Fuck the endgame!

When Claire and I play old stuff like Tetris or Mario Kart against each other, there's no love, no friendship, we don't even know each other as anything but mortal enemies. Mario Kart is WAR! Some games are just a lot better that way. When I log on to Space Marine, I turn into a total dick, who will stop at nothing until you're utterly destroyed. These are competitive games, you can play them in quick and dirty session or all night long - everyone knows what it's all about, trash talk is part of the fun and so is winning.

When I fire up a Role Playing Game, I usually put much love and thought into the character I create and play. I want to be immersed, want to become part of a huge, virtual world, get drawn in and just forget about my boring 1st world problems for a bit. This is why I love games like Skyrim or Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. You know, just roam the lands, explore some dungeons, help some people here, murder some peasants there, play my character any way I want and not give a crap about anything.

When I started World of Warcraft for the first time (yes, it's that kind of blog, so if you don't like it, go check out some porn or something), I treated it like any singleplayer RPG, just picked the race and class that appealed to me the most and ten minutes later my Tauren warrior was getting stoned off his ass and chasing after spirit wolves. Back then, doing these things felt incredibly cool, the game sucked me right in and it only got better when the Alliance rode in and both factions got ready for some epic world pvp. Okay, the server crashed, it was the beta, but I still remember the fun I had that night.

SWTOR is doing something similar to a whole lot of people right now. They create their characters, experience their storylines and for as generic and unexciting as the overall quest design might be, the whole thing is a highly enjoyable ride and many players get very attached to their characters in the process.

And then there's the level cap and that dreaded "endgame" content, everybody gets all crazy about on every new MMO long before the actual release. You can be a pretty damn tough level 49 Bounty Hunter on TOR. You can be a really powerful level 84 Rogue on WoW. Then you hit the level cap and you instantly become a maggot, a nobody, the one guy who gets slaughtered in pvp and kicked out of groups because your gearscore, your DPS or some other shit just ain't high enough. And it seriously ruins my fun.

I used to raid waaaay before there were any LFG tools. I've been in the arena since Season 1. I don't miss these days. I think it's a good thing everyone can get their fair share of nice gear using the raid finder or farming Conquest Points even without a successful arena team. I don't like, however, how that kind of crap completely dominates WoW and pretty much every other MMO out there, up to a point, where absolutely nothing else matters.

The second a new expansion hits the shelves, people are crafting all kinds of shit using materials they've been hoarding in their guild vaults for just this occasion, hoping to be "world first" to max out cooking or some other meaningless crap. The moment a new expansion reaches beta status, everybody gets all excited about the guilds who manages to beat all the new bosses, which won't even make it to the actual game for months to come.

And then there's the awful fotm, which sounds like another fucked up Lovecraftian monster, but is actually a lot worse: Flavour of the month. Every last fucking moron on the planet playing that one class, that one particular build, which is currently considered the most overpowered one. A whole lot of people no longer play the characters they like, something that they think might suit them, they just go with what the general public considers the most powerful.

The whole damn game is about being the first, the strongest, the best, being better than everybody else. And to me, that completely fucks up the whole experience. Sure, I could probably play the game any way I want and not care about any of that stuff, but it gets rather annoying when everybody makes your skill tree their own god damn business. Yes, thank you, random player with their name ending in -lol, for informing me that arms currently does 10% more DPS than fury. But guess what? I simply have more FUN playing fury right now! Does anybody remember fun? Playing what you thought was the most enjoyable? If people ask me why I play this or that kind of thing and I bring up fun, they treat me like I'm some kind of alien.

Of course it's all up to how much that kinda stuff bothers you, personally. Some people just shrug it off when it's pointed out they have the shittiest gear in the group, the worst spec, when you're just playing the game wrong. Heck, I freaked out at that level 85 warrior, who was single-wielding an epic dagger. No shield, no offhand, no proper weapons, just his dagger. I'm sure he gets a lot of abuse for that and either he's immune to it or he's a troll, who gets off to that sort of thing.

