Account Sales: Do Not Want!

So, back to normal topics... well, more normal than how Band is really an eldritch abomination, anyway. You know, if I didn't know better, I would think I use entries like that as filler material when I don't have a good topic in mind...

Anyway... This past week or so has made me glad that I don't own a PS3. I'm usually a PC gamer, so I don't normally care much about consoles (aside from fanatically waiting around for the newest Zelda game), but the issues with Sony are just mind-boggling. All I can think is 'thank god it didn't happen to me.' Besides, Sony is going about this completely wrong. If all your customer data has been stolen, then you take the data and use it yourself. I mean, they're gonna need a lot of money to make up for this, and it'll probably get taken by the hacker anyway... Plus they can get away with it. Remember, whatever bad things happen to any corporation could always be worse: I could be in charge.

I normally don't comment on anything in the 'real' world that has no relevance to video games or whatever, but I thought I'd make an exception for the royal wedding all the 'sophisticated' adults are talking about (and boring me to death whenever I happen to be within earshot). Several thousand people are camping around to hopefully get a view of said wedding. Whereas a few years ago when Twilight Princess came out, there were tens of thousands of people camping out at stores to be able to play it. I think that should put into perspective just how 'important' the wedding is.

Anyway, back to W-H-related things. Unfortunately, not that much remarkable has happened, although some BM members did get a laugh out of an epic coding fail I had on our forums (now fixed). I think Rad saved the page; maybe you could ask her to show it to you? It was just absurd...

Did you just try and disguise the fact that you had nothing to say by putting in some random info that 99% of your readers don't care about?

Yes. I mean, I can't say 'nothing happened' again. Nothing has happened too many times recently. At least the flood of people starting blogs has started to slow down...

Yup, at least people aren't stupid enough to copy you.

...Go away.

Anyway, I've got a fairly unusual topic today. It's based upon the contents of this thread. Since I don't know if that thread will still be around, the basic content of said thread is that the player 'Haunted' is selling three side accounts. Except they only list two side accounts. Maybe they belong in that group of people who failed math class?

We'll just say two accounts (E-bony and Zarina). Basically they are levels 12/18 and have 6/11 points respectively on them. Other info like their gear and DP amounts aren't really that important for the purpose of this entry (due to gear/DP being worthless).

The player is selling them for points, with a starting bid of 4 points a piece. Now, before we go any farther, ask yourself if you see any problem with this. Make your decision now, and then see how it holds up at the end of this entry.

The thing is, this isn't technically illegal. There is nothing in the TOS that even mentions account sales, which is somewhat unusual, since most sites have a clearly established policy on this. However, we don't.

The only precedent we do have is a post I remember Karl making, but unfortunately was before 1.1 (I think). A certain user *coughwdkcomeonwhoelsedidyouexpectcough* made a forum thread asking if they could level accounts and then sell them on Ebay or other sites. Admittedly, this seems like a monumentally stupid question to ask, but that's my opinion. Anyway, the point of this is that Karl said that no, you can't sell the legal property of W-H for personal monetary gain. Which makes perfect sense, and is actually legally supported by law.

Unfortunately, that doesn't specify anything regarding the sale of accounts for on-site currency.

Allow me to make my position clear: I personally oppose shared accounts, as well as any form of transferring ownership of any account. You shouldn't be able to give your account to a friend/sibling, as I know several accounts have been in the past. My position on people 'babysitting' accounts is somewhat more towards the 'apathy' end of the scale, and I'm only going to deal with the permanent transfer of ownership in this entry. If people are actually interested, I suppose I could do an entry on babysitting later.

The reason I oppose shared accounts is twofold - first, the trouble created if one of the 'owners' of the account breaks the rules and then the other 'owner' claims they shouldn't be liable. I don't like dealing with that bullshit. And second, because of the unfair advantage it gives. I complained about how Coren was on for 24 hours in one day. I would complain if 24 people from different time zones split into shifts to each play an hour a day and thus give the account the benefit of 24/7 leveling. I don't care whether it's a bot pressing the keys or 24 different people - it's still an unfair advantage over the average player.

For any sort of ownership transfer, I oppose it because someone else is getting XP without actually doing anything for it. If I gave my account to my brother, would you find it fair that someone who's never played W-H before gets to start with 24 million+ XP without even working on it? (Not to mention my brother is a moron). People say the 10x XP lessens the accomplishment of high levels, and they are correct. Getting XP without doing anything at all completely eliminates the accomplishment.

Then there's the question of whether you actually have the right to transfer the ownership of an account. Technically, your account, and all your info, are the property of W-H. You are simply granted limited access to that info. If you were required to pay for your account, this would be fairly clear-cut - you don't have the authority to transfer the valuable property of another. However, since accounts on W-H are free... how much value does any given account have in real-world currency? After all, if it had absolutely no value, transferring ownership would be technically impossible (since you can't own something completely without any value), but it also wouldn't be prohibited, because if I give $0 to you, no actual currency has changed hands.

However, you probably don't want to deal with the legal issues, so let's stick to practical concerns for gameplay.

The first concern I would have if account sale was allowed is account theft and/or scamming. I mean, we've seen several accounts hacked, some of them high level. If I wanted to sell those, with a bit of work it could be done without there being any proof they were stolen, and even if they were found out, it'd be after the sale - in which case how do you refund the player who bought them? I mean, I'd probably have spent the points on something else. Maybe I bought, say, art. You can't take the points from the artist - they legitimately earned them. You can't take the art from me - it's only valuable to my character or whatever, and it's not W-H's property. And creating more points without cash behind them devalues the currency. Lose-Lose scenario.

And with scamming, it's even simpler - offer an account for sale, take payment, run away. Or give a wrong PIN, so you can take back the account afterward.

This doesn't even mention the fact that any 'sold' account is still going to have its email set to the seller, so they can recover their password at any time. And before you say 'send a support ticket'... Imagine how well that could be used on a hacked account. Hm, let's say I got access to... Byz's account. Dang, I don't know her PIN...

#1: Make sure using proxy.
#2: Make a thread by Byz 'selling' her account.
#3: Buy account with my main. (on normal IP)
#4: Send support ticket claiming to have bought acc and needing email change.
#5: With email changed, have PIN resent.
#6: Use PIN to change password.

Woot! I now have complete access to Byz's account! And it appears to be legitimate in the eyes of the majority of the site! And all it would take is having access to someone's account for maybe a week, at most, while they couldn't get on. Like, say, if they were on vacation (or in Byz's case, just inactive).

And if anyone is about to object to me 'instructing' hackers or whatever, do you honestly think the staff is dumb enough to fall for this after I posted this?

So, allowing account sales would encourage account theft, whether to own the acc yourself or for profit. I could turn around and sell Byz's account for more than I sold it for (after all, I sold it to myself, so of course I accepted a low price!). Then I wait a month, steal the account back, and sell it again for an even higher price! And repeat.

And that's with just one account.

(By the way, what I'm describing is basically the process used by gold sellers on any major game, just so you know.)

Then we've got the fairness concerns, what with XP transfer and all. So far, Karl has (admirably) avoided implementing anything that gives players XP without them earning it, excluding the 500 XP available in the point shop. And, honestly, if anyone is willing to pay the thousands of pounds it would take to get on the top 5 with just buying XP, I say let them. I mean, for that much money, the site could make big enough improvements it wouldn't matter.

But for the most part, I'm against getting XP you don't earn. Buying accs provides an easy way around that. What in Sunset sold her account, since she's gone? And I mean her, not some hacker on her account. Well, then you've got the top 5 going to whoever has the most points... I think even Sea would object to that. Well, unless she bought the account herself.

And then there's accounts with customs, and selling them. All kinds of hassles there I'm not even going to get into. But you can imagine, I'm sure.

What about botting? Especially with how it's not in the TOS anymore. Due to how W-H works, I can simultaneously run multiple bot programs on different accounts from one computer, the only limit being my computer speed. So if I had a fast enough computer, I could have 10 bots running at once. Let's say I sell them at 1 million XP each, for 10 points each. Wow, I just made 100 points in a day or two with no actual effort required on my part aside from telling a program to run 10 times! Amazingly profitable! Let's do it again, but sell Legends this time! And since there are $0 in costs to me, I'll have amazingly low prices of only 2.50 pounds in points for an account with 20 million XP! There will be tons of sales!

You're wishing you thought of this sooner, aren't you?

...Maybe. But I suppose I can't do it now that it's on my blog. Oh well.

And then there's quest point issues. You can't transfer quest points from your sides to your main. But you could collect all the points from quests on your sides, then sell them for fewer points than they have, so that the buyer makes a profit, and have them pay your main. You just managed to 'transfer' those unusable points on your side to your main acc! And you can make as many sides as you want! Yay! Happy happy happy joy ha-

This is killing you, isn't it?

Dear god, yes! Pretending to be happy and enthusiastic... ugh. I feel like I want to puke.

Moving on... there's also the issue of the TOS section 1B, which forbids "using multiple accounts to accumulate money and/or points". Couldn't you fit selling accounts under that? Sure, it might not be what it was originally written about, and it's rather loose, but it still has the same end result - points generated from something on a side acc ending up on your main.

Anyway, I need to find a paper bag to throw up in, so I'll wrap this up. I think this entry should have made it clear why account sales are a bad thing. I'm not criticizing the site or the staff either (it's a miracle!) - they haven't technically allowed anything. All I'm saying is that account sales should not be allowed, and we should have the TOS clearly updated to state that. Yes, I just said 1B could possibly cover it... but it's better to be precise, so no idiot scammer noob forgetiticantcomeupwithnoninsultingnames can claim that the TOS technically doesn't forbid it and/or 'I didn't see it'.

