten about it until the forums sent me an automated birthday email.

But, yeah! I've been reading the Wiki... So far, it seems to be almost perfect for a Stargate game, even if it wasn't MMO. Think of it! The game is going to be balanced, more or less, for squads of four, of course, because that's the standard SG team size. (Seasons 9 and 10 don't count for anything, bleh. Stupid Mitchell. Stupid Vala. Stupid Ori.) Right now, the enemies are going to have elements of random in their actions... They won't do the same thing every time you encounter them like, say, in World of Warcraft dungeons. In WoW, there's a certain way you have to do things, and success is based purely off how well people know the scripted sequence of events for any given boss. It's an okay approach and we all enjoy it, but it does get rather old. Imagine yourself in an SG team of fellow players... You just got done investigating what you thought were some Ancient ruins. (Ancient as in Stargate-Builders, not just old ruins...) You head back to the Stargate and there's a patrol of Jaffa loyal to a Goa'uld who's out to get you. When they see you, they fall back and take defense positions behind the Stargate and fire from cover. You defeat them and leave... Now, say, the mission is repeatable. You go back to the ruins and come back and you know that there's going to be Jaffa there again, but, this time? They see you and they decide you're in a position to be overrun and they charge at you, staff weapons blazing! That's the premise here.

As for players, right now, there are going to be four races to pick from: Jaffa, Goa'uld, Human and Asgard! Jaffa will have two factions: Free and Loyal. Think of Free Jaffa as late-series Teal'c, when his symbiote dies and he needs to use Tretonin. Think of Loyal Jaffa as the good old fashioned snake-in-the-gut armies of the "gods". Goa'uld will simply be Goa'uld. No good, no bad, just Goa'uld. This particular faction is said to have seen how well posing as gods worked out (not very well), so they tend to act more like Ba'al, where they tend to do things on their own. Humans will have two factions, also: SGC and something called OPCORE, which is sorta like a new version of the NID, where they believe that they should acquire technology at all costs. Asgard are like the opposite of Goa'uld where if you pick them, you have no faction choice... You're just an Asgard. Kind of weird, and I wish they didn't let you pick them, but they do, so oh well. You get something called a Drone when you pick Asgard. The Drones seem to be what does all the interacting with things, seeing as how Asgard are pretty... frail and useless without their technology.

As for classes, I'm not sure if there are any classes for Goa'uld, Jaffa and Asgard, but for humans, you get to pick from the familiar abilities! Archaeologist for all you Daniel Jackson buffs, Scientist for those of you who actually understand what Samantha Carter is talking about, and Soldier, for all of you who more closely resemble Jack O'neill's method of approaching things! Archaeologists and Scientists are going to be more suited for analyzing ruins and technology, naturally. There will be puzzle mini-games that you get to work on, and Scientists and Archaeologists will specialize in these. Sometimes there will be technology puzzles that require a Scientist and sometimes there will be a linguistic puzzle or such that will require an Archaeologist, so you'll want to have access to each one, no doubt. Soldiers are, of course, suited more for combat, although each class can fight.

As you go on missions, you'll uncover Gate addresses that you can use to dial up another planet and see what's going on. So far, it doesn't seem that you'll be able to randomly dial addresses and see if a world pops up, and it'll be more that you have to learn addresses to use them. But once you know an address, you can visit the world any time you want. Some will be friendly to your faction, others will be aggressive, and others will be contested, and will serve as a sort of Player vs Player environment. PvP is going to be opt-in, which means that if you don't want to PvP, you don't need to do anything to defend yourself. (Except stay away from contested planets, probably.)

Flying craft will probably be an expansion at this point, as will the Pegasus galaxy and Atlantis. One of the original examples of the game, building a Goa'uld mothership, will probably be introduced in such an expansion, but crafting is going to be a major aspect of the game... More so than WoW's where you simply gather resources and press a button. It will most likely sport some sort of mini-game that will determine the quality outcome of a product, similar to what Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has, but... Of course, nobody's played the game yet, so we don't know!

Speaking of playing... The first release date is set for "Fall 2008", and reports say that the developers have reached every planned milestone on time, so, right now, this release date is viable. But... Knowing the nature of projects of this scale, I'm willing to bet that it's going to be pushed back as least twice. Which I'm okay with, actually. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for example, was pushed back because they couldn't get done what they wanted... It's when someone comes along and rushes production like Ubisoft with Uru and SOE with Vanguard that you need to start worrying. I also hope that all these plans get implemented! Right now, I think the game is absolutely perfect in every way. As long as they deliver what they promised and don't have to change anything because of some technological problem? This will be a really awesome game.

Now...

If I could only apply as much analytic power to my school work as I did in my last post...

I'd have my Ph.D by now, if I did... No foolin'.