Me, I don't do too well with insults. I tend to avoid them by getting the best possible gear ASAP, preferably before anybody else in the guild. I like being on top of the DPS-charts, having the biggest, meanest weapon around, being the heaviest hitter in the group. Nowadays, I get to enjoy my endgame sets of gear for about a month or two, then they come out with a new content patch and all my powerful items turn into useless crap. And that's when I go back to the neverending grind for the next set of purple garbage. I don't like it. I don't like farming, I don't like grinding and I wish they had never come up with a fucking DPS meter.

It's a guy thing. Everybody does their stuff in our little family guild. Claire has all the fucking companions, mounts and other useless crap, she knows every single quest, dungeon, raid, EVERYTHING in her sleep, other members talk about their hunter pets all day as though they weren't all nearly fucking identical anyway and I hit stuff really, really hard. It's what I do. And if I want to keep doing that, I gotta keep farming, even though I hate farming. There's some moronical pressure right there, which drains every last bit of fun from the game for me.

Mind you, WoW is merely an example. I haven't been on there for months, but the very same thing applies to pretty much every MMO I play. Look at TOR - the moment you hit level 50, you gotta farm horrid, nigh-unplayable pvp crap or do the same boring Operations over and over again, farming tokens for purple shit, which will make you powerful enough to farm the next tier of tokens for even better purple shit. Rinse, repeat.

I have killed the main boss baddie on Skyrim months ago. I still love the game. I'm still playing the same character. It's an offline RPG, there is no "endgame", there are no raids, there are no cookie-cutter builds, which I MUST play to get maximum DPS. It's just me, a massive world full of quests, dungeons and baddies and I can do whatever the fuck I want.

Why can't MMORPGs be like that? Why do I always end up having to repeat content, which gets terribly boring after the 3rd of so playthrough, yet I have to keep doing that stuff over and over again, only to be allowed to repeat yet another mind-numbingly boring raid?
Sure - in theory, I can repeat as many lowbie-instances, explore the world and do all kinds of random quests at my leisure, even at the level cap. But it comes at the cost of being a total pussy compared to everyone in the guild, everybody who fights in the arena, repeats raids ad nauseam, does that shit I hate so much, just for the sake of becoming more powerful. And being the bottom feeder isn't fun. You get forced into making a choice - do what you want and be a wimp or repeat stuff till you puke and be strong. Yay.

Some big, fat announcement, telling me how some random asshole was the first one on the planet to reach the new skill cap in first aid doesn't improve my gaming experience. At all. If I do a successful dungeon run with a couple friends, I don't want to know who had the best or worst DPS, for as long as we've finished the whole thing as a team and we all had fun. If I join a BG in blue items on a freshly-capped toon, I don't want to be reported "AFK" by the entire team, just because this particular character had no chance to get their items yet.

These are all reasons why I'm in such high hopes for Guild Wars 2 to make the difference the guys from Arenanet are promising (cmon, don't act like you didn't know I was going there). According to their announcements, there will be no raids, no farming, no grind, everyone will be equal in pvp and it's all down to personal skill rather than epic items or higher levels. Instead of being forced into raids, heroic dungeons or battlegrounds, you get to play dungeons or take part in the pvp by choice, because you feel like it and only if, when and as often as you want to. You still get cool rewards for doing so, but at least for now, those are supposed to be mostly cosmetic, rather than insanely powerful.

And the same morons who fucked up every other MMO are already crying on forums and fan sites. They demand "proper endgame", they're already talking about reaching the level cap before anybody else to "pwn everyone's noob ass". Some are complaining about how it's "too carebear" and it lacks possibilities for griefplay. Yes, some people actually get a kick out of ganking helpless level 20 players and all their quest mobs and NPCs 20 hours a day with their max level toons. People are seriously complaining about how the pvp in Guild Wars 2 is not going to allow that sort of bullshit.