Besides. Updating the TOS would take maybe 60 seconds. It's not exactly hard. In the mean time, hopefully mods will at least see the sense in this and enforce it as an unofficial rule. I mean, it makes sense...

Hey, I found a bag for you.

Thanks, Se- BLAAUuuuuuuurrrrggggghhhhhhh...

The Real Curse Of Band

I had to crawl my way out of the giant pile of Easter candy I'm living in to write this entry. You people don't appreciate the sacrifices I make for you... I mean, I could be eating chocolate right now.

Speaking of chocolate, I really hate the Easter bunny. I utterly despise it. Why? Because it means we get less chocolate. Imagine if, instead of dumb rabbits, the chocolate was simply made in large squares and rectangles. Solid, of course. It could be made faster, and we'd get more chocolate for our cash. But no, we have to have rabbits...

Still on the subject of chocolate, my brother actually had a fairly interesting theory about it. According to our (sadistic) martial arts instructor, pain is unbearable pleasure. Well, chocolate = pleasure, right? So, does that mean pain = unbearable chocolate?

Try and wrap your head around that one. I don't know how I live with these people...

Anyway, on to the main subject of this entry... the much-mentioned curse of Band, which I've been promising to do an entry on forever, but never got around to...

You know, it seems like people just don't understand Band these days. People either complain that she's an asshole, she's ass-kissing the staff, she's a fanatical loyalist of mine, or she's some third party that should be hated by everyone in general or so. None of those are true.

To truly understand Band, you must understand that 'Band' is a position, not a person.

You're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Clearly, you need education on what a Band really is. And no, it is not a group of people making random noise, claiming it's art, making millions, and then spending it all on booze and sex until dying a few years later. Not that Band herself isn't spending millions on booze and sex. But that's another entry entirely (as are her hats and how she literally owns the bandwagon).

So, allow me to explain the essence of a Band...

1: For every site, organization, or any grouping of any kind, there is always a Band as a member of that group. This should be self-explanatory.

1a: Said Band can have any name, and it does not need to be related to the word 'Band'. I'm simply using the word 'Band' because that's what you're familiar with.

1b: There must always be a Band for every organization. If a Band is ever killed/quits/banned/etc, a new Band will take their place.

1c: One Band can fill the role of 'Band' for multiple organizations, but there can never be two 'Bands' for one organization. In other words, Bandaint could serve as 'Band' for both W-H and... we'll say Neopets, but Kasac cannot be 'Band' for Neopets, then, because Bandaint already is.

1d: The gender of a Band is irrelevant. It has been theorized that a Band inherently has no gender, or that one is simultaneously both genders and has no gender at the same time.


2: A Band dooms any group it is a member of, as well as anything it comes remotely into contact to. Allow me to use Bandaint's history as an example, to explain what is commonly known as the 'Curse of Band' among packs.

 Band originally joined as 'BlackRidge' after being referred by WDK. And she joined Raven-Woods. And we all know how that turned out... Well, actually, a lot of you probably don't, but I'm too lazy to explain it. Suffice it to say they died. Dramatically.

Thus began Band's pack whoring. Acrasia, Broken Souls, Kishwaukee, and many more - all with two things in common: Band joined them, and they are now dead. This isn't a coincidence - it's a demonstration of the effectiveness of a Band in dooming organizations. Although the time varies, the doom is sure.

This means that yes, W-H is doomed, as is every pack on it, etc. If you don't believe me, come back in 27 million years, and I guarantee W-H will be gone by then.

On a broader scale, this explains why nothing is eternal, and the planet, the human race, the universe, time itself... everything must have an end. This is because a Band is an equalizing force. Without one, nothing would ever end. We would have complete immortality, unable to die. Nothing began would ever end or be finished, because finishing a project is a form of ending it.

In other words, we would have hell on earth, because people would never be able to finish making chocolate for us, but we could not die from lack of chocolate.

3: A Band cannot be prevented from succeeding in dooming everything. Success is inevitable. A Band is an equalizing force of nature. Their existence is logically inevitable, as is their success. Without them, life as we know it could not exist.

Corollary: Any attempt to interfere with a Band is an exercise in futility, and, by its very nature, is doomed to failure by being associated with a Band.


4: A Band exists entirely independent of any other object in existence or nonexistence. This is to avoid a paradox that would be created if a 'Band' was a member of the group of 'Bands', which would mean that the group of 'Bands' would have a 'Band' in it, that would doom all 'Bands' to failure. By their very nature, there is no group of 'Bands', nor is a 'Band' part of any group with another 'Band' and still a 'Band'. Also, 'Bands' are naturally immune to themselves, and thus do not doom themselves, or their fellow 'Bands', to failure.

5: A Band is not an asshole. A true Band defies description by mortal words. Claiming one is an asshole simply does not do justice to a Band. You cannot compare the professionals to the amateurs. In fact, that comparison in itself is flawed - a closer, but still not entirely accurate, comparison would be that you cannot compare the gods to the nonexistent. There are no similarities; a Band is so far out of the league of anyone you would normally say is an 'asshole' there are not even words to express it.

6: A true Band is a verb. Not some random person on the street. Not even a superhero, or a supervillain. A true Band causes bitching just by being there. A Band doesn't have to want to. They don't even have to think about it. It just happens, as a natural side effect of dooming everything they come in contact with (and the result of #5). People don't like it. They bitch about it.

It doesn't make a difference. You may as well complain about the existence of time itself. There is nothing you can do, no matter how hard you try. Any attempt you make is doomed to failure. Even your perceived 'successes' are, in fact, failures - to stop you from doing better, discovering more, whatever.

You do not understand; you still do not grasp that which I am trying to impart to you. Everything you will ever do will fail. Your entire existence is pointless and irrelevant, and will affect nothing, for in the end, nothing is the only result of everything.

That is the legacy of a Band. That is what you are dealing with, what you cannot - will not - comprehend. You complain against a force that is older, greater than existence itself!

But you don't get what I am trying to tell you. You can't get it, because your attempt to understand is doomed to failure. Even my attempt to inform you of this is doomed to failure. Why, then, do I try? In truth, even I do not know. I have attempted the impossible and received the only possible result: failure. Perhaps it is because grasping the hopelessness of it all is beyond even my comprehension...

Even though you do not understand this, remember this one thing, and perhaps your dealings with Band will be easier.

Band is not an asshole.

Band is the asshole.

Blogs: Don't Jump On The Bandwagon Just Yet

So, I was at my grandparents' for the weekend, with absolutely nothing to do aside from eating pie. A lot of pie. But not enough to keep me occupied all the time while I was down there. Which means I had enough time to probably write five or six blog entries so I'd have a good buffer.

Naturally, I didn't write a single one and wasted all the time lying around doing nothing. I'm so lazy, it's pathetic at times.

You're pathetic all the time.

Shut up. Who's the one who spent the weekend doing nothing but napping and eating ice cream?

Anyway, I hope you all had a happy Easter and all that. Mine sucked. But really, the real holiday is the week after Easter, because then all the chocolate is on sale. And that cash-to-chocolate ratio is important. You know, we should make chocolate the global currency...

Speaking of Easter, we didn't get anything special on W-H for it. I mean, I know Karl's coding 1.2, but it's kind of tradition for sites to celebrate holidays and stuff. It'd have been fun, even if he only gave us a quick quest. I mean, honestly, adding a quest would take like 30 minutes, absolute most... But then again, I guess getting nothing fits with what we've seen before.

On a completely unrelated note, you should read this blog entry from the Heroes of Lesser Earth webcomic. Because we all need to be aware of how deadly bad interior designing is.

Anyway... This entry is going to concern the latest trend on W-H. Namely, starting a blog. Yes, I'm writing a blog entry about blogs. Deal with it.

It seems like nearly everyone has gone and started their own blog recently. This is an obvious sign that we're bored out of our wits and have nothing to do. But we already knew that part.

I'm not against blogging, or anything of the sort. I mean, I'm doing it right now. But for those people who have started their own blogs, or are considering it... You need to think about whether you're doing it just because it's the latest trend or not. Because if you are, that's as stupid as 'firsts'.

So you're objecting to people making blogs like yours?

Not exactly. But sort of. I mean, I'm probably the worst role model for anything. Doing something the way I did it is usually a stupid idea.

Anyway, if you're actually going to start a blog, there are things you need to consider.

The first is update schedule. Nobody will read something if you don't update regularly. But can you update regularly? Making three posts a week might seem easy... until you realize you only have about five topics in mind. Then what? I mean, coming up with enough topics to meet my update schedule is a problem even for me.

Speaking of topics, consider your content. Do you really have anything to say that hasn't been said before? Not that you can't cover a topic a different blog already covered, but you have to have something to add to it. Do you really think people want to read anything twice? Besides, it'll make you look like a parrot.

And nobody wants to read about how everything is fine and there are no problems. Because we all know that there are problems. Unless you want to ignore the hacked accounts. I mean, even if you want to classify me as one of those problems, I still exist. I think.

If you don't exist, where would that put me?

Dammit, now I'm going to be thinking about that for the rest of the day...

Also consider your audience. Unless you have a good bit of publicity on W-H, it's unlikely you're going to get very many people to read your blog. I mean, I had a sizable advantage when I started mine - I was both an infamous player on W-H, and also a guide owner. Plus I placed backup guide info on here, which basically guaranteed views.

Most players don't have those advantages to get them views. Does that matter to you? Do you care how many people are reading your blog? Because, honestly, if you're doing it just for views, you should probably stop now. Or insult someone or something in every sentence. As Sesh mentioned last entry, the more controversial your blog, the more views you will get. Nobody is going to argue with facts, like an entry on how to use HTML. Of course, a lot of that attention you get may be negative. Your decision.

