Pumping Irony

Benjeth and I visited the Shing Jea Monastery today for the opening of 2008’s Canthan New Year! Benjeth had an opportunity to participate in some of the festivities last year but not enough for any rewards. Unfortunately I’m working over the entire festival this year as well. I will attempt to get some time in from the hotels on my laptop though; Benjeth really wants a dragon mask to add to his collection.

In retrospect, January ends as a slow month for me in MMO’s. I spent time each day home (granted, my January schedule was rough so I wasn’t home as much as I like) attempting to complete the final Hunter’s League quest in Vanguard, but I am not willing to sit on my thumbs for hours on end looking for a group. I’ll give it 15-20 minutes and I’m out. I did finally notice people forming a group the other night just before I logged out but as luck would have it, I did not have the time for it.

I did a little bit of Guild Wars here and there, also. Benjeth has still been incredibly unsuccessful at winning more than a round or two in the Norn Fighting tournament in Gunnar’s Hold, and so is still lacking the ever-elusive dervish, Kahmu, to complete his list of acquired Heroes.

I did login to LOTRO briefly to check my inbox for kinship mail and I decided to go ahead and get the Bree Horse for Arwellyn, my Lore-master. I was sorely tempted to go ahead and pick up where I’d left off questing and such, but I still want to take a little more time away. Book 12 will be out soon, perhaps after that? I’m perfectly fine with LOTRO’s low-fantasy take on things, provided I have a high-fantasy alternative game (GW and VG) to balance things out. My kinship is just awesome, and wanting to do more and more with them is actually the reason for my break. When I agreed to allow myself to return to MMO’s after my WoW burnout from a couple years of fairly hardcore play, I vowed to not get sucked back into that mentality and I felt it very strongly in LOTRO so I had to take a step back. I’m still playing other games but only casually. This laptop is a piece of junk and while it did perfectly fine with WoW, it has difficulty even running GW on low settings so I’m basically game-less at work, which was not the case in the WoW days.

I also see DDO’s Module 6 will be out by the time I get home, so perhaps I’ll try picking up some DDO in February?

Otherwise, I spent a little time re-discovering the FPS genre this month. I bought Team Fortress 2 on launch day and I love the fun little skirmishes but it’s not something I can do for very long stretches of time. I also bought Call of Duty 4 on Steam and, while I’m enjoying the single player campaign here and there, the online game hasn’t been very compelling to me. A good friend has become completely addicted to the Insurgency beta 2 Half-Life 2 mod but it seems just like a “hardcore” (ie. no hand-holding, no frills) version of COD4. Small-ish urban combat skirmishes. That can be fun in small doses for me, but I’ve been there, done that years ago. I like the sensation of being in a war not a skirmish, so the Battlefield series fits the bill for me. I fell pretty hard for Battlefield 1942 back in the day. Vietnam did not run well on my system at the time so I didn’t bother with it. On my current system, 1942 crashes with dual-core CPU’s and I’m not willing to hassle myself with manually setting the game to only use a single core each time I run the game. So I’ve been back in Battlefield 2142 and loving every minute of it. I’ve even been playing the demo version so I could introduce the game to a few friends, one of whom used to team with me back in 1942 and was instantly addicted to 2142 and purchased the new Deluxe Edition (fully updated 1.4 game plus the Northern Strike booster pack) from the EA Store so we’ll get to play the full version when I get home next week. I’m hoping to get the Insurgency addict hooked on 2142 as well!

As for the blog, I’ve played around with a few extensions and I think I nearly have things where I want them on that end. I did end up installing the Sabre plugin to combat spam registrations. Overall the spam commenting wasn’t bad and Akismet caught all of them anyway, but I kept noticing one or two bot registrations every day, all of the form ab123456@yahoo.com (random letters and numbers but always yahoo.com) and I quickly tired of manually deleting them each day. So I apologize if capcha tests are aggravating for new users to register but at least it has put an end to the daily stream of bot users. Tom added the ‘random header images’ I’d asked for in the new Mandigo theme so I need to get busy and upload some next month. Ironic that I’m the one who got the ball rolling on this option, but will be one of the last Mandigo users to actually utilize it — I’ve noticed all the other MMO bloggers jumped on it as soon as Tom released it. Such is life… I did pick up some traffic and some new registered users this month, largely thanks to Brent at Virgin Worlds linking my STO post, and a few other blogs referring here as well. Discussions are still very quiet, usually just SmakenDahead and I, but I’m hoping to regain some of the activity I lost last year with the server crash.

