It’s snowing in Copenhagen for the first time in 14 years on the heads of the Bible-deniers and scammers in Copenhagen and feels like -12 degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s snowed for the first time in Sacramento in 30 years, Austria and other places of the world, and they still refuse to accept reality and still accuse everyone who won’t agree with their fantasies of being liars. With such stubborn hatred I wonder if they would believe in God even if they saw and talked with him.

How many times must it snow early, for the first time, or in rare larger-than-usual amounts on the heads of Global Warmers, anti-Christians and Darwinists for them to accept reality?

God is mocking the Bible-deniers in so many witty ways, and they haven’t one cents worth of humor to laugh at themselves with him, yet they hypocritically claim that it’s the Christians who can’t take a joke, even if they are deliberately torturing the Christians.

[12/18/200 Update!: A record-breaking major snow storm hit Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia! It's gonna be hot for sure! Oh, hah, look what I just found a few seconds after typing that: DC Region Recovers From Biggest Snowstorm in Years]

For more information on “Climate Change” (oooo scary), see http://www.stopglobalcoolingnow.com/?p=404, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/11/snow-in-new-orleans-rare-_n_150282.html, and http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=a5wStc0K6jhY

As you may know from my earlier post, Recent Birding and Birdshots, I was able to go to Staten Island and view the Cackling Goose present at Mt. Loretto. When I posted this I only brought attention to one goose but after looking through my shots I have found that there were actually two Cacklers present. One definite Richardson’s and one dark-breasted Minima type bird. I thought it looked minima at first but then in the post said it looked like an Aleutian leucopareia. However, after talking to a few people and looking over the images again went back to my earlier thought.

Here’s a link to the Staten Island list to see earlier posts about these birds-http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SINaturaList/messages

And a link to one post talking about the minima-http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SINaturaList/message/1379

A shot of the Richardson’s-

A few of the minima

Plus my old entry minima shot-

If accepted this may be the first record of minima in New York! If you would like to go see for yourself the birds are very possibly still there, the last report coming from November 7th (Staten Island Naturalist). However, there have been no negative reports since then and since the birds have been there for a month you have a good chance if you try.

This posted in the hospital-hopefully will be able to get out and do some birding soon.

Good Goosing!

-AB

Strange it sounds.!

Stranger it  looks.!!

Strangest  experience.!!!

Statues are erected in honour of a leader ,who has done yeoman service to society.

Clinton is considered as a hero by the Kosovo’s ethnic society of Albania. Many onlookers braved the freezing temperature to witness the function.

The former president launched NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999.The brutal attack of the Serb forces on the community was retaliated by this move. Kosovo since became independent.

The eleven feet , gold sprayed statue, weighing a ton  is based on top of a white tiled base, in the middle of a tiny square,surrounded by communist era buildings .Clinton stands with his left arm raised ,holding a portfolio bearing his name and date  of NATO started bombing  March 24,1999.10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed, and 80o,000  people were forced out of their homes.Some 1000 U. S soldiers are still in Kosovo as part of NATO’s strong 14,000 force.

 The gesture is a novel citation to a man who brought peace and safety to the land. The  people of Kosovan have given a rare treat to Clinton  by asking him to unveil his own statue.

It is an out of box thinking by the people of Kosovo.

It is a fantastic moment of honour for Bill Clinton.

It is an event non pareil

Kudos.

and I wonder...

When you’ve knocked yourself down try asking yourself: What makes me rare?

It’s not easy to answer. Notice that when we are interested in something or someone, we want to figure it out because it makes us feel good to know so much about things, well it’s the same thing with ourselves. You have to do the opposite and feed yourself the attention. But don’t try to answer that question, instead, define it with your actions and how you live your life to the fullest because you won’t define rarity, it defines you.

Textual works create a trace through which the future can know its past. We interrogate  the texts (meant in a broad sense) that history deems worthy to survive to determine what came before. So question of survival is paramount to humanist epistemology. Lost books lobotomize the historical/archival record and so in exploring these losses we can begin to understand the limits of historical necromancy based on the text.