Realize that you will immediately have a good number of players who hate your guts. Because either you made a controversial topic that everyone doesn't agree upon, or you went out of your way to avoid controversial topics in an attempt to make everyone happy, in which case people hate you because it looks like you wimped out. It's a lose-lose-lose scenario. If you actually care about that, then you probably shouldn't start a blog.

You will be flamed. Period. It will happen. Unless you're so totally ignored that nobody cares about you. Name your poison. People who are flaming you will ignore facts, reason, and any sort of logic. Then again, your entries probably ignored those as well.

Speaking of flaming, you should probably adjust the settings on blogger. For example, you might want to disable anonymous comments. People can still make them, of course, but they have to create a new account to do so. And it's not too hard to figure out who's who if you know a few tricks.

Also, you can't block people from flaming you. You can delete their comments if necessary, but you can't stop them from posting again with the default comment system. There are some extra comment systems you can install that will have block features, though. Still, it's a bit of a hassle.

And don't pull any alternate personality crap. Yes, I have Sesh. Whether or not she exists, well, I don't know. But if you really think claiming an alternate personality is typing your entries or anything is going to get you off the hook, you're an idiot. You're responsible for whatever content appears on your blog, regardless of whether aliens were mind-controlling you at the time.

Which is why Storm lets me eat so much ice cream and snacks. If he didn't, I could post all kinds of things and get him in a ton of trouble.

Don't remind me.

Also worth mentioning is color scheme. Please at least try to pick something tasteful. Without a black background. Especially without purple text on that background (I'm looking at you, Burn). Heck, maybe you should skip the purple entirely.

And finally, don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever try to be a bigger asshole than Band. Seriously. You can't do it. It's not physically possible. You'll just fail miserably.

Not to mention her hats will have you killed.

Don't you have something better to do than comment on everything I say?

Not really.

Ugh... Anyway, I think I'll wrap this up. Consider these things before starting a blog, and if you don't like them, you should probably not have one. I understand you're doing it to be 'cool', but, really, you'll look like a moron if you don't know what you're doing.

Side Account Limit Please

So, Storm is off at his grandparents for Easter. Since they live in a time anomaly putting them about 50 years in the past, they've got no internet, so he might not be on much for a day or two. And you people claim time machines don't exist...

I'm just hanging around eating all his snack food. Unfortunately, the price for that is writing this entry. Considering how much he's got around here, though, it's probably worth it. Plus I get to lie around and do nothing the rest of the time he's gone. Laziness is fun...

Besides, I read up on W-H a bit more since last time. Call me a quick study. And Storm left me some good notes, too. Apparently the more people he insults in an entry, the more views he gets? Maybe I should try that sometime. Not today, though.

So, apparently I'm supposed to write about side accounts. At least, a side account limit.

I'm going to assume all of you know what side accounts are, and probably have one or two. That's fine. Even Storm has a side or two, although he only uses those for testing things and doesn't seriously play them. When I asked him about it, he said he never really got the point of playing multiple accounts if he could just get all the XP on one account, and that leveling sides doesn't help his pack anyway. But whatever.

I'm not sure who has the most side accounts on W-H, nor do I really care. I mean, I'm just doing this because I'm hungry. And bored. But anyway, apparently some people have over 40 side accounts. Isn't that a bit of overkill?

Apparently you people like to make a few sides for the names, like naming them after error messages. I suppose that's understandable... when I remember you're all insane. Not the point, though. Having an account or two just for the names is probably fine.

Remember, you're only human - weak, soft, fle- I mean, you can only play maybe five side accounts actively, and you probably wouldn't do very well on those. Although there have apparently been a few people who managed to get multiple high-level sides. But for most people, you'd never need more than two or three to play actively.

But I'll say five, for the sake of easy numbers. Gotta make it simple, since Storm says most of you people can't count past 14. Not sure why. And I suppose I'll say five accounts for the names as well.

You'll probably never conceivably need ten side accounts. Most of them will just rot, and help contribute to how your site has thousands of accounts but only maybe a thousand actual players. But that's your choice.

Still, enough is enough. There should be a side account limit of ten accounts or so; even Karl has mentioned in the past he was considering it. Whoever Karl is. It'd keep the number of accounts down, save server space, and make the staff's job easier. After all, it can be hard to tell who's who when somebody has forty accounts, especially if they have access to multiple IPs. And just about everyone should have access to multiple IPs from time to time.

If you ever get your referral system working, it'd probably help there too. I mean, apparently you people like to use your friend's ref links for sides. Not against the rules or anything, but it does mean people can get the ref honours without actually referring any new players. And I suppose somebody could technically get fifty refs by just talking to fifty other players and having them create a side. With no limit, everyone could get it... I'd try that, if I actually played W-H. Or cared.

Logically, I don't see any downside to this limit, either. Of course, since you people aren't logical, I'm sure you'll find flaws in this. Whatever. I don't care. I did my part; doesn't matter if it was a short entry. I'm going to go clean out Storm's freezer now. I think he's got some cookies & cream ice cream in there...

Numbers: Unnecessary

So, you'll have to excuse me for writing a fairly simple topic today. My hands are covered with blisters and I think my left leg fell off somewhere.

It's in the hall.

Whatever. I swear, my martial arts instructor is nearly as sadistic as I am...

Anyway, as a reminder to people, if you are going to leave a comment, please do not refresh or press the button multiple times. Duplicate comments just get caught by the spam filter. I posted that in the comments on my last entry, but figured I'd stick it here to make sure everyone read it.

On the forum side of things, apparently the latest trend is continually quoting the distinction between noobs and newbs. Sure, one thread is fine... but it doesn't need to be posted everywhere. I mean, we get  the point already. It's like, ugh, overkill.

Also, if you haven't noticed already, Sea has gone and made her own blog here. While I certainly don't agree with some of what she says, I'll at least give her the opportunity to get a few more views. Besides, she apparently updates every day of the week that I don't, although, at the time I'm writing this, she appears to have missed Wednesday's update (which will be yesterday by the time you read this). As a tip, Sea, use the scheduling feature and write entries in advance.

So, as I said, fairly short entry today. How many of you have seen players with names like random_noob93772 onsite? (Why do I get the feeling someone is going to go make that account?) Honestly, it tends to be very, very easy to recognize noobs, simply by all-lower case names, but especially by numbers.

There are a good number of exceptions, of course, so don't think I'm necessarily accusing you of being a noob for having a lowercase name or numbers. But, honestly, the point of this entry isn't about identifying noobs or anything like that.

It's just about the numbers. I mean, why are they even allowed in names? They almost always just look terrible.

Well, let's change that. I know why they are allowed - because practically all sites allow alphanumeric characters in name generation. But we don't really need them on W-H. I mean, we've got 10k users who can have usernames anywhere from five to 24 (I think) characters long. Or something like that. We're not exactly running out of names here. Heck, go look at some of those people with numbers in their names - the base name (without the numbers) probably isn't even taken in the first place.

So, I'm not criticizing Karl for allowing numbers in usernames. But, honestly, it'd be nice if we stopped allowing them, because they just look terrible and aren't necessary. I mean, if you were playing a single player RPG, would you name your character noob8273? (If the answer is yes, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog).

Now, I know some of you have numbers in your names and don't want to change that, and I also know that it'd be incredibly difficult to change all the usernames currently in use to remove numbers. I'm not suggesting that; I know that would be way too much effort.

But, honestly, why not just disallow numbers at account registration? It'll stop any more users from showing up with numbers, and if they really want them, get a name change. It's like five-character names - can't sign up with them, but you can still have them.

Honestly, I don't think that many noobs would bother sending in tickets just to get numbers added to their names. It'd be a win-win situation - noobs stop looking like... well, noobs, and we stop having to deal with numbers in people's names and the difference between wolf_noob999 and wolf_noob998.

Before you post your angry comments, I'm just throwing this concept out there. I'm not suggesting Karl spend his time on this rather than 1.2 or fixing bugs or the like. Nor am I suggesting it's an important matter. Just consider the concept, alright? If I wanted to make this an actual suggestion, I would have put it in the suggestions forum.

Do you really have to put a disclaimer like that on everything?

Yes. People are crazy.

So are you.

...Point.

Anyway, I need to go find some food. My fingers are killing me. You try typing with blisters some time...

How To Squander Potential: Completely Ignore Your Players

(Author's Note (Edited): First off, this entry was supposed to receive a bit more editing before being published. Unfortunately, my internet went out Monday morning and hasn't come back; I was stuck with my neighbor's intermittent internet network, and wasn't able to edit it. After quite a bit of fiddling and troubleshooting, I managed to fix my internet access up, though. I swear, sometimes it's more annoying when something finally works for no conceivable reason than when it doesn't work at all.

Second, I have no idea why this entry didn't post on time. It was clearly scheduled for 12:01 AM April 19th 2011. Yet it didn't post. So, sorry for the lateness... I'll try and make sure it doesn't happen again.)

See what you people get when you kill me? I mean, sheesh, I spend my valuable time insulting you all, and are you grateful? No! Instead you freaking kill me! And then you're stuck with Sesh. Decisions and consequences. The cycle is complete.

Anyway, now that she's gone, we can get back to nor-

I'm right here.

Shut up. As I was saying, we can get back to our (relatively) normal schedule around here...

This thread provides a nice example of just how far W-H has fallen. I mean, seriously? So much for equal rules and all.

The response to the revelation of the art theft was rather surprising. If you didn't get to see Alo's news post before it was deleted, you can download the page here. Just a simple saved webpage, should work with any browser. Or, if you don't want to download it and just want to view the text easily, you can click here, although that leaves out the comments. As I said, surprising. When you criticize someone's job relentlessly, you don't exactly expect them to agree with you. Although I'd have to say that entry was one hell of a way to turn in a resignation.

