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.