In Volume 10, Number 2, of The Library, Alexander S. Wilkinson discusses “Lost Books Printed in French before 1601.” He compares two 16th century catalogs of books (François de La Croix du Maine, Premier volume de la bibliotheque (Paris, chez Abel L’Angelier, 1584) and Antoine Du Verdier, La bibliotheque (Lyons, Jean d’Ogerolles pour Barthélemy Honorat et Thibaud Ancelin, 1585)) to the database used for the French Vernacular Book Project. He observes that survival of copies of books printed prior to 1601 is based largely on two factors: physical size (as reflected in imposition scheme) and topic. Larger books were more likely to survive than smaller books, and reference, illustrated, or poetic works were more likely to survive than texts intended to perform functions (political tracts, almanacs, literature, calendars, games, textbooks, etc.) . Although the size of print runs for these various texts would be hard to know, it is easy to imagine that the functional texts were more popular and printed in greater numbers. Large reference works, while highly useful, are simply not needed in as great a number as this year’s astronomical almanac. It appears the issue of rarity for these books comes from their treatment, not their conditions of publication.

I discussed the terminology of rarity in a previous post, but in this case relative rarity, the number of books surviving through historical accident, seems to more important than absolute rarity, the number of items produced. Wilkinson argues that some books were seen as more valuable, and less replaceable, and so were preserved. One easily explained exception is the low survival of bibles. Bibles, although reference works and large, were likely to be lost since they could be more easily replaced by another edition with the same text. Larger books were both more expensive and harder to lose because of their size.

So, if we extend this idea to our present production, perhaps coffee table books will define the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Scholars may try to understand the significance contemporary culture by looking for historical antecedents in Time Life’s coffee table books. These books are large, appear to be valuable (much to the chagrin of gifts librarians), are plentiful, and are a distinct text (not just another bible). This is, of course, complicated by preservation issues. Pre-1601 books were on hand-made paper and vellum, which is almost certainly longer lasting than clay-coated art paper which constitutes many of the recent coffee table books.

The lesson here, though, is that survival in the documentary archive depends on popular reception. Big, flashy, and apparently distinct books define the bulk of what remains, reinforcing the hegemonic interpretations. As critical scholars, we must therefore seek out the unusual, the small, the odd, and the paradoxical if we want to unmask the hidden narratives. Leave the historical “coffee table” books alone and take a look at the “almanacs.”

I got out of the hospital on the 16th for two weeks off to recuperate.

I was able to do a ton of birding. Here are some of the images I captured before the past weekend.

10/16-The day after I got out I decided to go to a nearby birding spot and get some fresh air. This adult White-crowned Sparrow was one of the highlights, along with a juv. White-crowned, 2 Adult Field Sparrows, and 2 Lincoln’s Sparrows. 2 was the magic number!

Palm Warbler, Staten Island, NY. Taken while searching for the Cackling Goose. 10/21/09

Cackling Goose, Staten Island, NY. My search through flocks and flocks of Canadas finally rewarded me with this possible leucopareia or Aleutian Cackling Goose.More shots to be posted in new photo gallery which is coming soon. 10/21/09

Pumped after finding the goose I moved on and was able to get the Rufous Hummingbird that had been frequenting the feeders at the Fischer Residents for 8 days. I was very surprised when I was able to obtain some nice shots of it. More shots to be posted in new photo gallery which is coming soon. 10/21/09.

Two days later I found a Connecticut Warbler at the Larsen Sanctuary in  Fairfield.The pic is really bad and kinda makes you wonder-but trust me I got pretty close to this bird (photo bad because of lighting) and noted the light bill, pale gray, and the complete eye ring. Pretty cool bird. 10/23/09

So, that was most of my birding before the weekend. Had a great week and saw some great birds!

