Another mark in the “Blizzard is evil” column: their “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” handling of a guild in World of Warcraft that advertised itself as “GLBT-friendly.” In brief, when a player sent a message over general chat recruiting people into her “GLBT-friendly but not GLBT-only” guild, she was given a citation for violating the game’s policy on sexual harassment.

The policy, at least its online version, is on this page and only disallows language that “insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation.” But apparently (in case there is another policy/agreement document somewhere less accessible), the policy is that you can’t mention it at all.

The responses from Blizzard game managers in that article are worded about as poorly as they possibly could’ve been — if they’d been outright offensive, then at least it would’ve been taking a stand one way or the other. What they did instead was try to make it sound as if they were looking out for the members of the guild and pre-emptively preventing harassment. Which is self-serving, chicken-shit behavior that in a lot of ways is even more offensive.

Advertising a guild as gay-friendly would invite its members to harassment? I hate to break it to you, Blizzard, but it’s an online role-playing game. Heavily populated by adolescents and shut-ins who never developed past adolescence. You’ve already got harassment. It’s built-in. Some of these people must have “omg ur so GAY!” and “Alliance fags!” on macro.

Now, you’d have to pathetically thin-skinned to get upset by that, but that’s not the point. The point is that for Blizzard to claim that the real world and game world are completely separate, and that it’s not mentioned at all, isn’t even disingenuous — it’s outright denial.

And it’s perfectly reasonable for somebody to want to reinforce an environment where you can just be comfortable knowing that if you mention your gayness or lack thereof, you won’t get dogpiled for it. The examples usually brought up are just saying stuff like, “I have to go AFK to pick up my boyfriend” when you have to leave in the middle of something. Hell, I’ve run into that when I’ve been playing and there’s downtime, and other people mention their relation to each other. I’ve seen female players say, “so-and-so is my husband” and a conversation starts about how it’s nice to see couples playing together.

I’ve been in situations where I started to type that I was playing with my boyfriend, but just didn’t bother because it would be too much of a hassle to explain. That’s not flaunting your deviant lifestyle to anyone, it’s just being able to talk without having to be constantly paranoid about saying The Wrong Thing.

So it would seem a pretty clear-cut case to me, but then the article goes on to mention two guilds called “Stonewall Champions” and “The Spreading Taint.” Great job, guys. Nothing like playing a MMORPG to make you feel that you’re constantly surrounded by morons, the shallowest dregs of humanity.

Blizzard and its supporters can back-pedal as much as they like, claiming that it’s for the player’s own good and it’s part of the stated policy and that whether a player’s gay or straight doesn’t make any difference at all. It’s just a game, right? Yeah, of course it’s just a game, but their response is nothing more than doing what people have been doing for way too long about this stupid issue — shutting their eyes, putting their fingers in their ears, and just hoping it would go away. And now, no matter how it plays out, it’s going to be portrayed as a bunch of whiners asking for special treatment so they can “flaunt their sexuality” in front of everyone.

It’s enough to make me want to quit the game entirely, except I just got these boots that give +10 to my agility and they’re simply fabulous.

According to USA Today, the scarcity of Xbox 360s will likely continue through Spring, just in time for the release of the Playstation 3.

Fine, then, Microsoft! I don’t want your damn computer box anyhow! I’d pretty much resigned myself to getting one, since I’ve got more discretionary income than common sense or time. I end up buying videogames I never actually play and feel a void in my soul if I don’t have The Latest Thing. It’s not so much I wanted an Xbox, I just didn’t want to not have one.

So I’d been saying that it’s inevitable I’d get one, and as soon as it’s possible to just walk into a Best Buy and pick one up without pre-ordering or tackling some overprivileged child to the ground, I’d do it. But every week of super-exclusivity is another week for me to ask myself whether I really want to get one.

The only game I’m interested in is Oblivion, and that’s coming out for the PC as well. The only other reason to get one would’ve been to replace the 10-year-old DVD player I’m using now, but it still works like a champ, and the PS3 is going to be better anyway.

