Knowing Me, Knowing You

Replying to a post over at The Friendly Necromancer on the recent Promptapalooza topic of favorite quotes led to an interesting exchange of comments with Stingite yesterday. I was going to continue the conversation there but I sometimes feel that going to and fro over a topic in a comment thread can feel a little intrusive so I thought I'd spin my thoughts on the subject into a post here, instead.

The quote in question, which you can find in full at the original post, together with a video clip of pro wrestler Al Snow saying it, makes the point that fans think they know but they don't, something that leads to false assumptions and ultimately to conflict.

I think that's true but I think it's fully reversible. In my comment I said "professionals have the experience of producing the content but they really don't have the experience of consuming it. It's never going to matter to them in the same way it matters to a fan."

Stingite replied with details on the due diligence a good, responsible developer employs out of a desire to make the best game they possibly can and to understand as fully as possible how that game will be experienced by its players. He concludes "This behavior should be the norm, not the exception" and I agree with that, too.

And yet, no matter the good will and resolution on each side, neither party can truly hope to know the experience of the other. Or can they?

There is one obvious difference between the two positions. As Al Snow says, fans "think they now have knowledge and an understanding of a business that they've never been in" but fans can and do transition into development. It may even be the most common route.

I wouldn't know. I stand in the position of knowing ignorance outlined by Snow; I've never worked in the video-game industry so anything I say is supposition.

It would surprise me, though, if it turned out that a majority of video-game professionals hadn't passed through a period of game fandom at some point prior to making gaming a career. It's not exactly banking or insurance, after all; a steady, reliable choice made out of pragmatism and a desire for security.

Anyone can play games and obsess about them; it's a lot harder to steep yourself in the magical world of insurance as a teen, although I'm willing to bet someone is doing it right now. Chances are, though, that most game-makers played games before they jumped the fence.

That could lead them to believe they understand what it is to be a fan. And it kind of does... only, really, it doesn't. It lets them understand what it was like to be a fan when they were a fan. But fandom isn't what it once was.

There was a time when just knowing the names of people in a creative industry qualified you as a fan and Xeroxing a few pages to share the information made you a superfan with fans of your own. Roy Thomas got his start that way. Hell, so did Francois Truffaut. That's how hard it was to know anything, once.

Things aren't like that any more. The bar has moved. The internet reveals all and social media shares. The fan/pro barrier is porous to the point of dissolution. Twitch makes fans more famous than the creators they feed off.

For many, being a fan is a lifestyle. For some it's an identity. For a few it's a full-time job, with pay. Where it gets awkward is when it becomes the key, defining, most significant thing about you. What makes you who you are. Knowing more about that one thing than anyone else. Wanting it, loving it, needing it. Owning it. Being your obsession.

I knew someone back in the 1980s who would buy the same copies of comics he already owned, over and over again. Not variants or reprints or different editions. The literal same, identical copies. He wanted, needed to re-experience the surge of pleasure that discovering and possessing those comics had given him first time around. He had to re-own his own life. Vicariously.

That's what being a fan does to you. It makes you feel your identity is bound up in the object of your obsession. That's why "toxic" fans behave so irrationally, so bizarrely. It's why they take everything so personally. Being a fan isn't just what they are, it's who they are. Threaten the thing they idolize and you threaten their sense of self.

Which is terrifying. Change is scary enough when it's the outer world that changes but when it's you're interiority that's shifting... well, that's going to trigger a reaction.

A reaction which everyone else is going to see as wholly disproportionate, if not just plain wrong, based as it is not just on a false premise but a complete misunderstanding of reality. Fans, as Al Snow says, " have no actual experience" of how things work. All they know is how they feel.

Seasoned developers, conversely, have plenty of experience. They know exactly how things work, even if it's only in their particular area of expertise. They know why changes are being made, what the outcome ought to be, where the compromises are. They also know it's not forever. If change doesn't work, change can be changed. And if that doesn't work, ultimately, there'll be another job. A chance do better with a new challenge.

Fans have none of that. By definition, a fan believes what they worship cannot change. It has to stay the same or the world will come to an end. Their world. Ironically, when their self-constructed, tissue-paper world does inevitably crash and burn, some fans just stepping-stone to another. Loyalties can transfer. But not always. Not for everyone.

Fandom doesn't demand stasis, of course. More of the same is always welcome. And more of the same can be something different. If you were a Bowie fan in the '70s and '80s you had to be ready to scrub off the glitter and face paint and start wearing suits.

But mostly fans like things to go along much as they were before. If there's too much change at first they resist and then they recoil. The object of identification becomes the nexus of contempt. It's not enough to ignore it or hold it in disdain. It has to be destroyed.

At least, I guess that's how it works. Again, it's supposition. Not being that kind of fan, I don't - can't - have that experience.

