People like to make lists around the end of the year. We could make lists in March, but then people would be like, “Dude, what’s with the lists in March? You’re totally late.” While I don’t really give a ratfuck if people think I’m lazy, I just don’t have the energy to explain every little thing to them.

My MMOG Wishlist of things I will never see in gaming:

1. Customizable reply buttons. You know how it is. Some level 5 ratfucker runs around ninja-inviting everyone to his spanking new guild and some box pops up on your screen while you’re running to the travel portal “Ratfucker wishes to invite you to his guild, Dragon Ratfuckers of Power” Accept or Decline. I want to have my Decline button text customizable. I’d customize it to “WTF” or “Go Away”. Same goes for the ninja group invites. Is it too much to ask that they send a tell before inviting the entire zone to their whatever?

2. X-ed functioning. Sometimes a player will go so far in their asshattery that I X them. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist. I want my /ignore functioning to go that one step further. I don’t want to see their lame chat, I don’t want to see their character … I don’t want to even hear rumors of them. I want to run past their hunt area and see monsters spraying blood for no reason, apparently engaged in combat with some mystery player; OR BETTER STILL, the monster disengaging and returning to its spawn spot, regenning like mad because it has slain said mystery player. Enjoy the graveyard, invisible fucker.

3. A reverse bad word filter. Working in foul language is an art form, and since technology’s goal is to make my life easier, why can’t I customize the game UI to insert foul language for me? My special brand of passive-aggressive swearing takes a lot of energy. Depending on how the looting is going that day, I’d like the few public channel comments I make to be STUFFED FULL of cursing. Example: I type, “Anyone doing that defias elite quest?” The UI outputs, “Any of you noob assholes going to do that pain in the ass defias elite-my-ass bullshit?” This is doable.

4. Survivor-style server populations. I’ve said it before, I’m sure to say it again, we need to vote people off the server. When some noob starts spamming the public channel with their “omgzorz, stop stealing my experience by hitting my mobs!!1!!1”, I’d like to be able to vote them off right then and there. For safety, let’s say 20 votes in an hour and they’re off the server. Summarizing: noob whines, they instantly see a counter on their screen tallying the rapidly rising vote; the tally gets to 20, BOOM, back to the server select screen. Enjoy online life elsewhere, whiner.

5. Truly premium servers. Let’s just get over our hinkey about ebay’ing game money and items already. The game companies should just allow players to buy the primo loot and character levels directly and let’s be done with it. If I don’t want to camp RareMob01 that hasn’t been seen in 5 years, let me Visa my way to victory. We have all these new and improved ideas to level the playing field between the casual and the power gamer … why bother? We all know the reason casual players don’t play as much as power gamers is because we HAVE JOBS that we actually SHOW UP FOR and then we GET PAID. Powergamer, my ass. Feel the heat of the Visa, motherfucker.

6. Sports scores. I’m working on the last few experience mobs for a major skill/spell level. Yet! There’s a big game between Miami and New England. I don’t want to risk my toon’s health and well being by glancing at a TV screen every few minutes, or worse, alt-tabbing out of the game to check ESPN’s sports crawl. We’re still in charge of the machines around here, let’s get a sports crawl going in game for the many of us that are sports AND gaming hags. Hooking up with ESPN seems like an ideal opportunity for cross marketing.

7. Consistent game terms. I’m getting old(er). Only Grim Death knows how much time I have left, especially considering how much alcohol I can burn. So let’s just stop making up new gaming terms. It’s not cute, it’s not clever and it doesn’t make the devs original or unique in any way. Since everything I know about life I learned in EQ, let’s just agree to use those terms … and while we’re at it, let’s just agree that it’s all about me and we won’t have any problems. Groups are groups, they aren’t parties. There are few things more unnerving than when some strange dude asks me if I want to party. (wtf!) Private communiques are TELLS, they aren’t whispers. Again, I won’t be whispering to some dude and if I’m whispering to some alleged chick, I may become over-pixelated — if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

8. Completely Roleplay-free servers. Roleplayers want to have a home, or an olde homestead, that they mighteth calleth thine owneth. Well, so do we non-RPers. You can keep your “Hail and well mets!” Release the NPCs from their archaic language; a simple “Kill 5 moles, return, get reward” will suffice. No weddings, no /bowing, no clothes that don’t have stats … DAMN, gimme something I can use!

9. NPC group members. I think we can all agree that forced grouping with strangers … make that STUPID strangers … isn’t what we want in our MMOGs. I need a stable of NPCs that I can hire if I can’t trick some player to do my bidding for hours on end. And code that AI well, because I don’t want to spend all my time teaching the NPCs aggro management, how to pull safely or mana conservation. If I did, I’d get a player character to do my bidding for hours on end.

10. Wireless patching. Previously, I wrote about the terror that an impending patch creates. I also wrote about the extra special terror that a Warcrack patch creates: that fucking peer-to-peer/takes-hours-to-download patch server they use. I want a wireless text message when a patch is released and then I want to call up my home computer to start the patch several hours before I arrive home. This really is a safety concern. If I sit around for hours patching, reading the Internets, probably having several strong refreshments all the while, I’m bound to be both torked off and jaked off my ass by the time I get into the game. This will only mean trouble for ALL of us.

I realize, of course, that I will never see any of these, but dammit, I’m the consumer here and I have wants and needs — many wants and needs that I don’t even realize that I have yet.

Here we are now. Entertain us.