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[Ferrio]

 

[Axsider]

EverQuest 2 rocks!!

 

[Ferrio]

Speaking of which, their post for the day

When screens began to pour out of SOE for Everquest II, I suggested that they were leveraging a powerful piece of rendering technology, but what was being rendered was devoid of any life or character. Flip through the "art" book for the game next time you're at EB, stuck in line behind the guy with all the Goddamn trade-ins. You won't understand why they went through the trouble of binding a book like that. The images that accompany your standard Harry/Malfoy slashfic resound with more vigor. I neglected to relate to you a comment I received when I made the original remark, but it's pretty awesome, so here you go.

I'm surprised he was able to complete an entire mail to me without accidentally inputting some kind of EQ macro. His assertion was two-fold: one, that I was incapable of making a legitimate statement about Everquest because I hadn't played it for four years like he had. Maybe I am a weirdo, but I don't consider myopia some kind of cardinal virtue. Anyway, he can have that one. I'd hate to see him bring that kind of dedication to bear finding my home address.

The second part was interesting though, because it details the vast cataract he had to develop and maintain in order to keep playing his game. He said that Everquest looked bad on purpose, and that this purpose was explicit: so that unlike WoW, the graphics would not obscure the rich gameplay. Also, he noted, the graphics being bad made it so you could invest the characters you created with your own notions as opposed to some (apparently evil) artist at Blizzard who is trying subconsciously to subvert your imagination.

I have some experience with World of Warcraft, so this is a topic I can speak on. I did not find my character looking fly to hinder my investment in any way. I would submit that it is probably not Blizzard's fault if you are so inert creatively that you can't identify with your little analog on the screen. I loved my avatar in World of Warcraft so much that I actually stopped playing, knowing that they'd just wipe him, no better than the rest of that stale data. I recognize that makes me the worst sort of beta tester, but it was quite real. I knew they would take him away. I couldn't bear to like him any more than I already did.

 

[nubbe]

Not even coherent

PA sucks

 

[Bog]

next time you're at EB, stuck in line behind the guy with all the Goddamn trade-ins.

It's funny, because it's true.

 

[Ferrio]

It's funny, because it's true.

I don't understand those people, and they're ALWAYS there with like 15+ games/movies.

 

[DDayton]

Not even coherent

It isn't?

Drat... and I thought I understood it, too.

 

[Great Wasabi Man]

I assume it's about a character wipe before WoW goes live? Other wise I have no idea what game thier talking about.

If so then....

OMG!!111!!!!111!!1ONEONEUNOICHI!

You mean before a game goes live they do a character whipe!? NOOOO!!! Fuck the Devs they suck! I'm going to make an only comic in protest! christ what is the world coming to next your gonna tell me Eminem is white!

 

[RevenantKioku]

Sigh.

 

[Unison]

next time you're at EB, stuck in line behind the guy with all the Goddamn trade-ins.

The EB I pre-ordered my DS @ opened an hour early yesterday & some woman came in during that one hour space of time, when the line was out the door, with a European Super Nintendo and several games. She wanted to trade them in. The manager got flustered and angry, and pulled her aside, saying "Now is NOT the time for this!!!". He offered her $5 for the lot. Heh heh.

 

[Suikoguy]

The EB I pre-ordered my DS @ opened an hour early yesterday & some woman came in during that one hour space of time, when the line was out the door, with a European Super Nintendo and several games. She wanted to trade them in. The manager got flustered and angry, and pulled her aside, saying "Now is NOT the time for this!!!". He offered her $5 for the lot. Heh heh.

While we are not susposed to, if there is a line, tradins need to wait till we are not as busy.
Better to piss off one person rather then 20

 

[Azih]

You mean before a game goes live they do a character whipe!? NOOOO!!! Fuck the Devs they suck!

Dude it was a joke comic and it wasn't even insulting anybody!

 

[firex]

wasn't all that funny, but it wasn't really lame. just kind of so-so.

 

[Lyte Edge]

We just closed one of our stores down where I work. Yesterday, it's busy, and I bought a PS2 from someone. Five minutes later, another guy comes in to sell his PS2. He's pretty damn rude. Apparantly all his games are scratched, too. (I wasn't handling this trade) When my co-worker hooks up his PS2 using the cables from the other PS2, there's no image on the screen. So I tell the guy we don't want it. He gets super pissed and starts cursing, saying he'll come behind the counter and do it himself with his cables, etc. So I tell him sorry, we don't want it if it doesn't work with any cord you hook up to it. He curses some more (in front of children and their parents) and that's it for me. Instead of offering to try and work something out, I tell him that's it and it's time for him to leave. He grabs his stuff and storms out saying "FUCK YOU ASSHOLES" as he walks out.