If it's not like that, though, why would forums and chat channels be filled with ex-fans throwing their time and energy into tearing down everything about the games they used to love? Why would people make accounts and characters for games they don't even play, just to log in and tell everyone how terrible those games are and how dumb everyone is for playing them?

Developers can observe that level of obsession, of connection, of identification. They can monitor it and moderate it and try to minimize it but they can't share it. At least, not if they're any good, they can't. There are professionals who do cross that line. I could name one or two. I'm not going to, because naming people like that is like calling up the devil. Pretty sure we can all think of examples, though.

Of course, all along here I've been talking about obsessive fans. Stans, if you will. I know some people don't like that term but it has value.

As bloggers we're almost certainly all fans of something or someone. Probably lots of somethings and someones. It's painfully clear from even a cursory reading of this blog that I'm a fan of EverQuest and Lana Del Rey, for example. I keep writing and posting about them, along with a few other things, even though it must be self-evident that I'm doing it because talking about my interests interests me, not because I expect it to interest anyone else.

That's fandom. It's also why fans can be really tedious company if you don't share their enthusiasms and sometimes even if you do. It's not toxic fandom, though. Al Snow didn't use the expression but I imagine that's what he meant. I don't think he was taking issue with people who subscribe to services that show wrestling matches or who buy magazines or even wait outside venues hoping to get an autograph or a selfie with their favorite.

That's the kind of experience creators, be they pro-wrestlers or game developers, can and do share with their fans. The cuddly, friendly, fun face of fandom. And, of course, creators can be fans in their own right, full-fledgedly outside their professional arena or, with limitations, inside it. When game developers say in interviews that they're fans of other developers' work, play their games and enjoy them, that's what they mean. Or at least I hope it is.

We can all share in that kind of fandom and understand it. We can all be fans, that kind. The other kind, though, the kind Al Snow is talking about, theirs is as unknowable an emotional experience to a working professional as that pro's actual working life is to an obsessive fan.

I'm not seeking in any way to explain obsessive, toxic behavior, far less to excuse or justify it. It's bad and it shouldn't happen. But bad things do happen. Understanding why they happen, that's the hard part. That and doing something about it. Hardest of all.

All I'm saying is, if it's hard for a fan to understand the experience of a professional, well, it cuts both ways. As for me, since I'm neither a stan nor a pro, clearly I don't understand anything at all.

Don't stop me talking, though, do it?

There's Been A Change Of Plan: EverQuest

All the shots in this post come from the aptly-named Beast's Domain, a Tier 3 zone from the Veil of Alaris expansion. Zam describes it as "a lush, wild land where the beasts rule".

I never really planned to go there. It just happens to be right next to the Level 95 Hot Zone, Sarith, City of Tides.

Sarith is the final Hot Zone. After this there are no more. I don't know why. Maybe Hot Zones always ran a few expansions behind the cap. I haven't been near enough to the top of the ladder to notice since 2004 and we didn't have Hot Zones back then. I can't say I've been paying attention to what happens when you get this close.

I'm paying attention now, though. My magician dinged 107 a couple of days ago and she's already 20% in. The next gear change comes at 110 but her focus effects already reach to the cap, five levels above that. She's not at endgame yet but she can see it from where she's standing.

With that in mind and planning ahead, I thought I ought to start investigating where she might go when Franklin Teek runs out of tasks to give her. Some of the mobs in Sarin already turned green when she dinged, although most are still a comfortable light blue. Another level, though, and it will definitely be time to move on.

With EverQuest as my focus game, things are changing. I'm finding it quite strange. I've been putting in a lot of work, upgrading gear, spells and AAs and it's paying off. XP per kill still crawls but time to kill has never been shorter. Quite possibly literally.

Instead of the familiar, sedate pace I've been used to, the mage is burning mobs down in seconds. She's started pulling aggro from her pet even on single targets, something that hasn't happened in forever. I'm having to hold back a little, which takes some getting used to.

With the buffs from the pile and the ever-increasing mana regeneration provided by high-level gear it's all but impossible to run out of mana. When I'm burning hard for maximum flow during my daily half-hour, double xp Lesson, I can chain-nuke and never go under half mana. I can kill mobs faster than I can find them - and there are plenty of mobs in Sarith.

With all that in mind, I went exploring in Beast's Domain. Hot Zones have always been unreliable when it comes to levelling efficiency. They have a bonus, it's true, but all EQ zones used to have separate Zone Experience Modifiers and some of them were already better than the Hot Zones for the level.

Something was done about that a few years ago, or I seem to remember it was. I think I might even have posted about it. This kind of thing is notoriously difficult to research, though, and I don't feel like spending the time right now.

Luckily, these days it's easy to test the proposition with a practical experiment. The default UI now renders xp to three decimal places. No more squinting at an analog "xp bar" and trying to guess how many pixels moved.

