How do we hate thee, eBay? Let me count the ways.

Ok, we haven't been blogging in a while, but we have a reason.

In case you've been keeping track--and judging by our site stats, you haven't-- we sell digitally deliverable goods on eBay. All our stuff is written by gamers and freelance writers we hire so we know we are producing a quality product. Unlike a lot of the garbage out there, we put time and effort (and even money) into our guides. It's a pride thing. We sell them through our website and through eBay, the website run by fine purveyors of all kinds of douchebaggery...

Sorry.

We're a little upset. Back to the post...

Now, eBay has decided that ebooks can no longer be sold on eBay. They can only be listed as 'classified ads'. This basically means they can't be listed.

We have no idea why ass-clown extroardinaire Brian Burke (director of eBay Global Feedback Policy) decided to take this ridiculously assanine action. According to his statement, it's because 'digital goods are re-produced at little to no cost to the seller.' We truly have no idea how to respond to that. Is he saying that goods need to have high-reproduction costs to sell on eBay? What constitutes 'little to no cost to the seller'? Not even counting listing fees, final value fees and no-questions asked returns, our product development process involves writers, editors, gamers, web designers and lots of time spent creating these projects (not to mention time spent playing the game, researching the game and doing everything needed to make a reader-friendly product), which means the cost to produce these items is nowhere close to 'little to no-cost'.

Yes, we ship digital goods. But because of that we don't have to charge our customers for our shipping, printing or manufacturing costs. All our costs are front end, not reproduction related. But apparently, someone at eBay is a business model nazi. Or nazi-commie. Or perhaps nazi-commie-monarch-luddite. Yeah. Probably that last one. (Note: we cannot confirm or deny that anyone at eBay has ever had any relationship with any nazi, nazi-commie, nazi-commie-monarch-luddite organization. Yet.)

Well, we're done with eBay. Look for our products through our website exclusively.

And if you ever see someone who works for eBay, kick them in the teeth once or twice for us.

'Till next tie, true believers!

Then we hold the world ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

So you want to create an MMO but aren't sure where to get the cash. You've called in all your favors, searched through your couch cushions and even donated plasma. Even with the giddiness that accompanies the sudden loss of a nearly fatal amount of blood, you are sure you still don't have enough. What is a person to do?

Well, if you are David Jones (One of the original creators of the GTA series), you just go to your friendly neighborhood venture capital firm and ask them to fund your planned console MMO. After that, getting a check for 50 MILLION DOLLARS is just a matter of opening your mailbox. (At least, we hope it was a check. Sending that much cash through the mail would probably cost you a lot on postage.)

So to Mr. Jones and his company, Realtime Worlds, we say: Fuck YO Casino! CJ!! (Yeah, that's a quote from GTA: San Andreas.)

And not to go off on a total non-sequitur (though it's never stopped us before) we'd just like to say that we are REALLY jazzed about the forthcoming release of the next GTA game. We haven't been able to think about much other than the prospect of beating new hookers with even bigger double-headed dildoes. (Dildo's? Dildi? We don't know.)

You disturb me to the point of insanity. There. I am insane now.

Some early reviews of the forthcoming MMO documentary Second Skin, and it looks like the film is taking on a subject we've tackled a few times before. Namely, that lots (if not most) MMO gamers are, to put it delicately, somewhat odd. To quote one reviewer: "After seeing the film, it stacks up as quite an accomplishment that the filmmakers were able to drag these folks away from their computers to attend."

Yes, we know there are a lot of MMO players out there who play their game and enjoy it for what it is: a game. But if you've ever spent a lot of time around people who are really into these games, it doesn't take long to get the feeling that all is not well in the state of Denmark.

For our own part, we tend to get bored with MMO's as soon as the novelty wears off. Once the prospect of repetition ad nauseam removes itself from the realm of the possible and becomes something actual, we find the enjoyment of exploring and interacting with a fictitious environment to loose lots of it's luster. And no, we aren't unfamiliar with the idea of crack-like games that keep us up for hours on end without sleep food or human interaction. (Dark memories of The Legend of Zelda spring quickly to mind.) But whenever we find ourselves similarly drawn, for some reason the entertainment value quickly dissipates. Maybe it's because we enjoy the creative elements more than the visceral elements (creating a character and specializing their skills being the creative, while the visceral is all the feudin and a fussin), but whatever it is, we think MMO's have a very limited place in our lives. All the MMO gamers out there who's games take up increasingly large portions of their lives are a unique sub-culture, and we're eager to see how Second Skin shows us their world.

