I'm too tired and stupid to even contemplate wit
I'm still playing World of Warcraft, currently on a type of server (PvP) where you can attack 1/2 of the other players at will. This is usually a good thing because, let's face it--online, there is a better than 90% chance that the person you're attacking is an asshole and deserves it.
But that's beside the point, which is that I'm a stupid geek. The people who made the game had recently come up with an event where if everyone on the opposing sides on the servers gathered enough resources (food, bandages, Clearasil) they would allow a new zone to open up and cause a "world event." Well, my server finished the gathering and quests and the new secret handshakes were handed out and they scheduled the event for midnight last night, my time. This was because other servers, whenever this event took place, crashed badly. Hence the clever time.
And me? I stayed up for it. Yep, I stayed up, waiting for them to open the gates to the new zone. Around me, around 300-500 other players all clogged up the area, and computer-controlled "armies" (actually, around 100 guys from both sides) stood waiting to throw back the invaders who'd united all us players to work toward a common... stupid. And so we stupidly waited as the time when some player--some kind of Grand Alpha Poobah of Geeks--would do, I don't know, something, and then we get the "cinematics." Epic war! Invading armies! The skies ripped a-sunder! Of course, before we even got close to the scheduled time, it was already hard to move around too much for fear your computer would barf up a lung, and so, predictibly and with little fanfare, the server crashed.
Now, to be fair to Blizzard, makers of this game, I actually had something to do with the next time it crashed. When the server came up, everyone in the zone was telling everyone else to stop being jerks, to stand still, not fight, to leave if they didn't "belong" there, to generally stop causing lag, darn it. This all despite the fact that every single server this event took place on had multiple crashes and restarts no matter what they did.
While waiting with a bunch of others in a group (24 of my closest friends!), we decided that rather than going to the gate and lagging to death that we'd go to the nearest city, where all the computer-controlled armies where waiting. Interestingly enough, right by this city there was a place where we could spawn a zone boss, this huge Anubus-looking guy that it normally takes 30-40 good players to kill. Our thinking, then, is this: (1) We're kind of bored, waiting, (2) we can make this boss appear, (2a) however, we only have 25 people and (2b) we're not necessarily "good" players. With me so far?
Sometimes, when you want to kill hard things or if you just want to cause trouble, a player can engage in the time-honored tradition of "training." To Train means to aggravate a monster, run away a bit, hit it again, run away, etc., with the express purpose of leading him somewhere advantageous or amusing. This is how a bunch of players, over the space of who knows how long, led a Level IKillYouAll monster from a ThereShallBeAGnashingOfTeeth zone at the bottom of one continent all the way to the white-bread main city of the opposite faction at the top of the continent. You know, just to say "hi." To really appreciate this, you should picture being a 12-year-old who's just advanced his brave and noble warrior to level 5, familiarizing himself with this strange and wonderful (and safe!) city, and he turns the corner and something 500 times bigger than him steps on him for 50,000% of his health. Now you should imagine him crying.
Anyway.
We're going to train this boss, because we can't kill him ourselves, over to the armies waiting at the nearby cities, and they'll help us kill him. So we summon the boss, and 3 bosses--50-foot high bugs--appear, and we shrug, hit them all and start running. I, of course, and misreal will understand, particularly irritate one of the bosses and given a good head start and ahead of everyone else, get him to chase me all the way to where the armies wait. The armies stare at the giants and say, "Meh," so I run past. Up the hill, bug chasing me, into a crowd of around 75 players who just hanging around in town away from the lag, into a building, to the head honcho there, who is likewise unimpressed. The boss chases me inside the building, then turns around and begins to tear into all the players in town, because people are stupid: 50-foot boss with skulls in his eyes or innocent puppy, if the game-makers allow a player to attack it... His two pals follow quickly enough, and suddenly it's a monster-a-go-go (but with the Japanese army busy taking a nap). Someone in general chat screams: "Bugs are attacking the city! The war's started!" Dead bodies are littered everywhere, the city guards--after some chin-stroking and careful consideration--decide that maybe the 3 monsters could negatively affect tourism and wade in, and I'm just watching it all and semi-ashamedly laughing my ass off. And that finished off the server a second time (sadly, before the monsters and/or all the players in town were dead).
After that, it was 6 more crashes as more and more people came to the zone and then a full server restart. Apparently, after the full restart, Blizzard just said, "Screw it, the gates are open, okay?" and the grand spectacle simply wasn't. There was nothing particularly "epic" in the long run to this world event, though this didn't stop me from staying up until past 3am running around killing giant virtual bugs. Yay?!
You all better *hope* I never have grandkids, I warn you now, because these will probably be the stories I tell them. And nobody wants that.