Another thing I don't know and can't be bothered to research just at the moment is when EQ expansions started using a "Tier" system for zones. It's long been common practice to refer to "T1" or "T2" zones but I always used to associate it with raiding. Now that I'm looking stuff up I realize it also applies to open zones.

I finally began to pay attention to tiers when I subbed my Magician's account at the end of last month. Subscribers can equip "Prestige" items. F2P players can't. I'd been wondering why she could use some of the drops from named mobs and not others.

As Zam explains, "Prestige Items in EverQuest are items obtained from higher-end content in the Seeds of Destruction™ expansion and later". "Higher-end content" is a little vague but a little digging suggests it means T3 zones and above.

Since I don't plan on keeping up the sub for more than a month and since almost all the drops are No Trade, being able to get Prestige items isn't of much practical use, even if anything the mage can kill was likely to drop anything she'd want, which is exceptionally unlikely. What's of more interest to me is a) how much harder the higher tier zones in the same expansion might be and b) whether the xp there is enough to to make any extra risk and effort worth taking. On the basis of my initial experiments the answers to those questions would seem to be "not much" and "just about", respectively.

Mobs in Beast's Landing take a little longer to kill but they give a little more xp. It probably balances out but BL is a really nice zone to hunt in and the drops are worth more. Also, it's visually very impressive - for an EverQuest zone. It's almost pretty in places and it's fun to explore. I like it there.

I even bumbled into the next zone on, the bizarrely named Evantil, the Vile Oak. I walked up an inclined tree-trunk, thinking it led to a raised area in Beast's Domain and half way up I hit a zone line.

When you find yourself in an unfamiliar zone in EverQuest it's best not to wander about. I hugged the trunk on the other side and conned the mobs. They were all aggressive but they were also all light-blue so I chanced it and sent the pet to poke the nearest.

They were tougher but quite manageable. I spent about half an hour there, gradually clearing the area around the zone line and venturing further in. Respawns were fast and there were plenty of roamers. I didn't get far. Eventually, inevitably, I got more adds than I felt equipped to handle, so I took the discretionary path and gated out.

It was good xp while it lasted and the loot sold nicely. I plan on going back but first I want to explore the whole of Beast's Domain. That could take a while. BD is huge. I mean really, really huge. It feels as though you could put several of the Karanas in there and still have space left over. 

That's the current plan, anyway. It's nice to have a plan but you always have to be ready to throw it out, particularly if it goes far better than you expected.

The whole reason I subbed was so I could grind AAs instead of xp, since I was making almost all my xp on Overseer quests anyway. And that's been going beautifully. I spent all my saved AAs and since then I've ground out over a hundred more. I've been saving them until I found out whether or not I'd get any of the free, auto-granted AAs when I dinged 107.

Well... I did. I got thousands of them. I'm not sure exactly how many it was but my Magician currently has 17,385. A week ago, before she subbed, she had about five thousand.

Those auto-granted AAs, automatically assigned to the abilities the developers consider key, make an immense difference. I went out right after I received them to see if I could tell the difference and it was as if the mage had been supercharged. I guess she had. No wonder everyone says the higher game is all about how many AAs you have.

So, change of plan. From now until my sub runs out I'm going to focus on leveling. I can get one more level for sure. Maybe two if I really go at it. If I get auto-grants for those it's going to make one heck of an impact.

And I'm going to see how much further up the expansion ladder I can climb. I had no idea when I was there, but checking it today for this post I realized Evantil, the Vile Oak is a zone from 2012's Rain of Fear. A Tier 2 zone, no less.

That's the most recent expansion I've ever hunted in (albeit not visited) and it was eminently doable. Maybe I'll try Call of the Forsaken's Dead Hills next. People keep suggesting that one in chat.

I can only die, right?

Now Denial And Legislated Nostalgia

Today's Promptapalooza prompt is short and to the point:

What is a favorite Quote/s, and tell us why.

Wilhelm drew that card. Here's his post.

I have a number of favorite quotes, most of which I've trotted out here numerous times. I won't go back to that well.

While Mrs. Bhagpuss was away the other week I started re-decorating the kitchen. It's a work in progress. When I came to repaint the wall in the picture above I noticed those five tiny frames above the window.

I put those up when we moved into this house, more than a quarter of a century ago. They've been there ever since. There were others scattered around the house but those five are the only ones that survived.

They all feature quotes from what was, at the time, one of my favorite novels, Douglas Coupland's Generation X. I read it when it was first published, in a peculiar, square-shaped edition with huge margins spotted with line drawings and definitions of zeitgeisty phrases
of Coupland's own invention. All of which were dropped from later editions. A mistake.

