Category Archives: Noteworthy

A Tale of Two City of Heroes

Posted on by

Over at The Corporation (the link’s over there, lazy ass), some guy named Jiffy had gotten a letter from NCsoft about his City of Heroes CD key … it’s a dupe. So NCsoft wants Jiffy to jump through a bunch of hoops to prove he is the rightful owner and the “other guy” is the duper. Or NCsoft is the duper.

Which brings me to my Short List for Dealing with Game Companies:

1. Take it to the mattresses. Actually, the rule is “Take it to the phones”, but I like to throw in a Godfather reference whenever I can. People at work don’t like to be bothered by phone calls; I’ve been known to feign hysterical deafness so I don’t have to answer. Using the phone is the closest you will get to being “in their face”, so unless you’re willing to fly out to their offices (and if you are, seek help — you’re a catass), use the phones.

2. If the Game Company is unwilling to resolve an issue to your satisfaction, have them cut you a check for the box price + subscription fees paid to date. Until they’re willing to do that, you’re not going away.

3. I’m not jumping through hoops, so just send the fucking check already. Takes less of my time to make phone calls than to paw through boxes of receipts. (Hint: takes them less time to make YOU jump through hoops than to resolve issues on their end. See the “game” they’re trying to play?)

I think Game Companies get away with this shit because a large portion of their player base are children that are intimidated by threats of character deletions and the FBI crawling up their ass with a microscope.

Not me, I can be bought. And my price is box price + subscription fees.

‘Til A Corpse Run Do Them Part

Posted on by

Today is the final installment of my week-long series on the human refuse that enjoys online gaming (like me, but not like me … really!). I only had about 39,422 more assclowns I could have chosen for today’s story, but I settled on a real life married couple, that I met in EverQuest a few years back, whose tale of misery and woe even took a worldly gaming hag like me by surprise.

The Mr. and the Mrs. both played paladins. At the time, paladins were the whipping boys of EQ, underpowered and dangerously susceptible to being driven by roleplayers. Paladins have since come into their own, but back then … hot damn, they sucked!

Mr. Paladin was a more ambitious sort, however — he was a max level 50 and the guild leader of a respectable raiding guild (mine, at the time). Not an uber guild, by any means, but capable of farming the top-end zones if nothing (and I do mean NOTHING) went wrong. Mrs. Paladin, not as ambitious, was happily roleplaying her way through level 35+ and occasionally would join our guild for zone raids where she could be of any use. (read: not very often)

One week, we started noticing a regular guest at our raids: a dark elf female shadow knight. She wasn’t remarkable in any way; quiet, behaved herself play-wise and not being a skank-wise. But we did notice that she was invited along often and that Mr. Paladin was friendly with her and enjoyed her company … not overly so, however.

Being the shits we are, we would tease Mr. Paladin in guildchat all the time … saying he had a girlfriend, where was his mistress today?, and other asshattery. Even Mrs. Paladin would, good naturedly, laugh along with us and get her digs in also. Mr. Paladin would take only so much then tell us shitheads to knock it off, and the raids (or corpse runs, as the case may be) would go on.

My fellow shitheads and I left the guild at some point, mostly due to stagnating membership and boredom, and joined another guild that was doing tougher zones in Kunark (which had been released about that time). We remained friendly with the people still in Guild Paladin and expressed regret when Mr. Paladin left the game, apparently for greener pastures … or something.

As we found out later from Mrs. Paladin, we shitheads had hit closer to the mark than even we ourselves realized. Turns out, Mr. Paladin was stepping out to see his dark elf chum, in real life, while Mrs. Paladin was at work, also in real life. Mrs. Paladin came home early one day (o god, don’t ever go home early from work without calling first!) and found the Mr. and the dark elf making the beast with two backs. Ya, without any armor even!

They eventually divorced and Mr. Paladin moved out to be with his dark elf mistress 24/7, while Mrs. Paladin bravely continued managing their EQ guild and slowly leveling up her character in her spare time, of which she had a lot more.

As I said earlier, this whole episode took me by surprise: somewhat because I was still naive then, but also because Mr. and Mrs. not only seemed like normal, decent people, they were normal, decent people. Maybe their marriage was in trouble already and when opportunity knocked, it was inevitable that one of them would open the door. Or, maybe online society magnified and exploited some character flaw in the Mr. to their mutual disaster.

