A Note on the EQ Raiding Series

I orginally wrote this series of raid blogs as a member of the Everquest Guild Southern Armada 2004/5. I had been playing EQ on the Karana server for about 3 years when the Guild that I had been a member of for the better part of that three year period, imploded, and I was left without a connection to most of the people I had spent all day, every day with.

At this point I decided I really wanted to see the high end raid game. In essence I was either going to quit or commit. I had spent so long in EQ I felt like I wanted to get into the “end game” and see what the deal was, see for myself what everyone was taliking about. So I looked about on the web to find an aussie/kiwi raid guild that wasnt going to require massive online time.

In my search I stumbled on the Southern Armada web site, had a good look around and after several days of thinking about it I applied to join. I transferred to Prexus about a week later and the following Blogs are my experience as a member of a high end raid guild in Everquest.

I started the blog for me, as a way for me to record my experiences and to have something to look back on. I let a few people from the guild know about it and within a couple of weeks I was getting “why havent you posted?” tells the day after a blog was due. Over the peiord of the 2 years that I wrote this, I recieved quite a lot of emails, ingame /tells and several people actually took the time to post on the SA website saying how much they were enjoying the series and my writing.

The original site where this was hosted recieved traffic from all over the world and quite a lot of it, usually straight into the next blog episode. One backpacker actually sat down in a cyber cafe in Spain and read the whole thing start to finish. I dont think I have ever been as proud of anything in my life as when I found out that that backpacker spent AUS80$ in order to read the entire continuing adventures of Ulaa the Necromancer and Southern Armada.

I think a lot of people were interested in the original blog because SA is a casual guild. It isnt one of those arrogant uber guilds who treat gaming like a job. We raided because we loved it and I was describing encounters that due to the mechanics of the game, many people, even those who had played for years, would just never be able to see or experience. It was a window into a world that was closed to many people.

I also very much enjoyed bringing to life the people and personalities of Southern Armada. SA is full of some amazing and incredibly dedicated people. My experience in EQ went from being Ok to being an absolute blast, I couldnt wait to logon and play the game every day. I would Raid till 2am and be at my desk at work at 7am twice a week for 2 years.

SA triumphed in EQ and moved on to the World of Warcraft. For various reasons I stopped playing that game, some personal, some preferential and some hardware related. I am however forever a member of SA in my head. I am currently involved with a game called Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and I am a site admin with the aussie fan site Ausguard.com I am very much hoping that as soon as VG is released SA will move to the new game and I can become an active member again.

I have now migrated these blog entries twice. I am hoping that by putting this up on one of the largest blog sites in the world this will be the last time I ever have to do this. I know they aren’t all that relevant anymore as people have well and truly passed through these areas, but what the hell I still like to look at them and maybe one day they will inspire someone else to log onto a game and go on a raid.

Massively Multiplayer: A Primer Part 2: Kids

I recently received the following Email from a friend of mine;

Hey Ulaa
can you give some advice/information for parents of a child who wants to join an online guild? Rules, etiquette, things to watch out for…?

Why yes I can. Here are a few thoughts on my MMPORG experience of Guilds and their membership.

1. Reputation follows you, whether its earned or not.
For me the most interesting part of any Massively Multiplayer game is the Guild that you elect to join. When you are invited to join a Guild one of the first things that happens is that you will you recieve a Guild tag above your head.

The Guild tag is visable to all other players and indentifies you as a member of a particular organisation. How that organisation is viewed by other players in the game is a result, not only of the actions of yourself, but of all other members present and past. Like any organisation, unless its brand new, a Guild has a history, it will have enemies, friends and allies. If the Guild that you join is known for anti social actions such as Kill Stealing (KS’ing), Raid Jumping, Griefing or any of the other various actions that can be performed to the detriment of other players in an MMPORG, then regardless of whether you yourself have ever participated in any of the events, to most other players you will still be tarred with the same brush.

For example: There was a Guild in EQ (Who shall not be named) who were known as a “Zerg” Guild. They would throw immense numbers of Players at a game event, until, through sheer persistance and weight of numbers they would win. In Everquest game terms this method of play usually implies a lack of skill and dedication on the behalf of the indivdual players within the Guild. The Guild were also known generally as unpleasant players, it was always assumed that they would be unfriendly, KS’ers, Trainers etc etc.
Generally not nice people.