-AB

By now most Magic players have heard about the “Priceless Treasures” in the Zendikar boosters – not some advertising gimmick of a few artifacts but legitimate cards worth up to several hundred a piece. The set has officially been out for less then four days and it’s already sold out at the distributor level. But instead of looking at this as a rabid fanboy, it’s time to view this in the eyes of a marketer and why this works so well.

Hilariously bad. Still.

Time Spiral and Time Shifting

Time Spiral was a lot of things to Magic – a hodgepodge of keywords, cards oozing with flavor, a return to Dominaria and Wizards first attempt at toying with a new rarity: purple for time shifted cards. This mess of cards was exactly what a veteran player was looking for and it worked: it got me back into the game. But back in 2007’s State of Design, Mark Rosewater said that while nostalgia is potent, it’s not universal. As a whole, the Time Spiral block is my favorite block besides Invasion. But the real take away is the introduction of Time Shifted cards – old reprints with a new symbol ranging from exceptionally good to hilariously bad (Foil Squire is still a personal favorite). But clearly Wizards learned something – players want more access to old cards.

People still want these.

Land, Land and More Land

With Zendikar being labeled as the “Land Matters” set, it’s interesting to note how they’ve gone about this. First, are the awesome full-art basic lands. The Unhinged and Unglued lands have always been popular and they’re only available in two ways: booster packs and fat packs. The biggest problem here seems to be the removal of the Tournament pack – 75 cards for the price of three boosters that includes 30 lands. Without the tournament pack, I don’t see how new players will amass the needed land – unless they buy a lot of lands or buy the fat pack. Even with that though, Wizards of the Coast seems to be moving towards a boosters only attitude. Without the means to get lands, new players may be faced with a land shortage.

Have you ever realized how big that fruit must be?

Spike Retailers

Many players buy booster boxes online when the new set comes out and traditionally a booster box of 36 packs goes for $80-$90 but Zendikar’s price jumped overnight to $115-$135 for the box. While this doesn’t do anything for Wizards in terms of profit, it almost guarantees the necessity of a reprint. If retailers know they can get 50% more per box, they’re going to do that.

Priceless Treasures

The inclusion of super rare cards in packs of Zendikar may be one of the smartest moves possible for WotC and big retailers of cards. Wizards went out and bought huge amounts of rarely sold singles – cards that literally just take up space. Sure, they’re worth a ton but are very rarely sold. Very few people are going to pay several hundred (or even thousand) for a Black Lotus but Wizards clearly used their power as both the supplier and the buyer to get some hefty discounts. Why go through the hassle?

Truly mythic.

Two major reasons. First, it gets the cards back in the hands of players. Any player who opens an out of print card will probably stay with the game a while and that player will being playing in formats that allow them to use their cards. A single Mox Sapphire may be all it takes to get that player to jump into limited, helping out the secondary market dealers big time. For Wizards though, the goal is simple: get people talking about the set. Sure, Lotus Cobra is exciting but that’s nothing when you hear about a player opening up a signed Unlimited Dual Land. This buzz has done one thing: increased sales. The chance of opening one of these cards in a booster is an experience few have ever had. I usually only buy a box of each expansion but this time, I bought three. Why? For the chance to open something truly mythic.

Rarity is often enough to add significant value to an item, especially in the case of art, jewellery and similar collectibles. In many cases, the rarity of an item is closely associated with the location from which it came. Over the course of many years there have been instances when this combination also applied to food and drink; for example, fine wines or a rare sort of animal or plant that is considered edible (and has become desirable).

However, there is one additional factor to consider – quality in workmanship, natural appearance or, in the case of food and drink, taste. Standing alone among specialty food items in the modern market, because of both its rarity and overall quality, is tropical honey from the nectar of Kiawe flowers.

A unique combination of geography, natural irrigation and atmospheric conditions creates a habitat on the Big Island of Hawaii ideal for this raw honey. Beekeepers have harvested excellent honey from the islands for some time, with nearly a million pounds of honey coming from the area known as the Puako forest annually. But in recent years, particular attention to selection of the raw honey results in a product that is literally unrivalled in its purity, texture and overall taste.

