Protocol 7

It’s been quiet around here, and I only have World of Warcraft to blame. I still bathe on a regular basis and haven’t given up my day job (yet), but I forget to eat and am incredibly moody when the server is having problems (more often than not on Khaz’goroth).

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Well, technically I’ve been legal for about a decade now, give or take, depending on what country you live in. But more importantly, as of Friday afternoon, I am playing World of Warcraft legally.

Whether poorly-hosted illegal servers are part of Blizzard’s overall marketing scheme or just a by-product of primordial internet chaos (you know, sans-regulations and all), my experience on the Outofdate Private server was enough to convince me that a) I really wanted to play the game and b) WoW is worth the monthly fee (for now, at least).

Not only was I running around in the most hideous green biker pants imaginable, I was running around in what appeared to be a beta-release of the WoW server at best. Which is tolerable when you are playing for free, but when you lose your character not once, not twice, but three times, you know that the old cliche is true; there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

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Having found a fourth for our Vampire rendevous, we gathered on Wednesday night for a little beer drinking and character creation. Which is to say, the dorks have risen and are playing Vampire: The Requiem. What the hell is that, you ask? According to the site:

“It is a Modern Gothic Storytelling game, a roleplaying game that allows you to build chronicles that explore morality through the metaphor of vampirism. In Vampire, you play the monster, and what you do as that monster both makes for an interesting story and might even teach you a little about your own values and those of your fellows.”

Modern Gothic. Which means that the events take place in the here and now, post 9/11 in the midst of terrorism, globalization, and outsourcing. Vampires however, with their impressive centenarian-on-steriods status, seem to have resisted the waves of modernization and organize themselves around a feudal society infrastructure. The densest concentration of vampires can be found in major cities (natch), each of which is ultimately ruled by a Prince. According to our Storyteller, Princes keep to their territory and don’t try to gain more power and influence by ruling additional cities.

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This is a drum game in the arcades here that is similar to Dance Dance Revolution except you are of course playing drums and not dancing. We tried to record a bit of the sounds on the italk but it froze up on us… we need to play around with the settings more and try again.

Pachinko is the only legalized gambling in Japan, and like any other game of chance, people will cash in the rent in hopes of hitting the jackpot. And much like Vegas, these parlours are loud and filled with smoke.

We’ve been playing a lot of shooting games in the arcades here…

The incredible massaging chairs of Japan, second only to the incredible toilet seats of Japan.

Not much to say about this one…

Yes, I now own a pair of pink sneakers. The last time I had pink sneakers was the summer before fourth grade when we were in Argentina. Awwwwww yeah.

Sebastian and Nanae with a newly won pooh hat.

This is the ramen place we like to eat at, once we figured out how to open the door.

More guns… surprised?

More details of the incredible massaging chair.

We went to a megamall the other day and encountered this (I have no idea what it is), outside of an electronics store. The picture doesn’t convey how loud all the screaming children were.

There is a thread that has been running on the women-dev mailing list (igda’s list for women in game development) addressing feelings of guilt related to killing in video games; it’s been somewhat nebulous in that the degree of guilt felt varies depending on the creature, the situation, and the video game being played. For example, in WoW there is a mission that requires the player to kill 10 cougars with the explanation that the population needs thinning. One woman found that she couldn’t bring herself to kill the animals, while many others cited the fact that it was for population control rather than for pelts or teeth (as is the scenario in several other games) that enabled them to kill the animals without feeling much guilt.

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