Now whenever I saw that Guild Tag in game I was always on my guard expecting the worst sorts of behaviour from those people, yet I very rarely had a bad experience with the individual players within that Guild, in fact many of them were friendly and highly skilled. However due to its past history the Guilds name still came with unpleasant connotations.

Now in a game such as Everquest where Player vs Player (PvP) is not a major part of game play, having a bad reputation doesnt come with many in game repercussions. In a game such as WoW, DAOC or EVE where PvP combat is a major part of game play, having a bad reputation can mean being corpse camped, it can mean people going out of their way to kill you over and over. This can most definitely spoil your game play and for children it will quickly ruin the game.
Some people actively seek to join Guilds with bad reputations and make those reputations worse, many are proud of having a bad reputation and seek to make it even worse.

Guilds being real life organisations, they can sometimes cross games and game genres. Thus you may see the same Guild name emerge in multiple different games.

People being social animals they become very attached to their Guild tag and sometimes try to have their Guilds move with them into new games. This can happen in the manner of Southern Armada or the Fires of Heaven, where the entire Guild essentially changed games. It can be that a Guild transcends any one game and has representatives in multiple games and genres such as Organisation:Drow.

Southern Armada has also sort of gone down this path with representatives of the Guild in both Everquest2 and World of Warcraft. However there is no connection between the two guilds apart from some members in both Guilds played together in EQ1. There are also Guilds that may completely disband in one game and then re-emerge in another game with no connection between the two instances except the name. Sometimes this can be a deliberate attempt to trade on a Guilds already established reputation, sometimes its just ex-membership of the original guild starting again.

Check a Guilds reputation before joining, either through playing with its membership or even just asking around on the same world shard.

2. Even a Half-Assed Guild has a Website.
Unless its only 5 minutes old (and thats possible) most guilds will have a website detailing their beliefs and policies. Find your potential Guilds website and have a good look around. The sections you particuarly want to read are the rules on player interactions, and the Guilds policies. Try to read between the lines a bit as Guild policies can range from “We dont care what you do at all” to “When you log on you must check in with an officer and obey that officer in all things forever and ever amen”.

IE some Guilds are run by Hippies and some are run by control freaks.

This is also a good time to review what it is that the Guild is going to require of its players. Raiding Guilds (or those who aspire to be raiding Guilds) will often have minimum required play times. Sometimes this is just a requirement to raid a certain number of times a week, but sometimes it is a requirement to be online for a certain number of hours a week.

Something else to check is to have a look at the Guilds Forums. Every Guild has one of these as they are the best method for the Guild members to communicate with each other and for officers to post information about upcoming events. This is usually where the Guild will also have a recruitment Policy and application form. Most Guilds will also post some form of warning about “appropriate use” of language in the Guild Chat Channels (See more below).

These warnings will vary from “We allow adult language/ topics” through to “We only allow the type of language as she is spoken in the Bible” Have a good look around the Guild website for policies and belief statements.

3. Play with your Child: Understand the game they play.
Im not saying that you have to control every moment of your Childs online play, but try to sit down with the Child and if you can, play the game with them, or have them explain what it is that they do in the game. I have found that most kids love explaining the stuff they are doing in a Computer Game. The better that you understand the game that your child is playing the better you will be able to make an informed choice on whether you want them to play that style of game at all. A blanket ban on all computer gaming or completely ignoring what they do are not answers to the issue of online gaming.

When joining a Guild your child will suddenly have access to a chat “channel” that is only visible to other Guild members. This is so that Guild members can communicate across the entire physical game layout. So even if you have watched the child in the past, when/if they join a Guild sit with them again and just watch the chat channels to check out the new level of conversation.

4. Etiquette
The Eitiquette of Massively Multiplayer is not limited to only the interactions with other Guild members. Because the entire premise of such games is interacting with other people in a fantasy setting, the etiquette of the game itself will probably dictate a large part of the inter guild rules.

