A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMOG or simply MMO) is a video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously.

The cool part about MMO’s is the persistant universe and the people you meet while you are logged in. The bad part is the people you meet when you are logged in.

To give you a back story, I’ve been playing MMO’s for an extremely long time. I’m not one of those people who will whip out their gaming experience penises and say “Oh well I was playing such and such when it was in pre-alpha beta”. I don’t care. I’ve been playing video games since the Intellivision.

My first MMO was The Realm, and the second… which pretty much destroyed my job at the time, was Everquest. And since my best friend at the time had dragged me into this world, I had an anchor to keep playing as much as possible and to keep my level as high as his. See, that’s how they keep you playing once you subscribe. You wouldn’t want your friend’s level penis to be bigger than yours!

But I digress…

I’ve played all of the major pay to play MMO’s that have been out since Everquest including Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes/Villains, WoW, Everquest 2, Planetside, Vanguard… just to name a few.

I’m not going to tell you what my current game is as I don’t want to start a flame war, because my blog is so popular it might bring down the internets. Lets just say I’m playing one of the many current MMO’s that deal with a fantasy theme of killing dragons, skeletons and lepers.

So last night I was invited to join a group that was going to an instanced area. We had a smaller group but we were confident we would prevail. We had a tank, a healer, a caster, and a DPS (me). The healer was the person who invited me to the group and was basically in charge of what we were doing. The problem is, Tanks are used to being “in charge” and pulling the monsters to the group. The tank apparently didn’t like being told what to do, he was also a major douchebag.

As soon as I joined he started talking about his armor, he kept hot linking armor pieces and weapons in the group chat window. “Oh, yeah check this out. I get .9 attack speed on this and .7 if I use such-and-such ability.” “Look at all my high-end gear” “I could even out DPS you” (He was speaking to me at the time, a tank telling a major DPS class that he can out DPS him is a total fabrication).

During the whole time we were fighting he continually went on and on about how much better he was than anyone else there. How he had an alt for all of our classes and they were all equipped so much better and if we were all equipped like his alts we would be going through the instance at lightning speed. The final straw for me was when he did a bad pull (basically pulling way more monsters than we can fight) and then blamed it on the healer.

“Dude, what’s up with your heals, they suck!”

I finally let loose.

“Look, asshole, if you would stop typing and actually pull like a decent tank we wouldn’t have wiped. Now stop waving your internet penis around and get to pulling like someone who knows what they are doing. Seriously, are you finished? There might be someone else here who wants to talk constantly about himself.”

The dude was obviously pissed, he pulled again but pulled way too many and then did a trick to refocus the monsters attack on me. Since I was such a high damage dealer it wasn’t hard to aggro the monsters. So I died, and he laughed and said “If you had my DPS equipment you would have lived.” By this point I had lost too much and gained to little to keep going.

Since we were almost done with the instance the healer of the group and I devised a plan.

When the tank went to pull more monsters again, the leader kicked him from the group and I evaced (ported to a safe part of the zone) leaving him alone with the 6 or 7 monsters that he pulled. We didn’t hang around to watch the carnage, but I’m pretty sure it was an epic massacre.

While I was finishing my play time and was running around selling and buying supplies I was spammed with hate tells and complaints from the tank.

“You wait *expletive deleted* I’m gonna *expletive deleted* your *expletive deleted* in the *expletive deleted* *expletive deleted* *expletive deleted*. All my alts are way better than your *expletive deleted* *expletive deleted*, you *expletive deleted*. I’m gonna petition your *expletive deleted* and get you banned, *expletive deleted*.”

I told him to go for it then I did an /ignore.

Tanks shouldn’t act like that. They should be the meatshield for the group, taking all the damage and keeping their mouths shut except for when they announce that they are pulling a monster.

The title of the blog is a generalization about tanks, but not all tanks are douchebags. I, myself, have a high level tank who I’ve been playing for a considerable amount of time. I consider myself to be one of the best tanks in the game and have been commended on many occasions on how good of a tank I was. I’ve PVP’d higher level tanks and even DPS and won several times. I have such great armor…

Oh, wait, sorry I’ll put my internet penis away now.

Aww, gee. Here we go, more “This isn’t a telemarketing call but it really is” phone conversations. Instead of letting the machine grab the call I reluctantly answered it and was about to tell the guy to shove his call list where the sun doesn’t shine. But I was feeling generous. So I answered his “Is this so-and-so” question with an affirmative.

Immediately he sounded so happy that I wanted to listen to him. I really feel somewhat sorry for these telemarketers, but only somewhat. If you accept a job as a person who annoys someone you have to expect some flak.

“Did you know that Fios servi-” I cut him off right there. I already have Fios internet I tell him. I’m enjoying the crazy speeds and stable connections. “Yes but did you know that TV will be coming there in two weeks?”

Wha.. what? Finally! I can get rid of Comcast! I did my little happy dance, and before you ask only I know how my happy dance goes. No one has ever seen the Geekfist happy dance. You’re missing out let me tell you.

I started belching out 900,000 questions about rate plans, and when they can schedule, and what channels they have on HD, then the dude stops me. “I’m only calling to set up an appointment for one of our sales people to call you back.”

“Uh, what?”