I was extremely taken with many of these tidy packets of snark. Enough so to take the book into work and photocopy some of the best, then go out and buy teeny-tiny little frames to put them in. I did a lot of stuff like that back then. Still do, when the moon is high.

Re-decorating gave me the perfect opportunity to get rid of the

ridiculous things. The concepts are long outdated, about as zeitgeisty now as Segways or Starbucks. Coupland, whose books once defined a generation, now writes stuff that makes Brett Easton Ellis sound like the voice of reason.

Instead of taking that opportunity I cleaned the plastic glass and put them back up.

They still sound like truth to me.

But Regardless, You're Mine

I spent all morning writing my Promptapalooza post. I know it's not due for two weeks but I like to get these things done ahead of time.

That means I don't quite have the mental energy for another post today but I also don't want to skip. So here's a thing I wanted to do but probably wouldn't have, otherwise. It shouldn't take long.

Remember when I was talking out loud to myself about how I was or wasn't going to buy some or all of the multiple versions of Lana Del Rey's first spoken-word album-cum-poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass? Well, the day came when it appeared on Audible and I thought abut it a bit and then I signed up for the free trial through Amazon Prime.

It was a bit of a rigmarole. They could make it a lot easier if they're trying to persuade people. Anyway, I got there. I tagged Violet to my account then cancelled because the last thing I wanted to do was forget and end up paying after all.

Audible kindly reminded me I was cancelling with an unused credit still in hand so I went back and looked for something else. The reason I don't have an Audible account in the first place and don't want one is because I've listened to about three audiobooks in thirty years. We have amazing speech radio where I live. Who needs to listen to actors reading books out loud? Or, worse, authors?

I hate to leave money on the table, though, so I took a Robert B. Parker triple which seemed like the best bang. The only audiobook I actually own, physical copy, is a Spenser double-header, although since it's on cassette I might as well toss it. Plus listening to the guy reading it doing Susan Silverman in falsetto is an experience I don't care to repeat.

So I thought I was done. I cancelled again and Audible didn't take that too well, either. They offered me a third credit for another title to get me to stay. Given the offer and the sub each only give you two, that's a substantial bribe. Didn't take it. I hit cancel for the third time and this time it stuck.

That was that, I thought. Then, a couple of days later, I got an email.

Yeah, still not buying. Reminds me of when I tried to cancel AOL and ended up keeping it for free for over a year. They just wouldn't say "Get lost, pal. See if we care". Which, frankly, is the only response I'd respect.

As for Lana's album, which is what I'm going to call it, because that's what it is, here are some reviews:

"The audiobook version of the singer’s forthcoming 30-poem hardback is a mixed bag – some are full of honest self-reflection, others are self-indulgent and mundane" - Martin Chilton - The Independent

"Lana Del Rey's poetry debut – sometimes cliche, always solipsistic: Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, released as an audiobook this week and in print in September, is a reminder of the singer’s strengths and shortcomings" - Yara Rodrigues Fowler - The Guardian

"She pulls off these musings and observations brilliantly, creating a new offshoot of the very specific world she’s created" - Rhian Daly - NME

"Lana Del Rey’s Audiobook Grapples With the Absurdity of Pop Star Poetry" - Sam Sodomsky - Pitchfork

"Lana Del Rey’s spoken word poetry album triumphs as a transcendent dreamscape" - Taila Lee - The Daily Californian

They're all fair reviews, from the lukewarms to the raves. As Pitchfork points out, the very concept of a book of poetry from a pop singer is a dodgy proposition. I was impressed by how seriously all the reviewers took it. The world really has changed.

I bloody loved it. Of course I did. Of course I do. Partly it's her superb reading voice. I could, as they say, listen to her read the phone directory. If we had such things any more.

It's also Jack Antonoff's wonderful arrangements. Without those Violet would be more of a book, less of an album, true, but it would also be much less of a miracle.

And all the reviewers are right. It's far from perfect. Some of the poems don't work. There's considerably more than I'd prefer to hear of the poet telling us she's a poet and how important poetry is to her.

But most of it is just wonderful. She creates worlds to lose yourself in. There's nothing to be done but listen when Lana recites. Background listening this is not.

Unless you're Mermaid Motel, that is. In which case you're busy visualizing. I'm not one hundred per cent MM nailed it on the first swing with her interpretation of LA Who Am I To Love You? one of the album's incontravertible highlights but close enough. A little on the nose, maybe, but so are some of the poems, although not this one. I hope the Mermaid does some more. I'm sure she will.

As for Lana, she's already talking about a second collection and there's a Lana del Rey album proper due out in a couple of months. Violet is already being talked up as maybe her first Grammy - for Spoken Word.

They all count, right?

Big Blue Diamonds : EverQuest

There's no question that EverQuest is currently my main MMORPG. How weird is that?