So it seems to me that the analysis in that article is actually correct — having an Xbox 360 shortage was good for the initial launch, because it drummed up demand. But how many of us are going to be patient enough to keep up the demand once they get the supply in place? I’m thinking I’m better off not having another time-waster in the house.

I don’t like real-time strategy games. You’d think I could just accept that and move on, but they keep putting in stuff that makes me think I’m going to like them. This one lets you build things! You like that SimCity game, don’t you, Chuck? This one has samurai; who doesn’t like samurai? This one has “an RPG-like campaign mode.” You like RPGs! Buy it now!

Sometimes when I’m weak all they’ve got to do is advertise elves and dwarves and shit. I don’t even like elves or dwarves as a rule. Who would?

The most insidious way to trick me into liking an RTS, though, is to put a bunch of AT-ATs and AT-STs and speeder bikes and rebel transports into it. Star Wars: Empire at War does that, which is why it’s evil. The game demoes very, very well. After watching the tutorial, I was already hooked. Hooked and disturbed, because I don’t like the thought of living in a world where LucasArts is making good games again.

Once I got past the tutorial and into the game part of the demo, the universe settled back into its recognizable form. Bad-ass spaceships aside (and none of that Naboo shit, either — this is a real Star Wars game), it’s still an RTS and I still don’t get the appeal.

It could be just because I suck at them; I’m not exactly Sun Tzu when it comes to strategy. Hell, I’m not even Sonny Bono when it comes to strategy. I’m not even Chastity Bono when it comes to strategy. I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. What’s happening? Since when did I start writing a weblog? Are you there, internets? It’s me, Margaret.

So yeah, anyway. I get easily distracted and don’t do good with the strategy games. Put a whole bunch of soldiers and tanks and a selection rectangle in front of me and all of a sudden I’m like the eople who say, “You work in videogames? I played Tetris!”

So Empire at War looks bad-ass and is tempting and all, but seeing as how I can’t win the demo, it’s probably not the game for me. I just hope I can keep that in mind the next time I’m in the game-buying place and I see the spaceships on the box and my eyes glaze over and my hand goes to my wallet. Every time I think of the unused copies of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and Warcraft 2 and Rise of Nations it just bears out my secret shame. I don’t like real-time strategy games.

Warning: This post is about World of Warcraft.

Like the other 200 million people who play the game, I’ve got ideas on how to make it better. Since reading the official forums just makes me sad, and since there are at least a couple of people who read this blog who are interested in videogames, I’m posting my Genius Plan here.

My biggest problems with the game are:

• Permanence: Nothing you do has any permanent effect. Enemies respawn, zones stay the same as they were before. The best you can hope for is to give a one-hour boost to people on your side, or inconvenience the players on the other side. The solution is to make your actions as a player have some lasting effect that isn’t instantly negated but also doesn’t ruin the game for other players.
• Fiction: The game’s good on gameplay, lousy on story. Even if you take the time to read the quest descriptions, there’s not much point because they all pretty much devolve into “Kill ten murlocs and come back here.” Instances and dungeons make a better attempt to tell a story, but you never get the chance to really be involved in it because the people you’re playing with have already done this dungeon (or battleground) dozens of times before and want to get right to it. The solution is to involve players in the story instead of just the mechanics, but without just adding a dozen long text descriptions of the Amulet of Riz’Fal’Ptah that don’t really matter to anyone except the guy who wrote it and imagined it was going to be so wicked awesome.
• Differentiation: No matter what the whiners say, the classes and races are all pretty well balanced. This means that you end up doing basically the same thing with every character, just in slightly different ways. There is some strategy involved when you’re in a big party in a dungeon, but for the most part you’re just killing monsters and grinding. The solution is to have things that only certain classes can do, while keeping the game balanced.

Plus, it just seems like the game should be more like Warcraft and less like Diablo. Just because that’s its name and all.

So here’s my Grand Vision, presented for free on the internets: emphasize resources and control points. They do this in the Alterac Valley battleground, but that’s a cordoned-off area that doesn’t have any relevance to the rest of the game. I’d like to see that concept carried throughout the whole game world.
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