VikingGamer

For me it was UO. I was had played several of the other Ultimas as well as other CRPGs. Work was busy at the time so I wasn't playing much of anything but when I heard that Garriot was making an Ultima that was online and multiplayer like a mud, I just couldn't stay away. A bunch of the other guys at work were the same being late twenties, early thirties so it was as much an interest in the game itself as it was a nerdy interest in the technology. One person among us was already playing Meridian59 but most of us didn't wake up to it until UO.

As for the game itself, both horrible and wonderful. Total, out of control gankfest but still so fascinating.

Did you even read what the goons were posting before Mitten's gave his apology and even after? I wouldn't say Eve is full of sociapaths but I would say that the goons are. The vast majority of the goons that posted are entirely lacking for a moral compass of any degree or type. I really do think that every goon and their allies could be banned from the game and it would only be a better place. There would still be plenty of intrigue and villainy even without them. Alex at least got that he crossed a line and apologized more than once for it. But most of the goons didn't seem to even understand why he apologized.

This is why I say that eve is polarized. No, this is not representative of eve as a whole. But neither was it a misinterpretation. There really are people this bad in Eve and they make Eve, net sum, a worse place for their presence.

I certainly agree that EVE is not nearly as bad as most people make it out to be. I am not sure, however, that it rises to the level of "the friendliest and most tightly knit MMO community on the planet." The problem, I think, is that there is a great divide between the friendlies and the not so friendlies. Eve is more like two buckets of water, one is hot, and the other is ice cold. put one foot in each and you will not be nice and warm. There are lots of good people in Eve but there are also a lot of very bad people as well. What makes Eve harsh is that the bad people are completely free to be bad and if you don't watch out they will take you for a ride.

Eve is not a tight nit community, it is a very polarized one. Pirate griefers have no love for hisec carebears, even a palpable hatred for them. And Nullsec gangs have absolutely no respect for Pirate griefers and can flippers, that is not real pvp. There are definitely interest groups in Eve.

Eve has some great people in it. Better than most because these are people that will have your back and drop everything to come help. But you have to find the group you fit into.Because not all of Eve is so friendly.

@Gojant

You can get tempbanned for can flipping in those starter systems but anywhere else those scams would be fair play. The only other thing I can think of is that they will ban you if you try to scam people in relation to one of their charity campaigns. Like the whole thing that happened a while back in Haiti. CCP setup a system where you could donate PLEX back to them and they would take the full purchase value and pass it on to relief services. Very cool stuff. But they made it super clear that anyone caught scamming people who were donating, like pretending to be the CCP person that you sent donations to, would be punished. I think it sent a strong message that while scamming is a part of the game, they would not be a part of scamming that impacted the real world. This at least is good.

I do agree thought that the tacit encouragement of in game scamming does draw the worst of or society's social misfits to this game. And while many or even most players are reasonably decent, the Goons do seen to have attracted the worst of the worst, of which Mittens is the leader. On the Eve forums, the threadnaught that was produced by someone suggesting that Mittens be deposed and banned was pretty amazing to watch unfold. The Goons, almost to a person, in their defense of their precious leader displayed some of the worst sociopathic babble I have ever seen in one place on the internet. The Goons really are the worst of the worst.

But that said, I have been can flipped and harrassed by a pirate that turned out to be pretty cool. I tried my best to defend myself and get him back but not understanding how things worked he basically chewed me and my friend up and spit us out. But after loosing a few ships I got to talking to him and he ended up explaining to me exactly what I did wrong and how to avoid it. He then dropped a few million isk in my account and said that I was going to learn most of my lessons by getting blowing up. That has turned out to be true.

I also get the feeling that all this has a bunch of holes in it. Especially the new wardec stuff. I think the first iteration of this could fall flat. But the upshot is that CCP is finally looking at these things. Even if the whole expansion blows out, just finally getting around to working on this is a big step in the right direction.

Oh curse you Blizzard. Just when I thought I was over WoW for good they have to go pull this. Pet battles? naw, that's just silly. Panda's? Meh, I don't hate them but at least they don't look entirely stupid like kung fu panda. No, none of this.