I seem to have hit a sweet spot. The last time this happened was probably when I discovered Jewel of Atiki, a strangely-named but delightful zone from the 2007's The Buried Sea. That was four years ago, when I was doing my Lesson and my Hot Zone daily for xp, then keeping myself busy farming plat to pay for armor upgrades in the Bazaar.

That seems to be what works for me because I'm doing it again and loving it. Just as it did back in my days in the Jewel, it helps enormously that I'm hunting in the light, sunny, open zones of 2011's Veil of Alaris. It seems like a delightful expansion, not least when compared to the oppressive, claustrophobic gloom of the inexplicably-preferred House of Thule, through which all re-starters and Heroic characters are funnelled. So glad to be out of that miserable hole at last.

As I posted a few days ago, the mage dinged 106 and I re-subbed her account. As I also explained, I was waiting for that specific level because that's when you can equip Conflagrant armor. In my particular case, Arch Convoker's Conflagrant, the variant intended specifically for the Magician class.

I was dreading hunting sharks when Franklin Teek gave me the task but it turns out there are loads of them right next to the docks, including this huge named.

It's not cheap but it is affordable. By watching the prices in the Bazaar carefully I've managed to upgrade ten slots. That leaves eleven to go, not counting ammo and power source.

I haven't been keeping a count of the exact cost but I must have spent somewhere around a quarter of a million platinum so far. I raided my Beastlord's piggy bank for 50k and bought a bag of platinum worth 13k with some loyalty tokens but mostly I've been farming grey mobs in much older zones.

Money flows in quite comfortably from the xp-level content I'm doing but when it comes to cash drops, EQ has a quirk I think is probably unusual in the genre. I can't speak for current content, which I haven't seen, but in pretty much every expansion from... well, thinking about it, from the original, base game, the standard moneymakers remain the same: gems.

Diamonds sell to a vendor for 190 platinum. Blue diamonds sell for 238pp. Various other gems sell for somewhere around the same amount. The main change between expansions seems to be not so much what gems drop as how often, although even that isn't consistent.

Hunting underwater in this zone is amazingly pleasant, not least because of the spectacular way the water amplifies every spell effect.

When I'm out doing my daily double xp Lesson in the level 95 Hot Zone, Sarith, City of Tides, the sharks Franklin Teek insists on sending me to kill drop diamonds and blue diamonds. So did the boogymen and samhain in Fear Itself. So did the reavers in Meldrath's Majestic Mansion.

Gems are great but high-value stackable mob drops can bring in as much or more. Clockworks in all of the Meldrath-related zones from Secrets of Faydwer (also 2007 - two expansions a year back then) explode into showers of cogs and springs when you smash them and those parts sell to vendors for a lot.

I guess those count as body parts if you're a clockwork, which makes sense because mob body parts have been a vendor staple since the game started. In other MMORPGs it's often barely worth giving bag space to fur and fangs but in EQ those crazy NPCs pay top dollar for the most repulsive and objectively worthless organs. I've always wondered what they do with them, although since no NPC vendor ever leaves his spot it's a bit of a moot point what they could do.

The final consideration when deciding where to farm is what players are currently buying on Barter. Incredibly conveniently, these days you can open the Barter window wherever you are in the game and sell directly out of your bags. No more running around the mazelike corridors looking for that one guy who buys writing ink.

The streets of the city are good, safe hunting. I'd do the quests but for that I need to learn the language. All in good time.

It's nearly all tradeskill materials they want, of course, but not necessarily the obvious ones. Many older mats retain decent value but many more are utterly worthless. Also, when selling things that are new to you, you have to be careful to check what the NPCs are paying before you put your silks and ores in the hand of a reaching player. Some buyers are less than scrupulous about offering a fraction of the coin you could get from cashing out at the nearest vendor.

Gems notwithstanding, it's fair to say the more recent the expansion, the more valuable the drops. If you're focused on making the most money per minute, though, it's makes sense to go somewhere you can cut the mobs down like corn. The individual drops may be worth a little less - although unless you go back almost to the beginning of the game it will only be a little - but being able to pull and clear whole rooms in seconds more than makes up the difference.

I've been experimenting, trying to find the most profitable, fastest, least annoying, most enjoyable farm. All of those. Asking a lot, I know.

I've tried half a dozen zones in Planes of Power. A lot of older guides to making money suggest the Plane of Fire and it is indeed very good for gems, plus there are trade mats there still that sell for hundreds of plat a time. Unfortunately, it's a hideous, ugly, depressing zone. I don't really want to spend more than half an hour there.

The aptly-named Beast's Domain is the next zone along. A lovely, blue-green forest with loads of kiting space.