A. Assume that the person behind the toon to whom you are speaking is the sex of the toon.
For example, if the toon is female, assume the player is as well. Sometimes it can be very obvious due to the tone of the chat you are having, that the female Elf is in fact a real life Male, sometimes it isnt. It may be easier ( you may think ) to assume that all players are male and act appropriately. However there are more and more women involved in the MMO Genre and many of them play Male toons in order to escape from percieved in game “harassment”, So you really never know.

It is not strictly speaking considered polite to ask the Real Life (RL) sex of another player unless you have known them for some time. My toon in EQ, Ulaa, was a very pretty Dark Elf, I had a number of embarassing encounters where I had to tell other players that I was in fact a male player, before their flirting went any further. I had one encounter with a young man where we had been chatting in game for some months off and on, then one day out of the blue he asked me my sex in real life. I told him and I didnt hear from him again for some weeks. I think he had been thinking I was female and learning I wasnt was something of a shock. I had never hinted or pretended that I was, but he was upset none the less.

The acronym for this kind of question is occasionally a crossover from the classic IRC chat channel question; A/S/L?

This means Age, Sex, Location and there is no obligation to answer it.

This leads us nicely to:
Always remember, there are real people on the other side of the screen. It may be a game, it may be “Fun”, it may all be Fantasy/SciFi, it may all be pixels and code, but on the other end of every Character in the game is a real person. Treat them as such. Be polite and friendly, exactly as if you had just walked into a room full of strangers.

B. Do not share intimate personal information with people unless you know them very very well and even then be careful.
After a couple of months of playing with Southern Armada I met up with my Guild leader as he also lived in Auckland at the time. I am a 100KG’s Male and have no problems looking after myself. However when I organised to meet him I did it in a public place with lots of people around and excuses ready in case it all became unpleasant. In my case it didnt, but if you do elect to meet someone from a game, do it publicly and do it carefully. Never share personal information like Address or Phone number in game.

Much like other public places, MMPORGs in general or public chats do not condone the use of explicit or racist comment. If you are playing a female Gnome and greet your Guild at each login with “Whats up my Niggers?!”, its inapropriate and isnt going to make you any friends.

C. DONT SHOUT.
It is generally accepted internet usage that posting all in caps is considered SHOUTING. Dont do it, its annoying.

D. Dont beg.
Would you allow your child to stand on a street corner and beg for coins? Im sure most wouldnt. However a surprising number of children (and they are easily identifiable as kids) will send chat messages to high level players begging, this is usually along the lines of “gimmee Gold pleeze” or they will simply stand in a zone and shout to be given items. Not only is this bloody annoying for all other players but it defeats the purpose of the game. If I hand you a high level account with all the most powerful gear in a given game, whats the point of playing the game?. Go out, kill stuff, do quests, you will soon earn your own money and items and have fun doing it. Persistant beggars just end up on my ignore list.

Asking for help is perfectly fine and this is one of the reasons many people will join a Guild. If you cant find the place/item/monster you need to finish the quest, ask in Guild chat. Someone will either know, or be able to find you the information. Asking for help to kill a Mob or finish a Quest is also perfectly acceptable. However do remember that your guild members are not obligated to help you out. If they want to help and have the time, they will, if they dont, they wont.

E. Written english comes across very differently than spoken english.
An enormous amount of communication is non verbal, its eye movement and body language. Be careful how you write what you are trying to communicate. What may seem funny to you in your head can come across as outright rude when it shows up on someone elses screen. Think about what you just written before you hit the Enter button. In reverse, if someone writes something that you find offensive or rude, ask them if thats what they meant to say. More often then not, they just didnt manage to get the joke across in the manner intended.

5. You get out what you put in.
Like any other organisation, the more you put into the Guild, the more you will get out of it, both personally and in game. As discussed above, reputation plays a big part of the game. This applies to both Guilds as groups and Players as individuals. People will get to know you and will judge you based on the persona you project. If you are outgoing, participate in Guild chat, show up to help others when they need it, join in Guild events, post on the Guilds web boards, try to organise fun events for other players etc, you will get a lot more out of the game than if you dont participate at all.