For some, it may be enough that this tropical honey comes only from a small section of a very special part of the world. That alone would separate it, in quality and taste, from much of the honey produced around the globe. But beginning with an exquisite raw honey just may not be sufficient to get this special condiment to those who appreciate its organic purity. Something else is necessary – meticulous attention to detail during the entire post-harvest process.

Harvesting Kiawe honey involves timing, a factor that may not be so critical with other honey processes. Raw honey taken too early may ferment in the jar, but if it is taken too late it crystallizes in the comb. If the honey is handpicked at just the correct time, and put into containers correctly, it will manifest a superior white, smooth texture in just a few days.

Taking the combs at just the right moment would be enough to separate the final product from other honey. Yet there is one more step to consider, or in this case, a step to leave out. Raw Kiawe honey is a living food. Experienced producers know that cold-bottling honey retains its wonderful texture and preserves healthy, natural enzymes. While leaving heat out of the process produces an ideal tropical honey, the viscosity (thickness) does slow down processing, again contributing to the rarity of the finished product.

Connoisseurs know there are some excellent raw honey sources around the world, and that fine honey is available on every continent. But a growing number of aficionados consider Kiawe tropical honey from the Big Island of Hawaii to be a natural treasure with few, if any, culinary peers.

Pretty purple epic loot does nothing for me.

This is part of why:  Obsidian Hatchling

Note two key nuggets of information:

One, the Rarity is “Very rare”, kindly noted in pretty purple text.

Two, the cost and supply: “50 (unlimited supply)”

To be completely fair, it is possible that something with unlimited supply could be very rare, if not many people are actually buying it.  That said, since gold is also itself unlimited (OK, throttled by time and per-character carrying capacity, but practically unlimited), there isn’t much of a limit to how many of these critters can be in the world.  I must admit, I’d love to see an Obsidian Hatchling swarm crash a server somewhere.  Yes, you can only have one per player active at a time, but the mental image of these little guys Zerging through a capital city just makes me chuckle.

Calling them “Very rare” is a bit disingenuous, and is likely more of an arbitrary selling point, rather than any reflection of accurate valuation or representation.  Perhaps it could be cynically noted that savvy customers already know this, but I can’t help but feel that something has been lost in the callous marketing.

“Rarity” in WoW is a better measure of the time investment than actual rarity.

It’s ultimately not a big deal, and I’m certainly nitpicking the nomenclature (something I’m no stranger to, considering my stringent objection to “black holes” in the most recent Star Trek movie), but it’s one measure of how sales and presentation are rather… flexible… in their interpretation of reality.  (It’s also why you need to do your homework when shopping or listening to those who are selling, and why Big Brotherish information peddlers are less than informative.)  The game goes out of its way to make everyone feel Super, which ultimately, undermines the point of being Super.  (Cue Syndrome evil laugh.)

True rarity just wouldn’t sit well with the current crop of MMO designs, for better or worse.  That’s not  “bad design”, just unappealing for some, and underwhelming for those looking for a little more meaning in their entertainment.  (Not everyone, to be sure.)  It falls into the same taboo realm as basing advancement on player skill, and really would be a niche design tenet.

To be fair, I’m not terribly concerned with true rarity, either.  If I’ve achieved something in the game, it’s a goal I’ve set for *myself*, and I don’t particularly care if it’s something that has been done before by someone else.  I don’t care for the pride and preening aspects of these things, either.  As a wise man once said:

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.” (Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1952, pp. 109-10.)  *Cited here: “Beware of Pride”*

At any rate, this is why I have a hard time getting worked up about gear in modern MMOs, or about “Achievements” that anyone with enough time (and OCD) can do.  It’s all about time and perception, and I have neither the time nor the delusion that these “epic rares” are all that epic (in anything but the grind to get them) or all that rare, and with the “Im speshul, yur not” and “true uniqueness” aspects removed, all these things are is indicators of how much time I’ve spent.  I choose to spend my time elsewhere.  (Yes, some things are vaguely skill based, inasmuch as they require raiding skill or social (asocial?) skills to manipulate a guild to do your bidding, but by and large, time is the biggest factor by far.)