Few of the PoP zones have aged well. My favorite to farm is Ruins of Lxanvom, better known as the Crypt of Decay. It's also stunningly ugly but as an underground dungeon with corridors and tunnels that seems more acceptable. Also it's relatively small and very simple to navigate.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's fairly popular for exactly the reasons I go there, so its not unusual to zone in to find everything already dead. Luckily the respawn rate is fairly fast and once people have cleared it they tend not to hang around for a second run. I know I don't.

All of the aforementioned Meldrath zones are good but I've done a lot of those over the years and I could do without the clanking. A nice alternative I've been trying is Bloodmoon Keep, a dungeon from the same expansion, refreshingly clockwork-free. All wereorcs, spiders and undead, that one.

I tend to farm until I run out of bag space or until I get tired, both of which clock in at around about an hour. My average for a run is somewhere close to 10,000 platinum but I'm fairly sure I can improve on that.

I probably need to, if only because I've bought up all the cheaper Conflagrant pieces now. The rest are going to run 40-50k a pop, which means I need to make about twice what I've already spent. I was very fortunate to get the chest and legs for about half the going rate, though, so who knows what bargains may turn up if I keep my eyes open?

From long experience I do know that I'll just about have had enough of farming after a couple of weeks. It's one of those activities that starts out as really good fun and ends up being a chore. For now, though, I'm still getting that thrill every time I see my balance go back up after a spending spree.

With a bit of luck I should be able to fill out all the remaining slots by the time my month's sub runs out. After that I imagine I'll be ready for a break, anyway.

Into Her Wonderworld: DCUO

Assuming we make that far, January 2021 will mark the tenth anniversary of Detective Comics Unlimited Online as literally no-one in the entire world has ever called it. Almost every MMORPG goes by an abbreviated version of its Sunday-go-to-meeting name but only DCUO has no other identity to fall back on beyond a set of initials.

And don't say "What about EVE?" I checked. The full name of the game we refer to as "EVE" is "EVE Online" and the correct, abbreviated version, which no-one really uses, is EO. Supposedly "EVE" is the name of the now-destroyed wormhole gate that linked New Eden with the Sol system, although why it was capitalized and whether or not it was an acronym, and if so what for, seems to be lost in the mists of space and time.

Hmm. I'd never noticed all that Christian religious symbolism in EVE before. There're the Sisters of EVE, too, an NPC faction that believes "the EVE gate is a gateway to heaven" That's a bit weird.

Umm... how did I get here? I was talking about something else, wasn't I? Oh, yes! DCUO.

It seems like a lot longer than a decade since I first stepped onto the streets of Metropolis. I was pretty excited for the game, being a lifelong DC comics fan.

I put in for the beta and got in, enjoyed it well enough to buy the game at launch, both for myself and Mrs. Bhagpuss. It was a subscription title then but it came under SOE's All Access umbrella, so that didn't factor.

Mrs. Bhagpuss completed the tutorial and, as far as I know, never logged in again. I spent several weeks levelling my first character to the cap, which was set at a low bar of thirty. It's still the cap today. The game uses a completely different system called "Combat Rating". I think it's based on some kind of gear score. Probably.

DCUO's progression mechanics have always been somewhat opaque to me. It's a pity. I really liked the leveling part of the game, the way it started out. If SOE had carried on developing and expanding DCUO along the same lines as all their other games I'd have carried on playing regularly, I imagine.

It only strikes me as I write this just how much of an outlier in the All Access portfolio DCUO always was. The launch roughly co-incided with the beginning of SOE's shift to a free-to-play model, but going F2P never stopped EverQuest and EQII from pumping out an expansion a year or more. DCUO has never released an expansion, not one.

Maybe that's down to its secret identity as a once-rare example of a successful console MMORPG. I have a suspicion Planetside and Planetside 2 operate in something like the same fashion. I've never paid enough attention to any of them to be sure.

Whatever the reason, with the leveling game over and the future marked for instanced group play, I bowed out. But I never gave up on DCUO. I keep popping back in every few months for another look. I've made several characters on a couple of accounts and played them up through those original levels. It's still as much fun, doing that, as it ever was.

About the current game, though, I know very little. It's been a very long time since I followed the storyline (I'm guessing there is one) or understood the structure (I know it's episodic but that's about it).

Occasionally Daybreak do something with the game that catches my interest. I got myself a Lair when they added housing and I always make sure to grab any free housing items that come with the periodic release of a fresh episode. I was pretty stoked when Krypto appeared. I even joined a League, once.

While I'm there, I generally have a bit of a run through the uplevelled "Event" version of whatever the new content happens to be. They all follow the same format. It's nothing if not predictable but as far as I can judge from reading the forums, regular players seem to like it that way.

When Dimensional Ink (Still can't take that name seriously) started bigging up the latest release, Wonderverse, the marketing department seemed to be making more of it than usual. I thought it was going to be something different for once. A new approach. Well, that's literally what they were telling us:

And maybe it is all of that, if you're a regular player with the required minimum CR of 300 and access to the full, permanent version of the zone. To me, when I logged in and knocked out a few quests for various Amazons yesterday, it felt pretty similar to all the other episodes I'd played.

