[GW2] Cabin Fever

Copied from Old Faithful:

“Cabin fever is an idiomatic term for a claustrophobic reaction that takes place when a person or group is isolated and/or shut in a small space, with nothing to do, for an extended period (as in a simple country vacation cottage during a long rain or snow). Symptoms include restlessness, irritability, paranoia, irrational frustration with everyday objects, forgetfulness, laughter, excessive sleeping, distrust of anyone they are with, and an urge to go outside even in the rain, snow or dark.”

The winds have certainly died down. Although, we did receive the slightest breeze last week, there hasn’t more than a gust since asura week mid September. We are floating a little listlessly in open water; lips cracked and throats dry, a glazed look in our eye as if we would happily wring the cabin boys neck if it meant a stiff westerly wind. It’s an uncomfortable position for a blogger.

Quarter 2 next year is looking further and further away the closer it gets. That’s assuming that Q2 is a good estimate for the release, I mean, we can’t be sure and ANet are as zip-lipped as ever on the matter (does anyone else think a “when it’s ready” t-shirt, possibly emblazoned with the ANet logo and an angry looking MKerstein face, would sell rather well?).

I’m certainly feeling restless; flitting between FIFA12, Black Ops, Magicka, BF3 and Guild Wars – unable to settle on a game for any extended period. I worry that even Skyrim won’t hold me down, not because it won’t be a good game, but because my anticipation for the coming storm will have me constantly looking to the horizon.


Ps. Then again, if Skyrim doesn’t hold me there’s always Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Batman: Arkham City, Modern Warfare 3, and Saints Row 3…

Pink Day in LA (and a little context)

I’m going to start this post with a bit of background info; it’s a little sombre but I promise I’ll perk up in a minute. Skip over it for Pink Day in LA info - this is just some context as to why it is important to me.

There is a history of cancer in my family, most recently with my little sister battling lymphoma from the ages of 14-16. I opened my 18th birthday presents at the foot of her hospital bed. It’s not a wholly remarkable story; if you threw an orange in a crowded bar you’d hit 5 different people who have had some friend or family member who suffered with cancer (you might also get glassed, depends on the type of bar). However, just because the story is common, doesn’t make it any less important. If anything, it is all the more important on account of its prevalence.

Since my sister’s illness we’ve all done what we can. My sister is a spokesperson for a charity that helps teenage cancer suffers; she is a confident public speaker and, at the age of only 18 was regularly speaking to large audiences, alongside my dad, about her experiences. I worked for the charity committee whilst at university and managed to raise a total of £30000 for various charities over the three years I was involved. Since leaving university I’ve been working in clinical research and have had the opportunity to assist on a number of cancer research network studies. Most relevant, I suppose, to the real topic of this post is my mother – she works in a breast care centre; screening women for breast cancer.

So, I guess you could say we have a vested interest in encouraging cancer research and breast cancer awareness.

With that in mind: PINK DAY IN LA!

This is a brilliant player run event, conducted in conjuction with Gamers Giving Back and Gaming World Entertainment Network (GW-EN) which seeks to spur doudy grey and green gamers into perfect, pretty in pink cancer research behemoths. Started in 2007 by some kind-hearted individuals, the whole event is an annual fund raising extravaganza which, this year, hopes to hit the holy grail of gamer's numbers by raising $13,370.00 in funds for The Canadian Cancer Society.

Head over to the GW-EN site to donate some dough for cancer research - donate $10 and you could win a host of tasty-wasty prizes!

We already have the NPC ready and willing to sell you some pink dye (I, in all my compulsive hoarding glory, still have some from last year) to make you look the part. I'll be lurking around LA all day Saturday, probably drinking heavily and popping party poppers like a madman.

[GW2] Maintaining a Little Perspective

In a recent post over at KTR, Zubon reposted a comment he received from a Guild Wars 2 fan after he bemoaned the state of a number of MMOs. The commenter listed every feature of the upcoming game as if it will solve every single problem he had brought up. Zubon rightly pointed out the short sightedness of doing this before the product has even been released – and highlighted the (I'm sorry to say it) arrogance which seems to have built up around the game. I believe that the point of the post was somewhat lost in the proceeding 30 or so comments, but the point Zubon (and Syncaine) is trying to make is interesting to note.
I think it is important to remember that the game which solves every single problem is an “Ideal Type” – a platonic concept, an unobtainable ideal. Max Weber argued that certain concepts were so perfect that they couldn’t possibly exist in real life and so were only good as a tool for comparison.

For example, take the ideal family. We all know that every family has problems (however little or petty). So, the happily married parents with 2.4 children, a white picket fence and a dog ideal simply doesn’t exist – but you don’t know where your family (with its drug abuse, manic depression and nick-nack hoarding) fits into the picture unless you have that ideal as a concept against which to compare. I think this is a concept that some GW2 fans need to grasp.

The way the game is often spoken about on forum posts and blogs you would think that it had been out for years, had been play-tested to infinity, proven to be completely and utterly flawless and the employees of ArenaNet had been crowned as Supreme Rulers of the Multiverse and given ultimate control over all proceeding and preceding (assuming they also included the solution to time travel in the first expansion pack) peoples.

This is not the case. So, I wonder whether some people might benefit from a bit of perspective.

I’m not asking people not to be excited about the game (that would shooting myself in the foot somewhat), I’m just asking them to bear in mind that until the game hits the shelves, we can’t be sure what it will be like. And until we can be sure, please also bear in mind that if we are going to roll Guild Wars 2 out on a trolley every time any debate about MMOs occurs people are going to get very tired of it very quickly and those people who aren’t as excited about the release of the game as us are going to get rather irritated that we are stifling their conversations by almost touting GW2 as the be all and end all. So, until then, the concept of Guild Wars 2 as the perfect game exists as only an “ideal type”; unobtainable, non-existent and only useful as a tool for comparison. We've got a great community here, but I do think we have to be careful.


Ps. Then again, if the game exists in an unobservable vacuum (unobservable by us, at least) then we could argue that it is a sort of “Schrodinger’s MMO” and, as such, exists in a state of perfection and imperfection simultaneously.