I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I don't need "endgame". I don't need to be told to repeat the same thing over and over again until the developers come up with the next tiny bit of fresh, actual content. It's one thing revisiting some dungeon you've already seen, just because you feel like going there again, maybe helping a friend or two. It's something different when you do that kind of dungeon every single time your lockout timer lets you in, because you must do so in order to obtain those items you want.

I'm just not sure how much of an impact the whining masses are going to have. Announcing plans for what sounds like the most enjoyable MMORPG I'm ever going to play is one thing. Sticking to those plans, even if there's a huge crowd of people demanding the same kind of shit you see in every other game of this kind is another. Let's hope they're not gonna be as loud and convincing as I fear they might be. And all things considered - having a game with no raids and no endgame grind sounds super awesome in theory, but who is to say I won't get bored out of my mind in just two weeks? Heh...

-Cat

Guild Wars 2: AAAAARGH! STOP BEING SO GOD DAMN AWESOME!

I'll let you in on a little secret: Part of my job as a games critic is hoping that nobody will ever figure out that I have no fucking clue what the hell I'm doing. I'm not kidding.

It's not like most regular jobs. Take a bus driver, for example. They have a route and a time table and that's how their job works. You drive here and there, at exactly this or that time, charge people exactly this amount of money for their tickets. Every step of the job is explained to you, you memorize that stuff, you do as they say, job done.

When you review games, you can be funny, serious, silly, you're supposed to find your own style, you're an entertainer of sorts. You don't want your readers to get bored. No two games are ever exactly the same and neither should your reviews.. You can't just pull off the same kinda stuff with every review, i.e. explain the story, character creation, combat, quests, describe and rate each individual component from A to Z every time. Boring. You gotta mix things up a little, communicate key-assets and deliver a meta-message. I have no fucking clue what any of that stuff means, but it's the way my RL quest NPCs talk to me. Basically, I just try to be fun and witty and add a little pun here and there that goes with the theme of the game I'm writing about and I try to answer as many questions about the game as I could possibly imagine. I'm pretty sure that's delivering a meta message and delivering key-assets, right? Right?

Another part of my job is ignoring and completely blocking out upcoming AAA-titles. Remember how long before the actual release of SWTOR there was all the hype, there were news articles, a huge fan movement and what not? I ignored it. I refused to watch any teasers and trailers and previews, read up on any detail about the game. I do that sort of thing with every major title, for two reasons.

First of all, I'm a freelancer. The FNG, the underdog, the guy who gets to review the F2P games. I'm saying this with all the love and respect in the world. F2P is great and all, I love my job, but if we're being perfectly realistic, this is how it works: The veterans, the cool and popular guys at the office, have first dibs on all the best stuff. Simple as that. If I get all hyper and crazy about some awesome new game, knowing full well that I have zero priority for a free press account or a free review copy, there'd be nothing but disappointment. Once again, I understand that this is the way it works, I'm not complaining, but I ignore the best stuff to save myself from jealousy and disappointment. Right now, I don't give a fuck about Diablo 3 and if all the guys I'm working with (and for) have been in the beta for ages and I get no access, well... meh. I don't care.

Secondly, I'M FUCKING IMPATIENT! When I like something, I don't wanna wait, I WANT IT RIGHT THERE AND NOW!!1 Ahem...
When Final Fantasy XIV was announced, I was pissing myself with excitement. Yeah, let's not get into how stupid I was for looking forward to that unfinished pile of horseshit that it turned out to be. I collected every single press release screenshot, watched the teasers and previews and wasted countless hours getting all the details straight off some Japanese fan sites. And the release was MONTHS away! The wait was killing me! What if I got hit by a truck before the game comes out? What if I accidentally amputate my gaming hand? What if something really terrible happens that will prevent me from playing when the damn thing finally comes out?

So... now that you know that about me, you'll understand why I've largely ignored everything about Guild Wars 2. In my universe, it simply didn't exist. And then one of my colleagues wrote a preview article about it, after he had been admitted to the Guild Wars 2 press weekend. CRAP!

