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October 2004
Welcome to another humble offering of "Confessions of a Newbie". Since I don't recall having ever done so before, and since other famous and successful columnists do so from time to time, I thought this month I'd dig into the "Mailbag" and derive my column from that. Granted, famous and successful columnists actually receive mail ABOUT their columns, but why should that little detail stop me?
On an e-mail list I belong to, one of the members posted the following comment:
"Has anyone noticed that a certain percentage of human beings who dream of becoming GOOD at a certain skill would prefer to live in a dream-state, and not actually look into how to acquire the skill? Nor do they follow up leads on 'how others before me acquired this skill'?"
Without delving into too many details that might reveal more information about this correspondent than they would probably like, let me just say that they are very adept at their chosen skill. Not only do they make their living professionally with this skill, they also teach it to others, as well as being extremely helpful to those of us novices who ask the same silly questions over and over again. Hopefully they won't mind me using their comment for my column this month.
Well, I'm happy to report that for the gamer, this dream-state is a real possibility. After all, if you want to have an uber character in D&D, all you have to do is find yourself a DM who will let you just fill out the character sheet however you want. In Ultima Online, you can just macro yourself to maximum skills and stats, or you can beg/borrow/steal an account from a vet. For collectible miniature games, turn those dials up to wherever you want, and for collectible card games, go to eBay and buy the rare power cards that will make you "all powerful".
To see just how well this works, let's use my personal favorite, Ultima Online. Timmy's big brother Jake has just went away to college, and since he won't have time to play UO anymore he's given his account to Timmy. He logs into game for the first time, happy to see that his character has maximum strength, maximum dexterity, and is grandmaster at swordsmanship, parrying, healing, tactics, and anatomy. This character is a melee fighter to be reckoned with! Let's watch Timmy as he takes this character out for the first time.
Timmy goes over to the lands where open "player versus player" and "player killing" is permitted, and struts around feeling pretty powerful. He has a strong character, a great sword and shield, and great armor. Oh, look! Here comes a dinky magic user! Timmy rushes in to attack, feeling pretty thrilled to see the mage running away. Wait; what's this? Timmy is taking damage! Oh no! Timmy's screen just went to black and white with the message "You are dead". How could this happen? Certain that the mage cheated, Timmy goes and gets his character resurrected, after which he notices someone lumberjacking, wearing nothing and wielding only an axe. With his sword, shield, and armor, surely this lumberjack will be no problem!
What? Timmy is dead again! This can't be happening! What exploits do these other players know about that they're using against poor Timmy? To add insult to injury, the lumberjack character just called Timmy a "n00b". How could he be a "n00b" when he has such a powerful character?
Resurrected once again, Timmy decides to demonstrate his skills on something that cannot cheat. Ah ha, a lich! Timmy has watched Jake kill plenty of liches with this character, so he confidently engages the evil undead mage in a battle to the death.
Unfortunately, it's to his own death, and not only does the lich kill him, it loots the gold from his body as well. He runs and gets resurrected again and returns to get his stuff off his corpse. Oops! The lich is still there and kills him again! How humiliating! Getting "rez-killed" by a simple lich! It must be the server lag! That's it! He's being killed by lag, since it couldn't be his lack of skills, could it? After all, Timmy's character was a "Glorious Lord" in Fame and Karma ("was" being the operative word here).
Certain that there must be some server problem, Timmy pages for a Game Master and complains. After seeing that he is number 459 in the queue, Timmy finally gets his character resurrected and away from the horrible lich without getting killed again. In the process of trying to get back to safety, Timmy is jumped by someone named "sUpAkIlLa", who kills him yet again and takes his armor, weapon, and shield. Thoroughly angry now, Timmy runs back to town as a ghost and gets resurrected in safety, where he waits to air his complaints to the Game Master, who will surely be responding with great concern at any moment.
Yep, any moment now.
Shouldn't be too much longer.
A big game like this should have LOTS and LOTS of Game Masters, shouldn't it? One should be here by now!
Man, this waiting is boring. Where is that GM, anyway?
As soon as that GM shows up, "sUpAkIlLa" is going to be sorry, that's for sure!
Finally! A message from the GM! It probably says "We caught sUpAkIlLa and have your items, and we'll be with you momentarily."
WHAT??? The message just says, "I am sorry; I cannot help thee with that!"
Timmy logs off, declaring that "This game sucks!"
Hey, can he help it if the game doesn't recognize that he's a great player?
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