Critigation

SO while talking about the new EQ2 expansion me and my friends accidently created a new term by slip of the tongue. Critigation Critigation is a term for 'critical mitigation' which is a new mechanic they are putting into EQ2. I have made it my new goal to make this term popular but first 'squatting' on various popular spots to make sure its origination is clear. One: by making lots of links out of the word pointing to my EQ2 guild who came up with it. Two: by making an entry into urbandictionary.com. Third is a little less specific, I've just started registering names called 'critigation' on various community sites like myspace.

Facetious - the new cop out

fa·ce·tious
1. not meant to be taken seriously or literally: a facetious remark.
2. amusing; humorous.
3. lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous: a facetious person.


I've been seeing this word used way too much lately. Bascially a new form of 'joking around' but removes the requirement that it had to be funny in the first place. So anytime you say something stupid/wrong/not funny and someone responds to it, the guy can act like your the asshole. "uhh duh I was being facetious." So I've started telling people off who use this word, then I throw it back in their face. "Hey fuck you and I really wish you died in 9/11" "hey man thats not cool" "haha dumbass I was being facetious, lol what a moron."

The problem is the concept has no 'tell' ,like being sarcastic or telling a joke. Being facetious and being serious literally have no difference in the way their being told. Two people could tell you they own a red car the exact same way, and one could be 'facetious' while the other is serious. I guess it could also be a form of getting away with lying too. "hey you said you would pay me back that money today, thats why I paid for dinner." "duh I was being facetious."

So I am going to kill everyone that is facetious, and if your gonna call the cops because I said that, I was being facetious.

The Fan, Shit is Hitting It

I try to be general in what MMO's I talk about, but I gotta talk about this. Its EQ2 related so if you don't care about EQ2 just skip this I guess.

Rangers on EQ2 have been getting screwed for quite a while. It came to a peak though with Rise of Kunark. This is because Rise of Kunark was an expansion with new levels. Meaning everyone got new armor and weapons as they leveled up. Sadly rangers did not. Some equipment was better, but most lacked benefits to ranged weapons. The biggest thing was, we didn't get any better ranged weapons. We are essentially still using level 70 bows, and doing level 70 damage BTW, at level 80.

So rangers rallied, complained, and quite a few gathered up tons of useful data for the devs to use. It is literally quantifiable by the players to show how unbalanced and lacking we are. The devs seem to like ignoring this, or flat out saying its quite the opposite, that we are just fine, despite the hundreds of angry rangers who all agree rangers don't do enough DPS for a class that can do ONLY DPS. Rangers are good only classes, our evil counterpart CRUSH rangers on most parse's especially on raids.

And Raid DPS is what this is about mostly. Rangers do fine solo and Group, quite balanced actually, but rangers get slaughtered on raids. Classes that can tank, heal, WHILE doing DPS have the capacity to out damage rangers with rangers using some of the best equipment available. Even rangers say a raid leader would be foolish to take along a ranger rather than ANY OTHER CLASS.

So it was finally too much, the devs couldn't keep a lid on it. So they announced that in game update 44 they will be fixing arrow mechanics. In a nutshell broken arrow mechanics is why a level 70 bow is better than level 80 bows. So for a time rangers cheered! Rangers will use appropriate arrows and bows and do as much damage as they should! This only lasted until the patch hit the test server.

On the test server is was found:
A. The bow we have been using has been severely nerfed
B. ALL bow damage was REDUCED

The patch basically did the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the rangers wanted. It lowered Ranger DPS instead of raising it.

This really lit up the forums. The scout Dev was barely getting posts in, getting trampled in what seems like a post ratio of 100:1 with the dev on the losing side. He CONTINUES to say rangers are fine, that the ranger DPS is fine while every ranger who bothers to write about it DISAGREES COMPLETELY. Both this dev and the moderator just couldn't keep up, the ranger anger even spilled into other class forums. So today one of the associate producers even stepped in and started replying, not directly about it of course, but hopefully this means the piece of shit scout dev is getting reamed/fired or at the very least someone else is looking at this travesty.

So spread the word, EQ2 rangers are fucking broken. Rangers need to do more DPS to keep up with their counterparts and fill their role as a raider. I've seen several rangers who have already canceled their accounts and dozens more promising to do so if this crap is pushed and rangers aren't properly fixed. So how many does that translate to in a game of thousands?

Nice little speech to memorize

So I was looking over my various forums and games and chat channels of MMOG's and found a common factor in all of them. While weird little cosmetic things are being added or other features that can be overlooked, the most important things in these games get overlooked and people just take it. So I rewrote a speech from the movie 'Network' Feel free to use it in anyway you want but I wouldn't change it so it becomes more familiar the more people read it and see it.

We sit playing our characters and listen to other players talk about how classes are broken or bad while every other class is doing just fine as if thats the way its supposed to be. We sit in our groups or our raids with what we got and say please just let us keep this and I won't say anything, just leave us alone. Well I'm not gonna leave you alone, I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest, I don't want you to unsubscribe I don't want you to send PM's and letters to devs, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. All I know is first you've got to get mad! You've gotta say "I'm part of this game dammit! My class has value!" I want you to log on now, I want all of you to get on your characters. I want you to log on right now and go to chat channels, type in it and yell "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!"

Delaying the Inevitable

Well I am officially sick of people bitching about being PK'd ON a PvP server. You know damn well you you got on the server you WILL be killed. Assuming anything less of being practically chain killed when not in a "no pvp" area is stupid and ignorant.

If you want to do quests, harvest, or essentially do anything that isn't PvP without getting PK'd, you can't play on a PvP server. If you do, stop bitching about something that will always happen.

Disturbing Precident

So while this may be old news, or even expected, I recently figured out Rock Band doesn't work with a regular controller. Two things

1. It would be SIMPLE to get both drums and guitar to work with a standard 360 controller
2. I find this "standard controller exclusion" very disturbing.

I really don't want to start havign to buy a special controller for half my games. I'm already spending $50 on the game (or more) and a monthly fee to play online in a decent manner. Wit these music games I accepted these controllers because I ASSUMED it was just to make it more fun, but now I know their REQUIRED it really scares the shit out of me. I don't want to have to get a special motion sensing sword to play 'god of war 3' or racing wheel that may or may not work with other racing games other than the one it is 'branded'