As I spoke about in my Lack of Inspiration article, I have been less than inspired by the current market of gaming; specifically the MMO gaming market.  And it appears that I am far from alone in this.  Prof. Venatus recently linked an article to me that I think addresses this exact topic.

The article is over on Wolfshead Online and is titled The Emasculation of MMOs: Part 1 – How Convenience Replaced Risk.  Perhaps it was due to my current state of mind, but the article just pulled me in.  The Wolfshead starts his article with the following analogy:

Twelve starving men sat down at a table. Before them was placed a sumptuous banquet. Then one of the men protested: “I don’t like salt…”. So in order not to offend him the others agreed to remove the salt from the table. Then another man exclaimed: “I detest pepper…”. So in order not to anger him they all consented to remove the pepper from the table. Each remaining man rose in turn rose and protested yet another ingredient until there was nothing left on the table. With nothing left to eat the twelve men died of hunger.

Essentially the article goes on to argue that without a sense of risk the player of an MMO loses the feeling of accomplishment.  Sort of like going out and winning the Tour de France without really having to ride the full 21 days, or winning the Super Bowl without having to play the regular season.

I found the article to be very thought provoking. The reality for me are that MMO’s tend to go bad when the creators/dev’s listen to the masses. Some of my fondest memories go back to Asherons’ Call. A game that would most likely “fail” into today’s market, yet it contained a lot of great features. Spellcrafting, spell components, currency weight, unfortunately corpse runs, and of course death penalties…although I don’t think it would delevel you.

It was my first MMO, and like my first girlfriend, I have fond memories of it…often forgetting all the angry moments as time passes.

I agree that in today’s world of gaming, death penalties are somewhat of a joke. Just today I was leveling in Age of Conan and fighting a group of cannibals and such when I got overran. Fortunately there was a rez stone very very close to the fight area, so I simply released ran back and essentially continued the fight with my buddies. This is just one example of the lack of risk involved…when you can simply just run back to continue the fight with only a minor delay (the release, run back, rebuff, etc). Overall, not very challenging.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate(d) corpse runs, but it did make me very aware of a few things.

1. Health
2. Roaming mobs (PAT’s)
3. Other players/gankers
4. Respawns

And while I am still often aware of those things, I, like most players, are not “worried” about it. It’s not like I’m going to drop my new sword and lose it…

On the other hand, we need to understand that many of the new gamers that are coming up are being raised in the “We don’t keep score & everyone get’s a trophy” age. So often challenges are not what these younger players really want…they simply want the rewards and are will to pay for them (aka Blizzard approach).

Until next time, enjoy the 4th.

Oh, another great series on this topic is the three part piece by Keen over on KeenAndGraev.com.  Have a read of the series: Old MMO Mechanics I Love and You Probably Hate (Part 1) :    Part 2 :   Part 3

Have you ever just had one of those days, weeks, or months?  You know, the times where you just simply can’t get inspired to game in any form.  Perhaps it’s due to an over active mind or ADD kicking in, but I’m in one of those funks.  I just can’t seem to get inspired to play any game.

The last time I think I actually played a role playing game was probably over a month ago.  Playing a game that is set in the current day, where the players are actually playing alternative versions of themselves.  It’s quite fun, but sadly getting the Thursday night crew together of late has been difficult, and sadly I am often one of those who just can’t seem to get my schedule open to make it…and I’m running the game.  It’s been probably over 6 months since we played any DnD 4.0 (because honestly I think the game kind of sucks now…just too generic, too video gamish, too not DnDish).  Maybe it’s time to be an old beardy and go back to playing 3.5 again.

Video games, well Age of Conan is fun, but sadly of the usual nightly MMO krew, only two of us are consistent in any sort of way.  Dr. Jones is, well distracted and always tired (yeah he sucks).  Mr. O is busy (he also sucks) with his business, and we all miss gaming with him, but he needs to feed his family.  Leaving only me and Prof. Venatus as consistent players…I’m not saying that’s a bad thing at all, but I tend to level a lot faster than everyone except for Mr. O.  Prof. Venatus and I have a lot of fun, but we are both a bit ADD and at the end of the day, you can’t do instances with only 2.