But that's beside the point, which is that I'm a stupid geek. The people who made the game had recently come up with an event where if everyone on the opposing sides on the servers gathered enough resources (food, bandages, Clearasil) they would allow a new zone to open up and cause a "world event." Well, my server finished the gathering and quests and the new secret handshakes were handed out and they scheduled the event for midnight last night, my time. This was because other servers, whenever this event took place, crashed badly. Hence the clever time.
And me? I stayed up for it. Yep, I stayed up, waiting for them to open the gates to the new zone. Around me, around 300-500 other players all clogged up the area, and computer-controlled "armies" (actually, around 100 guys from both sides) stood waiting to throw back the invaders who'd united all us players to work toward a common... stupid. And so we stupidly waited as the time when some player--some kind of Grand Alpha Poobah of Geeks--would do, I don't know, something, and then we get the "cinematics." Epic war! Invading armies! The skies ripped a-sunder! Of course, before we even got close to the scheduled time, it was already hard to move around too much for fear your computer would barf up a lung, and so, predictibly and with little fanfare, the server crashed.
Now, to be fair to Blizzard, makers of this game, I actually had something to do with the next time it crashed. When the server came up, everyone in the zone was telling everyone else to stop being jerks, to stand still, not fight, to leave if they didn't "belong" there, to generally stop causing lag, darn it. This all despite the fact that every single server this event took place on had multiple crashes and restarts no matter what they did.
While waiting with a bunch of others in a group (24 of my closest friends!), we decided that rather than going to the gate and lagging to death that we'd go to the nearest city, where all the computer-controlled armies where waiting. Interestingly enough, right by this city there was a place where we could spawn a zone boss, this huge Anubus-looking guy that it normally takes 30-40 good players to kill. Our thinking, then, is this: (1) We're kind of bored, waiting, (2) we can make this boss appear, (2a) however, we only have 25 people and (2b) we're not necessarily "good" players. With me so far?
Sometimes, when you want to kill hard things or if you just want to cause trouble, a player can engage in the time-honored tradition of "training." To Train means to aggravate a monster, run away a bit, hit it again, run away, etc., with the express purpose of leading him somewhere advantageous or amusing. This is how a bunch of players, over the space of who knows how long, led a Level IKillYouAll monster from a ThereShallBeAGnashingOfTeeth zone at the bottom of one continent all the way to the white-bread main city of the opposite faction at the top of the continent. You know, just to say "hi." To really appreciate this, you should picture being a 12-year-old who's just advanced his brave and noble warrior to level 5, familiarizing himself with this strange and wonderful (and safe!) city, and he turns the corner and something 500 times bigger than him steps on him for 50,000% of his health. Now you should imagine him crying.
Anyway.
We're going to train this boss, because we can't kill him ourselves, over to the armies waiting at the nearby cities, and they'll help us kill him. So we summon the boss, and 3 bosses--50-foot high bugs--appear, and we shrug, hit them all and start running. I, of course, and misreal will understand, particularly irritate one of the bosses and given a good head start and ahead of everyone else, get him to chase me all the way to where the armies wait. The armies stare at the giants and say, "Meh," so I run past. Up the hill, bug chasing me, into a crowd of around 75 players who just hanging around in town away from the lag, into a building, to the head honcho there, who is likewise unimpressed. The boss chases me inside the building, then turns around and begins to tear into all the players in town, because people are stupid: 50-foot boss with skulls in his eyes or innocent puppy, if the game-makers allow a player to attack it... His two pals follow quickly enough, and suddenly it's a monster-a-go-go (but with the Japanese army busy taking a nap). Someone in general chat screams: "Bugs are attacking the city! The war's started!" Dead bodies are littered everywhere, the city guards--after some chin-stroking and careful consideration--decide that maybe the 3 monsters could negatively affect tourism and wade in, and I'm just watching it all and semi-ashamedly laughing my ass off. And that finished off the server a second time (sadly, before the monsters and/or all the players in town were dead).
After that, it was 6 more crashes as more and more people came to the zone and then a full server restart. Apparently, after the full restart, Blizzard just said, "Screw it, the gates are open, okay?" and the grand spectacle simply wasn't. There was nothing particularly "epic" in the long run to this world event, though this didn't stop me from staying up until past 3am running around killing giant virtual bugs. Yay?!
You all better *hope* I never have grandkids, I warn you now, because these will probably be the stories I tell them. And nobody wants that.
posted by Greg at 8:15 AM
2 Comments:
Bwahhhh! You are now an annoyance on an international scale. All of those Chinese farmers must be cursing you out like extras from Firefly.
(see, I spreachen ze geek, too).
Ni hao?
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