It's hardly an isolated feeling, too, even among the staff. To quote another staff member I'm acquainted with, "Can't we just agree that wolf-haven sucks major balls and isn't going anywhere?" Naturally, they were only speaking anonymously, but it does demonstrate the point of how even the staff are fed up with W-H.

To take a break from W-H for a moment, I finished Mass Effect 2 a few days ago (got Against All Odds, missed No One Left Behind by Kasumi). Allow me to be very clear: if you don't have this game, go get it now. It's that good. I'm just not sure how I'll survive until the third entry comes out...

Also, while browsing TV Tropes, I came across this link. Seriously, you have to watch that video. It's just so much concentrated awesome, it can't be expressed. The level of effort that had to go into that... and then making it fit with the music... Wow. Just wow.

Anyway, back to W-H... Originally, this entry was going to explain the latest profile manipulation, where Karl's BBCode returned to haunt him by allowing us to entirely remove our profile information and then retype it. Which was totally awesome, of course, and basically harmless, since it was easy to identify the fake profiles, and the real info could be easily accessed in the source code.

Of course, demonstrating rule #24 of W-H (Bugs go unfixed until Storm abuses them), Karl quickly fixed the coding so that it's no longer possible to do that, at least until we figure out another way past. I mean, people have been modding their profiles since the start of W-H, and, as I said, it's basically harmless. However, apparently Karl has plenty of time to make sure to remove any fun uses of coding we have, while not even doing a thing about the rampant cheating and glitch abuses elsewhere. I mean, look at the fucking map...

Really, this is absurd. We've been asking for bug fixes on things like the Send Points feature for over a fucking year now, but no, Karl's too busy. Yeah, right. If he can be bothered to fix a coding bug that has no impact on gameplay, then he has plenty of time to fix the rest of the bugs and deal with the issues all around.

Besides, what are those bugs doing there in the first place? I mean, it was such a simple bug, I can't believe he would have missed it. Well, wait, it's Karl. I can believe it. But whatever. If he's going to take so long coding things, could he at least get them right?

The most common argument against my criticisms is that Karl isn't doing nothing - in fact, that he's done an incredible amount and still is. Let's stop for a second. Look at W-H currently. This is the result of Karl doing an incredible amount of work? Either he's making the situation progressively worse with his effort (entirely possible) or his effort is completely worthless. I mean, it's probably more insulting to him to claim he's been working hard and this is how we've ended up. At least if he hadn't done anything, he couldn't have directly caused it through his actions.

If Karl really has done a ton, let's see some of it. Because right now, W-H is utter chaos. Everything's in disarray, and even his staff are revolting against him. This is not exactly what I picture when I hear how he's been doing 'so much'. And yet, it's what we've got.

As players, we demand bread and circuses. We want new content. New features. But we have a specific type of bread and circuses we want. It's actually a very broad range of things we want, despite my use of the word specific. But there are things we don't want and/or don't care about.

Let's look at the menu change. Did we want that? No. Did we ask for that? No. Does it even help us at all? No. Does it confuse everyone? Yes. I mean, the sheer number of people asking where the hell the support tickets went is staggering.

What about challenge removal? We definitely didn't ask for that. I mean, I don't think we've ever asked for a feature to be removed. Even if we weren't using it, it still doesn't need to be removed. I mean, if it's not being used, let it sit there, code something else, rather than taking time deleting it.

It's not like we're asking the impossible or anything - we have an entire freaking suggestions board! Karl can easily see what we want! It can't be that hard to give us some of those ideas that everyone agrees on! But instead, we're getting random features nobody wants.

Why the hell do we even have a suggestion board? I can count the number of implemented suggestions within the past six months on one hand! And there've been quite a few good suggestions in those months. Honestly, I don't know why anyone even bothers anymore - none of our ideas ever happen, period.

W-H is doing terrible in everything except pumping Karl money. Which is probably all that's relevant to him, but whatever. Would it really be that hard to actually pay attention to the players and give them what they want? No!

Really, W-H would be a lot better off if we, as the players, had more of a say in what we get. I would assume we know what we want, after all. What will he add next, the option to turn off the XP bar? It's certainly something no one has ever asked for, and nobody would give a shit about it.

W-H had potential. Ignoring the users has squandered that immensely (among other things).

Major Art Theft

Hm? Oh, right, there's supposed to one of those infernal blog entries today. Dammit. I guess I'll have to do something.

No, I'm not Storm. Mei killed him after Tuesday's entry, remember? Thursday's entry was already scheduled, but I guess a buffer larger than one entry was too much to expect from him. Lazy ass...

Anyway, Storm's regenerating over at his phylactery over there. I think it's the jar with the Hello Kitty stickers on it. If I had to guess, I'd say he'll be fully recovered by... Monday?

Oh, right, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Sesh. I'm one of the personality fragments that floats around Storm's mind making him look insane when he talks to me. Don't confuse me with Janie, who is one of Storm's alternate personalities. I'm only attached to the 'Storm' personality, which is why I'm not in Janie's head. Maybe I should move over there; probably more interesting.

Basically I hang around and comment on just about everything, when I'm not napping or something. Storm claims this is proof that he's insane. Between the two of us, though, the reality of it is that I got tired of how many times he used me as a roleplay character and killed me anticlimactically, so I decided to hang around inside his brain. Dirty place in here.

Oh, and yeah, I'm female. This is probably a sign of some sort of deep-seated emotional problems. Or insanity. Don't ask me; I'm not a psychologist. I mean, I have enough problems figuring out if I exist or not. I bet you don't ever have to wonder if you're actually alive or simply a piece of someone's mind...

So, anyway, you're stuck with me for this entry. If you don't like it, then you probably shouldn't have killed Storm. Although he totally deserved it. But still, I'd prefer not to have to type this. I mean, these keys are near-impossible to press without fingers...

Let's see what he had planned in his notes. Hm... 'Call users useless furzombies'. Whatever those are. I don't think so. 'More dead pedophile jokes'. Ugh. On second thought, it's better he's dead. Really. I promise I'll find something, alright?

Guide Info, Screenshots, Neverwinter Nights 2, Blackmail, Giraffes, Media... Ah, there we go, Blog Topics. What's he got in here... XP Removal, Communist hats, Customs, Facists Hats, Curse of Band, Numerals & Names... Dangit, I don't know about any of this stuff! I can't write about this... I don't pay attention to any of this.

I don't see the latest copy of Evil Hats Weekly around. I guess he was right when he said I'd regret not reading it. Although I don't see any hat overlords around here. Gah, maybe there's something else in these files...

Hm... art theft? That sounds simple enough. I'll try that. I hope these notes are complete.

Alright... apparently back in December there were some art theft issues with a staff member known as 'Phoenix'. The image for her quest, and the ISE page (which was apparently very frequent?) turned out to be traced from a well-known artist's work. Phoenix claimed that this was apparently a tribute; she didn't seem to have permission, though. Click for image comparison.

Something here about the site being hacked before any of this was resolved... apparently this 'Phoenix' person disappeared, and the image was removed. Most people forgot about it. I guess you people have short memories? Not that it makes a difference to me or anything.

Apparently, though, a group of players listed here only as 'the unnamed' did a bit of research on the rest of the art work, though. I guess they thought this could get them in trouble or something; apparently they made Storm delete all records of their conversations and then sent him these links via an email from Belgium? I'm starting to think this wasn't the best idea for an entry after all... I hope Storm doesn't get mad at me. More than usual, I mean.

This group of players determined that the art theft wasn't just limited to that one image, though. There were more. A lot more. Take a look at a few.

W-H Image | Original Image | W-H Image Placed On Top Of Original

Those are just a few of the images on here. Apparently the images were also uploaded to megaupload. Go ahead and download it; it's just images. I checked. Nothing nasty in there. Although apparently there were one or two more pieces that weren't put in there. Space, maybe.

The file says all these images were found using Google image search, within the first page. Most of these images also aren't in the public domain, especially that quest wolf up there... whatever public domain means. I don't keep up with terms like that, alright? But from the sound of this, it probably means that the artist wasn't supposed to use it.

Storm made an extra note that while the file specifically implicates this Phoenix person, some of the pictures are from earlier than when she was on the staff, not to mention that there are a few varying art styles. Apparently this means it's unlikely that Phoenix was the only artist who did them.

There's also something here about it being 'goddamn fucking impossible for Karl not to have noticed. Why the hell didn't anyone pick up on this before?' I guess he wasn't happy about this. Not sure why. But whatever. There's also notes on Phoenix's disappearance being part of a conspiracy to keep this quie- Actually, let's stop there. When he gets into conspiracy theories, reality starts bending to his ideas. You don't want to go there. We'll just stick with it apparently being obvious that the people in charge had knowledge of this.

What else... Oh, yeah. Apparently several staff members were informed of this previously, but it was kept quiet. Supposed to be blackmail material if they object to this info or dispute the evidence. Dammit, why didn't I write about hats?

So, uh, I think I'll just summarize this and get out of here. Do they have a witness protection program for personality fragments? Anyone know?

Somebody called Phoenix, likely in addition to another artist or two, used a whole bunch of material they weren't supposed to, so that almost every enemy added in 1.1 and several of the original enemies are stolen. The head staff was apparently complicit in this. So... the vast majority of enemies on W-H are stolen artwork. Not just one quest image, like everyone thought.

I'm out of here - Storm should be back on Tuesday! If either of us are alive...

The World As We (Don't) Know It: Enemies

You know, we seem to have lost an affiliate within the past week or so. I have no idea which one it was... nor do I really care. I mean, if you asked me what affiliates we have, I could name Vis Servo, Wonderwhy, some Warriors RP, and a Dreamhost ad. None of the rest really stick in my head. Not that any of them matter, anyway...