By extension, it’s also why I can’t get worked up about playing these MMO things all that much in the first place, at least not long-term.  It’s fun to see your numbers go up and watch merely mortal mobs melt under your maleficent ministrations, but when it comes to feeling special as part of the game world, well… we’re all just heroes in our own minds.  Some of us play that role better than others (maybe because we have to to enjoy ourselves in a world of clones), but in the end, what do we have to show for it?

Are you really a rarity, a sparkling snowflake in a world of me-too caped heroes?  (Sadly, my Death Knight is no longer the only Sendoku.)

Somehow, I can’t make myself any more interested in being a level 80 Druid (or whatever) any more than I want to be an 80 year old Cube Jockey dual specced into Paperwork and Maintenance.  The journey itself has its share of great moments, certainly, but the destination is rather underwhelming, including the epics you have to show for it.  Perhaps a whirlwind spin through the Cataclysm will be fun, but like any good vacation spot, it’s not somewhere I’d really want to call home, or build a self image around.

tl;dr version, I’m still an Explorer, not an Achiever.  This applies to gear and loot as well as Achievements.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Wonderful World of Words! Whether I am reading for pleasure or for research, I sometimes come across words that well, make me go, ‘Hmmm, I wonder what that could mean?’, and so I’ve decided to post those words here online as a sort of notebook to remind me of such words. I would also be interested to know how many of you out there in cyberspace know this particular word, or if you, too, scratch your head sometimes in your explorations of the wonderful world of words!

Word 22 – unflappable

Word 23 – impetuous

The model describes four personality types: phlegmatic (unflappable and slow to take action), sanguine (easily but not strongly excited and having short-lived interests), choleric (impetuous and impulsive, often ambitious and perfectionist), and melancholic (inclined to reflection) (Dörnyei, 2005, p. 11).

Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The Psychology of the Language Learner: Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Do you know what ‘unflappable’ and ‘impetuous’ mean? Let me know if you do or don’t.

Until next time!

Hello everyone and welcome to the Wonderful World of Words! Whether I am reading for pleasure or for research, I sometimes come across words that well, make me go, ‘Hmmm, I wonder what that could mean?’, and so I’ve decided to post those words here online as a sort of notebook to remind me of such words. I would also be interested to know how many of you out there in cyberspace know this particular word, or if you, too, scratch your head sometimes in your explorations of the wonderful world of words!

Word 18 – inextricably

To the contrary: I believe that ID research is inextricably linked to psychometrics and research methods, with the issue of questionnaire design being at the forefront (cf. Dörnyei, 2003c) (Dörnyei, 2005, p. 8).

Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The Psychology of the Language Learner: Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Do you know what ‘inextricably’ means? Let me know if you do or don’t.

Until next time!

Hello everyone and welcome to the Wonderful World of Words! Whether I am reading for pleasure or for research, I sometimes come across words that well, make me go, ‘Hmmm, I wonder what that could mean?’, and so I’ve decided to post those words here online as a sort of notebook to remind me of such words. I would also be interested to know how many of you out there in cyberspace know this particular word, or if you, too, scratch your head sometimes in your explorations of the wonderful world of words!

Word 14 – trite

Of course, these phrases do sound a bit trite, just like the three Musketeers’ motto, ‘All for one and one for all!’. (Dörnyei, 2001, p. 34).

Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Do you know what ‘trite’ means? Let me know if you do or don’t.

Until next time!

