The Sims Online dies

I actually found an online-related thing to post about today. This blog doesn't have a stated agenda, really, any more than my thoughts, but this is in keeping with the cyberpunk-theme that it has revolved around a bit.

EA Games is closing down The Sims Online. (The article calls it EA Land, but the game used to be called The Sims Online, which is what I assume most of us will know it as.) And what are they giving to all those people who paid $9.99 a month since 2002, hoping that the game would get better? The people who believed the hype at the end of last year that the game would be significantly improved and all those things they had been promising would finally arrive? A $15 gift certificate.

Now, I only ever played this game's free trial, so this is no skin off my back. But consider the ramifications: EA Games, a huge game company, is just dropping a game like it has the crabs. Well-loved old games like Everquest and Ultima Online chug on even in the face of new competition (read: World of Warcraft), but something like this only plays on one of my oldest fears:

Scenario: I spend thousands of hours online. I pour my heart and soul and waking hours into a game and a character, developing a person that is real in all but body, giving him the very best gear, position, stats, and everything else I can. I make friends, real friends, people I share ups and downs with, share my thoughts with, spend hundreds of hours with.

Then, it's all gone. The character, the world, the time is as though it never happened, except for the memories. Some of my friends go one way, some go another; we try to keep in touch, but it goes away.

I felt this a little when World of Warcraft supplanted Neverwinter Nights, but at least I can go back and play a bit for nostalgia, and I never had to pay for online play. But imagine when this happens to World of Warcraft, which I'm sure it will, sooner or later. What then?

This is why I'm terrified of falling in love with an MMO. I know that, sooner or later, it will go away, and then I'll be hurt.

Blog 30

That's really not a benchmark, but I'm making it one! Because after all, what significance does any number have that we don't give it?

I promised before that I was going to use this space to give ideas for possible stories, so it's about time I did that. And the idea is this:

The story is set during the Crusades, and it has three main characters. They are two knights and the Muslim woman they are escorting back to the Holy Land. One of the knights is a veteran who has returned from the Crusades with the ransom for her, as she's the daughter of a Muslim lord, and she was taken captive during a previous campaign. The other knight is the son of the lord who took her captive and is holding her for ransom. Aftre the ransom is paid, the two knights, for varying reasons, agree to go with her to ensure her safety, since a single Muslim woman traveling alone would be in big trouble through medieval Europe.

The story begins with how they leave the castle, as neither knight is initially willing to do it. The first is a callous and war-weary young man, a crude man-at-arms knighted on the battlefield, and the second is the chivalrous, idealistic son of a rich lord who doesn't think the safety of a Saracen is worth the life of a Christian knight. One is swarthy, dangerous, and rough, while the other is fair, brave, but untested.

And there would have to be all kinds of stories, from corrupt lords to traveling gypsies to witches to tournaments and jousts. And maybe a story or three borrowed from The Canterbury Tales!

I'm also thinking that the young lady herself will have, in her time of captivity, trained herself in the ways of cunning, stealth, and swordplay, so she'll have her own tricks up her sleeves! That is, if she wears sleeves. I'd really have to research medieval fashion. Because a hot medieval assassin woman is just about perfection.

And of course I'd have to call the series Knight Champloo. What do you think?

Nicole Kidman!

I had a dream Nicole Kidman was dead. I think it was some kind of accidental overdose. I guess in my mind Heath Ledger and Nicole Kidman are connected. Well, they've both been in Batman movies and they're both Australian, so there IS a connection....

That being said, it's been almost ten years since Moulin Rouge. I know Nicole was still looking foxy in The Golden Compass, but that was more of a "my best friend's hot mom" kind of look, rather than a "that cute girl I'd pass notes to during class" look. I really need to update my mental list of hot women. I think Sharon Stone is still on there.

Help me, Keira Knightley. You're my only hope.

By "help" I mean "stop making Pirates of the Carribean movies" and "do something interesting with your life."

