Virtual Femme

Quests, as a word in the gaming community, has been dumbed down beyond belief by the churn-n-burn questing style introduced by World of Warcraft that has continued in Everquest II, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and just about any new MMO that has come out since then.  I remember when quests used to be epic, and a game might be designed around ONE quest with a bunch of puzzles to solve.  Now, bringing three boar farts to an NPC is considered a quest.  (Though, actually, having to figure out how to capture boar farts might be more involved than most of the quests on these games now.)  Seriously, the sheer number of ‘quests’ in these games makes one feel like they’re on a forever grind of never-ending bitchy, needy NPCs.

Interrupting the Story

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One of my favorite starting points for general research used to be Wikipedia, but by now, many of you in the gaming industry may have heard all the hooplah about the entire Threshold RPG vs. Wikipedia incident.  (That’s a bit of a misnomer.  I should say the incident is really between Threshold RPG and a few pompous, arrogant, and, ultimately, ignorant editors and administrators who definitely like to get together to gang-bang vulnerable articles.   You can read more about it here .

Now, I love to write, as anyone reading this blog would know, and the idea of writing something that would be really useful to someone else is a bit seductive.  That’s probably why I started this blog.  Imagine how seductive it must be to write for Wikipedia then.  There’s only one big problem, and it’s a doozy.  Anything you write can be changed or outright deleted by someone who very possibly has not not even finished high school yet.  Most of the people running around submitting articles for deletion (and arguing until they get deleted) obviously have not done a day of research in their life.  They have very little knowledge about how to write and how to cite, and their defense is the wikipedia policies and guidelines that have obviously been written for a more intelligent and educated crew.  They, however, love the power of being able to bludgeon people with their misinterpretations and ridiculous logic that would never fly in any kind of an academic setting.

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