The Funeral of WoW Gold

It’s been more than 50 years since “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first book of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, was initially published. While any author would be honored to be remembered so well after a half-century, surely Tolkien never foresaw that his life’s work of imaginative literature would not only endure, but become indelibly etched into the popular culture of the world like the fiery writing on the One Ring itself.

The book is still a great read in its own right, an epic adventure about a handful of home-loving hobbits who are swept up into a dangerous world of evil and magic, power and war. From their quite
land of The Shire they are forced into a long journey across Middle-Earth in the company of a dwarf, an elf, a wizard and men from far-off kingdoms, first in flight from menacing Black Riders, and later with a perilous mission to destroy a magical ring in an effort to thwart the enemy, Sauron.

If it sounds like stock fantasy fare, it is, but that’s because Tolkien unwittingly created the mold from which much of the next half-century of fantasy writing would be cast. From Ursula K. Leguin to Robert Jordan, it’s hard to find a fantasy series that can’t trace at least part of its heritage back to the Ring trilogy. Tolkien didn’t just inspire imitators, he helped spawn an entire section of the bookstore.

It’s a solidly-written work, and even if you stripped out the fantasy elements there would still be left a heck of a road novel, full of careful description of the natural world which makes you want to grab your backpack and go. But the real magic in the books is the extraordinary effort that Tolkien put in to constructing the imaginary world in which they dwell. The different races have their own histories and cultures and languages and songs, to the point where passages appear in the Elven language which Tolkien painstakingly constructed. The reader is often given multiple names for a single place, as characters recite the different names that dwarves, elves and men might have for a single mountain or river, a device that elegantly echoes the cultural complexity of our own world and its languages.

At the time of publication, the books were sometimes criticized for a lack of depth in the characters, but they may only seem flat compared to the depth of the world around them. Tolkien originally intended the Ring trilogy to be published alongside “The Silmarillion,” a much denser work which was essentially a fictional history book, detailing the creation and ancient history of the races and lands of Middle-Earth. While “The Silmarillion” was not published until 1977, its presence is felt nonetheless, as it comprises the mythology and history that underpins “The Lord of the Rings.”

Tolkien’s shadow is longer even than the bookstore, however, and casts across genre. Not only do wildly popular online fantasy games such as “World of Warcraft” (10 million players and counting) trace their cultural lineage back to Tolkien, but the idea of simulation itself owes something to the intellectual exercise that Tolkien indulged in his writing. Simulation and world-building are mainstays of modern video games, whether they are set in a fantasy world or a more realistic setting, and the idea that a convincing narrative must happen in an open world-space with its own rules and not in a linear cause-and-effect narrative tunnel is essential to how they work. In that sense, “The Lord of the Rings” is an unwitting great-great-grandfather to “Grand Theft Auto IV.”

Re-reading “The Fellowship of the Ring”  today is not only fun, but full of those “Oh, that’s where that comes from!” moments that pepper the pages of truly great classic books.

Home sick again, but now that the sweats and chills have gone I feel downright peppy, despite the warzone inside my respiratory system. I even managed to drag myself to the PC and moved my rep with the Sons of Hodir from neutral to friendly. Then I blew myself up on land mines. Then I took a nap, exhausted from the “excitement” of it all.

When I woke up, the healer world was all a-chatter about the changes to mana regeneration for healers.

(go read. shoo. back? ok.)

I’m really going to miss Divine Plea. It was a handy little way to increase my mana during trash pulls and lulls in Boss fights. And I loved it when soloing PvE. But a 50% reduction in healing for 20 seconds is just too much to risk during a fight. I’m worried that the changes in regeneration are going to affect my ability to heal all but the most uncrushable of tanks through 5-person Heroic Boss fights. And although I like the 10-person raids, the fives are my favorite.

As a casual player it took me a while to reconfigure how I played to adjust to the 3.0 changes. I still wish I could drop 30-minute Salvation on some of the crazy AoE aggro-pullers. I think I’ll copy Akro over to the the test realm once 3.1 goes live there and see what the real deal is.