Blog dream

I had a dream last night that involved this blog. I checked the blog's comments (as I do at least once a day) and found that I had ten comments on several posts. This came as a great surprise! Other than people telling me how fantastically witty I was, there was some girl with a name that was C...Aardvark, although I don't quite recall the nick. I wish I did, so I could check to see if this person is real or not. She was getting very personal, telling me how my different blogs made her see me, and even sending me private messages. She was even critiquing my writing style! It's a blog, for crying out loud, not freaking Shakespeare. Hmm... odd. It goes to show, I suppose, that even someone as lonely as me should beware strange online people. Then again, as much as people fear people who become obsessed with them online, I have a lot of sympathy for that kind of person. I can see where that kind of loneliness and need to connect on any kind of level comes from.

In other news, I'm still in my pajamas and it's almost one in the afternoon. Take that, schedule!

Dream on....

I happened across an old write-up I had done of one of my dreams. I often think back to this dream, struck by its strangeness and generally striking creativity and story. I keep meaning to write a story based on it, but then I put it off (as I do so many things). Whenever I think of it, I think of it as a dream I had recently. But today I checked the date of the actual dream, and it was more than three years ago. Has it really been so long?

Sometimes I have the feeling the world ended for me in 1999. I still see things that came out in the 90's and think, "That was only a few years ago!" New Year's Eve 1999-2000 was perhaps the high point of my life. It wasn't anything that happened to me: I was at a party my parents went to full of people I didn't know. But there was a feeling that the world was going to be fresh and new, and the entire world was celebrating just being here and having something to celebrate together. It was before 9/11, and I sincerely thought that if the world could move past all of that hate and pettiness for a day, as we did on December 31, we could do so forever, and have a better world. It was a naive feeling, but a beautiful feeling, too, and one that I miss so much that sometimes I just want to cry. In those days, the Internet felt fresh and beautiful, like a meadow after it rains, a meadow with a creek and moss.

Because those are the most beautiful.

Enter Douche

I had a good post written up about this, but then the internet ate it, thinking it was a carrot.

Have you ever wondered why you're all alone? Why it seems like all the beautiful women in the world have gone away, perhaps to a mystical, magical place called Narnia, or perhaps just across the sea to where the elves go? Well, the fact is, they're still here on the material plane. They're just hanging out with douchebags. And the proof is a site that draws together pictures from all over the place (although, apparently, New Jersey is a favorite) and proves once and for all that beautiful women, for one reason or another, are attracted irresistably to assholes. Here's the site. Enjoy, particularly the Hall of Scrote section.

Quicky

Just checking in quickly because I have to teach a class tomorrow. Every now and then, I feel inspired to do things I have no time for. Right now, I wish I could be writing to you about some stories that are floating in my mind. Instead, I must go sleep, so that I can return tomorrow to the grind.
In the morning: teach.
During the day: read for class.
In the afternoon: class
At night: flop into bed, dead-dog tired

I have heard a legend of a time called Summer, when the the drinks are free, the days are warm and dry, and girls are pretty (and SINGLE, thank-you-very-much, Utah).

The Dustiest Place on Earth

I've been watching a Chinese television series, Laughing in the Wind, that's in the same vein as movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's also thoroughly chop-socky, in that characters spin like tops in the air and make statements like, "Your Purity Sword technique cannot best my Paper Tiger Style!" (The Purity Sword technique is really something they reference frequently on the show.) Also, even though it was released in 2004, its camera appears to be either something from the 1950s or someone's home camcorder. While I'm on the subject of production quality: maybe it's just my computer, but one of the episodes doubled up every sound effect. When swords hit, they clanged twice, foosteps beat twice, a cup smacked down on a table thumped twice. It hurt my head.

The translations are pretty bad, but generally decipherable, even though it's hard to take a show with an "evil party" at all seriously. Then there's the plot, or what there is of it. Although that's uncharitable of me to say: I get the feeling that there is a plot, which makes it all the more difficult for me to attempt to follow what's going on. New characters are tossed in without any background, and the main plot appears to completely vanish while the show spends half an hour on a group of characters you haven't seen before.

Then there's the martial arts. It looks kind of cool... sometimes. Other times it's people whirling around waving their swords in the air while the sound effects go TING TING TING TING TING! It's almost like watching little kids pretend to swordfight. The costumes are elaborate (albeit appearing to have come straight from a modern sewing machine) and the sets are typically good, even though some of the forest shots appear pretty plasticky.

All that being said, the characters are charming (if very one-sided), and so far that's been enough to keep watching. Netflix, what hast thou wrought?