You have to know, the guy I'm talking about isn't just any co-worker. We played the same class on SW:ToR and when we talked about the game, it turned out we criticised it for pretty much the exact same reasons. We both play warrior-types with a passion. Being the big and brawny guy, who kicks ass at the front line, that's the one and only way to go. So let's just say we have similar taste, we like and dislike the same stuff and I value his opinion.

I can also tell when he's writing positive reviews, because a game is good and when he's being genuinely enthusiastic, because a game is fucking awesome. You can say "Coop-multiplayer in game X is highly enjoyable." Period. It says you think it's good, you're not getting too detailed, you're probably not addicted to it and it's simply just that - good. But not "OMG I gotta tell you about every last detail" kind of good. Guild Wars 2 is every last detail kind of good. I don't care when Game Informer, IGN, Destructiod, Kotaku or god knows who say it's gonna be the best damn game of all times (though they all do), but when somebody I know and whose opinion I value ends up getting so crazy about a game, it's difficult to keep ignoring it.

Crap. Crap crapity crap! I've read up on all the inverviews now, watched all the videos, read all the articles. I've signed up for the beta. I already know which race and class I'm going to play, which name I'm going to pick, I'm all set and just waiting to be allowed in. There's not even a fucking release date, all I know is that it's probably going to be sometime around summer. SUMMER! ARGH! What if I die before summer? What if I get abducted by homosexual aliens, trampled by cows or ripped to shreds by the vengeful spirits of Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, David Carradine and Steve Jobs? I can still die after I've maxed out a toon on Guild Wars 2, because it can't possibly get any better than Guild Wars 2, but what if I don't make it? I'm biting my nails here. I want the beta to start. I wanna get in there. I wanna roll my character and kill stuff. IT LOOKS SO DAMN GOOD! GRRRRR!

I HATE anticipation. I HATE waiting. Every other game feels boring now. And there is way too much potential for disappointment. Grrrrr! Damn you, Guild Wars 2!

-Cat

Tender Borg: The revamped endgame content of STO

2nd Tier MKXI endgame armor set

While you do get your usual assortment of (mostly younger) complete assholes in the community - especially since the F2P transition - a huge part of the STO crowd consists of people, who actually grew up watching the original series with Captain Kirk. And by MMO standards, that's pretty damn old. And it makes sense: The new Trek movies are all happening in some parallel time line and the original Star Trek universe is standing still, thanks to the complete lack of a new tv show. And STO is officially canon.

For the better or worse, this online game continues the Trek story, it tells the stories of the original characters' children, and while the narrative certainly doesn't compare to some of the better tv shows in the series, it's the only fix a die hard fan can get. Aside from the books and semi-official fan-made internet shows, of course.

STO caters to the average, aging, hardcore Trekkie. Folks who aren't necessarily serious gamers. In fact, many of them have never touched an MMO before - or any computer game, for that matter. And you can tell: STO is - and I'm saying this with all the love in the world - the easiest MMORPG I have ever played. You can get all the way from level 1 to the cap of level 50 in a week with absolutely no clue what you're doing, entirely without powerful gear or clever skill points management and the game will even reward you with free ships and insanely mighty level-scaling weapons, shields and other goodies.

I know. Much of this has also applied to WoW for a long while now, but STO is a tad more extreme. Unless you willingly, knowingly crank up the difficulty level as you play among the stars, death has absolutely zero consequence - you blow up your ship or get your away team killed and a few seconds later you'll respawn a couple feet away from where you kicked the bucket. No penalty, no durability loss, no nothing. No matter how many times you might die, you can keep running back to the same bunch of baddies over and over again until they're all toast. The only way to actually "fail" a mission is by walking away from it altogether.

And then comes the endgame. So-called "Special Task Force" missions against the Borg, where five people must team up and cooperate to win. Originally, these missions were so extremely, unbelievably difficult and frustrating that the vast majority of people simply ignored them. But that's a thing of the past, the whole endgame has undergone major difficulty adjustments and now these missions compare to a run through the Deadmines at the appropriate level on WoW. Vanilla.