As far as the Xbox goes, well I have had some good times playing Splinter Cell, and now am playing through Arkham Asylum (I am the Batman!).  It’s actually quite good, but again…it’s just not a long term game.  It will probably only last me another day or so and then I’ll be done with it.  Thus the way of the Xbox gaming.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not whining, I’m just saying that at times it’s very difficult to write about gaming when you just aren’t inspired to game.  It just seems like there aren’t any decent MMO’s out.  Even the biggest MMO on the horizon (Star Wars the Old Republic) looks rather meh to me.  The preview vids look AWESOME, but the game play looks kind of well, meh.

Could it be a sign of age?

Could it be a sign of boredom?

Could it be a sign of been there done that syndrome?

Well I suppose it could be all three things or something completely different.

I think the truth is that I just have been very focused on our businesses.  Today for instance I spent nearly 8 hours working on websites, 3 hours talking with my real estate partners, and maybe two hours watching tv off and on (World Cup, Tour de France Preview, and now South Park).  Huh…yup, I guess that’s it then.  I’m working way to hard.

Time to become one with the Darkness.

I am the Batman!

One thing that E3 is known for is being the venue that many game companies announce and premier their upcoming titles.  This year is no different.  With all of the announcements of 3D gaming from Sony and Nintendo, many exciting potential game releases have been lost in the news.  One of the big titles, in my opinion, that has been somewhat down played is the announcement/premier of THQ’s Warhammer 40,000, Dark Millennium MMO.  Set in the EPIC Warhammer 40k universe (Games Workshop’s Cash Cow Universe) this is the game that many MMO gamers were clamoring for when they announced Warhammer Online a few years back.  Well 40k fan’s your wish is in production!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Strangely enough, I view this game with both excitement and trepidation.  I love both the 40k universe and the Warhammer universe.  Unfortunately, the Warhammer Online game failed to meet expectations with it’s primary focus on PVP game play instead of a solid balancing of PVP and PVE.  Let’s hope that Vigil doesn’t make the same mistake…but I think we all know that they will.

The game looks interesting enough, but it still seems like it would be a bit odd to play a single Space Marine in an MMO setting (seeing as they are all military men…)  Also the lack of females in many of the troop selections shown in this video could cause an uproar. (In the video are: Space Marines (all male) Orks (all male) Chaos Space Marines (all male) and Cultist (male/female))

While in this universe I don’t know that I would follow my view point on playing a female coming into play, especially given the chance to play a Space Marine!

If you should ever venture forth into the gaming genre known as MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) let this article be a guide to how to deal with the characters you will encounter there.  When you play an online game, you take the role of a character.  You will most likely be given a variety of choices, class, sex, race, etc.

This article is only here to cover one choice…sex.  You will be given the chance to chose whether you will play a male character or a female character.  Let it be a forewarning that most of the female characters you will encounter are played by men/boys/males (I have seen reported statistics as high as 90%, although I would honestly guess that it is probably closer to 65-70%)

So if you don’t play these games, you might be wondering to yourself, why?

Well it’s pretty simple.  In the early days of online gaming(all text based) it was amazing how many guys would give you free stuff because you were a female toon (toon=character or avatar).  This extended into the first generation of MMO’s as well (Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron’s Call).  So it was based on economic or financial desires.

Personally speaking, of my closest friends (myself included) all play female toons.  Sure we all play male toons as well, but the split is probably right around 60% of our characters are female.

Now let me be clear here, all of the guys I game with are 1. Male and 2. Married and all of them (not me) have 3. Children.  So why play female toons?  Is there some deep cross gender bendering desire we hide behind?

The simple answer is No.  Ok, I can’t say that with absolute 100% confidence as I am not deep within the mind of my gaming friends, but I am pretty sure and can say absolutely it is not the case for myself.

So why do it?  The answer is simple.

The character models often look better than their male counter parts.

If you have to look at the backside of a character for hours/days/months/years (in some cases) which would you rather look at, a hot chick or a burley dude’s backside?  I know what my answer is. (This was originally explained to me by Prof. Venatus of Sector360 when I asked him why he always played female toons…it kinda made sense!)

Ok, truth be told, I could actually show you a LOT of different character’s that are female…and some males, but I don’t really go around taking in-game pics of my characters.  Honestly I think you get the idea.