Aside from that... nothing's happened. You know, there's only so much of Karl doing nothing I can report before... I don't know. Something or other happens. Wait, no, technically nothing happens, because he's doing nothing... forget I said anything, actually.

Seriously, though... It's kinda a bad sign that the sporadic moments of chaos caused by exploits are really the only amusement we get around here. That, and drama, which is probably worse. The worst part is, though, that if you remove all the staff from the site, and then remove all the experienced players and leave the site to the noobs... the site would be exactly the same as before. Just, seriously, it wouldn't make a difference. Think about it.

Anyway, this is going to be the final entry on the world of W-H impossible namelessness land. Not because there's nothing else to cover (I'm sure I could think of something), but because I think I've got my point through, and you guys have been hearing about this for a week. I don't want to bore you too much, after all. So Saturday's entry will be back to the normal. Well, whatever qualifies as normal here...

So, let's recap. In the first entry, we've established that impossible namelessness land is... impossible. I bet you never could have figured that out by yourself. Yeah... In the second entry, we've determined that quests are completely pointless and illogical, and that W-H is worse than Pong. In all seriousness, I'm not entirely sure if I can top that insult...

Regardless, today we're looking at the enemies. As mentioned before, the animals on W-H appear to be unintelligent items of food. Like... exactly what they are now. Hey! We found something on W-H that makes sense! It's a miracle!

Oh, wait... it only makes sense in the context of our world. In namelessness land, it makes no sense at all, because if wolves are intelligent then there's really no reason why other animals shouldn't be. I mean, wolves are canines, right? So if they're intelligent, all canines should be. And if we're going by evolutionary theory (assuming that evolution in namelessness land exists and a wizard didn't create the universe), then technically everything is related and the vast majority of the animals should be intelligent. And while we're at it, I suppose the plants should be intelligent too. But whatever.

So, sorry to disappoint you, but there's not actually anything that makes sense here. I know, I was excited for a moment too...

Anyway, the animals tend to ignore climate, apparently, since we've got creatures that shouldn't exist on the same continent as each other. However, I'm going to pass on that, since that's probably just for the sake of having variety, and there's no real guarantee that it's not possible in namelessness land. Besides, it's too easy.

 So... what do these animals in impossible namelessness land do? Nothing. They stand there until you try and kill them. We don't even get any mention of them doing anything, aside from a few quests which complain about populations and such. Apparently natural instincts are bad things or something.

But still, there's no motivation to kill them. Now, personally, I would think that if I was a wolf, and I had a choice, I'd prefer one or two animals as food. Like, big game, maybe. But here, we've got no more reason to kill a mouse than a bear, aside from XP (which isn't something to be thought of in the game world context here). Some of the animals we can kill wolves don't even eat - I mean, a wolf literally can't eat a penguin. So... kill for mindless slaughter?

Speaking of killing, I'm going to go off on a tangent here. Karl makes W-H to be politically correct. Yes, I'm serious. All the quests were suggested by players, right? He actually went through them all and removed the word 'kill' from any of them. Instead it's defeat, or something along those lines. When you win a battle, you defeat your enemy. Not kill it. He even once mentioned he'd considered changing the respawn timer to a 'recovery' timer. I'm not making this up.

The word 'kill' isn't anywhere in the official text onsite (except I think a taco quest; it was back when I did it months ago. That is, if there was a taco quest). So the site goes out of its way to avoid killing. How are we supposed to interpret this? Do you actually not kill anything? You're a carnivore. You fetch Byz food. You 'reduce' the populations of animals. How the hell are you doing this without killing?

Besides, how many of you would be offended if the word 'kill' actually showed up on W-H? I mean, the players refer to it as that anyway. There's never been a single person complaining about it. And yet, we must be politically correct. Hell, wolves and coyotes are both canines, right? Karl initially refused to add coyotes because apparently people would complain about 'killing' canines. Except, like, we had a poll on it and no one gave a shit about it.

So, Karl is obviously very much against any implication of killing things on his site. About carnivores. Despite the fact that it's irrelevant. Does this strike you as stupid? Oh, also...

The word 'kill' isn't allowed in quest text. Human arms? That's fine! And remember, this is a staff artist we're talking about here. And Karl allowed this. Hypocritical much?

You know, that wasn't really relevant to this entry... but hey, if you expected sanity, you came to the wrong place. It does point out the flaw of whether or not we kill things. Sure, it's heavily implied in the game world, but if Karl is against it... how are we supposed to know? It's a complete contradiction. Who do we listen to? It's completely absurd either way...

Oh, and let's take a moment on Vlad. Unlike the rest of the enemies, he has a name. Is he intelligent, then? We don't know. If not, wolves must have named him. Actually, even if he is, wolves named him, because we wouldn't know whatever he calls himself. But still... named enemies are important 99% of the time in games. Instead, we've got no info on him... at all. But I've covered that before, so I'll let it go with that.

Basically, we don't know why the enemies exist, why we kill them (if we do kill), why killing a million mice allows you to take out a gorilla, etc. Heck, why are macaws better than bears? Why can we kill roadrunners if a certain coyote tried for years and never even got one? There's just endless questions here, none with a good explanation.

The biggest one, though, is this: why? In other words, what's your motivation to do anything in this world? Nothing, from quests to enemies to the world itself, has the answer to that question. It's pointless.

I'll use the rest of this entry for the conclusion, from what we've seen in all three entries...

The home page of W-H reads as following: "Wolf-Haven is an original non-forum based wolf RPG". Really? I think not. Let's look at this.

Is W-H original? Not really. The 'original' part most people refer to when talking about how other sites aren't like W-H is the concept. What could have been. What we didn't get. Because, honestly? The W-H we have now isn't original. The complete lack of any plotline or reason to play a game? Not original. Pac-Man was more original than the W-H we currently have.

The non-forum-based part... well, it should have another hyphen, like I put in. But aside from me being a grammar Nazi... I disagree. Nobody plays the game. We hang out on the forums and the chatbox. They see way more activity than the map. Let's just throw that out. Besides, it sounds like it's saying forum RPs suck. I've been in some good ones; honestly, a proboards forum would probably give you more entertainment than W-H. And you don't even have to pay for an RP forum.

Let's go with the wolf part for a second. Replace all the wolves with dead pedophiles. Assume the questgivers and art change. Is the site different? No. It makes absolutely no difference at all, except in what you can have as customs, which isn't really part of the site. In fact, it might make more sense game-wise. I mean, dead pedophiles don't require a habitable planet or anything. So I don't think we can use any sort of label here, because it doesn't matter at all what the characters are. It makes no difference.

Then we've got the RP part. There's no roleplay here. I made that very clear last time. If you've ever played a PC and/or console RPG, you'll acknowledge the truth of that. If you've never played an RPG... what the hell are you doing reading this? Go buy KOTOR. Or Mass Effect. Or something along those lines. And do it now. Seriously, life without RPGs is boring...

So all we've got left is the 'G' - game. Is W-H a game? Well, games are supposed to be fun and interesting. They're supposed to have a point, and they're supposed to be winnable (and maybe losable). Do we have any of those things? No. So I don't think it's a stretch to say that W-H doesn't even qualify as a game.

So now we have 'Wolf-Haven is a(n) ______________'. What should go there? Waste of space? Monumental disappointment? Stupendous waste of potential? Excuse for Storm to be overly wordy? Get rich quick scheme by Karl? Website with no content except dead pedophiles? Refuge of heretics who refuse to acknowledge the power of the Raisin Muffin?

I don't really know. Why don't you think about it for a while? Heck, if you want, leave your answers in the comments. Maybe you can find some amusement from it. It's certainly more than you'll get playing the game itself.

The World As We (Don't) Know It: Quests

Our continuing saga of Karl not doing anything while chaos reigns on W-H... continues? Call me too lazy to grab a thesaurus and look up a synonym. But as I was saying, we've still got someone (or maybe multiple people?) wrecking havoc unfettered around here. Fortunately it looks like it wasn't too serious, with just some things in the forums messed up. Like, random stickied topics and somebody's pack RP ending up in the main forum (unviewable by the majority of the players, though).

Those of you who decided that it was too petty for something I would have done were correct. I mean, I would have at least locked the topics too. And, like, cleaned up the suggestion board or something. Not to mention I was asleep at the time...

Also, apparently Burn (or Zanna, as you might know her by) has been banned. Actually, this happened last week, but that's what I get for writing entries in advance. Anyway, that's another fairly well-known member gone. Anyone want to start a betting pool on who's next?

Oh, and apparently in 1.2 RP topic starters can delete posts from annoying noobs. Too bad we didn't get this sooner, before all the RP boards died and went to hell. Not to mention we're finally getting to edit our first posts, after ages and ages of asking for it. Why the fuck was this not allowed in the first place?

Anyway...

As stated in the last entry, this part of our series on impossible namelessness land will feature quests, as well as any lore and plotline. Basically, any information about the world that we have through characters that exist in said world... if we actually had any info, that is. Oh well.

Alright, so we'll start by establishing the fourth wall. All quest characters seem to have no knowledge they exist inside a game, so there is obviously a fourth wall in play here. This is excluding Karlos, who does break the fourth wall, but only to basically welcome the player. This is expected, as is some sort of tutorial on how to play, like in most video games.

Too bad we don't actually get any of that 'tutorial' stuff. Or, like, if the FAQ actually included questions on how to use the map and attack things. Oh, wait, I forgot - it was all ripped from my guide, which already had a tutorial, so it didn't need to answer those things!

Getting back on track, we know that all of the questgivers are characters in their world. We can draw a few conclusions just from their appearances. First, either there is a cave full of permanent markers or vats of paint, or some other unexplained circumstance has allowed wolves to come in a full range of absurd colors. I bet a wizard did it. >.>

Of course, I'm not going to complain about the coloring too much. As all the characters are actually owned by the players, it just reflects what the players wanted to color their wolves. That, and my character's design is somewhat less than strictly realistic anyway.

