..oh, and there's this Everquest thing, too.
AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE - War against the Mushroom Day TWO
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06/10/99 2:00 PM AND NOW, SOME MUCH NEEDED BARDIC ANALYSIS Samwise writes: I look at the whole situation and I stand
in awe. Never have never seen a bigger bunch of SPARES
fighting over a scrap of bandwith in my life! I would like
to address all the parties involved in a last stitch effort to end this
horrible conflict.
OLD MAN MURRAY:
Funny. OMM is very funny. Read their
review of Ultima Online. I shit my pants. I wish they would make fun of me so
that I could see that they know I exist. You may not be considered a mainstream
gaming journal, but you know that and you wouldn't want to be one anyway. My
hats off to you.
THE MUSHROOM:
Jesus grow some balls. You're destroying
your chances at acomplishing what you want the most (which is for people to like
you the same way they like OMM). You can't be an SOB internet satirist unless
you can tell people to fuck off. Look how well you were doing. You did a
parody of
USER FRIENDLY. Great
start! Those strips were really funny. (No, they weren't. Then again, neither
is User Friendly, usually. - Lum) You took a biting stab at Illiad and your
stung him (you can tell it worked because within the hour, he was emailing you
all pissy like). But then you cave in and take them down. Then you go and try to
pull an Illiad on NGR and they tell you to fuck off, which is what you should
have told Illiad. Stop your whining and get back to trying to make people laugh
(not laugh at you). It's a compliment that they are taking a shot at you. And
for the love of god....stop telling people that you didn't steal the HTML from
the ONION. We know you didnt' copy and paste the source code, but it's obvious
you stole the design. "I didn't steal that code, I maticoulously recreated it by
hand." see? laughing AT you, not WITH you. Bad.
NGR:
Please delete your site. you are not funny. I have a 5 year
old cousin who makes better Pokemon jokes than you. Once again, not funny.
(I was pretty sure they weren't funny, but I have no idea what the fuck a
Pokemon is, either, so I wasn't a good judge. - Lum)
LUM:
How great is it not to play UO anymore? (Pretty
good, although gnomes don't get no respect in EQ either. - Lum)
06/10/99 11:30 AM THE LONG DARK FUNGUS OF THE SOUL We continue to prosecute the war against the 'Shroom with every wicked mystical weapon of power that we possess. This includes spastic white-boy dancing. Dispatches from the front include this artillery shell from Musashi's Land of Cheese and... well, OK, that's all we've done so far. But don't make us mad, because we know kung fu. So what does this have to do with UO? Nothing, OK? Not a damn thing! Nothing at all! OK, here's a picture of Designer Dragon. Knock yourself out with its sheer relevance. Note the UO logo in the corner of the picture. If that isn't relevant, NOTHING is, baby. No mushrooms us! 06/09/99 10:30 PM LIVING THE MUSHROOM LOCA! Kevin "Tovarisch" Murphy pulled his rant against us non-professional funny types off his site today. So of course, being a total rat-bastard, I've mirrored it here. With a few changes, of course. 06/09/99 2:30 PM "LUM THE MAD" OFFICIAL HUMOR SITE OF OLDMANMURRAY.COM In response to our brave and foolish declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare below, we received the following note from God:
Well of course, the only thing to do was to change the message base mascot. 06/09/99 12:30 PM IT'S
WAR! Those of you who read this web site religiously know that we worship Chet, Erik and Marvin of OldManMurray as gods. Even though Marvin is actually probably a fictional character and Erik... well, he can't be gay. I mean, Freddie Mercury wasn't gay, either, I don't care what you say. Don't go bustin' on my idols. Every time someone emails me saying "You rip off OldManMurray, dude", I smile within myself, just for the words youand OldMan being in the same sentence. That's how cool they are. Well, there's this whole other gaming humor site out there. And, well, they aren't quite as funny as OMM. In fact, they aren't quite as funny as uo.com, and uo.com doesn't even try. Their big moment in the sun was last year when they posted this weird gay love fantasy between John Romero and John Carmack that Romero hyped in his .plan file. You know, this is all having far too much of a homosexual context, especially when you consider that plans in "Papillon" were these metal cylinders that prisoners hid in their rectum to safeguard valuables. But these are questions we don't want answered right now, especially by Levelord. I blame the whole thing on Neil Peart. Well, this just went STRAIGHT to these guys' demonic skull-heads, and ever since they've been pumping out these sort of bizarre, sort