It couldn’t have happened to two nicer people. And that’s a shame.

A Predator Posing as a Housepet

Posted on by

Part IV, Example III of the week-long series on human refuse doing what they do best, this time in an online environment where all can see! After today’s tale of woe and teeth gnashing, there will be one more to tell (for now). What fun it’s been, selecting only the best (worst?) of the assholes to document.

No small coincidence that most of the depravity comes from EverQuest, possibly the same would be true of Ultima Online (I didn’t put a lot of time into UO ever) — my theory on this is because EQ requires such a horrific time commitment, that the line between reality and fantasy blurs for some. Not to say that these assholes wouldn’t be assholes otherwise; they undoubtedly would. But it may be that the immersiveness of this niche fuels the flame.

Example III, however, comes from WAAAAY back. Back before there was an EverQuest, before there was an Ultima Online. I’m talking ’bout back to my gaming roots, man!, in a little PVP shooter called Rolemaster: Magestorm, previously chronicled briefly, here.

Since this game was so damn fun (fading memory can do wonders for how highly I think of a game) and there really wasn’t many other online games around at the time, there was a core of Magestorm players that hung out together almost every night … playing on the same team, playing against each other, trash talking, arguing about character templates, bla bla … and we all became quite friendly and close.

Some of us closer than others, as it turned out.

The one weekend, one of the regulars announces, in a conspiratorial tone (shhh, tell no one), that one of the female regulars (let’s call her BangsEmAll, to protect her gaming identity) is taking a trip to visit one of the male regulars (let’s call him CouldDoBetter, to protect his gaming identity). Most of us found this very curious, for a few reasons:

1. Bangs was in the process of divorcing the father of her children. And good thing too, since he was extremely abusive to her! So she said, and we knew she wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true. (For crissakes, I was young, I believed any sort of shit people would tell me), and

2. Before this point, we had never imagined that people, who knew OF each other only through an online game, would be interested in meeting each other in real life, for what nefarious purpose, we could only guess … and guess we did! (For crissakes, online society was new. Did I mention that I was young?)

The next week, Bangs came back from her road trip and wasn’t shy at all about telling us that she and CouldDoBetter did indeed have sexual relations, many times and in many places and that they intended to continue, probably in other places. Well woopeefuckingdoo for you. We needed to know all of that, why?

Eventually, Bangs and CouldDoBetter moved in together, dragging along the youngsters to enjoy their new home. I will give CouldDoBetter credit here, for taking in that hosebag’s children and, from what friends tell me, was a very positive influence in their lives. (emphasis on “was” … c’mon! you just know this hosebag is gonna fuck this up somehow, don’t you?)

Fast forward a bit, and Bangs gets her divorce from the father, we all continue to enjoy battling in Magestorm, and then the shitstorms start arriving. The first one is named Ultima Online and the second one is named EverQuest. Bangs starts playing Ultime Online and falls in roleplay love with another UO player, marries the roleplay fiance, and starts spending every waking hour with him, maybe on their roleplay farm, I dunno. CouldDoBetter is not happy with the situation, probably because he is NORMAL (after a fashion).

CouldDoBetter puts his foot down, roleplay or not, let’s get away from this situation and go play EverQuest. *waits for laughter to die down* Isn’t it fun when you just know how a story is going to end? Most of the Magestorm crew had also moved over to EQ, so for a time, we played together. But then, it became obvious to Bangs that the rest of us just weren’t as commited to “winning” EQ as she was. So she moved on to other guilds, and other EQ challenges, and other online fake boyfriends.

Which became a problem for CouldDoBetter when Bangs started taking weekend trips away from her precious EQ, and ignoring her children, and quitting her part-time job as a temp. Eventually, Bangs and CouldDoBetter parted ways, much like Bangs parted ways with her children when her ex was awarded custody. Bangs went to live with one of the fake EQ boyfriends and did marry this one (in real life this time). She even got a FULL TIME job, or so she said. (By this time, I was old enough to realize that she could say it even if it wasn’t true.)

She never lost that charming penchant for sharing every aspect of her life with anyone that would listen: her sexual preferences, masturbation techniques, what her genitals looked like at every single moment, and all the different ways that CouldDoBetter sucked and made her life a living hell.

So this story really has a happy ending. She’s happy where she is, and we’re all happy that she’s elsewhere. Hosebag.