I'm not talking about some level 85 guy boosting you through there or a bunch of morons in full heirlooms, but an actual weak, inexperienced bunch of total newbies fighting their way through their very first dungeon. Some of you might still remember what that was like. The warriors had to figure out they can and should take the hits, the healers learning that they should focus on their tanks. Going from a shaky start where everybody does what they've been doing solo for 20 levels until they all realize they have special abilities, which help their team get stuff done.

The endgame missions on STO, especially their non-elite variety, are very close to that. You may get lucky and end up in a group of players, who have played plenty of MMOs before, who know everything about aggro management, buffs, heals, boss attack patterns and the proper timing it takes to pull off certain actions as a group. If you're less fortunate, however, you'll be stuck with a bunch of 60 year old Trekkies, who have absolutely no idea what the stats on the tooltips of their gear mean.

Mind you, I'm not being sarcastic, I'm not exaggerating and I'm not making fun of anyone. This is a fact. There are quite a few people on this game, who cannot tell which item to use, when the tooltip on one of their weapons quotes 20 dps and the other one shows 100 dps. They don't know what dps is. And when you try and point out boss battle strategies or simple gameplay mechanics you have to follow in order to beat the mission, they might ignore the ingame chat completely. Well - imagine you're a first generation Trekkie, you've never played anything like this before, you're trying really hard to focus on what the hell is going on and some guy is talking to you at the same time - there's a high chance you won't even notice.

The average skill level on this game is somewhere between Hello Kitty Online and La Tale, up to a point, where it reaches comical levels. As acquiring all the most powerful endgame gear is as difficult as finishing the original version of the Deadmines, you can probably do so within just a few hours if you have a few mildly-talented friends available. Ironically, there is a huge amount of players, who simply find this sort of thing too difficult, too complicated and too challenging. And while this might make me a terrible human being, it's incredibly fun to point out just how mediocre their gear is when they try and brag about it or to talk about how STO is the easiest MMO around when they moan about how they cannot finish certain missions. STO is a game for people, who aren't gamers. And when you point that out, they get incredibly angry. I genuinly love it.

This weekend, the Clairebear and I are gonna repeat every single mission on elite difficulty - they all scale to our level, so it should be challenging enough. I just hope it's gonna keep us busy for a while. With all the most powerful items obtained and the most difficult challenges mastered, we're running seriously low on content. I wish her family played this game a little more seriously, so they could join us and we'd do the whole thing together. Ah well.

-Cat

STO + PWE = WTF

When Star Trek Online went from Atari to Perfect World Entertainment and switched to a F2P-model, a lot of people proclaimed the end of the world in that typical, internet-based end of the world kind of fashion. But when you filter out all the crap and exaggeration, people basically believed that the new business model was simply too good to be true. Too fair, too cheap, too little reason to actually spend real money on anything in the cash shop.

I have seen and recommended games with similar models, DC Universe Online being the most recent one of them, which also puts very little to no pressure on you with their cash shop and is highly enjoyable without ever spending anything at all. And when STO appeared to do the same thing, I dragged friends, family and possibly a few magazine readers into it. Yes, I did write a very positive review about it a little while ago, emphasizing how there is no need to spend any actual money on anything other than fluff. You know, a new uniform here, a cooler-looking ship there, nothing to give you any serious advantage over anybody else, but something to satisfy your cravings as a true Trekkie. I strongly believe that this is a good way to handle F2P - give people the opportuniy to support the game they like by spending a little bit here and there, reward them with something they like, but don't penalize people who can't or don't want to spend any cash.

And it worked just like that. Until last night. Until the 'Cardassian Lockboxes'. These boxes drop out of the sky right now - baddies drop them, you get them for doing missions, you may even buy them in the dilithium shop, using currency, which is obtained by doing pvp and special missions. And they're nice to have, too, seeing as they contain rare pets, uniforms, power-ups and a brand-spanking new, insanely rare ship, which you may *only* obtain by opening one of these lockboxes. In fact, this ship is the most agile and powerful one of its kind and comes with unique, really powerful weapons, which cannot be obtained by any other means in the game.