'Til next time, true believers!

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

We note with sadness the passing of noted author and humanist Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Clarke passed away yesterday at his home on Sri Lanka. We've been a fan since the 8th grade, when we got a chance to pick our own book report subject and were lucky enough to choose Childhood's End. Unlike most of the people who ever existed, or ever will exist, we believe Mr. Clarke and his work will be remembered long after the end of his life. If you don't believe it, read some of his novels and writings on science and technology. You won't be disappointed

Zookeeper, those monkeys are killing each other!

A gamer told us about a relatively new MMO the other day called Zu Online. Currently in open beta, this gamer (we call her 'female-girl-gamer-lady-woman') said she had recently quit WoW because it was taking up too much of her life. Her boyfriend was getting angry, her child would go missing for hours and come back with geological samples for some reason, and even her co-workers started commenting on how she had become "Much more axe-wielding than usual."

To make a long story short (too late), she found Zu and thought it was great. Sort of a pre-Burning Crusade version of WoW, Zu is based on a Chinese fantasy novel. Though developed by an Asian company (pagoda Asian, not mosque-Asian), it's offered by IGG, an American company. We haven't played it yet, but from what we've seen, it looks pretty good. We just wanted to let you know about it case, you know, World of Warcraft is taking over your life.

Shake em up, shake em up, shake em up, shake em.

Oh man, when we read this article we could barely contain our happiness. In general, we prefer computer games to console games. And we prefer MMO's to any other game. But we have a special place in our heart for Rock Star's excellent Grand Theft Auto series. Not only did the series re-introduce us to such musical classics as Japanese Boy, Louisiana Woman Mississippi Man, and of course, Today was a Good Day, but now Rock Star has opened the door for a potential GTA MMO.

I mean... MY GAWD! Can you even imagine it? Oh...the possibilities. Chain saw massacres. Helicopter acrobatics. Hooker beat-downs. And all in an MMO!!

Ok... Ok... just a second. We need to...need do breathe.

Oh man.... I mean... oh man... We have to go compose ourselves.

Vewy well. I shall... Welease... Wogahh!

So we just completed work on our Pirates of the Burning Sea Strategy Guide. (Yes, it's shameless self promotion, we know. But since our lobotomy we've been unaffected by shame. Or poisoned berries. Is that weird?) And, like we do whenever we complete a new project, we stepped away from the game and took a vacation of sorts. It was during this time of ascetic meditation when we found ourselves reflecting upon the nature of the MMO experience. (And by ascetic meditation and reflection we mean that time of the night immediately after waking up on the linoleum but before the realization of the pressing need to go to the E.R. again and have our stomach's pumped with that delightful, if slightly chalky, charcoal ipecac.)

A typical gamer might spend several hours at a time playing their chosen MMO. Whether they are doing solo missions or grinding, or whether they are part of a group, playing these games is almost entirely a solitary experience. Even if you are using a headset and talking to other members of your group while you play, you aren't really interacting with people. You are controlling a digital avatar that is interacting with other digital avatars who are similarly controlled by other players. It's kind of like parallel play, that stage of child development where the kids play next to each other instead of with each other. Yeah, you are interacting with people, but can you really say you are really playing with them? At best, you hear their voices.

And yes, I know what you're saying "Well, isn't that good enough for the blind?" And even if you are quoting The Guild, it still isn't the same thing. This kind of MMO interaction offers a sense of community, but no more than that of ham radio operators or playing chess by mail. You are simulating a social interaction, one where you might be able to convince a part of yourself that you are sharing experiences and ideas and thus are forming a basic societal unite, but it's a bit of smoke and mirrors, a self imposed prison cell, of sorts. You remain solitary, yet interact with people in some way, and thus come to believe you are not solitary. It's the proverbial carrot held in front of the donkey. You can see the thing you want, and you can make progress as you chase after it, but you'll never get it.

That's all for now. Till next time, True Believers.

Stand by for mind control!

We've posted several times about how we believe MMO's are generally in a state of cult-following status. There are a core of MMO gamers who really enjoy the medium, but these people are not representative of society as a whole.

