Massively Speaking Episode 160

Really like the Robo Rubi voice. Very intimidating.

Beau, your opinion about competitive raiding guilds and "the guld jerk", that whole segment made my day, brother. Thank you.

You guys must be really passionate about GW2 to have been scrutinizing all the Sylvari details that much. Wow! :P

I'm glad Beau further explained his position on The Raid. I read your blog post on it and read that as an overreaction more than anything else. But after hearing your reasoning here on the podcast it made me reconsider a bit and see why the documentary was getting such flak.
At first I saw the people bemoaning it for its impact in the media as insecure and laying the blame on the wrong person. I know it wasn't the director's intent but yeah, he had such a narrow setting and cast of people that it painted the gaming environment in one light only, a seemingly negative one at that. Now I don't mind him showing this particular guild group, but it's important to those outside of the gaming circle that they understand even more about raiders and the many types of gamers out there.
I do hope the media doesn't use this as fuel for the fire against games and its effects on people. You could tell the director had good intentions and he tried to highlight that with some of the quick blurbs he included. But as is human nature, many will take away the bad parts with them after viewing "The Raid" and the good will be put on the back burner in their minds.

And a couple of quick comments on the podcast: Beau is like the traveler of MMO gamers. You play so many games! I'm more of a one game at time type of guy so that type of habit is so foreign to me. I've known you played many games for a while, but it still makes me amazed.

This was a really good episode, I found all the topics and discussions interesting. Thanks!

Well, my first episode to listen in on. Not bad!

Ironically, it's also the first time I listened to those .wav files in GW2 (I had to back-track and finally listen to the Charr). I pointed out, it may've been lack of context/reference, but yeah, I agree about the Brit accent. They need to do something else with nobility and it doesn't necessarily have to be an accent tied to a country.

As for Gold-Farming, I mentioned in the first article about how virtual currencies are coming into fashion; some are just "made up" and not tied to any game. Really, there is a considerable amount of people who will bet on anything: snail races, the exact time it may rain on a certain day, etc. But more importantly, such enterprises are a pretty easy way to move around money (and even launder it).

As for puppet-sex, believe it or not, South Park's "Team America" movie was not the first to show such stuff! And I won't link it; got to google it yourselves! ;P

I just listened to this new discussion and I think you guys are looking at things from a "different" angle.

1) You all "seem" to be "older" than the average COMPETITIVE raiding group. Thus you may not understand that these bosses are EXTREEEEMLY difficult!

2) The thing is that SOMEONE HAS to be first! There is always a first and the raiding group that was shown in the documentary is one of the top five raiding guilds in the game! So they have DO have a good chance of being FIRST. Thus the stress and frustration.

3) There are NOT a million good tanks, or healers, or dps! In fact, most are bad players and have no idea about how to play a perfect raid for 15 minutes straight.

4) I love you're show but you seem to know very little about the top 5% of raiding. Which is surprising considering I pretty sure you have played MMOs longer than I have ...

Thanks and keep up the good work.

On the topic of the Sylvari voice acting, specifically the sound bit about the pet and the hairball, I think the main issue I had with that was that their discussion was about such a silly, mundane thing, yet it was supposed to be an example of how the Sylvari are all linked empathatically through sheer power of emotion. If I were to hear that particular discussion between NPCs while walking around a residential area then I don't think I'd have much issue with it, but I don't think it was a very good example of what the paragraph introducing it was conveying.

If your Sylvari's name violates EULA or TOS, I would want those Sylvari to fall on their head and die, just because. DO IT, ANET!

Sylvari have breasts for the same reason they look human: So they can fit in.

The tree is not in the US either -_-

Why not british, this is not even english think of it like translating an alien language so you can understand it, maybe sylvari are snooty so they're british ?

On the subject of goldfarming:

The only way we're going to significantly reduce this issue is live moderators and GMs. I work for a company that handles staffing of MMO worlds (So yes I am plugging my proffesion), and it has really opened my eyes to the effect mods and GMs can have on online games... and even more useful, the effects when they are not present.

Basically, it works like any kind of security works: You just want to present the image that your property/house/game is harder to break into/goldfarm/be a pedophile in than the other games, and it's not worth the effort. You can't stop these negative behaviors, but you can be sure they don't happen on your watch. A mod or 3 standing outside the town Shawn mentioned banning ever character that ran through with the obvious goldfarming character would be a great deterrent. Alerts of possible repeat farmers whenever an account generates a certain high number of gold per hour for a mod to review would be a good step. Responsive actions to player reports is the bare minimum companies will need to enact if this is as much of an issue as they keep claiming.

It comes down to how much they care. If they don't care enough to spend money to hire active countermeasures, the farmers WILL pick up and use their game for their affairs. If you make the life of a farmer hard, they will move to greener, easier pastures.

I think I'm going to make a Sylvari character and name them Marquis de Salade.