Techno-Slave

The other day, I've spent a whole paragraph whining about people, who can't leave the house without checking Facebook every two minutes on their smartphones, giving me an excuse not to own one. One that sounds cooler than, "Can't afford it." Well, now I'm at home, Facebook is having issues and I can't post any status updates and there is a million completely redundant things I want to share in status updates. How utterly pathetic!

Stuff about dragons, for one. I'm playing Dragon's Prophet, playing with Poundland rubber dragons, playing Dragon Age: Origins, hoping to get in the right mood for Dragon Age 3, which I can't seem to care about very much right now. I've finished Origins the week it came out and forgotten about most of the story, so I'm having a lot of fun on my current playthrough, which is nearing its end, unfortunately. There were some big surprises, both good and bad.
For instance, I couldn't believe it when I realized the game was only released in 2009. In many aspects, it feels so old, ancient, awkward, eldritch even. Always wanted to use that word in my blog.

My character remains silent throughout the entire game and just blankly stares into the scenery while everyone else gets kickass voice acting and okay-ish facial expressions and gestures. I completely forgot about that! Switching to the tactical top-down perspective in dungeons causes the focused toon to walk right out of the screen most of the time, with the camera not following the action. Setting up AI tactics is annoying and complicated and makes characters like shape-shifting Morrigan completely useless if left to the AI. You just can't tell the AI when and how to use spells or change shape into animals, what animals to change into and what animal abilities to use. You gotta play her by hand or leave her out of the party. And the visuals... man, the game wasn't much to look at back in 2009!

Though with the right settings and mods...

...it still looks decent.

But this game is so, sooo damn good! Specialising the three basic classes, turning a rogue into a sneaky assassin or a ranger, who summons animal companions to her side, teaching your squishy healer to become an arcane warrior and seeing how it all plays out on the battlefield is utterly satisfying. And I love the setting, because it isn't all happy happy joy joy, it's dark, it's depressing and everybody is just a little bit fucked. All templars are addicted to Lyrium and eventually lose their marbles, mages have a tendency to turn into vegetables or abominations and the oh so heroic Grey Wardens force you to drink the blood of your enemies (which is likely to kill you) and stab you in the face if you try to walk out. And then you're haunted by nightmares for the rest of your life - on the plus side, said rest is relatively short, because the Darkspawn blood causes people to go insane over time.

The whole thing is full of rape, murder, treason and plot. Sure, the story itself isn't the most original thing of all times and I'm nowhere near the edge of my seat, dying to find out how it all ends. But the characters are the most lovable and exciting bunch this side of Mass Effect.

I just hope I can get myself to finish Dragon Age 2 when I'm done with Origins. I tried it once and gave up after just a few hours. Character management was dumbed down, I didn't like the new party members very much and the interiours of caves, buildings, everything just fucking repeated over and over again. Turns out that higher resolution textures and faster-paced combat isn't everything. Oh well. Back then I was all hyped up and got disappointed. Now I fully expect DA2 to suck, so maybe I'm in for a pleasant surprise. Fat chance, right?

In other news, Blizzard won their lawsuit against the developers of Shadow Bot and Pocket Gnome. I love this bit in Ceiling Fan Software's official statement:

"[...]pursue our right to operate and our customer’s right to play WoW as they choose". Their right. Their right to use bots, to cheat, gain an unfair advantage over other players and to break the rules. Nice. They've also added a link to their paypal account in case you're interested in donating to help these assholes cover their legal fees.

The real fun started when I translated this article and posted it on my employer's website. Comments section. On top of the usual "Yay! Go Blizzard! Fuck bots!" and the teenage renegade "bots aren't so bad, I also buy gold on ebay ololol" bullcrap, another bot developer had taken the opportunity to advertise his own product underneath the article. The best part was when he shared stories about alleged thank you letters, which he supposedly received from a disabled player, who could now finally experience World of Warcraft by having a bot play for him. How touching.

What really fascinates me is how some users actually suck up to this asshole. Let's face the facts for a moment: This guy is one of the reasons why every BG in WoW is populated by bots, which walk in a straight line, spam auto attacks and are generally a waste of space and potentially lose the whole damn thing for your side whenever you get stuck with them. And the people using them get their gear in their sleep. This isn't fair, it takes the fun out of the game, it's against the rules and the guy selling this software doesn't give a shit, because he's sitting on a soft, comfy pile of money. And he's blatantly advertising his crap, because "it helps people with disabilities enjoy WoW". Yes, I'm sure that's what he had in mind when he decided to offer his bot for money. He's an asshole. He's the very definition of asshole. If you look up "asshole" in a dictionary, you'll probably see a picture of David Cameron, but this guy is close.

And then you get people, who ask the guy about his "motivation" to sell his bot, aside from money. "Certainly, it can't be your goal to upset the player base with your product or to annoy a huge amount of people. So what are you trying to achieve, what are your expectations?" Almost funny if it wasn't so messed up. He's SELLING a program that PLAYS THE GODDAMN GAME FOR YOU, what the fuck do you THINK his "motivation" is? He's exploiting lazy fuckers with more money than common sense, he doesn't give a shit about the community or how it affects the game. And he sure as fuck didn't have the well-being of sentient, limbless torsos in mind, who crave to play WoW, or else he wouldn't take money for the damn thing. Why the FUCK would you treat scum like that with any respect, let alone pretend they gave two shits about how their bots take a good amount of fun out of the damn game? What is this, Stockholm Syndrome 2.0?

Ah fuck it, I'm gonna go take a ragedump.

-Cat