of quaint, and not really very funny "news stories" After a few hundred of these, and possibly one or two psychotic obsessive fanboys sending them email saying "You da man! No, you da man!", they decided to go legit and become, you know, a REAL GAMING SITE. I am not making this up. This is exactly on a par with my deciding to post news stories about Paula Jones and Kosovo on a UO/EQ rant page. I'd never do that. Only they also have dating advice. Once more, I'm not making this up. Hell, Salvador Dali couldn't make this shit up. Anyway, a whole completely different web site made fun of an incredibly pathetic story this "legitimate news site" posted from E3 where Joe T. Fanboy was pissy because 3dfx and Nintendo didn't treat him like a REAL JOURNALIST. That parody used a picture from their web site, cropped and altered, of said pathetic fanboy. The 'Shroom sent then a catty email saying "take that picture down, because it's our intellectual property, d00d." Of course, the 'Shroom would NEVER violate anyone's intellectual property. That gaming site did what ANY of us would do... they called in Marvin, the scary mascot from the future. Unfortunately he was busy, but Chet and Erik started busting the chops of these amateurs, including such scary tactics as rampant Sammy Davis Jr. abuse and posting pictures of Chet's ass. Again, I could never make any of this up. In response, the 'Shroom posted a witty riposte that said basically that they were right and everyone else is wrong, because they are, you know, REAL JOURNALISTS. Oh, and they didn't copy the Onion's layout because, you know, the HTML looks totally different when you look at the source. I only wish I made that part up. I didn't. The only proper response is to take up arms and fight the good fight, to stand up for what's right, because damn it, freedom is WORTH fighting for! We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the streets, until this evil is driven forth from the Earth. Since I know Lord British PERSONALLY, kicking collective ass is going to be a cinch. This is an official declaration of war, kiddos... we shall not rest until The Mushroom withdraws, fully and completely, from Kosovo. Until then, listen for the air raid sirens, and do your part. We WILL prevail. We MUST. For the children. 06/09/99 12:00 PM OK, EVERYONE BANNED FOR AUTOSTACKING ORE, THE LINE TO GET YOUR ACCOUNTS BACK IS OVER THERE UOAssist was finally deemed legal for use with Ultima Online. This is a positive step, but somewhere on the level of Officer Barbrady announcing that he can read now. Nice, but we kind of expected it some time ago... 06/08/99 11:30 PM REAL PLAYERS. REAL COMPLAINTS. JUDGE JUDY. Musashi clued me in to this account on a Stratics message board of another case of someone with too much time and too much access to the legal system our fine country has to offer. You know, folks, you can always turn the computer off. I know it's hard, the computer is your friend, warm and soothing and often willing to show naked pictures of the appropriate gender. But if you're hauling someone in your game to court, you are taking this a wee bit too seriously. And yes, I know, GMs suck, OSI sucks, I suck, yackity smackity. But you know, if a game becomes a liability for a company (as it would, in terms not only of financial responsibility but of publicity as well) it gets, you know, shut down. This may or may not be to your personal liking, but I think the thought of Designer Dragon loose on the streets of Texas is not something I personally want to contemplate, OK? Let's keep everything the way it should be. My universe is happy. Yours should be too. 06/08/99 2:30 PM SOMEONE SEND ME THE "TOO HOT FOR THE WEB" DR. TWISTER VIDEO! Dr. Twister, formerly your friend in space in a Jerry Springer sort of way, now wants to be your lawyer too. (Check the story titled "Take OSI To Court? Maybe...") I was going to ignore this in the hope that no one was actually retarded enough to take this seriously, but after this message on the discussion board pleaded for my legal services (I'm not a lawyer, but I make a mean ipso facto over calzone) I had to say just one thing: Frivolous lawsuits are a crime, folks. And EA does have one or two lawyers. Really. On retainer and everything. 06/08/99 2:00 PM AS JAR JAR BINKS WOULD SAY, "HOW RUDE!" Got this note: I was on the small bank roof in Trinsic when I overheard some guys
talking
about how they had a ton of lvl 1 maps. I asked them if they would sell
some. We agreed to a price of 1200 gp ea for 100 maps, and he gated me to
his vendor, where all the maps were in the corner of his bag. I started
buying them, checking the price of each one as I went. Well sure enuf,
there was a map for 80,000 gp. I left, stored what maps I had and then came
back. The scammer's name is Quinten and he said "I like screwing people".