I’ve been 1/4-joking (almost serious) with the guild about retiring Akromah because I’m growing weary of healing. Remember, I’ve been healing in these MMORPGs for years and years. Now I may have to give world’s worst mage another shot.

Safe travels and stay healthy!

For most who played the game at launch, like myself, Star Wars Galaxies remains an experience that was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.  In fact, it’s a galaxy that most who played the game would not even recognize anymore.   In 2005, a large portion of the Star Wars Galaxies player base, including myself, boarded up their houses, put their star ships in the garage and moved out of the neighborhood to other MMORPG’s such as World of Warcraft, Age of Conan or Warhammer Online.

The problem was the release of the NGE or New Game Experience unleashed by Sony Online Entertainment in November of that year.  For many Star Wars fans still clinging on to the chance of a
New Hope, it was instead Revenge of Sith as Sith Lord John Smedley and his team forever changed the game and making perhaps the biggest blunder in MMORPG history.

I haven’t thought much about Star Wars Galaxies in recent years, until I received an eviction notice in the mail earlier this week.  In transmission identified as “Important Information From Star Wars Galaxies “,  I quickly opened the message, hoping for news that order had been restored in the galaxy and it was safe for residents to return to their homes and cities.

Instead, it was an eviction notice signed anonymously by one of the Emperor’s minions. 

Effective March 3, 2009, at 4:00 AM PST your in-game player owned properties including Houses, Guild Halls, Theaters, Hospitals, Cloning Facilities, Merchant Tents and Factories may be Packed-up, removed from the game server(s) and placed in your datapad.

Years ago, after the first exodus in 2004, Sony had performed a similar purge of houses from the game world.  While this is a necessary function to keep a sense of normalcy for those few who remain playing the game, it is also one more slap in the face for long time fans hoping to one day go back to the game they once loved.

The eviction notice itself was merely a black mail message from the evil empire.  You will be evicted unless of course, you give us money.   The notices continues..

On March 3rd, we may pack up and remove items attached to Star Wars Galaxies accounts that have been inactive (an account that has not been logged into and had an active, paying, and valid subscription) since July 1, 2008.  If your service has been inactive since July 1, 2008, and you do not validly re-subscribe prior to February 15, 2009, your houses, structures and associated assets may be packed up into your datapad and removed from the game servers at 4:00 AM PST on March 3, 2009.  Should you decide to return to Star Wars Galaxies after that date, you will have to place these items back into the game world.

At this point, I am very certain that I do not care about any in game items I may or may not still have in that game as like other Star Wars fans, I am eagerly awaiting the release of BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic.   While I know TOR may never be what Star Wars Galaxies ever was, unless Bioware has gone completely nuts, it should be many times better than the current state of Star Wars Galaxies.

It would be interesting to see how effective this eviction notice is in generating subscription renewals for SOE, but I’m pretty sure that a more inviting solicitation would have been more effective.   This email serves to demonstrate one more time that SOE, while not completely inept as the masses may claim, had once again dropped the ball on Star Wars Galaxies.

Players who are considering returning to the game however will be allowed to log in free of charge until February 15th. I personally will not be accepting the invitation because nothing in the message was even remotely enticing.

In the wake of reports earlier in the week, a lot of people are under the impression that massively-multiplayer online games are now barred from sale in
Australia. Off the shelves. Well, they are not.

Let’s clarify what’s happened, and look at things from a more practical point of view.

At the moment, most MMO games are unclassified in Australia. That means they are not given a rating by the Classification Board (Australia’s equivalent of the Entertainment & Software Ratings Board), despite this being, well, technically against the law.

Why? Because for years there has been a loose understanding between the Australian games industry, retail sector and the Classification Board, in which loopholes in the body’s guidelines meant that MMO titles - thanks to the unpredictable nature of their online play - did not require a rating.