But I was only in the Event version. They're always busy. I imagine the problem is that once the Event ends and a new Episode rolls in, no-one goes back to the old one. The usual built-in obsolesence that leaves so many MMORPGs bloated with forgotten content no-one uses any more.

The zone itself was nice enough, attractively designed on a Greco-Roman theme. Wonderful Mediterranean skies. Gorgeous terracotta tiles. All very Greek.

It was sprawling and "open" in the sense described in the Dev Diary, meaning it wasn't instanced. It was certainly chaotic and I did indeed run into other players, some of whom helped me kill stuff and some of whom poached my quest updates. That happens every Event, though.


I was hoping for something a little more like the original Metropolis and Gotham zones the game launched with. Those are true MMORPG open-world zones; huge, complex, unrestricted. Themiscyra is more like a non-instanced outdoor dungeon, lots of alleyways and plazas that interconnect but not too much wide-open space.

I freely admit that I may be missing something. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised to find the zone I was in isn't even the "open world" zone they're talking about at all. I get incredibly confused in DCUO most times I visit. I was just happy to find the spot where the action was without having to spend half an hour flying round and round the Watchtower, searching for the teleporter, like I usually do.

For now, I think I've seen as much of Wonderverse as I care to but I'm keeping it under advisement. If it turns out there's more to it than I've understood, I'll be back. And anyway, I'll most likely tune in to see which Big Bad pops up next time around. They do kind of have that part of the comic book schtick down pat.

Other than that, roll on the tenth anniversary. I'm excpecting something special for that one, guys!

The Magic Position

It's that time of year again! Blaugust, right? Oh, wait, no, we did that already back in April, didn't we?

Belghast, Monitor of the Blogosphere, seeing the world was troubled, in need of distraction from its fears, seeking solace for its pain, brought the timelines forward so we could enjoy summer in spring. Blaugust became Blapril and the weather obediently followed his lead (or it did where I live, anyway).

The Great Re-arrangement left a yawning gap where Blaugust once was but Belghast moved swiftly, binding the tattered ties together with a new creation he named Promptapalooza. All through August denizens of the blogosphere will come together in harmony for a game of pass the post, each blogger having their say then handing on a new idea to the next.

All are encouraged to join in as and when the spirit moves them. Kinda reminds me of my childhood, sitting in the Quaker meeting room, waiting for inspiration to prompt someone to stand up, break the silence and speak. Only a lot less boring.

I was all ready to go when August began but then the starting pistol sounded on the last day of July because of course it did. I mean, Blapril began in March. What was I thinking?

It was totally my fault I missed the first day. I even have the Google docs spreadsheet with the dates (I'm up on the seventeenth). There it is in black and white

Okay, that's reeeeally tiny but trust me, it says the opening post is by Bel on the thirty-first of July.

It's okay, though. I never planned to hit every beat. That would mean either an entire month of posting about topics I didn't choose while not posting anything I normally would have posted (never going to happen) or double-posting most days for the whole of August (would fricken' finish me!) .

I plan on picking and choosing. Posting in response to the prompts that interest me or anything that sparks a reaction. Also on using the prompts shamelessly to take the strain on days when I'm out of ideas, of course!

Yesterday's prompt, "If you could change anything about one of your core fandoms, what would it be?", I most likely wouldn't have responded to anyway. I'm not sure I have any fandoms, core or otherwise. I was most definitely an active member of UK comics fandom from the late 1970s to the early '90s, to the point that people I'd never met knew who I was (yes, I know these days that applies to everyone in the entire world but it was kinda not the normal run of things back then) but since that ended I don't think I've identified as being part of any fandom as such.

I'm a fan of a lot of things but being a fan and being part of a fandom are entirely separate states of being. It's well-documented on this blog that I have very serious issues with the concept of being a "gamer". Spending your entire life playing games isn't enough to qualify for that tag in my book, or not necessarily.

To be part of a fandom you have to contribute, not just consume, but conversely, contributing doesn't predicate membership of a fandom. I self-evidently "contribute" to blogging but I don't consider blogging to be a fandom. I think of it more as a craft or a hobby.

See, this is why I wanted to avoid this particular topic. The moment I read it I knew I'd get completely tangled up in definitions long before I ever got to say anything about the substance of the question. Let's shelve that one and move on.

The topic for the first of August itself is infinitely more straightforward: "What is some popular piece of content/media that seems to be universally loved that you have never been able to understand?". Bel assigned that one to Dragonray, who addresses it with what seems to me like an eminently reasonable and well-argued rant against Game of Thrones.