The second conclusion we can make is that wolves are sentient, intelligent creatures. As a corollary, all other animals seem to be non-sentient and simply food, since none of them are ever portrayed as anything but food, and none of them can talk. Not to mention that several questgivers talk like they are 'managing' the population of the other species, like we'd do with, say, cattle or horses. More on that later.

We can also note that wolves appear to ignore any instinctual behavior they have on earth, as they don't appear to be territorial or hostile to strangers (except Mei, and she's *comment censored to prevent Mei from killing the author*). They also appear to have vastly differing goals. This would be realistic, as humans hardly cooperate on anything, if any of those goals could be connected to each other.

Instead, we're stuck with a ton of 'kill 10 rats' quests that are completely and utterly unrelated to each other. There's no connection, even if you did a quest for that character previously. For example, at one point Byz is injured and needs food. You give her food... and that's it. Nothing related to her other appearances on the map, and nothing to deal with the fact that she still has a wound to recover from that would probably take weeks. Even with the huge amount of food you give her (how the fuck did you carry 10 fawns?), she'd still need more help or something.

Of course, there's a reason for this: all the quests were written by players. Now, this might seem like a nice idea... but it doesn't really work. Sure, we could have all the current quests and be mostly fine... if we also had a plotline of some sort, which would have to be written by staff. But no. No storyline allowed. Just defeat random enemies so you can gain XP.

Oh, speaking of XP, apparently the questgivers know it exists, despite there being a fourth wall. Because, you know, they're all like 'here take this' when you're done and hand you DP and XP, and maybe points.

This causes a lot of questions. For one, how the hell do you give XP to someone? A magical Thayan learning scroll? Sure, it's understandable that quests should reward XP... but the questgiver actually giving it to you? Yeah. Oh, and how do they know XP exists if they don't know they're in a game?

Oh, wait, that's logic. Sorry.

And then there's DP. What exactly is DP, anyway? It stands for Dominance Points, so... it's how dominant you are in the world? Um, how do you give dominance to someone? And if you get dominance from helping quest givers, like they're giving you some of their dominance... why don't you just kill them in the first place? I mean, then you'd get all their dominance or whatever, right?

Anyway... We've still got no sort of plot or even continuity in the quests. They're all unrelated. If you do all but one, it makes no difference. No chain quests, either. Nor does it affect the world in any way if you do or don't do any of the quests. So... they're pointless and irrelevant?

We don't get any information from them, either. No background, nothing about the world, no explanations of why they're blue and pink and red, nothing. In fact, they seem to contradict each other half the time - Lumina worries about how apparently the population of elk and caribou is getting out of hand, basically like a game warden. Meanwhile Mei acts like a protective pack alpha against the extremely-threatening snow leopards (and the wild goats, which Fellack claims are extremely dangerous predators. Run while you still can!). Those two mindsets don't even belong in the same world.

So, let's look at our checklist:

-Standard kill 10 rats quests? Check
-Completely unrelated to each other? Check
-Inexplicable reward system? Check
-No in-game reason to complete them? Check
-Contradictory info on what wolves in general in namelessness land are like? Check
-Background information about the world? Um... nope
-Any sort of overriding objective? Nope
-Fun, believable, and interesting? Nope

Hm... I don't know. It's almost like someone went out of their way to make it impossible to have a worse quest system! Although I'm sure I could think of something...

So, let's combine what we have from the past entry. In impossible namelessness land, there are a bunch of confusing and unrelated quests to kill random things for no good reason. So... the point of W-H is to kill random things for no good reason?

Think about it. What is the goal of the player in W-H? Get more XP so you're stronger. Why? Uh... just because?

That's all the reason we get. We are supposed to continually kill random animals to gain XP in a never-ending, impossible-to-win cycle. In an RPG, there should be a storyline here. W-H claims to be an RPG. Allow me to make this very, very clear:

W-H IS NOT AN RPG.


Clear enough for you? Seriously, go look it up. This isn't a roleplaying game. There's no roleplay involved. There's no reason for your character to do anything. Heck, you can't even claim your character exists - because nothing happens to you. You've got no purpose. Just hit buttons continually until you... oh, wait, no, it's just hit buttons continually. Because it's impossible to win because it has no end.

Even Pong had a point - win the game. Get the ball past the other side. You get the idea. We don't even have that. You can't win, you can't lose, you can't ever have anything happen!

Yes, I just said that Pong was a better game than W-H. Deal with it.

Please remind me why I'm playing this again?

Next up: Enemies (And maybe something on Vlad)

The World As We (Don't) Know It: Geography

People need to learn the difference between new coding and new content. Karl's recoding things for 1.2 - that doesn't mean you're actually getting new features. Sure, it's possible you might, but take into account that Karl has previously said that 1.2 was supposed to purely be a recode, and we wouldn't get any content until 1.3. Of course, he's probably changed his mind, but still... stop raving over all the new stuff you're going to get in 1.2 until you actually know you're going to get it.

For those of you who stalk the suggestions board, this thread contains a good example of how to shoot down a thread and the attached noob to the point where they'll probably never make a suggestion again. Which, when dealing with noobs, is the correct goal, because you really don't want them back. Whereas for an idea that might be feasible but isn't really useful, you wouldn't want to criticize the creator... too much.

Also on the forums, the Advanced RP board has officially gone to hell. Just on the first page, over half the RPs don't meet the rules for word count and/or grammar; quite a few belong in playful. Nothing's been done about it, either, so it's probably a lost cause. The sad part is now Intermediate RP has better average quality. (Pro tip: 99% of threads started by users with no capitalization in their names are breaking the rules. Seriously, it's that easy to tell).

Heck, RP in general is a lost cause on W-H; never been moderated much in the first place, and why would staff start now? We've got a huge noob population, some of them so dumb that they have to ask what a word minimum is (tell them it's minimum word length). Not to mention that with the messages actually showing what they reply to in 1.2, forum RPs will basically be outdated, at least for 1x1.

The chatbox also seems to have a noob infestation; seriously, I rarely go on without there being at least one noob or troll annoying everyone. Something needs to be done here... Like, say, actually enforcing that age rule, maybe. Did you know that there's never actually been a point someone was banned from chat for being under 16? I'm serious. We made the rule months ago, and have never enforced it once.

Anyway, I'm going to break from my usual pattern here, and write a series of entries. Yes, that's correct - I've got a topic that's so long even I can't fit it in one entry. Or rather, a series of connected topics.

I'm going to be covering our world of W-H in general, from the map to the quests to the enemies, analyzing them all. It's more of a 'why' thing than anything else. That, and I want to point out flaws in things... well, more than usual.

In this entry, we're going to concentrate primarily on the world of Wolf Haven itself. Actually, we don't even know what the world is called. The only quest to even mention it is Karl's introductory one, which, since it's breaking the fourth wall, is probably referring to the name of the site, and not the world. Besides, while W-H is a fine name for a site, it's hardly a name for a world. And we know we aren't on Earth, due to the geography and species spread. Oh, and the flying demon sparkledogs.

So, we've barely begun, and we've run into our first problem: we have no idea what this place is called. For convenience, I'm still going to call it W-H, but the truth is that it doesn't actually have a name. You wouldn't think a name would be that hard...

Now that we have entered the land of namelessness, let's look at what else we can find. Directions... oh, dammit, we don't have any cardinal directions either. No idea what way is north. Heck, since we're not on Earth... do we even have north? Are there magnetic poles? Does gravity even exist? I mean, seriously, on a 2D map it's hard to tell. Characters are never implied to not be able to fly. Maybe there are just geomagnetic storms above water and trees that prevent passage? It may sound ridiculous, but we don't know. These things need to be established, or at least implied. Like, if we saw characters sitting on the ground, it's implied gravity exists. Instead, we see them in odd positions... probably hovering 20 feet off the ground, for all we know.

However, for the sake of having something to go on, we're going to assume the following:

1: The map is oriented towards the cardinal directions, like all standard maps. Up = North, Down = South, Right = East, Left = West.
2: The laws of physics apply except whenever it's more 'cool' for them not to. Or just when it's easier to be lazy.

I make these assumptions because that is how real life tends to work, and unless told otherwise, everything is assumed to be like real life. If we're not specifically told that the map is actually upside down and up is actually south, then we have no reason to believe that. So, if we were actually supposed to believe anything else, we should have been informed of that somewhere.

So, with those assumptions, we go into geography. Yes, I know you hate geography. Most people do. Trust me, I won't dwell on it long before I get back to insulting things.

Alright, since the laws of physics apply here, we assume W-H-world exists on a planet. This planet presumably orbits a sun, at a precise range for habitable life blah blah blah. You get the point.

Now, climate is caused by how much heat from the sun you get (well, when you dumb it down a lot. You don't want the details). On Earth, the most sunlight goes to the tropical locations, and the least to the arctic ones.

So, we have basically three climates: tropical (island), temperate (forest), and arctic (snow). The desert doesn't really count, because deserts can exist even in sub-zero temperatures and can be formed by natural formations, like mountains.

The arctic area, logically, is basically the same as one of our poles. So, we have an East pole, instead of a north pole.

Now, we have two possibilities here. If this world follows the same patterns as Earth, then it goes East Pole - Temperate zone (forest) - Tropical zone (island) - temperate zone (unknown) - West Pole, and we just haven't seen anything past the tropical zone, since it would be in the far west. The second possibility is that the West Pole just doesn't exist, and there's only one snowy pole on the planet.