On a wider scale, if you are known as a good player and a good person you will get people searching you out to group with, people will respond more favorably when you are asking for help. In other words if people like you and regard you as a good player, they are a lot more likely to help you out.

For some people its not the in-game participation that counts, its the out of game stuff. An active Guild web site requires a lot of support. Beyond the coding, design and layout of the site itself there is content updating and moderating and security of the Guilds web boards. I know of Guild web sites where the people who actually maintain and support the Guilds website/board are no longer actively playing any sort of game. They are still regarded as respected and active members due to their participation in the Guilds life in other ways.

6. There are assholes everywhere
This is true of games as well as life. You like to know who your kids play with in RL, so you really should know who they are playing with in Game as well. This is sort of related to 3. Play with your Child: Understand the game they play, in that its a good idea to sit with your child and learn what they are playing and who they are playing with. There will always be assholes everywhere and your child will encounter then both in game and out. In MMPORG’s which involve PvP combat such people are usually known as “Griefers” or “PlayerKillers” (PK’s). These are people who go out of their way to make your life miserable by repeatedly killing you for no other reason than they can.

Oddly enough most of the Griefers I have ever come across have themselves been children. They are usually unsupervised 10-16 year olds having a bad day and determined to take it out on other people. The best way to deal with Griefers is generally to get away from them. If you cant do that, then its time to put the call in to the Guild to come and help you. Most Guild members will come and help out if you are repeatedly being Ganked by someone a lot higher level than you. If that doesnt work. Just log out and do something else, play another toon or another game. Smack talk and anger just excites a griefer, log out and you have taken away his/her fun.

Thats about it for now. Feel free to leave comments or ask questions if you want to know anymore or want me to expand on something.

Remember Them

If you are able,
Save for them a place inside of you
And save one backward glance
When you are leaving, for the places the can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them
Though you may
Or may not have always
Take what they have left
And what they taught you with their dieing
And keep it with your own
And in that time
When men decide and feel safe
To call the war insane
Take one moment to embrace
Those gentle heroes
You left behind

Major Michael Davis O’Donnel
1 January 1970
Dak To
Vietnam

The future

This is disposable throw it away
This is an animal dont let it stray
That was the past so leave it behind
This is the future its all in our minds

Love

And in those words were hell divine
As if of salamander and turpentine she spoke;
instead of simple words.
As if the world were new and old at once
And pain did at last eschew the lonely and the feared and poured forth; a dawn of fire and tears
In those words the Gods did walk
Instead of simple talk
Of Love

The City

Its cold, in the morning, amidst the concrete and glass
Its cold, in the morning and here I am, sitting on my ass,
Coffee and a cigarette fill up my mind.
The City wakes up at a very early hour
comes alive quickly slowly
in a rush of light and sound and smell and power
I wander amidst tall towers and flashing lights
I smell the smells and see the sights
of my city coming back to life.

A Poem for you

The Sea rides high the waves,
Above the Sea;Clouds
flow and drift through blue void.
Seeming tho it was
Oil on webs of water.

A statement of Fact

Joss Whedon is my God

Welcome to the Internet

This is incredibly True.
This should flash up on every copy of internet explorer as soon as you access the internet.

This is a mirror of the original, posted at Deeplight.Net. It was written by Robert “redpaw” Jung, Webmaster, managing editor, chief techmonkey of Deeplight.

Welcome to the Internet.
No one here likes you. We’re going to offend, insult, abuse, and belittle the living hell out of you. And when you rail against us with “FUCK YOU YOU GEEK WIMP SKATER GOTH LOSER PUNK FAG BITCH!1!!”, we smile to ourselves. We laugh at you because you don’t get it. Then we turn up the heat, hoping to draw more entertainment from your irrational fuming. We will judge you, and we will find you unworthy. It is a trial by fire, and we won’t even think about turning down the flames until you finally understand.

Some of you are smart enough to realize that, when you go online, it’s like entering a foreign country … and you know better than to ignorantly fuck with the locals. You take the time to listen and think before speaking. You learn, and by learning are gladly welcomed. For some of you, it takes a while, then one day it all dawns on you – you get it, and are welcomed into the fold. Some of you give up, and we breathe a sigh of relief – we didn’t want you here anyway. And some of you just never get it.