Hello everyone and welcome to the Wonderful World of Words! Whether I am reading for pleasure or for research, I sometimes come across words that well, make me go, ‘Hmmm, I wonder what that could mean?’, and so I’ve decided to post those words here online as a sort of notebook to remind me of such words. I would also be interested to know how many of you out there in cyberspace know this particular word, or if you, too, scratch your head sometimes in your explorations of the wonderful world of words!

Word 11 – exigency

Therefore, we often need longer periods of observation, but the exigencies of research do not often allow long periods of time (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p. 268).

Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2005). Second Language Research Methodology and Design. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Do you know what ‘exigency’ means? Let me know if you do or don’t.

Until next time!

Hello everyone and welcome to the Wonderful World of Words! Whether I am reading for pleasure or for research, I sometimes come across words that well, make me go, ‘Hmmm, I wonder what that could mean?’, and so I’ve decided to post those words here online as a sort of notebook to remind me of such words. I would also be interested to know how many of you out there in cyberspace know this particular word, or if you, too, scratch your head sometimes in your explorations of the wonderful world of words!

Word 10 – ambit

This is very much within the ambit of the teacher’s facilitative powers (Usuki, 2007, p.148).

Usuki, M. (2007). Autonomy in Language Learning: Japanese Students’ Exploratory Analysis. Nagoya: Sankeisha.

Do you know what ‘ambit’ means? Let me know if you do or don’t.

Until next time!

Some of the best fun I have had with crafting in games has been where it was unusual to be a crafter so people would come seek you out to make commissions.

I think this is quite close to the original concept for crafting in MMOs. It was based on the medieval idea of the crafter as someone who made items by hand and might become well known for their crafting skills. Fantasy literature is also full of famous weapons and the people who made them. And I think that back in those days, new subgames were put into MMOs as much for thematic reasons as for gameplay.

So there is this notion of crafting being something that you could use to make your character different. Something that you could possibly do as an alternative to adventuring. A rare skill that might make you useful or desired in a community. Plus you could make items that you could sell to make some gold.

It has changed a bit since then. Modern MMOs tend to assume that everyone will take a crafting skill, and point you towards trainers fairly early on in the game. They also often split the skills between making things and gathering thing. And it’s fairly common that gathering skills and selling materials via an auction house or vendor becomes a staple money maker in the game for players.

For me, crafting is a bit schizo at the moment because it’s actually two different things.

• Making stuff. Possibly creative handmade crafting skills. Crafter can distinguish themselves by what they make. Possibility for both crafter and client to make their character more unique involving one of a kind or rare items.
• Selling stuff, or running a business. Probably involves selling commodity goods, may also involve producing them, in a production line type of way.

MMOs do the second part tolerably well (it varies from game to game, EVE is probably the high water mark for would-be virtual industrialists.) They do the first part very badly.

Which is unfortunate because it’s the first part which really fits into the fantasy settings that are so ubiquitous in the genre at the moment. You don’t really imagine production lines in Tolkien.

The problem with crafting rare goods

Crafters being a rare breed is very interesting from an immersive point of view, annoying from a buyers point of view, and extremely fun from the crafter’s point of view. It’s nice to be sought out for your skills.

Problem is, why would crafting be rare? Only because it’s tedious, time consuming, expensive to skill up, dependent on rare drops or starting conditions (eg. 1/100 characters starts out with potential for crafting) or otherwise inaccessible to the majority of the player base. So if we want crafting to be rare, it probably won’t be fun and accessible for most players.

You could imagine a game where crafting is fun, but most people will find it more fun to go kill stuff. I think EQ2 toys with this design and it seems to work well from what I have seen. Both crafting and adventuring are time consuming, and you probably don’t have enough time to do both. Given that choice, most players will choose adventuring but the ones who don’t can become (rareish) crafters. That would solve the problem of how to keep crafting rare without making it needlessly dull and time consuming.