However, neither of those is actually possible. Why? Well, picture the planet orbiting its sun. If the second possibility is true, then the East Pole must never face the sun (not to mention we'd have a super-desert of constant day and heat in the west). That just doesn't work, period. You can't have only one pole that avoids the sun's light and still have a habitable planet. In the first case, the only possible scenario would be to have the planet orbit the sun sideways. I don't have a diagram, but imagine the Earth's orbit of the sun, and turn the entire thing 90 degrees.

In that case, it's entirely possible for there to be two poles at the east and west. However, I think this is just stretching the Willful Suspension of Disbelief a bit too far. Although I'm not a scientist, common sense just says that shouldn't be gravitationally possible while maintaining a habitable planet. Not my field of expertise, though.

So, basically, we've got a physically impossible planet that namelessness land exist on. Again, we are assuming the laws of physics apply. It's entirely possible W-H is in a different universe and this works fine. But we have to be told if that's the case. Otherwise, it doesn't work.

Let's go to the forest itself. We've got grass, trees, what appear to be rivers, paths, and bridges. You might expect me to start my criticism on the paths/bridges, but I'm going to give those a pass. We'll assume bridges represent any form of crossing, be it a beaver dam or a ford, and just are placeholder tiles because making extra tiles for different crossings would be overkill. And paths exist so that we, as human players, have a direction to go.

So how large is a tile, anyway? How much does it represent? Let's make some assumptions here, since we have no data and have to make logical guesses.

A tile must be large enough for several animals to forage/hunt without stepping on each other. They must also be large enough that a wolf attacking an animal would not cause any panic in another tile, since nothing ever runs away when we attack something next to it. Thus, the tiles must be enough space that a creature in another tile either can't hear it or is not worried about it.

My parents own a 5 acre piece of property. Looking at it, it would have the space, although animal senses could probably hear out of it. Still, we'll be conservative, and say that each tile is 5 acres.

This brings up the obvious issue of scale. You cannot have a transition between terrain over 5 acres. It just doesn't happen, period. Terrain doesn't just drop off at one point.

Not to mention how small it would make the explorable map, when you size it up. But then, what am I supposed to assume? Each tile is a square mile? That seems way too large, not to mention the infeasibility of rivers a mile wide all over. This is, once again, an example of something we need to be informed of. If we actually knew how far our wolf moved with each key press, at least we could relate. Instead, we're stuck judging by tiles. So much for any sense of actually being in the game. Let's just have all the questgivers break the fourth wall and talk about XP, too, while we're at it. Yeah...

Then we've got rivers. Rivers always have sources, and they always go somewhere. This is due to gravity. Unless we don't have gravity, and they're just bodies of water floating there. Which raises the question of why they don't get drained or anything. But still, it's actually more feasible than our current situation. Rivers come from nowhere, and go nowhere. They should come from either springs or mountains, and either merge together, or head towards the ocean. If we have an ocean, since we don't know if the island is actually in the middle of a large lake or not. Although a tropical island in the middle of a lake... would actually be completely consistent with everything else we've found so far. Sensing a problem here yet?

So, instead of actually being interesting, or at least believable, rivers come off as basically trees v2. Another random barrier thrown in because all trees was just too boring. Yeah, that works well.

Of course, a common argument is that we don't care about realism. Technically, this isn't entirely correct. We're not interested in copying Earth. However, we are not willing to throw logic completely out the window and believe completely illogical things (well, I'm not, at least. Those of you who are willing to believe illogical things may start building me a shrine now). If the entire world functions differently in W-H, that's fine! But we have to be told that. Otherwise, it just makes no sense at all. And by told, I mean with a better reason than 'a wizard did it.'

We haven't covered the desert much. Let's move there.

Why does the desert exist? Is there a magic artifact of doom that radiates intense heat? Is there a mountain range blocking rainfall (I sure don't see one)? Was a bowl of spicy chili poured on the land and turned it into an eternal wasteland? Again, we don't know. The chili is just as feasible as the mountain range (maybe more so).

There's no logical reason for a desert to exist there. If things worked differently, we should have been told. Otherwise, we should get a reasonable explanation. How hard is it to stick some mountain tiles around somewhere and claim they cause a rain shadow? Or to say it's a result of some event in history (ooh, history... there's something that we don't have anything of at all). Or make it a result of some artifact, as said; could get a quest out of that too...

On to the island. First off, it's not much of an island if there's a giant bridge leading to it. But we'll chalk that off to accessibility.

Alright, we have a tropical island that is basically a replica of the Galapagos Islands with a few more things thrown in (they're island in South America with a variety of odd creatures). And we still don't know if it exists on the ocean or a lake. Or even why it exists, and what it's doing there. And if it's the ocean, what's stopping it from flooding the rest of the map? Sure, it's hard to portray height on a 2D map, but hey, you could, like, throw some mountain or hill tiles around to demonstrate that the land is higher or something.

Not to mention tide. Seriously, just by looking at that island, like half of it should be submerged half the time. And if we throw in a tsunami for good measure... why the heck is it above sea level, anyway?

But we're getting into more technical aspects here, so I think I'll end this part now. As a recap, we've established that namelessness land exists on a physically impossible planet, which may or may not have gravity, with absurd climates and no reason for them to exist. And basically life should be impossible and everything on this place should be dead.

Unless we're all zombies. With some sort of particle field keeping our flesh from decaying. You know, that could explain a lot... which is why it's so sad. I mean, seriously, if I can realistically theorize the planet is inhabited by zombies, something is very wrong.

Next up: Quests!

Bonus Entry: Dear Noob...

I got a message a bit ago that I couldn't help but want to share, and why make you guys wait for it? I'm not totally cruel and evil... Wait. Yes, I am. Never mind.

Anyway, be sure to read the previous entry if you haven't, as it's today's 'official' entry. This is just for your amusement.

Look! From -Brook-, sent on 2011-04-07 at 09:57:23

For one, I'm not a low level noob. I'm way past a noob. I have every right to make suggestions. You are not the boss of everyone!Just beacuase your a legend, does not mean you can do everything. And also, I just had that on my mind, I was not saying it to be so. But I think you should work on not being do bossy to every lower rank.

To put this in context, I haven't had any communication with anyone by this name within the past week, I don't recall any suggestions I shot down by this person (I even scanned the topic starters on the first page - no results), and their profile was a bunch of garbage and no help in identifying them.

However, I had nothing better to do at the moment, so...

RE:Look! To -Brook-, sent on 2011-04-07 at 11:45:05

Dear low level noob,

Thank you for writing to demonstrate how much of a noob you really are. Your message gave me a few laughs, and I will be sure to show it around as an example of the pinnacle of noob-dom.

Of course, your message would probably be more meaningful if I knew who the fuck you are. However, I don't happen to remember dealing with you within the past week, so either you're the slowest typist in existence or a side account of some noob I shot down on the forums.

But, don't worry about it, because I honestly don't care who the hell you are, as you're obviously beneath my notice, as I am uninterested in dealing with 11 year old noobs who cannot even use correct grammar.

Assuming that I did, at one point, actually waste my time in addressing your existence, then maybe you should consider the fact that there is no reason whatsoever why I am required to value your opinion at all. In fact, I'm not even required to acknowledge you exist; consider yourself lucky to have been allotted even a passing notice.

Also, you may wish to reconsider why exactly you presume that I actually give a damn about your opinion of me. Your message seems more like an 11 year old insistent on getting the last word in than anything else, as any logical person would have concluded that messaging me about whatever I presumably did to you is pointless, as I am decidedly unapologetic about my actions. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that you have no emotional maturity at all and are simply yet another young noob who shouldn't even be on the site in the first place.

On an off note, if you think so little of me, you may wish to reconsider what you post on your profile. That XP/Level/Rank list? I wrote it. As well as just about all of the actually useful info pertaining to the site. So, if you really hate my guts, then you will not use it, or any info I have written. Please enjoy being a low leveled noob forever, as W-H is clearly too complicated for you to figure out without someone instructing you on everything.

Oh, wait. You already are a low leveled noob. My bad. Carry on.

As for complaining about me being bossy, allow me to first congratulate you on using such a mature insult, as it definitely isn't something that is almost exclusively said by young children.

It is also a completely incorrect term, as the fact remains that I do not, actually, boss people around. While I freely admit to applying indiscriminate insults to almost everyone around, you will not actually be able to find me ordering anyone around, unless it is a case of common sense.

Not to mention that you attempting to force your opinions on me is 'bossy' in an of itself, clearly proving you are a complete hypocrite. Perhaps next time, when you are inevitably complaining about someone's behavior, you should consider that you have no right to enforce your beliefs on proper behavior on them.

Again, thank you for wasting part of your insignificant life writing to me. I sincerely wish to never hear from you again, so please refrain from contacting me for a period of no less than 4,672 years from the current date of April 7th, 2011, 3:44 PM PST.

Probably the only person who will ever waste their time on your pointless existence,
-Stormgaze
 
For the record, I did actually look after I sent this, and there is actually a message from this person in my inbox, about five pages back... from nearly 2 weeks ago. Yeah, I'll go with the slowest typist in existence option here.

Said message didn't shed any light on whatever they're talking about, though, and I wasn't able to find my response to them (if I sent one) in my outbox (I send a lot more messages than I receive (unless people are throwing glass at me >.>) so it's harder to search for). And, really, it wasn't worth any more effort, as I really don't care.

And yes, I did deliberately go out of my way to be extra wordy and all that. Basically the entire point of the message was to mock the noob. I'm not actually ascribing extreme importance to myself or anything. This isn't intended to be serious or anything.

(Oh, and the noob ignored what I said about not being contacted again and sent back an irrelevant reply of a few words, which I ignored. If they do actually message me again, I'm going to report them).