I paged a GM and told him what this scammer was doing, and after several
pages back and forth describing the scam GM Darwin kept the stance that
"that's not really a scam, more just being rude". Huh? If that's not a
scam I don't know what is! It was obvious to me that he understood what
Quinten was doing... Anyways I didn't press the issue. I was just amazed
at the lack of good judgement GM Darwin showed in this matter. I've seen
posts where scammers are punished and they're made to stop their scams, so I
wonder if Quinten was just a friend of the GMs. (This on PACIFIC) I know the Earth is going to fly off its axis now, but I gotta go with the GM on this one. Being a crook isn't an exploit, it's part of doing business in the great social experiment of UO. There are scammers in EQ too, but since
it's so hard to actually travel anywhere, you tend to hear about them
all in your area eventually. (Speaking of which, don't trust
Battyrider on Veeshan. In fact, PK him early and often, since he's
red.) This is probably another sign that EQ's economy isn't as mature
as UO's. Let's hope EQ catches up to UO's level of larceny soon! 06/07/99 1:00 PM NEWS FROM UO FOR ALL TWO OF YOU WHO STILL PLAY On that same topic below of Don't Page Us, We're Only The Piano Players, here's an example of the form letter that gets sent out when you spam a GM's internal mailbox. I sure hope Stratics and UO Vault are getting some kickbacks from EA for being officially sponsored resources! (FullDisclosureNote: The person who sent me this was our guild's GM. We were a roleplaying guild on Great Lakes who moved to Sonoma. After we left the guild referred to took over our "blessed", in other words uniquely-decorated, keep and proclaimed themselves our successors. There is no love lost between the two groups, thus the harassment described. Anyway, on to the dish.) The situation: A GM blessed building was being used to ban (and thus trap)
then PK several players. There had been at least 3 people slain already in
this ban-trap fashion. The GM added decorations allowed for an exploit
where anyone who was banned was also automatically trapped. Tensions were
high as a group of blue innocents stood outside the building conversing
with the PK's inside. I, like many others, walked inside the building, and
was instantly banned and trapped. In addition to this the foul
language, verbal taunts and sexually crude references seemed overly
present from a couple of the decorated buildings patrons. Or how about the fact that this GM blessed location was intended
for role-playing and not insta-ban mindless Player killing. There was a fair contingent of players who were
not only subject to the untouchable exploitation of several KewlDewds who
happened to have bought up (yes you heard it right.. they bought it for
cold hard UO cash) a GM decorated building! and hey.. anyone who comes to
take a look see (all the nice decorations and wow.. neat a statue!) can
be easily banned and firewalled to death (you cant recall because you get
banned into a nice warm firewall just waiting to kill you, your spells get interrupted and you are a
super easy kill.. wow * flex * you da man Mr. PeeKay!!!). --- Hello, This option is reserved for when you
are being harassed within the game. We have compiled and posted several
comprehensive documents regarding harassment that may be helpful to you
if you are experiencing harassment, they are posted on our web site for
your inspection. I would recommend https://www.support.uo.com/gm_9.html
and https://www.owo.com/conduct.html as
very good resources. - Another player is
harassing me Other links you may find helpful are:
06/07/99 11:30 AM NEWS FROM UO FOR ALL THREE OF YOU WHO STILL PLAY According to DD, the reason why the Patch Server threatens to ban you from UO for daring to page GMs - thanks to the new logging system, UO *automatically* sends a dump of your server-side log to the GM whenever you helpfully page hitting the "harassment" button. Whoops. He also said that 90% of the harassment calls GMs take are bogus. Woo woo! (By the way this was all on Usenet. Props to Dejanews.) 06/04/99 8:30 PM THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO, "Hmmm." Not much going on. I promised some deep thoughts from my
UO time, and here they are:
