A Party Atmosphere

You must know that I couldn’t resist. After reading about the hubbubbub and the bruhaha on the Warcraft Medivh server over the giant influx of level one spectators, tourists and jagoff wannabes, I just have to see for myself.

Now here’s the thing, I’m just here to observe. I understand the mathematics of queues and lag, but I didn’t design this community event and I’m not in charge of allocating Warcraft hardware resources, so all I’ll say is “Congrats Medivh” and “This is the price of fame”, I’d also say “cry more” and “too bad, so sad”, but I’m trying not to be a douche.

AFK Gamer has a small team of reporters covering the Medivh globe; screenshotting our way from graveyard to graveyard on our epic journey to Silithus.

01/17/06 — HOUR ONE

The first thing to greet us, other than Welcome to World of Warcraft, was the spammed guild invites to the tourist guild. What a friendly server!

Guild Invite

We left soon after joining the tourist guild because damn, unless they have a warlock to summon us straight to Cenarion Hold in Silithus, what’s the point?

We were soon to realize, however, that the natives were not as friendly as our tour guides.

More later as we edit raw screenshot feeds and witness the mayhem history …

CNN (Cow Network News)
Silithus

Week of Fives: Day Three

Continuing … the 2005 that I want to remember for-flippin-ever, Five Favorite 2005 Gaming Screenshots:

1. February 2005 — The warrior protest on the Warcraft Argent Dawn server … hundreds of naked and partially-dressed gnomes marching on Ironforge. The horror. The horror. (full post)

Gnome Conga Line

2. March 2005 — World of Warcraft’s impending launch in China is eagerly anticipated … by Blizzard alone. (full post)

China Launch

3. April 2005 — The drunk cat toucher in Warcraft’s Darkshore zone was my favorite public chatter of the year. His cat liked it! (full post)

Drunk Cat Toucher

4. June 2005 — My psychotic, cursing group member from Guild Wars. So young. So angry. Damn that rap music! (full post)

The Psychotic Should Only Solo in Games

5. August 2005 — The Warcraft noob who was unsure if Humans could pick up the face-melting talents (aka Shadow spec) or if those talents were limited to Undead priests. He wasn’t joking. (full post)

He R Stoopid

Looking back through all of my 2005 screenshots, I’m reminded that it’s the people that make multiplayer online gaming so special. And when I say special, I mean “frequently a pain in the ass”.

Week of Fives: Day Two

Today, Fives Ways I Would Abuse Power as a Game Employee, Developer, Designer, or Assistant to the Undersecretary of Orc Spell Effects:

1. The Server-wide Broadcast System. Usually reserved for important game announcements like: We know the game mail system is broken at the moment, hell if we can figure it out, but don’t delete your mail in the meantime because you will regret it and then we will laugh, I’d run roughshod over that system if ever the Undersecretary’s back was turned.

“We’re watching you ….” and “Aren’t you glad this isn’t Norrath (Azeroth) (Ascalon) (Camelot)?” and “Stop complaining about us in guild chat or your raid might have an unfortunate ‘accident'” and “Player64 is right. Player907 *is* a ninja, I saw the whole thing.”

2. My own Ego-NPC. FotonNPC, placed prominently in a major city, would interact with players via programmed scripts. (Yes, I know this has been done before, keep reading.) Any players that would /rude or /spit in my NPC’s vicinity would set off the “Time to Die, TargetPlayer!” script, where my NPC would give chase and wtfpwn with dual-wielded glowy swords and then /rude and /spit on their disrespectful corpses.

A few times a day, my NPC would also make a patrol of all the city’s dark corners and hidden passages and engage the wtfpwn script if any night elves were caught cybering, because that’s just weird and inappropriate in my city.

3. Chat Channel Vigilante. I would port to the major cities, hidden, and watch the chat channels for the lollerskaters, PVP whiners and other chat nuisances. Public chat abusers would get a special tell from GM-Foton: Greetings! You talk too much in public chat. Thanks!

I could just macro that so it wouldn’t take too much of my time. I’d have a separate macro, of course, for the players who offer their unsolicited opinions on every auction they see in the public channels: Greetings! How about you mind your own business? Thanks.

4. Raid Critic. I’d choose a server guild at random, port out to their instance hidden (duh), and sit and watch the show. Occasionally, I’d offer some tips and insights in /say, “There’s no way this is going to work” or “You need more healers. ALOT more healers.” Or, after a wipe, when they arrive back at the room of their untimely deaths, /say: Now THAT’S a lot of skeletons (corpses) (bodies)!!

5. One word: screenshots. Think of the screenshots I could gather of private conversations, dirty deals and unethical collusion between players, rivals and guilds then! Now, I’m somewhat limited to what happens within my circle of friends, enemies and guildmates … to have access to the whole chat system, I would indeed be a god.

Naturally, I’d publish all the good stuff on a super secret website under yet another super secret identity so everyone could enjoy.

I realize that all this could only end in tragedy, my ultimate dismissal, but what the hell — it’d be a great ride while it lasted.