Now here's the fun part: In order to receive the precious items contained within, you need to buy a key from the cash shop (1 Euro a pop). Sure, some people also sell them on the exchange (auction house) for 1.5 to 2 million credits a piece, which is just about as expensive as it sounds. To make things a little more interesting, you don't actually *know* what's inside the box until you use a super expensive key on it, which will instantly disappear afterwards. According to the forums, people receive one of those rare and sought-after ships every 250 lockboxes. That's 250 Euros or 375 MILLION Energy Credits - and you don't have to actually play STO to know that 375 million credits is a metric shitload of money, much more than any average gamer is ever going to collect in their life.

Being the capitalist pig that I am, I haven't bothered with the actual boxes and made about 50 million credits just by selling them. When I logged on again this morning, the trading price for lockboxes has plummeted so massively, most people simply throw them away. I made some hefty profit there, right on time. And since everything one can find in these boxes can be traded, I have managed to buy pretty much all of these items on the exchange for a fragment of their original value - except for that insanely rare ship, of course.

And that's the problem right there. People are wasting huge amounts of money right now, hoping to get their hands on that ship. And the game is being a right dick about it: Whenever a lucky player finds the ship in their lockbox, every other player will be notified by an on-screen popup message, which cannot be removed or disabled. "PLAYER XYZ HAS JUST UNLOCKED THE GALOR CLASS CRUISER!" Phsychological warfare.

What they're pulling off right now is a massive kick in the crotch and I regret how they're doing it just a few days after I wrote my article. I don't like praising a game, recommending it to people, getting them into it for it's oh-so fair F2P and the complete lack of pressure coming from the cash shop, when one week later the game mocks players, highlighting the names of every single user who obtained that rare and powerful ship for real cash. This is some really nasty bullshit.

And yes, it's pay2win. Sure - you don't *need* that new cruiser. In fact, you might not even like it. I sure as hell don't. But now you can spend the odd extra Euro or two here and there (or Pound or whatever the fuck you wanna spend), buy a key and sell it for a ton of credits, which you can use to kit out your ship and crew with the most expensive crap on the exchange. Real money now buys currency, items and power - and unlike certain dubious Chinese websites, this method is fully legit.

Sure - pvp and elite "raid" content aside, gear doesn't mean shit on STO, anyway. You could beat pretty much all the content using only a shuttle with standard issue ('white') weapons. But when you start releasing essential, sought-after new content such as brand new star ships and only make it available to users, who can actually afford playing a frustrating, unfair virtual lottery, then you're ripping them off worse than forcing them to just pay a fucking monthly fee. We're not talking about a fancy costume, a mount or a pet here. We're not talking about fluff. We're talking about a fucking ship - that's like having a super powerful set of armor on WoW, which you may only get by actually buying something at the Blizzard Store, with no guarantee of actually receiving the item the first 250 times you try.

Your chance at getting this item increases with the amount of money you're willing to spend. Real money. Back when they asked people the same damn monthly fee, at least everybody was equal and had the same access to the same damn items. What you're doing right now is beyond ripoff, it's wrong, it's shameless and it's the reason why F2P games will forever have such a shitty reputation, no matter how good some of them are. Fuck that.

-Cat

No tits for the Brits

Let me show you the kind of German tv commercials I grew up with:

Holy crap. Nipples. Big fucking deal, right? And since I just loooove bringing it up, they also show vaginal soap commercials where I'm from, during the day, when all the kids are up. And you can just about make out another nipple on that one. Go fight that nasty pussy odor! Rawr!

I'm having a conversation about David Beckham's penis with two (female) German friends on Facebook this very moment. Nothing insanely serious, in good spirits and all that, jokingly and with no one feeling offended. Well, except Beckham, perhaps, but he hasn't checked my FB status for a while now. ANYWAY...