Because Australia’s ratings guildelines were too outdated to cover a product like an MMO, and because there was no way of determining much of the game’s content (you are, after all, communicating with people, who can say what they like), a blind eye was turned to the fact they were going on sale sans classification

It was, essentially, a gentlemen’s agreement on a par with the “Game Experience May Change During Online Play” notice placed on American titles by the ESRB . You can read more about it here, which is a thoughtful and pragmatic piece on the subject.

Now, though, a stink’s been kicked up in the wake of reports by both Massively and the Sydney Morning Herald, which both highlighted this loophole and sought comment from men connected to organisations overseeing the Classification Board (though not, it should be noted, the board nor the Classification Review Board themselves).

Those reports were reported on, and reported on again, and now we have many people - and many news outlets - under the impression that MMO titles (including World of Warcraft) are now somehow “banned”, or barred from sale in Australia.

They are not. You can walk into an Australian store, today, and purchase a copy of World of Warcraft. Or Warhammer Online. Or Everquest 2, if you can find it. And you can do this at EB Games, GAME, or any other retailer across the country.

I’ve spent the last two days calling stores across the country, and while some staff were aware of the issue, none had received notice to bar the sale of the products, nor had they any intention of taking the games off the shelf until they received formal notice to do so.

And why would they? They’ve been selling MMOs for nearly a decade now without incident, without controversy. And with the current popularity of titles such as World of Warcraft, MMOs are good business.

Plus, it’s not like the New South Wales Police (the police force of one of Australia’s six states) are actually going to take this matter seriously. Let’s take a look at the statement issued by a spokesperson for the state’s Police Minister:

Police officers in the NSW Police Force will respond to complaints received from members of the community or other agencies to investigate alleged breaches of either the Commonwealth’s or NSW’s Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Enforcement Act 1995.

That’s a generic, cut & paste statement. Anyone who has worked in the civil service will recognise that. And it’s a cut & paste statement made, let’s not forget, by a civil servant working for a state Police Minister, who is a politician. Not a member of the NSW Police, and certainly not the NSW Police Commissioner (who has 1,543,656 more important things to worry about).

Same goes for the other statement that some people (though it should be noted not the original SMH piece) have latched onto, by a spokesperson for NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos:

The NSW legislation covers computer games bought online as well as those bought in stores, and treats single, multi-player and online games the same way.

If there is any suggestion that any business is trading illegally, police need to know, and it should be reported.

Again, a response pasted from a template by a civil servant.

Neither of those statements are by the men themselves. They are not a political call to arms. They’re not statements made with klaxons sounding. They’re standard responses to a public enquiry made by a civil servant, representing a politician, from a single Australian state.

Which is important to remember. After all, neither the NSW Police Minister nor the NSW Attorney-General have a lick of authority outside the state of New South Wales. They can’t impact the sale of games in Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, Western or South Australia, or the Northern & Australia Capital Territories, nor over federal retail or classification laws.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the issue is irrelevant, nor that it will simply go away. These games probably do need some kind of ratings, and this loophole couldn’t remain hidden from the public’s eye forever. And now that it’s been raised, it’s certain that somewhere, somehow down the line, action will be taken.

But it’s important to remember, this is Australia we’re talking about. Any changes made to the way the OFLC rates games has to come on a national level, not from some state politician, and with the country on the precipice of recession I highly doubt politicians will want to devote time and resources to amending a loophole that’s stood for a decade and has already allowed millions of game sales.

A loophole about, let’s be honest, video games. We’re talking politics, police and federal government institutions here, for each of whom video games are about as low on the “to do” list as it can get. One need only look at the lack of progress made on a national level towards amending the country’s lack of an adult (R18+) rating to see that.

One need only look at Blizzard’s response to the whole matter to see how worried they are about the whole thing:

Blizzard Entertainment and its affiliates work very closely with the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia to ensure that we are in full compliance with Australian law as it relates to the distribution and operation of our games, including World of Warcraft. We’d like to reassure all of our players that World of Warcraft is currently, and has always been, distributed and operated legally in Australia.

So relax! World of Warcraft isn’t banned. It’s still on sale, it’s game cards are still on sale, and if past experience with video games law and government policy in this country is anything to go on, it will be for quite some time to come.