“Yes, I am not authorized to provide any kind of detailed information on the service. I can only schedule an appointment for us to call you.”

At this point I was perplexed. So now, Verizon needs to call me to schedule an appointment to call me. Doesn’t that sound a bit redundant? I asked the guy if it sounded redundant and I don’t think he knows what that means because he said “No sir, I hear that the sound quality is amazing in HD.”

*sigh*

Isn’t this like making an appointment to make an appointment? Why didn’t someone else call before this guy did to make an appointment for them to call me to make an appointment to call me? Why is it necessary to call me to make an appointment to call me if it’s not necessary to call me to make an appointment to call me to make an appointment? Say for instance that I called them to make an appointment to talk with one of their salespeople, but they were on the phone making an appointment with their Doctor, who in turn also made an appointment a few minutes ago with his Golf coach, this was right after the Golf coach made an appointment with… and so on and so forth.

My brain hurts, Verizon. And it’s all your fault.

But I really want your TV!

That is until someone let the KKK into the game.

In a typical southern drawl, one of the players started in with racial taunts. You know the type, the white supremacists who can only insult African Americans using the anonymity of the Xbox Live service. The ones who don’t have the balls to insult a black man to his face.

Now I’m not an African American, but I have always believed in equal rights for everyone. I will teach my children to respect all people, because we are all human regardless of race or religion.

The southern gentleman that was on Xbox Live last night shouted out the typical N-words but what got me was the length that he would go to taunt a black individual. I have heard this type of talk before on Xbox Live, I usually just ignored it and would keep killing everyone around me regardless of who they were. However, this gentleman proceeded to try and get the white players against the black players and have some kind of racial war.

This dude has issue which probably include but not limited to, jealousy of African American males. There could be no other reason for it.

He proceeded to talk about ways someone could kill a black man. Going into lengthy detail about what he would do if he met another player, who he assumed was black, on the street. Then, as if they needed someone to be their racist leader, everyone else in the game (and yes I am generalizing but I couldn’t tell who was talking and who wasn’t) started talking like a racist.

But I guess that’s the Xbox Live community. You see, in GTA 4 you can’t tell who is talking in a Free Mode game unless you are near them and can see the speaker icon above their head. The southern “gentleman” (I use that word very loosely) must have been hiding, like he probably does in real life, away from the other players while he threw up his rant of racist puke.

Now I’m not saying all southerners are racist. I’m saying that it seems like the only people who start throwing around the N-word and talking about lynching a black man are southern white males who have pent up anger resulting from some kind of jealousy regarding black males.

The whole thing made me kind of ill, but I’ll manage. I’ve seen it all before and I think that I will see it again. People have the choice to live their life how they want to live it, however it’s when they start inciting riots or trying to get a group together in a game just to attack a black player is when it gets to me.

That’s just a little ridiculous.

My fellow Comcast customers will usually agree, adding more shit to the already small Program Guide is wrong, wrong, wrong. What do we need the new advertisement banner at the bottom of the Program Guide for? It’s like Comcast decided, in all of it’s wisdom, to take all that money they get from us and put it towards building a guide application that would annoy us more.

Why do we need this? Who decided that we need this? Who’s brilliant idea was it to put this worthless advert banner on my program guide? My program guide and I have been through a lot together and then you just up and change everything. I fear change. However, I what I fear more is advertisements forced upon me in a cable box UI.

Over at Brandon Notices, a blogger named Brandon Dilbeck wrote about this very issue and Comcast replied with the following:

The ads “educate our customers about the value of Comcast Digital Cable service.”

I read this as: “force our customers to realize that unless that want to use satellite they are going to have to deal with whatever we want to put on our service. One day they will realize the value of our way of thinking.”

Ok, Comnazi. There is another option coming in August for TV and I’ll be sure to take advantage of Verizon’s infinitely cheaper HD TV service. I already use their Fios internet which has not failed me one time and provides a CONSTANT 15/2 connection. I see that Comcast has released their own equivalent to this called Blast which provides a 16/2 connection for a slightly higher price thatn Verizon’s Fios 15/2 service. I have not tried this new service myself, but if it’s anything like their 6/128 service I had awhile ago I’ll take a pass. I didn’t like losing my connection every time there was a test of the emergency broadcast system. Nor did I like losing my connection for no reason whatsoever. In fact, I can’t think of Comcast cable internet without thinking of “disconnected” in the same thought.

If you read the small print on the Comcast website you will see some truth regarding this new Burst offer:

Comcast High-Speed Internet: Equipment fees not included in monthly service charge. Prices do not include applicable taxes, installation or franchise fees. Pricing, content and features may change and may vary by area. Call your local Comcast office for restrictions and complete details about service, prices, and equipment in your area. Pricing and service offerings displayed on this site are for residential Comcast customers only. Commercial and business pricing and service offerings differ. Speed comparisons are dependent on Comcast High-Speed Internet service tier selected (6 Mbps, 8 Mbps or 16 Mbps) and are based on download speeds vs. standard 1.5 Mbps DSL service. Not all service tiers are available in all areas. Many factors affect speed. Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. Maximum upload speeds range between 384 Kbps and 2 Mbps depending on the service tier selected and can be even faster with PowerBoost®.

I bolded the important stuff.