...It turns out that it really WAS the cables hooked up to the TV that were the problem. :lol

So he comes back 20 minutes later saying he went to another game store (seems strange to me...if he went elsewhere why not sell it there, hmm? All the stores around here give the same for systems IIRC) and it works, still cursing. I tell him sorry. He wants to speak to the manager. I tell him I'M the manager. He tells me my co-worker (who I want to kill now) told him the owner is in the back. So I go get him; I'm sick of this asshole by now. It's not that I don't mind telling him we made a mistake and that it was the cables, this guy was just an asshole and kept cursing in front of other customers, and I wanted him out of there. So I watch as my boss kisses his ass and ends up buying the system without even testing it using his cables just be sure. Made me sick. I told the guy I'd be happy to apologize to him, but his cursing in front of kids was the last straw. So he apologized too and shook my hand. But the guy is still a dick.

When it's over, I'm talking to my boss and he's asking me why I turned him away. I tell him when someone is acting like that, I want them out of the store ASAP. People bring in broken systems all the time and try to act angry when they won't work in order to get something for it anyway, so I don't believe it when someone says "It works man I just fuckin' played it five minutes ago!!" You get that far too many times at a game store to be able to trust anyone.

 

[AfroLuffy]

Lyte, the little security button on the phone is your friend in times like those. You could have gotten his ass out of there before he had time to throw a fit, but um...i really have no record to stand on here, since I had a customer throw a tomb raider guide at me once ;/

 

[Amneziak]

Damn, I hate asshole customers. I don't work in retail anymore and I'm GLAD. I'll never go back if I can help it. Saturday I was at Claim Jumper and a waitress was putting drinks down on the table next to us when the bottom of a glass just falls off (a freak occurrence) and the drink spills on the table and the man sitting in front of it. The guy leaps out of his chair to avoid getting wet and yelps. This was clearly not the waitress's fault and yet this man-child was scowling and turning red as if she spat in his face. after a few minutes he sat and seemed to calm down a little, but it seemed that this incident ruined his whole evening. I don't understand how anyone could be so angry over a harmless accident. It's not like he was wearing an Armani. I hate jack-offs like that.

 

[Late Stage Marxist]

Damn, I hate asshole customers. I don't work in retail anymore and I'm GLAD. I'll never go back if I can help it. Saturday I was at Claim Jumper and a waitress was putting drinks down on the table next to us when the bottom of a glass just falls off (a freak occurrence) and the drink spills on the table and the man sitting in front of it. The guy leaps out of his chair to avoid getting wet and yelps. This was clearly not the waitress's fault and yet this man-child was scowling and turning red as if she spat in his face. after a few minutes he sat and seemed to calm down a little, but it seemed that this incident ruined his whole evening. I don't understand how anyone could be so angry over a harmless accident. It's not like he was wearing an Armani. I hate jack-offs like that.

You have a shit attitude. Regardless of what I was wearing that would easily ruin my evening.

 

[Flynn]

The post made me think of this:

APOCALYPSE, SIM: Post Card From Blazing Hills

—Sandi Tan

THE SIMS ONLINE (TSO) TEST SITE IS now up and running, with thousands of volunteers inhabiting a choice of several cities at no charge until TSO's official launch on December 17. During this test period, wipeouts (full erasures of data) are conducted sporadically to remove bugs and upgrade the system. In these wipes, Sims lose everything — their homes, their skills, their friends, their identities . . . hours of online labor. At 11 a.m. PST on Nov. 26, 2002, the city of Alphaville was wiped. Many fled into Blazing Falls, only to find that it, too, would be wiped the following day. Found in the rubble after the second Apocalypse was the following letter from an actual player using an assumed name:

Dear Tim Ruston (if that's your real name),

I hope this note finds you. Though we only knew each other a couple of hours, I was moved by your invitation to be your roomie.

As a fellow refugee from the 11 a.m. wipeout of Alphaville, you knew the pain of having your house, possessions and carefully maintained Friendship Web zapped in one ghoulish mid-morning. I do miss my building, the Dakota, but that's history now.

