If you’re curious, the body is fleece, and all of the accents are felt.

http://www.beckett.com/estore/news/?eskin=subMOG&a=9958&s=118

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2008/08/research-on-gold-farming.html

I have to heartily disagree. While I do think that it is true that players being given to buy gold can be the result of bad game design (the obtaining of gold relying upon doing repetitive tasks that bore them and why would the player want to skip content if it was good?), I don’t think it is the only, or even primary, reason that they do, and his assertion that if someone released a perfect MMO, no one would buy gold, is naive.

He makes the point that people don’t pay their friends to play basketball for them, because the enjoyment is in the activity and not the result. But while people may not pay a friend to play basketball for them, people will pay for steroids to make them better so that they are better than other players. So long as there is an element of competition involved in an activity, people will find a way to cheat, and buying gold is a way to cheat your way to dominance in an MMO setting. If anything, the most exceptional, fantastic, popular game would only attract more goldfarmers than inferior games, because more people would be driven to dominate such games.

Also, many people are lazy. The obtaining of gold has to be at least to some degree hard for that gold to have any value, and so while that will drive some people to rise above and overcome that difficulty, it will cause others to find the easiest way to that goal, often subverting the route that was intended to take you there.

And to make a less negative-about-human-nature point, people want to play with their friends, and in a game where people invest years in a character, this can be impossible to do, so buying gold or power leveled NPCs is the only way to catch up and enjoy said game with your friends.

The point is, in a multiplayer, persistent game, there are going to end up being huge disparities between players, and for one reason or another, people are going to look for ways to bridge that gap. The primary reason one goes to an MMO instead of a single player RPG is because you want to interact with other people, either on a competitive level, or a social level, and you can’t really make a good case that an MMO’s purpose should be to create a single player experience that is so exquisitely sublime that no one would want to skip it, because honestly, if you do, then you have made a fantastic single player game, but not necessarily a fantastic MMO.

I certainly can agree that boring, repetitive activities do not a good game make, and that MMOs should always be striving to create more dynamic and enjoyable content, but the fact is that when the first player realized that in order to be better than than his fellow gamer, instead of spending the time to actually do that, he could use his parents’ credit card to buy gold and buy all of the best gear in the game, the gold farming industry was born. And it’s not going to go away any time soon, even if a cadre of the world’s finest minds in game design come together to create the most subliminal gaming experience ever put down in microchips (and their egos don’t completely ruin the whole thing).

If you haven’t seen, they posted the schedule:

http://events.station.sony.com/fanfaire/schedule.vm

I’m going to speaking on the following panels:

Friday

3pm – 4pm
EverQuest II: History and Lore
Panelists – Jeremy Gess, Roger Uzun, Noel Walling, Morgan Lockhart. Arcane knowledge or Norrathian trivia. The people who write and catalogue the lore of Norrath will be here to answer questions and talk about the History and Lore of EQII. Pavilion 1.

5pm – 6pm
EverQuest II: Anything Goes
Panelists – Joshua Kriegshauser, Bruce Ferguson, Greg Spence, Noel Walling, Jeremy Gess, Roger Uzun, Emily Taylor, Morgan Lockhart, Chris Junior, Chris Kozak, Jason Woerner, Jennifer Gerull, Bill Yeatts. Anything you didn’t get to ask during the day is up for discussion in this “Anything Goes” panel. Or you can just see what happens when you put a bunch of EQII devs in one room! This panel is available both Friday and Saturday. Pavilion 1.

Saturday

2pm – 3pm
EverQuest II: Preview the upcoming expansion.
Details to be announced. Pavilion 1

5pm – 6pm
EverQuest II: Anything Goes

So I suppose Friday I will mostly be wandering. I’ll probably sit in on a few of the other EQ2 panels for moral support and maybe see what my old pals at Vanguard are up to.

http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.php

Now, I’ve wanted a copy of Rock Band, but with the holiday season and its resulting drain on finances, I have waited, but last night I decided to just go ahead and get it. If I’m going to have it for the party, I want to have a decent chunk of it unlocked (though I am sure people would have fun unlocking it as well, it would give them an added purpose). I hooked it up as soon as I finished cooking dinner (while eating it) and Tom and I played it until Melinda and Rick showed up to watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles, at which point we set up the drums and Melinda joined in (until the show started, at which point we broke for it, and then returned later).

I’m sure no one needs me to reiterate that it is awesome, but well, it is. As a vocalist, I find the amount of songs for a female to be frustrating. So far all I have found is Celebrity Skin (Hole), Paranoid (Garbage), and Maps (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Now, I frequently sing songs originally intended for men, but I’ve found some of the songs on the game strain my lower registers considerably. Try as I might, I just can’t go as low as it demands sometimes. Apparently, the game adjusts to whatever octave your voice falls in, so I may see what happens if I try to sing an octave higher the whole time. Results pending.

I am very glad I went for the PS3 version and not PS2. The downside of the PS3 version is that until April, we will be limited to one guitar, at which point PS3 compatible stand-alone guitars will work. The Guitar Hero guitars don’t work, and there are no others available. *But* that’s only a couple of months, and the customization in the PS3 version is incredible. Apparently the PS2 version lacks that, but you can fiddle with every little detail of your character, and perhaps it’s the chick in me, but I love fiddling with all the clothes and make-up and hair styles and face paint and such. I wish you could work on your band’s career independently, but, that’s what solo career is for.