To make this work, devs need to really put more work into crafting. It has to be a complete game in itself. An alternative to the rest of the game, and not something that was just tacked on at the last minute. That’s a very tall order for something that is going to be a minority interest. Free Realms has fully featured minigames for crafting, which I thought were good fun. It’s just that there’s not much of a way to sell things to other players and you can buy stuff for real cash that’s better. So they got the crafting down quite well, but there’s no real reward for it.

But still, I think players would enjoy being able to make more unique items, even if the uniqueness was just in the look. It would be cool if particular crafters could build up reputations. I’ve been told a few times that Star Wars Galaxies had a really good crafting system that allowed for a lot of crafter customisation. I don’t have personal experience with that, but it’s something I’d like to see developed further.

I also think that a lot of crafters would enjoy it if the crafting side of the game could be less dependent on the adventuring side. It’s fine to buy goods from adventurers that can only be gotten in instances or from nasty monsters. But forcing the crafter to level and go get it themselves isn’t the way to make crafting more fun. Until crafting is more recognised as a separate playing style in itself, it’s never going to really take off.

And I honestly believe that there are a lot of players –- especially people who enjoy crafting in real life (yes this would include a lot of women, I expect) – who would be very open to trying it out in a game and might really enjoy it and produce some awesome virtual goods. But it’s going to need some brave devs who accept that not everyone wants to go kill monsters or delve deep  into coding (a la Second Life) to really make it sing.

How about those production lines?

The actual process of crafting is typically pretty dull. There are some exceptions to this but it really is usually a case of have the materials handy and click the red button. Then watch the green line. If you’re lucky you will be playing a game where you can get it to keep crafting the same thing until all your materials are used up (that’s the production line). So you can go get some tea and feed the cat, maybe read a chapter or two of a book or catch up with Torchwood while you are waiting.

This is not actually playing the game in any meaningful way. It would be better to let players do it offline. It’s more to do with resource management and trading than with actually crafting anything so it would be better to treat it as a separate minigame.

And allowing players to put a production line in place isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Especially if the alternative is going off to read a book while the game gets on with it.  But it shouldn’t replace the more intensive process of producing a rare, handmade item.

Crafting doesn’t have to be tedious

I don’t think crafting needs to be dull. We don’t need artificial game mechanics to keep crafters rare. And rare, desirable goods don’t have to be ones with potential for unbalancing stats. It might be enough just to focus on letting crafters … craft. And letting traders … trade. And letting industrialists .. err… do industrial stuff.

But treating crafting and the economy as a one-size fits all second thought is missing out on a huge wodge of players who would love to play that game.

Blog: yankeediva.blogspot.com

No només és una de les grans mezzos d’avui en dia.

No només és una dona absolutament humana, divertida i generosa.

No només canta Rossina com ningú.

No només va i es trenca la tibia en directe i continúa cantant.

No només decideix acabar tota la producció amb la cama adolorida i amb crosses.

… Sinó que continuará les funcions de Il Barbiere a la ROH en cadira de rodes!!!

Quina lliçó !

Joyce, ets simplement genial.

Freak – adjective, describing another’s personality. Synonym of aberration, anomaly, chimera, curiosity, grotesque, malformation, miscreation, misshape, monster, monstrosity, mutant, mutation, oddity, rarity, weirdo

*Not to be confused with: freaky, freakin’ it, phr34k*

"When that freak Michael Jackson died, the internet died along with him."

1. Freaks are the people you cannot explain or understand. They defy rationality and logic, leaving anyone attempting to understand them completely dumbfounded. Being a freak is not an occasional condition, it is a life-long perspective, an attitude, and a lifestyle. Freaks typically classify themselves and embrace being freaks, at least once they reconcile their differences.

"Michael Jackson may have been a freak but he could rock a stage!"

2. An individual that enjoys bizarre or uncommon sexual behaviors as a means to reach orgasm or sexual ecstasy. Occasionally enjoying freaky behavior does not make you a freak – it is a matter of consistency.

"Michael Jackson allegedly enjoyed playing with little boys - that made him a freak."

Què fa una noia com tu en un lloc com aquest?

Ouch