We've also posted how we think this is not likely to change very much until either a game designer is able to create a new MMO that has more mass-market appeal, or someone invents a Holo-Deck. Until the medium can become something as easily accessible as a book or a movie, with enough transportive elements that allow a person to experience a fictitious world in a more rewarding way, we think it's doomed to sub-culture status. (That's fancy talk for saying that books and movies let us do stuff that is kind-of real but not really.)

But wait. Though the holo-deck is not here, it is getting a little closer. Remember the early 90's and all the promise about how virtual reality was going to change the world? No? Well it was there, even if it faded as soon as the internets came into everyone's home.

But some virual reality type stuff keeps popping up, even if it isn't so complete as the Matrix. Take this new bit of technology for gamers: the brain controlled headset. Using a bunch of techmology, this headset will allow gamers to control their games using just their vertabrains. Or at least that's what we can tell form the depths of our middle-school science education.

No, it isn't virtul reality, but it's kind of getting there. We think it's largely inevitable that holo-deck type environments will be around sometime in the future. The ability to interact with a fictitious world not only in just a mental capacity (books, movies, games) or a visual capacity (movies, games) or an interactive capacity (games) but in a physical and interactive capacity is probably the way of the future. We can see a time when stories will be loaded into completely immersive, matrix like environment where people are free to interact and be a part of the story, while still maintaining the safety of fiction.

But until then, we'll keep an eye out for the next Raiders of the Lost Arc, Legend of Zelda, or The Sun Also Rises.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my underground lair.

As if the threat of addiction, loss of sleep and those wierd dreams weren't enough, there is now a potential new threat to all you MMO gamers out there: TERRORISTS!

According to a report that has something to do with the Director of National Intelligence, (Not the same guy who is responsible for high school students not knowing in which century the civil war happened. We're talking about another kind of intelligence.) government spies may soon be infiltrating an MMO near you in order to find terrorists among us.

No. We're not kidding. According to the report, the intelligence community is working on developing software to identify those nasty terrorists who aren't just content to bring their wanton destruction to the real world, but the virtual ones as well.

Yeah, we know what you're thinking. And you're right. If you want to avoid your house being raided at 3:00 in the morning by black-clad, submachine gun toting guys in gas-masks, you should probably stop doing all the bad stuff you're doing. This means ditching the epic suicide vest you found in that desert instance, leaving any guild that rhymes with 'Jihad' and resisting the urge to shout "The streets will flow with the blood of the infidels" whenever you get shafted by that healer in your guild who always "just happens" to be doing something else whenever you really need help. Kyle, you dick.

As for us. Say goodbye to old avatar Entaro McKickass. And say hello to our new avatar: Ayatollah Assahollah.

Ooohhh! Jimmy's Down!

Once again we're forced to report on Perpetual Entertainment, or rather, P2, or rather, that company that used to be Perpetual Entertainment and P2.

Reports (or rumors, or rumors of reports. We're not sure.) are that P2 has now shut down. After a recent slew of bad news, the MMO company appears to have ended their run. Here's a quick list of why:

1. Terminating your flagship project: Gods and Heroes
2. Pulling out of development for Start Trek Online.
3. Getting sued by your public relations firm.

It's too bad. Both of their projects looked interesting. But, and we hate to harp on this, it's just one more sign that the MMO community is not broad enough to support so many games or game developers. Dedicated cult following is how we have come to label the MMO community. The MMO players are out there, but it doesn't look like anything other than WoW has been able to capture any significant portion of those who wouldn't normally play them in the first place.

And not to get off on a tangent, but taking a look at the handful of posts on gaming blogs about this story/report/rumor, we wonder how all this information gets disseminated. No, we don't have any industry insiders or cool remote-control bugs that we can send into places to be the proverbial fly on the wall. All we have is a computer, a connection to one of the internets (the blue one, we think) and the ability to listen to whatever our helpful office leprechaun tells us when he finds us passed out in the mornings. What we do isn't journalism. (Though we do write in an online journal, nay, Blog.) It's us writing our thoughts about the industry in which we have a miniscule part in and occasionally think about. So all these reports of the rumors, or the rumors of reports, or reported rumors seemed strange to us. It kid of reminded us of high school, where someone hears something and it quickly goes through the grapevine. the things is, the only people who care about it are the people who talk about it anyway. The people who don't care about it don't give it a second thought. So it begs the question, even if the rumors are true, does anyone care besides the people who report on the rumors? We don't know.

Besides. The leprechaun is getting jumpy. It's time for our 10:41 whiskey sour.