The offensively clueless have a special place in our hearts – as objects of ridicule. We don’t like you, but we do love you. You will get mad. You will tell us to go to hell, and call us “nerds” and “geeks”. Don’t bother … we already know exactly what we are. And, much like the way hardcore rap has co-opted the word “nigger”, turning an insult around on itself to become a semiserious badge of honor, so have we done.

“How dare you! I used to beat the crap out of punks like you in high school/college!” You may have owned the playing field because you were an athlete. You may have owned the student council because you were more popular. You may have owned the hallways and sidewalks because you were big and intimidating. Well, welcome to our world. Things like athleticism, popularity, and physical prowess mean nothing here. We place no value on them … or what car you drive, the size of your bank account, what you do for a living or where you went to school.

Allow us to introduce you to the concept of a “meritocracy” – the closest thing to a form of self-government we have. In The United Meritocratic nation-states of the Internet, those who can do, rule. Those who wish to rule, learn. Everyone else watches from the stands. You may posses everything in the off-line world. We don’t care. You come to the Internet penniless, lacking the only thing of real value here: knowledge.

“Who cares? The Internet isn’t real anyway!” This attitude is universally unacceptable. The Internet is real. Real people live behind those handles and screen names. Real machines allow it to exist. It’s real enough to change government policy, real enough to feed the world’s hungry, and even, for some of us, real enough to earn us a paycheck. Using your own definition, how “real” is your job? Your stock portfolio? Your political party? What is the meaning of “real”, anyway?

Do I sound arrogant? Sure … to you. Because you probably don’t get it yet. If you insist on staying, then, at the very least, follow this advice:
1) No one, ESPECIALLY YOU, will make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

2) Use your brain before ever putting fingers to keys.

3) Do you want a picture of you getting anally raped by Bill Clinton while you’re performing oral sex on a cow saved to hundreds of thousands of people’s hard drives? No? Then don’t put your fucking picture on the Internet. We can, will, and probably already HAVE altered it in awful ways. Expect it to show up on an equally offensive website.

4) Realize that you are never, EVER going to get that, or any other, offensive web page taken down. Those of us who run those sites LIVE to piss off people like you. Those of us who don’t run those sites sometimes visit them just to read the hatemail from fools like you.

5) Oh, you say you’re going to a lawyer? Be prepared for us to giggle with girlish delight, and for your lawyer to laugh in your face after he explains current copyright and parody law.

6) The Web is not the Internet. Stop referring to it that way.

7) We have already received the e-mail you are about to forward to us. Shut up.

8) Don’t reply to spam. You are not going to be “unsubscribed”.

9) Don’t ever use the term “cyberspace” (only William Gibson gets to say that, and even he hasn’t really used it for two or three books now). Likewise, you prove yourself a marketing-hype victim if you ever use the term “surfing”.

10) With one or two notable exceptions, chat rooms will not get you laid.

11) It’s a hoax, not a virus warning.

12) The internet is made up of thousands of computers, all connected but owned by different people. Learn how to use *your* computer before attempting to connect it to someone else’s.

13) The first person who offers to help you is really just trying to fuck with you for entertainment. So is the second. And the third. And me.

14) Never insult someone who’s been active in any group longer than you have. You may as well paint a damn target on your back.

15) Never get comfortable and arrogant behind your supposed mask of anonymity. Don’t be surprised when your name, address, and home phone number get thrown back in your smug face. Hell, some of us will snail-mail you a printed satellite photograph of your house to drive the point home. Realize that you are powerless if this happens … it’s all public information, and information is our stock and trade.

16) No one thinks you are as cool as you think you are.

17) You aren\’t going to win any argument that you start.

18) If you’re on AOL, don’t worry about anything I’ve said here. You’re already a fucking laughing stock, and there’s no hope for you.

19) If you can’t take a joke, immediately sell your computer to someone who can. RIGHT NOW.
Pissed off? It’s the TRUTH, not these words, that hurts your feelings. Don’t ever even pretend like I’ve gone & hurt them.