So if you decide to venture into the world of MMO’s here are a few simple rules:

1. Always assume the player behind the female character is: MALE (unless proven otherwise!)

2. Play the character you think looks best, male or female…just don’t attempt to make others think you are the other sex…cause that means you have issues imo.

and finally 3. realize that if you are playing a female character, you may get solicited for ERP (Erotic Role Playing)  You know…talking/typing dirty.  Yes, I think think it’s gross.  Yes I have been solicited many times. No I do not ever participate…it just doesn’t belong in my game…ever.

So before you think to judge me or anyone other guy playing a female character in a game, I think the questions one must ask…if you are male and playing a male character…are you gay?

Not that there is anything wrong with that…

Ok, you may not know, but I am a very active real estate investor.  It’s my day job so to speak (even though it’s really a 24-7 job).  I honestly can’t say that real estate is my passion, it’s not.  I enjoy it at times, like when I get paid for example.  It’s not uncommon to earn $10k for just wholesaling a property (wholesaling is simply finding a property and then connecting that seller to an end buyer…so in a way it’s sort of like a finders fee).  If we actually rehab the property, well that profit can be anywhere from $35k-$200k or more.  Of course it has a level of risk involved, but we try to limit that as much as possible.

So anyway, I have pretty much devoted all of my time working on real estate these days.  I’m not really marketing any of my other services in any aggressive sort of way.  And as of righting this right now, I’m sort of wondering if I have chosen the right path.  You see, my real estate team has just lost a wholesale deal that should have closed (transfered ownership/processed, etc) yesterday.

Ok, well we lose wholesale deals all the time.  I mean if you can’t connect the seller to a buyer, well there isn’t much you can do.  But with this deal, we HAD a buyer.  A buyer who said, “no matter what the appraisal comes in at, we will be able to go to close on Friday”.  It was a slam dunk deal done situation.

Well apparently not. Their hard-money lender (investors get their money not from banks but private individuals who invest in deals for high percentages or points) came back and told them they would fund $175k of the $212 asking price.  Which means they needed to come up with $37k from some other source (plus some additional closing costs…so let’s just say they needed $45k from a different source).  Still, based on the prior emails this wasn’t going to be a problem…WRONG!

“We can’t bring that much to the table and still rehab this property!” they said.  ”We only have $25-30k, and we need that to rehab with!”

Um, what happened to the “we will go to close on Friday no matter what email?!?”

So anyway, how much did we lose in a single afternoon?  Well after our closing costs and expenses…

Just over $20,000

Have you ever just had $20 grand disappear?  POOF! Gone.  To say it’s disheartening would be an understatement.  To say it’s a kick in the jibblies would be more accurate.  Assuming of course the kicker is a 20 ton elephant.

This deal has been plagued from the start.  The REO Agent (P.B. for short) is a psycho  from where I stand.  Very unprofessional and how she continues to work with banks is beyond me.  My agent had to go around this woman more than once to get the deal done.  You see, the day we had our offer accepted.  This psycho bitch lowered the MLS (the multiple listing system that Realtors, Appraisers, and Investors use to judge the value of a property through comparable sales or comps)  price nearly $15k BELOW our contract.  On top of that, she would not alter it back to the original.  We lost 3 buyers because of her and could not get financing on the property because of this Whore of Babylon.  I hope she rots.

You see, we realize that after she dropped the pricing on us at least one of our cash buyers contacted her directly and said they would close quickly.  On top of that, she would get both commissions (seller and buyers side…so instead of only getting 3% or about $5.5k  she would earn 6% of the lower price…or about $10.5k)  so it was in her best interest to sabotage our deal and contract.

Wow, that makes me feel much better.  Well even though it’s Saturday, I need to get back to work so I can get some game on.

Enjoy the Memorial Weekend…

Mr. Johnson

Ok, so if you are here and expecting the old Basement51 look, well I have some bad news.  It’s gone.  Dead.  When I tried to log in to keep it up to date, and well I was actually gonna post something, I found out that the site was haxxored.  I wasn’t able to log in under any account and it kept redirecting me to a bogus site.  Weird huh?

So I simply took a sledgehammer to it and now Basement51 is a new site again.  I figured it was time for a face lift anyway, and while I did not want to lose any of the old stuff (there was a lot of good articles etc…) I felt that I needed a place to just be a goob.  I also felt that I needed a place where I could simply bitch about life, investing, gaming, whatever freely and without anyone judging me.  Well ok, I admit you will be judging what I write, but honestly I don’t give a shit.  You will either agree with what I write or you won’t.  To each their own.  But if you don’t agree with anything I write, or if you find you agree with everything I write you should seek help immediately.

