by Julie Whitefeather

I once heard Tom Stoppard, the playwright, talk about a party he went to in Toronto, Canada. At the party, a woman turned to him and said,“Are you Tom Stoppard? I thought you were dead.”

“I assured her,” Mr. Stoppard continued, “that I was not dead – merely in Toronto.”

My own version of the story above would include the insistence that I am not dead, but merely languishing in halls of bureaucracy that would make time spent with the Vogons (featured in Douglas Adams “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” series of books) look like an exciting weekend in Vegas by comparison.

read on…

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated…
…but not by much

Back in undergraduate school I listened to a lecture by the playwright Tom Stoppard.  He mentioned that he was at a party in Toronto, Canada when a woman turned to him and said, “Are you Tom Stoppard? I thought you were dead.”

“I assured her,” Mr. Stoppard continued, “that I was not dead – merely in Toronto.”

My own version of the story above would include the insistence that I am not dead, but merely languishing in halls of bureaucracy that would make time spent with the Vogons (featured in Douglas Adams “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” series of books) look like an exciting weekend in Vegas by comparison. Now you may not know who the Vogons are - those paragons of bureaucracy, the aficionados of the officious. In his books, Douglas Adams described what they are best at this way:

“Bureaucracy is a parasite that preys on free thought and suffocates free spirit.” – Douglas Adams

Ah but fortunately, my friends, we have the virtual worlds in which we all play (or you wouldn’t be reading these words) to set us free from life’s trials and tribulations that can oft be the cause of the mundane. And much has happened within those virtual worlds of late…

The good folks at Turbine have brought the depths of Moria to life and given the players two new player classes in which explore it. However I have yet to tread those harrowing halls for I have been busy battling the burgeoning ranks of the undead controlled by none other than Arthas himself: The Lich King.  I must say, despite the insistence of a certain author who shall remain nameless (*ahem* Richard Bartel) who claims that Blizzard callously supports torture in their game, the quests in Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) are incredibly involving - So much so, in fact, that when I encountered the villain at the end of a quest chain recently I found myself shouting at the computer screen, “YOU BASTARD, YOU DID THIS!!”

But the Lich King isn’t the only one causing the wrath of players these days. It seems that Mythic Entertainment has stirred up the Warhammer Online (WAR) community as well. It was not that long ago that Mythic’s front man, the ever effervescent Paul Barnett, described public quests in WAR this way:

“The public quests (PQ’s) are one of those things that passes my genius test. My genius test is simple: if you see something and upon seeing it you go ‘my god that’s blindingly obvious.’ And yet to you had never seen it up until that moment, then whatever it is that you’ve just seen was probably genius. Public quests will change the face of MMOs forever… Look at PQ’s. They allow you to engage in the game without having you queue up and without having to get a lot of people together…” – Paul Barnett in Beckett Massive Online Gamer Magazine in an interview by Rebecca Bundy

But those words don’t exactly ring true any more.

Don’t get me wrong. I love WAR; I even co-host a podcast about it.  But most of the times there are so few people actually doing the public quests there is no way to complete them and get the reward at the end of the quest. And there, as the great bard Shakespeare once wrote, “lays the rub.”

The word on the virtual streets of WAR these days is that the reward at the public quests (when indeed there is a reward to be had) is not figured out by player contribution as has been represented by the good folks at Mythic. For those of you who have not played WAR, at the completion of a public quest the game purportedly ranks all players by their contribution to the quest and gives bonuses to the determination of who gets the loot and who gets “skunked”. But now the word making its hurried way around the internet is that the loot at the end of public quests is awarded entirely at random.  But no, says the author of the “RP that Way” blog (via thegreenskin.net) in a post available here:

Here is a quote by the author who says it is worse than we think:

“I have an entire post written which I am considering publishing. It would probably ruin keep raids for awhile until mythic changed it, but at least false information wouldn’t be passed as fact. I cant read WHA right now, but I can tell you that contribution, while broken, is NOT random. Its just more broken than you even think it is.” – rpthatway

Truth be told I would like the truth to be told. It may be that the whole supposition amounts to nothing more than “ein haufen mist” as it is said in Germany – then again, maybe not. At the moment the good folks at Mythic are silent on the issue.

While things may be a bit up in the air about the whole public quest issue over at WAR, Richard Garriott aka General British has his feet back on the ground after spending 30 mil for this trip into space. Once he had his feet back on the ground he decided to leave NCSoft (the developers of his of his Tabula Rasa game) to pursue “other interests.”

As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”

I remember back when I played Ultima Online (UO) and the mind behind the game, Richard Gariott then known as Lord British, decided to leave UO.  It seems that Dick Garriott is making a habit of this sort of thing.  The difference is, shortly following on the heals of his announcement was another by NCSoft telling us all that they were closing down Tabula Rasa in February 2009; something they assured us not that long ago they had no intention of doing. In a sad and obvious version of the famous line from the Wizard of Oz “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” earlier this year the folks at NCSoft assured us that the layoffs at their company would have no effect on Tabula Rasa.

Right.

Well I was never a Tabula Rasa fan but there is just a bit of irony in the whole thing for it was just a bit of a year ago that Richard Garriott was predicting the demise of the 800 pound Blizzard Gorilla describing their game mechanics as “the harbingers of failure.” Message to Richard Garriott: Be careful where you through that mud mister. Note to self: Be careful about believing the things Richard Garriott says in interviews. In the end, what matters is not what other interests that Dick Garriott chose to pursue while he was busy jumping ship, but that some ones hard work is sinking with that same ship afterwards – let’s hope and pray that no one is out of work because of it.

So it seems that no one will be pinning the 800 pound Blizzard gorilla to the mat any time soon. And in the mean time, until next time…

See you online

Julie Whitefeather