Archive for April, 2005
Server downtime
My web server has been down for most of today. And nary a word from my web host, not even once I could collect my email again. Not that I’ve been posting much lately, but if you tried to look and couldn’t, don’t worry, I’m still here. Or do worry, if you happened to go to one of those ridiculous anti-VSU … [coughs] ... uh, anti-freedom rallies today, since … [whispers] I am not on your side.
In case you’re wondering who my webhost is, it’s World Super Host. And no, I wouldn’t recommend them. Not unless you like unexplained downtime with your dirt-cheap hosting.
50-foot-tall book meme
Any fool can tell that I haven’t been posting much, so today I again resort to keeping the blog active with relative nonsense. You know you’re clutching at straws when your last post was a link to an online quiz, and the one you’re writing is a meme iteration.
Thanks to Myst for this, anyway. It is, apparently, the “50 foot tall book meme.” I’m not sure if it is attempting to generate a list of books that, if stacked, would be 50ft high (I suspect it’s there already), or a list that, on-screen, is 50-feet long. If it’s the latter, I suspect people are going to give up before it gets that long.
Whatever the stated aim, it is a fabulous opportunity to show off how many books you’ve read on a list to which others have added titles they deemed worthy of mention. Myst’s already done an admirable job of flaunting how well-read she is, so now it’s my turn.
The deal, by the way, is that if you replicate this meme on your own site, you have to mark the books you’ve read, and add three more of your own to the end of the list.
Books I’ve read all the way through are in bold. I’ve also added some commentary. Note that the markings for books I’ve read become sparser as the list gets longer and ever more obscure.
Extreme pinkness
I switched to my Windows box for a few hours today while I was backing up my Powerbook’s HD, and I noticed…
benhourigan.com looks very pink when viewed on a monitor that hasn’t been calibrated properly. This was not the intention. The background is meant to be a light tan, rather than salmon.
I blame Windows, for having such shoddy colour control. Of course, I never noticed how bad it was until I started using Mac OS X, and Linux is usually just as bad as Windows.
Since the fact that my uncalibrated readers are experiencing extreme pinkness displeases me, I will soon be changing the background colour. Any suggestions? Colour’s name and RGB values, please.
Eight Virtues
If you don’t get this post, don’t worry. It’s a geek thing.
Today I’ve been redrafting the chapter in my thesis about the history of RPGs, and had to find out what the Eight Virtues from the Ultima series were. Ultima IV was a real milestone in videogame history, in that its hero, the Avatar, appeared in a world that had just been saved from villains three times. The people of Britannia were looking for ways to transcend their bloody past, and were building a code of ethics to guide them into a glorious future. It was the first RPG I know of that really thought about what was needed to build a good society, and possibly the first videogame that incorporated an explicitly formulated moral code that the hero was expected to adhere to.
Those whose memory of the games is clearer than mine may remember that the Eight Virtues of the Avatar are:
- honesty
- compassion
- valour
- justice
- sacrifice
- honour
- spirituality
- humility
Ultimas IV—VI asked players a series of questions to discover what virtues they favoured, to determine what the PCs attributes and class would be. Some of those questions have resurfaced as online, Ultima-themed “personality” tests. There’s one that uses graphics from Ultima IV (lots of clicking through required to get to the test), which, like Ultima IV itself, asks so few questions that you’ll have an affinity with a different virtue every time. Alternatively, there’s one that asks loads of questions but doesn’t conclusively tell you which virtue you favour.
These tests are so far from being valid that it’s ridiculous, but the questions are all based on imaginary situations, and they’re fun for nostalgia’s sake. If you’re looking for humour, there’s also the oddly-named Test of Avatarishness Purity Test, which doesn’t really test your personality, or have anything to do with the Virtues, but is a lot more fun than the others. It asks, among other things, “Have you ever been threatened by big red evil faces on your computer screen?” I have, and was deemed 32% Avatarish.
Tests aside, which of the virtues do I favour? Well, I think it’s honesty.
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Microsoft copies Ubuntu logo
The MSN Spaces service recently passed out of its beta phase. On visiting the service’s home page, regular readers of OSNews will likely recognise a shocking degree of similarity between the Spaces logo and that of distro-of-the-moment Ubuntu Linux. The similarity is obvious when switching between the Spaces and Ubuntu pages in separate browser tabs. In the sites’ favicons, the three circles representing human heads are in the exact same positions in both logos. There is also a blog within MSN Spaces that has been set up to show Ubuntu’s logo side by side with Microsoft’s ripped-off version. Have a look before Microsoft hears from Canonical’s lawyers.