Anyway, here we go.  Rebuilding the awesome site that was once Basement 51 again.

It’s hard to believe that this entire series of articles came about based on the hurried thoughts of last minute game preparation. What has stretched out over weeks in terms of the reports on Basement 51 flew by quickly over the course of only a few days. Before getting to the opening music and the debut of the heroes of Kh’bai, though there were two more concepts I had in mind for the campaign that bear mentioning.

Rapid Growth Fund—

Because we wouldn’t have the opportunity to play very often, what with Kh’bai acting as a “fill-in” campaign on weeks when the regular game was cancelled, there would barely be any advancement. Part of the reason for the previous house rules article on speeding up advancement was to avoid spelling it all out right here.

I decided that levels would be awarded every five to seven encounters.

There would be no need to track experience points and the storyline would build-up towards the moments when the characters would level.

While part of the reason for this choice was the infrequent schedule of play that would plague the campaign, the other reason would soon make itself clear after a only a few encounters.

Point bluntly, a Dungeons and Dragons character forged from The Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords is capable of absurd feats of epic destruction. I assure you, this is not an exaggeration. I would rapidly adjust the EL’s involved in the opening adventure to be even a little bit competitive with the characters. In doing so, however, the XP involved, especially when split between only two players, was ridiculous.

Abstract advancement was absolutely the way to go.

These thoughts on advancement also tied into another concept of the campaign that we set out with. Serving as a test bed of odd rules, there seemed little point in just testing those rules with first level characters.

We wanted to explore them through the range of levels and the best approach to doing that was to “fast-forward” a bit at a time to get a feel for the characters advancing.

The soul of a game. Some of us here at Basement51have been talking about this issue for a bit now, so I think it’s time to share some of those thoughts. Some of you might be asking yourselves, “What does he mean by the soul of a game?” YourDictionary.com defines the soul as follows:

Soul

:

The central or integral part; the vital core

or

A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.

So essentially, the soul of the game would/could be defined as that integral part of a game that gives a strong, deeply felt emotion. Hopefully everyone reading this has had that sort of experience in one game kampaign or another. That feeling of connection you might have with your character, worrying about the repercussions of his/her actions within the game. Or perhaps it occurred during a scene where you just had to perform, much like a real life athlete with the game on the line, you feel your heart beating fast and hard…because if you blow the roll your doomed or your party is doomed.

It’s this connection you feel at that moment within the game, that you have an emotional connection to your character…you become your character in a sense, and it’s at that moment you have felt the soul of a game. That is what a good pen and paper role-playing game can provide, and I would argue that lacks within any video game, mmorpg, or first person shooter (Perhaps I’ll go into detail behind this last statement in a future article about the soulessness of video games.)

Modules

One of the issues I have with games that are run straight from the “module” are that they lack a soul of a true kustom kampaign. This is one of the primary issue I have with the RPGA system…while many of the modules are really, REALLY well written and thought out, they smell a bit like, well to be blunt…a video game. String a bunch of these together and ta DA you now have a table top version of an MMO. Take this quest, go complete it, get access to cool magic items some times, get next quest, rinse and repeat.

“But I don’t have time to write my own game sessions,” some might say, “I have to run modules if I want to game!”

Okay, I will concede that time is not what everyone has, but there are solutions. One thing we have been doing here at the Basement with the two kampaigns that I am involved in (Shackled City and the Dragon Below), are taking pre-written material and modifying them to fit and challenge the party. Add in a bunch of great role-playing opportunities and whamo, the kampaign begins to develop a soul of it’s own. Characters begin to have agendas, goals, and dreams beyond hitting that next level to get that next great new feat or ability…and most important, your players will have that connection to their characters and give your game soul.

So please, please, PLEASE get some soul into your game today and help win the war vs the soul sucking Video Game!*

Mr. Johnson

*Ok, I admit it…I’m also a soul sucked Video Gamer playing not only PC games (yes…sad to admit but I’ve played probably half of the non-Asian based MMO’s out there over the last 10 years) but I also play a LOT of xbox 360 stuff. But given the choice, table top games will always be my first choice of gaming!