We don’t like you. We don’t want you here. We never will. Save us all the trouble and go away.

The Middle is always behind the Edge

Microsoft, ahhh Microsoft.
They are like your Granny, nice to have around, occasionally she makes you cookies, but every now and again she opens her mouth and just plain embarrasses herself and probably you. I will explain where this is going after a little bit of a digression. I have written 2 articles as introductions to the world of the Massively Multiplayer Game.

I play MMPG\’s on a daily basis and I have a reasonably good idea of what the hell I am talking about, I can write on the subject from an informed viewpoint. At one point I considered writing an article covering the language of the Multiplayer Game, after some reflection I decided not to for two reasons. The first and most important is that its an enormous subject. The language of the MMPRG, much like that of the TXT Generation has evolved from acronyms and shortenings of words due to most people (Like me) having crap typing skills.

Thus instead of writing “I will be right back, I have to leave the keyboard as I need to go to the bathroom” a player will write something like “brb, afk for a bio” This is translated as “Be Right Back, Away From Keyboard for a Biological break”. There are literally thousands of these acronyms and bits of slang. I once saw a guide to MMPORG speak that was Everquest specific on the EQLive forums, towards the end of its life it had expanded out to about 15 pages.

Here is a very basic primer to give you an idea of the type of thing involved in this new language. It is a vast and very new subject. Not even Nick Yee has done any significant research into this proto language. I dont know if the “serious” language researchers of the world simply dont regard it as worthy of study, but from someone who “speaks” this language reasonably fluently, I can state it is definitely evolving into a language very seperate from its parent tongues.

The thing with online gaming speak is that it gets in your head, I actually find myself thinking in MMPRG speak. For example if I find something funny, I will still physically smile or laugh, but I wll also think “lol” (Laugh Out Loud) to myself. I will have little conversations in my head and suddenly realise that I am actually thinking in the language of the MMPRG rather than fully articulating my thoughts in my native English.

The second reason that I didnt write anything on this subject is that the language, to an extent, is game or even Genre specific. Much of the core language is trans-game but a lot of it will evolve within a game to discuss specific aspects of that game’s dynamics. Some parts of the language will work in some games and not others. For example in MMPRGs where it is possible to join a Guild type organsation the reference /GU will refer to speech made in the guilds chat channel. This is due to the use of the prefix /GU to speak in the guild channel rather than locally. In use you would see “Wow man, did you hear what johnny said in /GU the other day?”

In a Multiplayer FPS talking about /GU wont mean anything. Yet the commonly used phrase “Woot!” meaning that something good has happened (Woot I just soloed that MOB!) is used across all genre’s and types of gaming. The phrase has even made its way into main stream media in places. It is claimed that this phrase evolved out of the FPS phrase “We Owned the Other Team!”. Meaning that your team has decisively defeated your opponents.

On top of all of this there are the online worlds of the script kiddies, the BBS freaks, the Hackers and Phreakers, the IRC bots, web chat fans etc. It is truly a massive and in some cases disparate community, yet at a basic level they are all still able to “speak” the same base language.

The particular language dialect within the gaming community, will be different depending on whether you are playing a fantasy based MMPRG such as Asherons Call, Everquest or World of Warcraft, a more “realistic” type of game like The Sims:Online, a Multiplayer First Person Shooter like Halflife, Doom3, Unreal Tournament, Quake, a Science Fiction like MMPRG like Star Wars: Galaxies. Each game will have its own specific phrases and acronyms, as well as sharing many similarities across the Genres.

The reason the whole thing came up was a friend sent me this link on Kids online speech from Microsoft. I dug around and also found this on Teen Speak and this on Gaming Lingo. To me this kind of thing is like trying to learn the English Language from a single page of instruction written by someone 100 years ago. By the time Microsoft tries to write up a primer on this, it has already evolved well beyond them.

Ok its a way to start understanding the language, but if you ever truly want to understand your childs “L337 5p3@| <" (Leet Speak) you will have to go online and learn the language yourself.I will write up a short history of Online Languages and their evolution, as far as I understand it some other time.