I say "seems" because the problem I have here is that I've neither read nor watched Game of Thrones. Oh, I can tell you the titles of all the books because I've put them on the shelves a thousand times. I've just never bothered to open the cover and look inside.

I read George R.R. Martin's Hugo and Nebula award-winning SF/Horror novelette "Sandkings" back in the early 1980s and it repulsed me so viscerally I swore I'd never read another word he wrote, a promise to myself I've found no difficulty in keeping. Of course, I can't stand turgid, time-wasting 500+ page fantasy potboilers either, so that helps.

I could come up with a list as long as one of George R.R.'s dramatis personae of popular media content I've avoided because I believe I wouldn't enjoy it but what seems more interesting to me are the things that I have consumed and enjoyed, things I would consider to be merely ordinary but which have become major global phenomena and cultural juggernauts.

I used to think World of Warcraft was one of those but that was before I played it. Once I gave it a chance I didn't find it all that difficult to work out why it had become the runaway success it once was. I still think it's unoriginal and derivative in many respects but Henry Ford didn't have to invent the automobile to figure out how to put one on every driveway.

No, the super-mega hit that still puzzles the heck out of me is Harry Potter. I mean, I totally get why people like it. It's a school story with wizards. What's not to like? School stories and magic have been two staples of children's fiction since the Edwardian age.

It's not a bad version of the two tropes, either. It's accessible and relatable, the language is simple, the characters are distinctive, the plot is... well, the plot is all over the place, let's be honest, but that could be said of even my very favorite writer in the genre, Diana Wynne Jones.

The first couple of books are weak but they get better, although as they get better they get longer, which isn't better at all. If you have an author who's inexplicably outselling everything since the invention of the printing press, the last thing you're going to want to do is piss her off, so I imagine editing J.K. became something of a fine art around book three or four.

I was working at a bookshop for the entire first-print publishing run of Harry Potter. I saw it change from generic children's schedule-filler by unknown first-time author to literally the major publishing event of the year. For the last three or four titles we re-organized our entire schedules around Potter Publication Day, and by "we" I don't just mean the shop, I don't even mean the company, I mean the entire bookselling industry.

Never actually seen any of the movies...

As far as I can tell from talking to people who've worked in bookselling and publishing for a lot longer than I have, no-one had ever seen anything like it before. None of us who lived through it expect to see anything like it again.

And yet, the thing about Harry Potter is that it's very ordinary. I have read all seven books, just the once. I can't remember when I started. I think the second was already out by the time I got around to reading the first.

After that I read each of them on release. I never paid for one. We received them in such insane quantities there were always damaged or misprinted copies floating around. There wasn't much competition for those because in my shop most booksellers either wouldn't have been seen dead with a Potter or they were so gung-ho into the series they'd pre-ordered, begged to be allowed to host the inevitable midnight opening, then stayed up all night afterwards reading the damn thing.

I was unusual in that I was interested enough to want a reading copy but not so interested I was willing to pay for one. I read a lot of fiction marketed to children and young adults and to me Harry Potter was (and remains) a pretty run-of-the-mill example. It's a bit better than "meh". More like "mm'ok".

And that's it! Why would something as generic go nova the way it did? Not a clue. These things just happen, sometimes, although obviously not often.

I'm curious to see how Harry Potter lasts. We still sell a lot of Potter although I'm not sure how much we sell directly to children or teens these days. The series seems already to be moving into the category of "books I read when I was a child" that parents love to spend their children's pocket-money on. Soon it'll be on the grandparent's gift list. Once a book makes it to grannie's preferred reading status it's "a classic" and we'll never be shot of it but no-one will be excited by it ever again.

I am projecting a bit, here. All that's a few decades off. For now, J.K. Rowling is still out there, wildcarding, so anything could happen. Her adult titles haven't hit Potter sales figures but she's a very major player in crime fiction now, yet she clearly just can't leave Potter alone. And until someone takes her Twitter account away, she's likely to keep generating the kind of controversy every publisher claims to deplore, while secretly wishing their quieter, slower-selling authors could emulate.

I can take Potter and his pals or leave him but I do have to thank the streaky-haired prodigy for one thing: without Harry Potter we'd never have had Simon Snow.

If you've ever read Potter, whether you loved him or loathed him, you owe it to yourself to read Rainbow Rowell's pastiche/parody/homage. It begins in Fangirl, where the Potter-analog serves as a backdrop, then moves into full 'verse status in Carry On and Wayward Son.

The difference between the two series is the difference between Launder and Gilliat's St. Trinian's films and Lindsay Anderson's "If". Do you want to kill a couple of hours on a wet Sunday afternoon in February or fall in love with another way of being?

Buyer's choice.

All images borrowed from the interwebs. If anyone owns anything they'd prefer not to see here, please let me know and I'll shift it.