Oh, just curious… I know Heartless Gamer has his own little TF2 Steam Community, which I’m member of (it’s tiny and I don’t think the gang has ever actually done anything as a group yet) but I don’t suppose there’s a blogger group or clan for BF2142 is there? That would rule… I know PvtHudson over at Wife Aggro mentioned last week he’d like to get back into BF2142 but in the very next post he said he was back into EQ2 for the long haul. Meh.

Shawn just dropped a bombshell today: GLU, the Guildcast fan guild, is going to be disbanded (actually it got so big there are two GLU guilds) and the alliance both GLU’s are members of will be disbanded soon. Shawn will reveal the reason in the next episode of Guildcast.

Off the top of my head I envision one of two possible reasons:

1. Drama. We did have a bit of drama last week that resulted in the departures of a few very well-loved individuals. The departure seemed amicable enough and I don’t know what went on other than what was said in the alliance chat channel. I won’t go into details, especially when I don’t know all of them. If drama is the reason, I can’t say I’m looking forward to the prospect of having GLU’s dirty laundry aired publicly over the podcast.
2. Much like Merlask was hired by Turbine a few months ago, perhaps ArenaNet has hired Shawn! If this is the case, congrats Shawn, I’m so envious it’s not even funny. Shawn working at ArenaNet would most likely mean Guildcast would have to be shut down, as well as Shawn’s other podcasts, Tabulacast and OMG Real Life (actually OMGRL probably wouldn’t be a conflict of interests, though it would be a conflict of Shawn’s available time). The catcher here is that everything associated with the podcast and guilds could be handed over to someone else. Who? Lady Sinaea has her hands full with Ringcast these days but it’s possible someone would step up to the Guildcast plate. It’s already evident that people are willing to step up for GLU itself.

We’ll soon find out if either of my off-the-cuff predictions have any merit, but for the record I feel whether in the long run this ends up as a positive for Shawn and/or for us lowly fans, dropping a bombshell like this then keeping us in the dark until a podcast sheds light on the situation is a poor way to handle it. Whether guild drama was part of the reason or not, the silence is creating drama and tension among those remaining as well as a profound sense of confused sadness. Many have already left GLU not knowing why, and two of the allied guilds have already dissolved their alliance with GLU. In the span of a single day we’ve gone from a huge, friendly, busy alliance to barely anyone remaining and those who do are tense and withdrawn, not knowing what to say since no information is forthcoming until Shawn gets his next podcast out.

Maybe after this is all over I’ll see the wisdom of this approach, but going through it like I am… I do not approve. It is fostering negativity where none existed before.

Update: Episode 90 came out this morning with the explanation. A benign reason after all, and not one that came to mind: burnout. Shawn feels overworked with three podcasts, an upcoming “podiobook” he’s working on, and that not-so-fresh “this is work not fun” feeling about the game. Guildcast has been going strong for two years, and Shawn has decided to quit while he’s ahead rather than allow the show itself to burnout or podfade. In the meantime he’s taking a break from the game and hopes when he returns, minus the podcast work, that the “fun factor” will return in full force as well.

Now that all is disclosed, I am still of the opinion that something could have been said to the GLU membership. The two-day silent treatment took its toll on many of us. Some had a sense of confusion and loss. Many got off a sinking ship without so much as a goodbye. Apparently there was even talk of “overthrowing Shawn” and taking control of the guild which is, of course, not possible. As with any bits of “guild drama” this one, mild and understandable as it is, did much damage to the family feeling that GLU stood for, and that’s a shame.