Unlike others I met here so far, Tim Ruston, you were not put off by my appearance — floppy red Santa cap and bushy white beard, nor did you ridicule my shiny pink tuxedo. You seemed to intuit that what I look like on the outside might not reflect who I am on the inside. For that I am grateful. Other Sims (an ageist society, I might add) chose to ignore my friendly waves and catcalls. A Spice Girl clone even said: "Ewww, gross!" and shimmied away from me — into the arms of a Ken. (Here I step back and add parenthetically that it never ceases to confound me that out of the 186 heads and 171 bodies you can choose for yourself — if you choose to be male — almost everybody opts to be a Tiger Beat raver. If you choose to be female, the choices are even wider — 234 heads and 226 bodies. And yet, I keep seeing hot chicks in bikinis and sarongs.)

I want to apologize for messing up your terra cotta flooring when I tried retiling our patio. You know how slippery these mouse buttons can be. I know you politely muttered: "No prob. We all die tmrw." Still, I could sense your secret resentment at having to room with a clumsy old geezer like me. Were you hoping for a pliant Barbie? So, after you left to play Code Breaker elsewhere (I was jealous, I admit), I sold your piñata and bought a giant teddy bear, an egg chair, a couple of tiki paintings and redid the exterior walls in polka dots. Oh, and I also sold the gas range stove. I couldn't wait to see the look on your "face."

When it dawned on me that you might not return before tomorrow's wipe, I headed out. Fellowship's in our DNA — if we don't talk to enough strangers, our Social Level goes down and we collapse, remember? I'd hate to expire ahead of Doomsday.

I tried to get a quick fix at someplace called Nocturnal Dating Service but no one was in. Nor could I enter Hookers Hangout or Make-Out Junction. Had everyone already fled? Finally, though, I found a humongous pad called Lesbian Lodge. There were seven gals there with blue streaks in their hair, all of them grimly discussing the impending doom. I tried to cheer them up by yelling: "Any of you li'l missies wanna sit on Grampa's knee?" but they ignored me. I ended up doing the Robot by myself on their dance floor. Such unfriendly people! (Oh well, they'll all be gone in the wipe . . .)

After a quick pit stop in their bathroom, I set off. In Angels Beach, an estate with disco, pool, spa, gym, the works, I found owner Bergrar standing all alone, staring vacantly at his Venetian tiles. He'd built the place over 55 days and tomorrow everything'll be history. While he moped, solemnly repeating the words "Snowcrash . . . Snowcrash . . .," I swam in his fantastic Moorish-style pool. (I didn't realize I wore pink Speedos, but I do!) Afterward, I watched cartoons on his TV (funny how the image on it never moves) and helped myself to his punch bowl. Did you ever notice that drinking punch replenishes both Hunger and Comfort levels?

At Emergency Med Svcs, I found a Middle Eastern couple making out on their leather couch. I think they wanted to experience the wipe entwined but didn't have the money for the coveted vibrating bed that would let them make love. Poor things will die virgins. I sat on a chair across from them and hoped they'd include me in some sort of pre-Apocalyptic bacchanal. But they kept giggling to each other: "Santa's a watcher! Santa's a watcher!" I got embarrassed and left.

Eventually, I found solace at AndyWC's Lunacy Lodge, a homey, ramshackle log cabin built over seven days by a nice couple, AndyWC and Jesi, facing ruin with Zen calm. "Everyone's bummed out about the wipe, so they're mean," explained Jesi, while AndyWC tried repairing their broken refrigerator. Minutes later, AndyWC stopped and said: "Don't know why I'm even bothering with this since we're all dead tomorrow anyways."

Jesi invited me to dance disco with her. It was my last waltz and therefore surprisingly moving. As we danced, I asked AndyWC his true feelings about the wipe. "I hated it at first," he said, "but now I'm looking forward to it." He wasn't even bitter, which was odd. Stranger still, I agreed with him. The wipe will end all the loneliness, hunger, poverty and discomfort of being here. It's so painful just living, just keeping alive. Yes, yes, the wipe will come as a relief. Release from the little things that have begun annoying me — especially Sims who use emoticons ( J ) and say "lol." They're so not "in the moment."

I guess what I really wanted to say, Tim Ruston, is that your hospitality will never be forgotten. Your taste in furniture was immaculate. Your pizza was delish. My father always told me there was a world beyond the one we know. Maybe I'll see you there. I'll be calling myself "Rob Schneider." Come find me.

Your pal,

Harrison Ford

From the LA Weekly