"Whatever makes you break..."

Lock me up if you want me to zip my lip. Telling you about a flunked relationship won't be pleasant at all. I'm no Venomancer in inflicting insult to injury, but I can sure make it feel like it's burning through your heart and soul. More pew pew, less QQ you say? Screw it, she's SUPPOSED TO BE OUT OF MY LIFE, but every day her number still sticks in my head, torments my mind. I am the Leshrac and she is Kel'Thuzad throwing a Chain Frost that keeps on bouncing back to me, wave after wave.

Stock some tissues. I'm not going to make you cry, but rather, BLEED. I'd rather leave you behind and stick my phone behind your back than endure another day. I know, you'll try, but you can never get me back in your arms again.

Now for the Barrel Roll



Watch, then go ahead and shoot me.

You sure didn't like that, right?

RIIIGHT.

Oh how I could wish I could spam this site with... every single piece of provocative writing I could scrounge from experience.
Moderatorship gives you a bird's eye (and a worm's whatever it uses to sense things) view to how depraved some people can be, and how others can become pedestalized.
Experience tells me that people are naturally territorial and defensive about their friends and colleagues.
I can't fault them for that, but the sheer stupidity of finding fault in something situational and blaming it on someone or something is plain unjust.
It's just something about corporate ethics (or a demonstrated lack of it); and my infatuation with customer touchpoints that makes it so sensitive.
Most flames I've read (or experienced) have had something to do with the quality (or lack of it) of service in games or in forum.
Others are just... meh, plain regular generalizations or stereotyping of people, which is "relatively" normal if you're one of those 24/7/365 net crawlers.
Desensitization, and a general lack of verbal sparring, they make me wistful for the nostalgia of a concrete philosophical/psychological debate.
Oh how all those pyromaniac tendencies of relative youth make you insensible to anything but the most forceful blows of the banhammar.

I chose Ciryandor because of my penchant of fantasy. Lord of the Ships, sounds entirely normal for a naval power's bloodline.
Creating such a character was and still is a labor of love, shaping the ideas that hallmark the lack of grouping as a social identity.
Building his name and making it an identity I can associate with has become something of a life work that will remain with me.
Shaping his identity and my own is a joint undertaking, a representation of the lonely path each person has to eventually bear.

Silly it all sounds, but creativity sometimes has to sound like madness for it to work.

I feel that it's finally time to divulge what I have to think about some of the most ethically difficult issues in Philippine Online Gaming.

As a pragmatic online gamer, I’m not ready to accept the perfect world of ideals, with people who will not resort to supposedly underhanded means to gain power and prestige, and by that, I mean resorting to Real Money Trades or Deals, also known as PHP trading.

Now, how should a proper gamer approach these kinds of people? Honestly, I have been a conduit for either suggesting or outright dealing with these people. Some of them are out to get the most out of the game, after having lost interest in it. That kind of deal I can understand, and tolerate to a certain degree on power-gaming types of people. These people are ones we know we are going to miss, for they are the kind of person who loves a game, yet sees not the social value of their avatar, but instead their financial investment in them. Others, and the kind of person we should be more vigilant against, are the “businessmen” of any online game, out to make a profit out of the games we love, and out of gullible and unwise people who need a quick increase in power. They are the ones we should try to eradicate, since they distort the balance of power in any game versus honest players.

In gaming ethics, especially that of pen and paper role playing, making and trading an avatar for money is virtually unthinkable, and abhorrent. In an environment where people pay to enjoy their avatars, it is a different story. RMT or RMD will be here to stay. The thing that our developers and publishers of games can do is to make their games in a sense resistant to those deals made as a business, yet give a possible loophole for players who wish to retire to pass on their characters to those willing to carry on their name. Business in games should be made untenable by making items more “attached” to characters, like the soul-bound items in World of Warcraft. Virtual money WILL always be traded for real money, but making it less valuable by isolating items and characters from the money trade, like making only upgrade items worth selling in money instead of upgraded items themselves. It would of course be only a waste to leave power characters rotting in their accounts when their owners are gone. When a gamer quits, why not make others benefit by introducing them to gaming with those characters, and encourage them eventually to create their own. Education will always be the key to making gamers value their characters, but it requires people like us. It is our job to make them realize that their characters are essentially an expression and extension of our real lives. Achieving that is the realistic balance between responsible and ethical gaming.

There is no love lost between the “casual” gamer and the hardcore “adik” in the Philippine online gaming community today. The dedicated “adik” holds the casual gamer in contempt, typically seeing him or her as small fry to be devoured, made use of, and exploited in the course of his gaming career. The “casual” player, on the other hand, looks at the addict as if he were some kind of leper or lunatic, completely dedicated and immersed in the game. The addict, thriving on his competitive drives, seems to be living without two important things, the realization that what he is doing is simply another “pastime”, and the lamentable fact that there is more to experience outside of games with other people.

Now, why would I harp on this kind of topic in the first place? It is the fact that I am one of the unfortunate few who seem to be stuck in the middle of these two gamer stereotypes. I may be completely immersed in the game I play or spend my time on, but I perceive the game as something to be enjoyed with other people, not as something to make others feel that they are not worthy to be part of it. Maybe it is about people being able to step on others’ egos, but what is more lamentable is the fact that enjoying an online game is all about being able to play with more people, whether addict or not. This “divide” between addicts and casual gamers is probably what makes online gaming here in the Philippines so arcane and inaccessible to the common computer user. Maybe, it is time to help not just some, but all of our gamers realize that what makes their games so good is because of the people. Time to make them see that without reaching out and making themselves members of the larger Philippine society as a whole, they will never be more than just another marginalized group of people without acceptance, without the recognition we justly deserve.