Having said that, I will use this to make one point. I really, really despise people who complain because the high levels don't agree with everything they said. We use levels to judge overall experience on the site, not as a means of discrimination. There are high levels that nobody gives a shit about their opinion as well - like Rodeo on this thread, who is apparently incapable of reading the post above mine. Yes, I just used a completely unrelated topic to insult them. Deal with it.

Anyway, back to low levels complaining about anything high levels due based on the grounds that it's simply discrimination against them for being low levels... that's crap. That's like claiming someone is racist against your ethnic group because they disagree with you. Yes, I just made a flawed analogy. Who cares?

Anyway, enjoy the letter!

Deconstructing Packs

Hey, the MotD isn't shamelessly advertising Karl's twitter account any longer! I forget just how long that was up... Anyway, what do you guys think the odds are that the majority of the population of W-H forgets about the entire thing? Like, say, that blog Karl tried to start that got all of one post? (Did you even know he tried to start a blog?) Or the FB page? (How many of you are thinking 'Wait, W-H has a FB page?' right now?) I'm guessing it'll just vanish into obscurity.

I'll still check on it occasionally, though. If there's any important updates or anything, I'll mention them, so don't worry about it too much.

Nothing exceptionally interesting on the pack side of things today. No big changes... Which is probably a good thing, considering that only bad things seem to happen lately. It's worth taking a look at that rainbow pack's profile, though; there's a nice example of how coding can fail utterly if you don't have the exact resolution and screen size it was designed for. Not to mention that on my netbook, the rainbow wolf emote is actually covering a bit of the nav, which is one of those unofficial rules. Don't fuck with the nav, people.

On the player side, more and more people seem to come closer to leaving. Which is definitely understandable. Seriously, look at W-H - there are quite a few notable members who've quit or been banned, and usually all of them left willingly. It's a bad sign when people start leaving. However, I think it's a lot worse that there's no valid reason you can give people to stay. Pick any prominent non-staff member on site. Imagine they decide to quit because they're tired of the game and the drama. Now, imagine one argument you could make to get them to stay that isn't pure emotion or 'we need you'.

Think about it.

And I may as well take the opportunity to recommend another webcomic. You probably haven't heard of Crimson Dark, but it's worth checking out. Unlike most webcomics, it's a bit less on the 'comic' side; closer to a graphic novel (science fiction). It's a good story, but I think it's the art I like best; it was my 'introduction' to 3D webcomics. The artist's attention to detail is amazing; I mean, have you ever seen a spaceship in a webcomic (hell, even in TV) where the interior actually made sense? I hadn't before I read this.

It seems like almost all of my entries concern either packs or the forums - sometimes both. Packs are in the lead, though... So why not take the opportunity to completely deconstruct my main writing material?

I was musing today on all of my observations about packs (most of which you've seen in previous entries) combined. You know, just the bland, general stuff: being a pack leader is hard, recruiting is impossible, loyalty is difficult to obtain, motivating lazy people just doesn't happen... Stuff that, as a pack leader, you'll invariably have considered.

When I've covered some of those topics in the past, I've tried to analyze the question 'Why?' in regards to them. What's the source? How can you fix the problem? Etc. You get the idea. But today I was wondering if I'd actually gone deep enough...

The fact is, you can reduce every single pack-related problem to the existence of packs themselves; if packs did not exist, none of your problems would. Yes, I know that you're inwardly commenting on how brilliant I am to be able to make an observation like that. Just shut up and hear me out, alright?

So, we've basically only got one issue: packs themselves. Alright, let's continue our thought pattern here. Why do packs exist?

You're probably thinking that the answer is obvious and this question isn't worth asking. I did at first as well. However... if the answer really is obvious, why is it that I have such a hard time finding one when I actually try? Think about it - why do packs exist?

Let's look at some reasons that I think people will likely come up with:

-Realism. After all, this is a wolf game, wolves hunt in packs. So it makes logical sense to have packs, right?

Not really. Solely addressing the realism aspect here... we don't give a damn about realism. We're wearing robotic armor. Not to mention the skull of a hawk that would have had to be at least three times as large as they are in real life. And we don't even have giant hawks on the map anywhere! Not to mention that low level ram-skull helmet... Coincidentally, there are no rams anywhere on the map. Or anything even remotely similar.

-DP. Working together gets DP faster, right?

Well, yes, it does. However, as I think everyone on the site knows, DP is completely worthless. I have a tendency to dump 10 million on random pack members just for the heck of it. We don't need the cash, period. In fact, DP has always been worthless. I remember back when I first joined I would run around attacking people deliberately just to lose cash, because I had so much and nothing to do with it (and there were no banks back then). The hawk gear changed nothing - by the time it was added, everyone already had that much.

-Teamwork.

Teamwork at what, exactly? I'll be honest - W-H plays more like a single-player game with a forum than any sort of actual multiplayer game. I mean, other players can't even affect your map screen aside from territory - we each get out own copy of our virtual world, with no competition for kills or anything. Ever read those theories on infinite parallel realities? W-H is actually a good example. The only 'cross-over' points on the map are boss fights.

The fact is, there's nobody who can help you on the map (don't give me crap about the mate feature). What are you supposed to cooperate towards? Packs are basically just groups of people who achieved different percentages of game completion. You could do the same thing with any console game.

Of course, there will be a few who will argue for 'helping' people along with DP and points. People can get their own DP. With the bank, it's easy. For the points... first, there are more than enough on the map. Second, that's basically socialism, because you're taking the resources gained by the better players and redistributing it to the weaker players. Although that's somewhat a flawed analogy, because the higher levels don't actually have anything to do with it. Still, the point remains that the weaker players haven't really done anything to earn it.

-Boss fights.

This would be an example of someone who Did Not Do The Research. Boss fights exist because of packs - packs do not exist because of boss fights. In fact, boss fights did not exist for a substantial amount of time until after packs did, and there wasn't even mention of them being planned during the early days of packs.

Boss fights were added to give packs something to do. Because, honestly, we were getting rather bored. After all, back then pack wars didn't count gear, so they were basically completely random (Oh, wait! They still are completely random!), and there was absolutely nothing for us to do (didn't even have a toplist).

So... players are bored, packs need something to do. Hm... Oh, I know - let's add a giant bear as a boss, and give him a name that immediately screams 'vampire!' (alright, Vladimir doesn't technically have much to do with vampires, aside from some Vlad the Impaler guy. It's still the first impression I get when hearing it). Not to mention that we should make sure we give absolutely no reason at all why said bear exists, or why it's necessary to kill him!

Let's see... we've made sure the feature is pointless, has no continuity, and basically violates every law of common sense. However, since the Players Are Morons, we don't have to worry about that. Now, let's just throw in a quick batch of coding to the whole feature and call it good! And just in case anyone wants to complain, let's make it give out free points so that no logical person will complain about it!

To sum up the sarcasm, boss fights were just part of the bread and circuses given out to keep us happy. There's no reasonable explanation for the points, either, and quite honestly, it undervalues donating. Plus, you know, there's nothing to do with points aside from buy upgrade points or art, since we've already got every gear piece from questing.

I've been more in-depth on boss fights previously, and the fact remains that nobody needs them - either the average player or packs. They're basically free money machines. We have enough of that.

-Pack Wars

Again, this is something that was added afterwards, and isn't that important. It's also one of the earlier pieces of coding, and it honestly didn't live up to all the expectations at the time. I mean, you click the attack button, you get some randomly-generated numbers, and eventually someone wins. The end.

Really, this is more bread and circuses to keep us happy. Yes, it spreads DP around... but DP is worthless. The only justifiable reason for it to exist is to keep packs from being untouchable banks with infinite fund amounts.

Here's the thing: people will argue that removing pack wars will make DP harder to obtain. The truth is the exact opposite.

Hypothetical situation: pack wars don't exist, and packs can't store money (or just don't exist, period). Money must go somewhere - thus, people are forced to carry large amounts of money on themselves, because there's more money than people can store in their banks (I mean, 400k is kinda low for a legend). When you beat someone in PvP, you get 5% of their cash. That's a lot more than what you get off pack wars. Plus, it'd be obtainable by individual players.

Money would actually be more available, even to weaker players, than it is currently. Since this isn't generating new money, and just spreading it around, it's not a bad thing. Heck, some of the concentrations of cash are fairly absurd, anyway. I mean, BM used to have over $200 million DP before the hack. Heck, at one point I had billions! (Alright, alright, that was one of those DP glitches. It still sounds cool.)

So... pack wars exist to redistribute cash. Except cash would be better redistributed if they didn't exist. Counter-productive much?

-Territory.


TERRITORY IS FUCKING WORTHLESS. KTHXBYE.

Besides, Guestview owns the world, anyway.

--

Those are all the main gameplay points I can think of for packs to exist. If you have others, feel free to mention them in the comments. But, from my analysis... there's no point in packs in the first place. It's like, say, going on the forums for a console RPG and forming a 'clan' or whatever. All you really do is talk. It doesn't affect the game at all.

When you realize that packs are pointless, things make a lot more sense. Why is it so hard to get active members? Because they get nothing from being active. Why is it so hard to recruit people these days? Because there's no reason to join a pack, period. Why don't people line up for boss fights all the time? Because they get nothing out of it.

Of course, that brings up the question of 'Why are people still bothering?' I think the answer is fairly obvious - because we have nothing better to do. Nobody wants to level anymore, and there's no other point in the game. Honestly, W-H is more of a forum than anything these days. There's no 'game' in it anymore.

Still, my point remains - packs are actually inherently pointless. Really, they're no better off than, say, the challenge feature - it had no real reason to exist. After all, basic gameplay is two features - the map and the gear. That's it. Nothing else. Analyze W-H like any mainstream console/PC game - the pack feature feels like something tacked on at the last minute just to meet deadline or something, doesn't it?

Wow, that was my longest entry in a long time (and I probably could have gone on a bit more). Opinions?