My point is - where I'm from, nudity isn't a big deal. At all. I grew up with tits on the telly, my son is growing up with even more tits on the telly and insanely easy boob access on the internet. My parents were naked around me when I was a kid. Not all the time, of course. Or even in public. But they didn't usually lock the door before having a shower and nobody left the bathroom fully dressed, either.
And after swimming class in school, our gym teacher and all the boys would use the same showers together, fully naked, with nobody freaking out over it. I'm pretty sure there's some law against that nowadays.

The whole thing is really just as sexual, indecent or dirty as you make it. My stepsister would flash her tits at the dining table on a regular basis, in front of the whole family. "Look at the new piercings I got!" Chicken dinner and pierced, teenage nipples. Yum! And that's nothing compared to when she got her tattoos...

And, believe it or not, I didn't grow up to be some kind of sex-crazed pervert. Not any more than any other guy, anyway. I don't whip it out in public, I have a decent job and I'm in a happy, monogamous relationship. The occasional nipple on tv didn't completely corrupt me as a child. Though I really don't miss nude beaches. They may seem great when you imagine them, but seeing people of all shapes, sizes and ages naked really isn't fun.

So, why the fuck am I talking about all this?
You are probably aware of the Leveson Inquiry, which came up due to the utterly ridiculous phone "hacking" scandal. For as much as I'd love to bitch about how dialing some random celebrity's voicebox number has absolutely nothing to do with hacking, let's focus on something else for now: While they're already at it, they're also bitching about the Page 3 Girls, debating whether they should be removed altogether.

For the slightly less educated among you: We're talking about the topless girls in The Sun. They're not showing off any saucy bits, just boobs, nothing hardcore or over the top. But apparently offensive enough to start a discussion about their possible removal. And the arguments on both sides are so fucking unreal, it's downright hysterical. It has been in the news on the radio this morning.

"Imagine a father reading The Sun at the breakfast table, getting ready for work, dropping the paper and his seven year old son picks up the paper, flicks through it and gets stuck on page 3. 'Mommy, why is this lady not wearing any clothes'? How do you respond to that?" Riiight. Let me show you what kind of newspaper our fictional daddy is reading here:

 

Before he'd get anywhere near the titties, junior might be asking: "What's a bastard, mommy? Should I eat my hamster? Why did they shoot Grandfather Christmas in the head?"
Seriously now. Look at this shitty excuse for a "newspaper". It's all about exaggeration, it's full of rape, murder, crazy shit, it's as inflated as somehow possible, spectacular, flashy and colourful... it's entertainment. *coughs*

Come on now. What the fuck are we talking about here? It's 'news' presented by idiots, for idiots. It's full of blood, gore, football and - OF COURSE, DAMMIT! - tits. Why? Because the target audience is almost exclusively male.

Of course, the other side of the argument is in every way as ridiculous, stupid and insanely funny:

<<Dominic Mohan, editor of The Sun newspaper, has described topless page 3 girls as "good role models" who are "very healthy". Mohan went on to argue that all models were seen as ambassadors for The Sun brand and that far from being a sexist organisation, it was keen to promote campaigns on issues such as domestic violence.>>

What a fucking prick.
How the fuck does showing your tits to the general public make you a good role model in any way? And how the hell does this in any way promote "campaigns on domestic violence"? How do you come up with that kind of horseshit with a straight face?

Why can't people in England *ever* just talk about stuff exactly the way it is? We all know why there's a stack of these papers near your crapper and we all know what you do when you disappear with a page 3 girl for a minute or two. You're all a bunch of wankers and there's nothing wrong with it. Can we stop pretending it's the end of the world and can we stop acting like those bitches were empowering women in any way or even promoting women's rights or some crap? They show their tits for a bit of money, we ogle the tits, that's it. Jesus F. Christ.