Getting to kick the crap out of Garrosh and reinstate Thrall as warchief?!?! I hate Garrosh with a passion. Garrosh ruined Cata for me. My Tauren Warrior is still only lvl 82. I really hate to say it but I will buy MoP just for taking down Garrosh.

Vanguard deserves the extra attention. Great game in so many ways. But I just can't shake the feeling that they are going to screw it up. This is SOE after all. They have the worst f2p design in the industry.

@epilepticemu
Some some monsters having chicken legs breaks your immersion because of the unrealistic physics involved but shooting fireballs from your fingertips at that monster doesn't? And I am not talking about magic here, assume the magic and just deal with the conservation of energy issues. Why don't my hands freeze? What about the tank, that obviously has about 1/20th the mass of the creature, being able to withstand even one attack without being launched across the room like a dog's squeaky toy?

I think perhaps some of these gaming companies forget that in most parts of the IT industry and in other industries gaming is frowned on. It is pretty obvious that those in the gaming industry are not going to be looked down on if they play games. Games are how they make their money. Of course people who make games would be likely to play them also. Even up to the execs. But that simply doesn't transfer to the rest of the computing industry, for the most part.

"It's just not cool -- yet"
I am sorry but I think you are being a bit naive if you think gaming will every be acceptable. Has DnD ever become acceptable? How long has pen and paper roleplaying been around? It is fine for teens and college age kids to game but about the time you settle into a career, start having kids and start buying a house it is pretty much regarded as time to grow up and put childish things away by the wider middle class culture. It is really not a matter a simply waiting for these kids to get older and bring their hobby into a new demographic. There are a lot of us who started playing mmo games in our late twenties with Meridian 59 and Ultima Online about 15 years ago now. We were still young, few years out of college, just starting to land jobs in programming or systems. It was fine because we, being in our twenties, without kids and unmarried were still largely seen as college kids. But even then, you might talk about gaming with some coworkers but never with your boss around, rarely with older coworkers.

Now we are in our early 40s, we have teenage kids, we are senior system engineers, project leads or tech management. Were we able to bring gaming with us into middle aged professional culture. Nope. Nobody beyond 2 or 3 of my closest friends who are not gamer knows that I am a gamer. I have about a half dozen local buddies who have been gaming friends for these last 15 years. Only about half still play MMOs. Me, I can spend more time playing because I am divorced and my kids are grown and starting families of their own. Yeah there are a lot of people in their 40s even 50s who game but it is simply something you don't share with people who don't game

My point is that it is not simply a matter of time. People transition to different stages in life and some hobbies simply never will transition easily with it.

Professionally I have my real name, a degree, years of experience, expertise in several high end databases. If you look me up you will see things about my professional life.

When I play games, or talk about games I am VikingGamer. These two people never intersect. I sure someone could connect the two with a a bit of research, my purpose isn't to completely hide my identity like some criminal. But rather, I simply don't want people looking up my real name on facebook or google and seeing all kinds of associations with games. I want them to see associations with the database profession.

The only way social media is going to work with gaming, long term, will be to allow for this anonymity. Facebook doesn't let people create accounts for their gamer identities. They have to be "real people". Gamer identities or handles are real when they are used consistently. They allow us to consistently associate a name with a particular user and a community comes to know that "person" for good or bad by that name. And we don't even mind that our real name is associated with are gaming identity within private records. We are not trying to hid anything. We just don't want it to be open to the public.

So when Facebook decides to let up and allow VikingGamer to create an account, I would be happy to like Rift's page and maybe even to try some facebook games. But they will have to allow VikingGamer to do that. Because I never will, because I am a database professional, not a gamer, Viking is the gamer. And if Rift ever got to the point of requiring Facebook. I would close my account. I am actively playing rift and enjoying it. But requiring facebook is a deal breaker and for as much as I enjoy gaming, I could put it all away, I have though about as much more than once. At the end of the day, my job is more important that my hobby.