Role-playing
Occasionally, when I’ve had some spare time, I’ve been playing World of Warcraft. Usually I’ll spend a few nights or afternoons playing for several hours, then have a long break while I do other things. The game (commonly known as WoW) is the first MMORPG I’ve ever played seriously. It’s also, today, the first arena where I’ve ever had fun actually role-playing.
World of Warcraft is currently home to the avatars of over 1.5 million players worldwide. This population is split over just over 100 different servers, or “realms,” each one of them a complete, parallel instance of the fictional world of Azeroth. Players on each server mostly have the same fantastic quests available to them, but the servers come in three different flavours: Player vs Player (PvP), Player vs Environment (PvE) and Role-Playing (RP). Each of these flavours offers a different kind of gaming experience.
Until now, I’d stuck to PvP. Whatever kind of server you choose, WoW makes you pick a side. The Alliance are the “good guys,” humans, dwarves, night elves and gnomes. The Horde, while not really evil, has a darker, more brutal feel, and consists of orcs, trolls, the minotaur-like tauren, and the undead Scourge. But on a PvP server, unlike the other kinds, killing players of the opposing side is a major part of the game. The developers, Blizzard, are currently testing a reputation system that will reward players for killing their racial enemies. This race-war element, I need to point out, I find a little disturbing.
I also find the race-war inconvenient. A few of my real-life friends play WoW, but I started playing before I knew what servers they had characters on. Unfortunately for me, I had chosen to play a human warlock on the Blackrock server, where many Australians play. This character couldn’t talk to one of my friend’s characters, since he had chosen to play an orc warrior, my warlock’s racial enemy. But I couldn’t just start up a Horde character to go adventuring with my friend, because PvP servers don’t allow you to play both sides. Eventually, I managed to migrate my warlock to another server, and start up a Horde character, a troll shaman, with which to talk to my friend. He, however, hasn’t been online this weekend.
Building up the troll character, though, I noticed that a lot of the people playing Horde characters, like many of the people playing Alliance characters, were either boring, or idiots. Late one night, when it was nearly time for me to sleep, another person asked me to join a group with them, to do a quest. I joined, and then ended up following them around for over an hour while they went shopping in one of the game’s major cities, Orgrimmar. Finally, I gave up, and logged out, but before I went, I told my shopaholic companion: “next time, get your shit together before you go looking for buddies.”
In the whole PvP experience, things were lacking: seriousness, camraderie, even civility. This shouldn’t have surprised me: a lot of people are playing WoW, and as Harvey Lee told me, this means “the dregs of society are playing, too.” But there was one way I might get away from those dregs: join a Role-Playing server.
One one of the WoW web forums, I saw somebody describe RP servers as being like a vegetarian option at a fast food restaurant. They’re for people who are picky about their experiences. The rules for RP servers state that you aren’t allowed to say anything in public chat that is Out of Character (OOC): you have to behave, to everyone else, as if you are your character, with the perspective of your character, who knows only their own world, and nothing about real life or about the mechanics of the game. I expected this rule to act as something of an idiot filter.
I logged on to Feathermoon, expecting just to try it out for a few hours and see if I liked it, but soon I was hooked. At the inn in Kharanos, I ran into some members of a new guild, the Hardbeard Clan, and saw them riffing off each other, their characters discussing and joking about how they fit into the Warcraft series’ lore. One of them had clearly done his homework and, as I had, read “the extensive backstory”:http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/story/ from start to finish. Here was someone, no, several people, who had approached the game with seriousness and, as a result, were more obviously having fun than anyone I’d seen playing WoW in PvP-land. I asked to join their guild, and was soon in the midst of a hilarity-filled guild meeting. For the first time in the month and a half I’ve been playing WoW, I began to feel part of the fictional world. I felt both challenged and rewarded: for the glorious effort of playing a character, I got to play a game of improvisation with other people. Further down the line, I spent two hours chatting about real-life with a fellow guild member, getting killed by monsters several times as I neglected to take care of my mage’s bodily welfare. Another guild member gave me several silver to deliver a knife to another of his characters. Civility, playfulness, seriousness, sincerity, helpfulness, intellect: this is what I encountered on the RP server, and what I had been missing in PvP.
So, for the first time ever, I have had fun role-playing. I played D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) a few times, but, like Bill Clinton smoking marijuana, I didn’t inhale, or rather, I didn’t enjoy it. I blame the DMs, who shall remain nameless. This time, though, I did enjoy it. I’ll mark up a few more points on my geek rating. Thanks to everyone who made my first day on Feathermoon such a pleasure.