So if you're doing anything else - mining, tinkering, fishing, PKing, adventuring, programming, sleeping... quit it and go make a new character with 50 tailoring. Oh, and I think I can safely say, without a certain Utility That Dares Not Speak Its Name tailoring is also the most boring thing one can ever do, and that includes listening to Celine Dion. Speaking of Celine Dion, has Canada EVER had decent musicians? I mean, the closest they came in my humble opinion was Rush, and I just can't work past Neil Peart's butt obsession. In Everquest news, Verant hired Brian Hook to lead their programming staff. There's an interview with him up already on VoodooExtreme, but if you live under a rock and never heard of these little game called Quake II and Quake III, he worked on those. Now, can you imagine Origin going out and hiring programming staff of this caliber? No offense to the guys there (Pandemonium in particular seems to be eager to actually fix the client which is kind of overdue) but Origin's hiring policy is hiring really young guys who want to break into the gaming business, already play UO, and have been pestering DD or the GMs for jobs. Hmm. On the other hand, OSI is actually one of the sanest gaming companies in Texas to work for; some of them are just sad. Anyway, Mr. Hook (or "Grandmaster B" as he likes to be called) had an interesting thing to say about EQ in particular and multiplayer RPGs in general:
Thank GOD someone is saying this. One of my longest beefs about UO and now EQ is that they are both aimed at losers with no lives. Someone on disability or suspended from junior high, who is online 23 hours a day doing nothing but powerlevelling his character is already 50th level on EQ, after having 3 castles in UO. We're supposed to compete with him? Or just let him own the game? Bleah. OSI has said that their development efforts currently are aimed at making UO more newbie-friendly; hopefully they'll read the above and take it to heart. Or failing that, just hire John Carmack to work on UO2. 06/02/99 3:30 PM A MODEST PROPOSAL I know, I know, I said I was quitting UO. It's like smoking,
I've quit UO so many times I'm an expert. OK, but here's some ideas I've gotten
from the vacation.
One of EQ's best features is its pvp switch. It's not perfect, but the environment fostered is far saner then the rep system in UO. It has convinced me that PKing in UO is probably its worst feature. Considering that I used to *be* a PK, it's something of a paradigm shift. But running around EQ, you find that without the economic incentive for players to die and be looted, you see much less k3wldewdness, and more willingness to help each other. The rep system should be tightened in UO. How? Some very simple rules. No stat loss for reds, UNLESS their victims are blue. If they kill a blue, they take stat loss IMMEDIATELY, not upon death. So basically, everyone gets 5 free PKs, then either they behave and fight willing combatants or their characters go into the toilet. Blues cannot be looted by players. (Monsters may loot them freely, however.) Reds can be looted freely by anyone. If a corpse is blue, only its player can open it up. Seems simple enough. (Also make the blue decay time a lot longer so they have a hope of getting there.) If you implement these two rules, UO will become a VERY different game. 06/02/99 3:00 PM LIFE IN LEVELQUEST OK, it took most of Memorial Day weekend, but I'm bored with EQ now. For those of you who haven't tried EQ yet, here's the Special HTML version of Everquest for you. *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *level* *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *level* *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *level* *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *level* "Woo hoo! New spells!" *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *Ambassador DVinn hits you for 90,400 points of damage* *die* "Aw crap, I lost a level." *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] *hack* -slay- @[email protected] So I'll fire up UO this evening and see if it still holds any attraction for me. Who knows, I might even have a thought or two while doing it. Hell, I might even post about it. YOU NEVER KNOW. 06/01/99 2:00 AM HEY, I UPDATE MORE OFTEN THEN BITCH-X Clearing out the decks, let's work through some issues. An annoying number of people have sent me bitchy mail saying basically I was responsible for their computer being infected with BackOrifice or something because I posted a link to UONude. OK. Those of you with a clue can pretty much recite what I'm going to say from memory... just go ahead and skip down to the picture of Uma Thurman. Can't miss it. OK, for the rest of you nimrods... (1) I am not fucking responsible for your computer. You are. You know, the dopehead that's sitting in front of the screen drooling right now. That's YOU. You are the one who actually controls what appears on your screen. I know it's a hard concept to grasp, but work with me here. (2) If you do not have a constantly updating virus checker on your PC, you have no business on the Net. Get the hell off. I'm sick of reading about losers who open programs total strangers send them in the mail and find out their next month's phone bill has $79,003.82 in calls to a sex line in Bulgaria. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't take proper care of your machine, you DESERVE to be ripped off and have your hard drive wiped. It's evolution in action, baby. (3) I didn't download UONude. Hell, I don't even look at pictures of naked women on the net. For some reason, and I know this may be just totally outside the limits of imagination for a lot of you, I prefer actual naked women. They tend to be a little more interactive, and some of them are better conversationalists. If you did download UONude hoping to see little pixilated penises and breasts swaying in the breeze as everyone's mules run by in town, you need to turn the computer off, breath deeply several times, walk outside, stand in the middle of the road, and let the next car run you the fuck over, just so there's no outside chance of you ever breeding and polluting the gene pool with your chromosomal code. Failing that, go out and date an actual woman. (Women may feel free to replace this with men, in fact preferably other men reading this, assuming they stop drooling.) You might find yourself playing online games a HELL of a lot less. Whoulda thunkit? Just so you are absolutely sure what a woman is, should you decide to go out and risk actually meeting one and talking to one, below is a picture of Uma Thurman. Thank you, and get the hell out of my yard. OK, now that we lost the drooling idiots (they clicked on the Uma picture hoping to see pictures with her face badly pasted on some nudie-mag scan) let's break down what's going on in UO, why I really don't care, and what else I'm up to. Dr. TwisTer (see, I remembered the correct capItaliZaTIon of HiS NaME) posted a letter from an Anonymous Gamemaster saying that basically the Dev Team is giving up on UO and working on UO2 now. Here's my thoughts on the subject... (1) No GM is ever going to write Dr. TwisTer -- they'd need to learn how to use email first. (2) The Dev Team isn't going to tell the GMs why they're not working on UO. That is something like Bill Clinton sending an email to the postal sorters in Pawtucket on why he's still bombing the crap out of Serbia. (3) The Dev Team is actually still working on UO, as you'd know if you downloaded Pandemonium's latest client. It may not be player races and necromancy, but hey, what is. Oh yeah, in EQ you can be a drow necromancer, not that has anything to do with it. Speaking of EQ, I still suck at it. I'm a 5th level Druid on Veeshan, which means I'm just high enough in level to REALLY suck... can't cast any decent spells, can't hold my own in melee any more, I just suck. Oh well, I'm holding out for 9th level when I get better spells. See, it's like crack. Just one more hit on the pipe, baby. On Rallos Zek (otherwise known as the PvP server or the Server that's Not Candyland) I gave up being a drow because the drow newbie zone is wayyyyy too crowded and started a troll named Lummy. If you see Lummy be nice to him, because he's not very bright and also because he likes to hurt people a lot. Trolls are like that. Maybe later I'll comment on why there's nothing to bitch about in the People's Republic of Everquest, when the political officers aren't looking over my shoulder. Really, it's a good example of why sometimes harsh strictly enforced rules actually work once in a while. Kind of like adulthood, but with minotaur axes. Also picked up Birth of the Federation, a Star Trek strategy game. Yes, I am a trekkie, deal with it (at least I don't have uniforms or anything). In MY personal version of the Federation, the Prime Directive is giving the beatdown to those annoying Ferengi. More later, it's real late and I should probably go to bed and get up and go to work and all that good shit. See? The page isn't dead! Just sort of zombiefied and without focus, just the way you like it.
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