If you want to act all high and mighty about how in the 21st century we shouldn't have "nudity" in our papers, at least go all the way and fight that whole fucking lame ass excuse of a newspaper. The whole thing is garbage and if you read that sort of thing in front of the family and leave it out for your kids to see, then a bunch of tits is probably the least of your problems. Though I can assure you that junior won't grow up any more or less fucked up because he has seen a nipple.

And if you love The Sun so much and enjoy the naked chicks in there, stop acting like you give a fuck about "natural beauty". They're tits. You don't care about the articles around or the face above the tits, you don't care whether those tits are real, hand-crafted by a skillful surgeon or photoshopped. And when you're done and the page 3 girl's expression suddenly becomes strangely judgemental and makes you feel guilty, she'll end up in the bin. There's gonna be a new one tomorrow.

People on this island seriously need to loosen up.

-Cat

Failure week: Raising the losers of tomorrow

Failure is always an option - unless you're Adam Savage, then this saying is probably bullshit.

I woke up to the news on the radio this morning at 1pm and they've announced "Failure Week" in a school around here. It's all about teaching kids that it's alright to fail. I shit you not.
Humankind has reached a whole new level of decadence. Not only can we order cheese-stuffed pizza on the internet, but now it's okay to stop trying. Because it's cool to fail. Today's PE teachers no longer have a winning and a losing team, everybody hugs and holds hands and scores mean nothing. It's all about the fun and not about winning. Yay. ♥

You're fucking up those kids for life. Think about it - if failing isn't a bad thing and there are no more winners, where's my motivation to even try? The winners are winners, the losers are winners, might as well not give a fuck since it makes no god damn difference. You're raising a generation of complete and utter pussies. And now send those losers out into the real world.

This may sound harsh, it might not be pretty and things would be so much easier if it wasn't true - but here's a fact: Everything in real life is a competition. If you apply for a job, you compete against every single other person applying for the same job - they rate your CV, your qualifications, the way you behave on a possible interview. There is only one winner here and that's the guy who gets the job. And if you really wanted that job and you didn't try hard enough, well... not so fun to fail now, is it?

Even if you actually do get the job, you'll want to keep it, you might even want the occasioal pay raise or a promotion. And these things do or don't happen based on how your efforts measure up against the work of your colleagues. If you fail to at least keep up with the rest of them, it's not just goodbye promotion, but probably goodbye job.
It's not fun to fail, it isn't good to fail and it isn't even socially accepted to fail. Do you like demotivationals? Fail vids on Youtube? Of course you do. People on there fail at things and we gloat about their misfortune. Schadenfreude. To fail is even worse than to simply lose - losing implies that somebody was better, you got outsmarted, but if you fail, you've done it all by yourself, because you sucked at it.

In real life you don't get a trophy if you suck. Call your landlord and tell him that you won't be able to pay the rent, but you tried really hard and you feel you should be rewarded. Tell a girl after 2 minutes of lousy sex that you really tried. They still want a fine if you fail to finish your tax return before the deadline, no matter how hard you try. That whole democracy in the middle east thing didn't really work out, but America should get an A for effort, right?

IT IS NOT OKAY TO FAIL! No free hugs, no trophies, no love for losers. Ever. Stop telling kids it doesn't matter if they fail and it's alright to suck! Yes, of course you'll still love them if they screw up, because you're idiotic parents and you love your kids no matter how ugly, boring and stupid they are. And you should - because somebody has to. But if you teach them that the outcome is always the same, no matter how hard you (don't) try, then something is seriously wrong here.

-Cat

STO: Major facelift making old crap more fun

In case you've read my one big complaint about Star Trek Online in my last posting about the game, you'll know I'm criticising the lack of voice acting and cut-scenes as advertised in their new gameplay trailer. Turns out I was wrong on that one. They've actually re-designed most of the old missions, which came with the game 2 years ago and there is, in fact, quite a lot of exactly that. It's pretty amazing stuff, too.

That is all. Enjoy random crap I've filmed whilst playing STO: