Mysidia

I hear it's catching.

Since the Praetorian invasion was been wacky, I figured we could share some stories. Mine is as follows from none other than Lord Stanley P. Recluse, Esq.

Just because it apparently needs repeating: this is not, nor will it be, a moral judgment contest. In fact, I was one of the people who suggested this sort of contest by calling it "A big damn costume contest that includes everything from costume to bio to power choices. Make it a concept contest, not just a costume contest."

And I know for a fact that Dazz and Nibblez will not let personal opinion step in the way here. If they do, I will gladly yell at them on Ventrilo or yell at whoever is making personality a criteria.

I would definitely suggest everyone enter. I am one of the people here that WANTS to see tons of costumes, bios, and power sets...even if I am not a judge for this!

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Bachelors smachelors. Just grief a MMO for a while and write up a quickie PhD thesis about how it made you feel. From what I understand, they're handing those things out like candy these days.

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Ironically, I was going to write a paper on video games and violence for my theory class last semester, but it wasn't going to be original research. Maybe I should employ this new and amazing methodology for research!

I'm a Phoenix, too!

Thanks again y'all! Keep it goin'.

Thanks y'all. And yeah, I haven't been around and soon won't! Getting a bachelors degrees is, as a former president said, hard work.

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Allright, so what's with the idea that people will need therapeutic counseling? I'm pretty sure nobody is slitting their wrists at the idea of their defeat by twixt ending up in a book.

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It's standard after any research to offer therapy after you manipulate one's life. It is especially standard in any psychological, anthropological, or sociological studying in which you actively control one or more variables as this gentleman did.

The standard came into being after the Little Albert case in which John Watson conditioned a phobia in a small child that resulted in generalized phobia that severely altered the child's life. He conditioned a fear of small rat by taking advantage of the natural startle response. The child eventually generalized that to all furry things such as dogs or even a Santa beard. The child was never desensitized to the new phobia -- he remained fearful of anything furry.

From that came two important ethical rules set forth by any academic body for research or observation: 1) get informed consent that the subject knows what you're doing, how you'll do it, and what tools will be used to do it. 2) Offer any therapeutic measures needed to undo any psychological or social harm done by your being present.

In essence, we want to be there and do these things, but we want to be able to leave and the participant not be fundamentally changed like Albert was. Even if it is just a game and it is just observation, he was obligated to do both to the participants of his study or observation. Without it, he in clearly in breach of ethical rules set forth by associations and societies by the American Psychological Association, American Sociological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and many others.

Edit: And as to the question of how to research against his study? You'd just take a personality inventory and self-report of users based upon their aggression, operationally define aggression and measure the instances, then run the appropriate statistical analysis to see if the general population of CoH is as aggressive as the subset PVP group. You could even run a solid two way ANOVA of this bad boy and have PVP and PVE players who identify as aggressive and non aggressive to see which is more aggressive then possibly do a chi-squared to see if the observed frequency of aggressiveness is expected based upon the ANOVA data. I sure as heck don't plan on doing either.

Now give me real moneys, Bronx. I know you have 'em!

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1) Mysidia!? Welcome back? Or did you just poke your head in to this fun little thread? Awesome post- hit just about every nail on its head.

2) Dinah is Lighthouse? Who knew?

3) Pie

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Not so much with the back. I can't even bring myself to open the game past the patcher. I just saw this and wanted to comment, but I didn't want to go register on the newspaper website.

And 'sup!

To start, I was told of this story by a friend in New Orleans. Apparently, this friend told me, Twixt was this amazing pariah of a player that was outcast by all and loved by none. He was threatened, ridiculed, debased, and hated as none before in this game.

Now, with that said, there needs to be some grave cleanups concerning his research. First and foremost, this is not an experiment. There are no variables. There is no control. There is no causality. Nothing in this man's research even remotely fits the model for a psychological, sociological, anthropological, or scientific mode of experimentation.

This is a case study. It has no applied value, no heuristic value, nor theoretical value. It is, for all intents and purposes, an observational case study. However, it is not natural observation. The researcher heavily involved himself in the carrying out of his case study to such an amount that its value is lost. He became, as he details, emotionally invested in his research. That is the first, and cardinal, rule of research -- don't get involved.

With that said, we now have a case study with little actual merit. So let us look at the actual methodology: One man entered the game and, upon doing so, acted in a way only considering the official Terms of Service rules. He did not, however, gain the informed consent of any participants nor did he offer any therapeutic intervention--two massive ethical lapses. He engaged, however, in a socially sanctioned way of behaving that broke the conventions of the culture, even if just online in a game. This culture dictated specific rules of play style that he was informed of dually. He immediately discarded with these social norms and cultural values. Again, while this may be a video game it does have its own social rules.

He, in essence, broke the social rules. As we all know through grade school, what happens if you break the rules? You get punished. Well, if Anthropology has taught me anything about culture...it is that those who break the cultural value system will be socially punished. Social control theory dictates that those that break our norms and values are sanctioned either formally or informally.

Informal sanctions range from ridicule, sarcasm, criticism, and disapproval all the way to exile, threats, gossiping, and complete exclusion. When he engaged in the behavior others corrected, he was given leeway. Our culture said "He doesn't know, like a child, so he will be taught". He broke the mores again. He was informally sanctioned through ridicule, criticism, and disapproval. He continued to break the cultural values and social norms...he was met with gossip, exclusion, and threats. That is the nature of social control of humans. As a PhD in Media, he should have at least taken ONE course in either Anthropology or Sociology. How this little nugget escaped him is beyond me.

So in recapping:

He engaged in a case study that be involved himself in heavily, gathered no informed consent, gave no exiting therapy, broke the norms and values of the culture and then pretended to be shocked, AND is now pretending to be the victim of a lurid, insulting gaming underworld.

Dr. Myers, I am only a Psychology undergrad and I know enough about research to know that your case study and your published book are absolute hogwash with no applicable value beyond a retelling of the events that you orchestrated. Any self-respecting researcher would realize the moral, ethical, and professional errors in your case study that should be laughed out of any actual peer-reviewed journal. I cannot help but postulate that this very fact is why you've published this as a book and not in a journal.

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Get this !!!!!!!!!


I teamed with a bunch of people who think they are so much better then everyone that they forget every noob mistake they ever made and actually take the time to post about others mistakes on a message board.

I wonder what some of the people on these boards would think of concept toons of mine or other people i know.

Like pings travel powerless ill/emp? My pool power less toon. Or captain pool power

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Thank you, Jester.

Guess I'm one of the few people who would, you know, help these people instead of just remembering it as a self-aggrandizing story to tell later.

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Trying to make a majority of you guys happy.

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I think it's safe to say that you, Jay, and others make the majority of us happy. You should have a talk with your boss, though. He ain't doin' so hot lately.

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Perhaps all those things that take a bajillion hours to code might one day be funded by little things like this?

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Where did I say that it wouldn't possibly fund this?

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Why cant you guys use developer resources for something we really need like email transfer of items/inf? That to me would have made more sense than this. The only times I ever got respec recipes were on characters that didnt need them anyways but the ones that did were on another server. That would have helped me alot more than this.

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Umm... probably because what you're asking for would require dozens of hours of coding, QA, etc., while this probably took maybe 30 minutes to pop out. This is all PlayNC side with a tiny amount of interaction with the server using code that's already there, whereas what you're talking about is an entirely new feature that would have to be coded from scratch, tested to make sure it's not gamebreaking and interacts nicely with every other piece of code, etc.

Honestly, you people. I swear.

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While I don't agree with Ryu, who cares if something takes a bajillion hours if it improves this game? It's a copout answer as far as I am concerned. Especially considering that our development team has grown quite a bit lately.

Well, I only have one thing to add:

Are the other avenues no longer working as hoped? You have game sales, monthly fees, wedding pack, GvE, in-game advertising, pay-for slots, pay-for renames, pay-for server moves...

If this game is that starved for money then I an somewhat concerned about the future -- especially the profitability of this scheme.

The alternative could be that this is merely yet another way to earn money in a lucrative fashion much like the various cash shops that have made MMORPGs a good amount of money. Of course, I realize that my post cannot be answered at all...but it's still postworthy.

Here's to hoping that this deal results in better in-game options. I certainly hope the upcoming ideas are better.

As for me? I won't use this. I never intend to use this. I'd rather remake a 50 than use this. It's too expensive for what is being offered. Someone else may use them, but count me out.

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*sigh* And here come the Rikti again for a whole week at the start of August to interfere with my game again.

Sick.
Of.
Invasions.

I wish it were one weekend rather than one week. A week's way too long.

Oh, well. Makes a good excuse to go play something else instead for that week. Breaks are good.

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And I'm going to basically disagree with everything you said. I love invasions. I love that they come back and that they last a week. They break up the monotony of mission-mission-mission. I look forward to playing the invasions week -- free experience, free prestige, free influence, free badges. There's very little there that I don't like, even if it takes over one single zone for all of 10 minutes every few hours.

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Because that notwithstanding, I can't think of why people would post "/signed" for something unless they agreed and thought it would improve their gameplay.

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I don't want to be mean, but read the other posts for the reply to this point.

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Posting a longer form of "I agree" simply forces people to read more words that say essentially the same thing. Posting "/signed", on the other hand, allows people to get an idea of how popular an idea is, while at the same time being able to quickly browse to posts that expand on that idea.

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Oh no. Not reading. Anything but READING!

Yes, that was my initial sarcastic reply. The human mind is able to function well beyond reading a few extra words. You will not become combustive from reading more words. The problem is that /signed does nothing at all for conversation and it does absolutely nothing to help the designers come up with the real issue to be solved.

It merely lets someone know how popular they are. I'm sorry to be rude, but this is not high school. You do not need to know how popular you are or how popular your idea is. If you stand behind the idea, the amount of agreement doesn't matter. I can certainly tell you that the popularity of an idea doesn't always matter to the developers. If it is a good idea to them, it will pass through into live -- regardless of how popular it is.

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Now, I do agree that expanding on an idea is better than simply agreeing with it. But if we limit posts to only those that expand on ideas, then I fear posts will be weighted toward the negative side. People tend to have much more to say when they disagree with something than when they agree with it.

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Which is the problem. People disagree fluently, but they agree poorly. It is easy to agree with someone's post. Let me show you a very easy way:

I absolutely agree with your idea. I really do think that we need x. I was just telling a friend that the game seems like it lacks y, and I really think that your idea will bring it to the game. Great idea, and I hope to see it implemented!

Then again, as you said above...you have to READ now.

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How many degrees of separation must a link have from content not allowed on these boards before the link itself is not considered to be a violation of those rules?

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That's a silly, parsing question. You don't post pornography on this board. If you happen to post a link where an ad pops up with breasts, then you cannot do a thing about that. Therefore, I am more than sure that Koschej and others will understand about that. In fact, I'm more than sure they're not going to bandy about the internet clicking every single link until they find pornography. They're too busy dealing with the endless what-if scenarios that people throw at them.

Just use your common sense. Don't post pictures from pornographic materials. However, I'm more than sure you can link to a product on Amazon.com (say, this game). Amazon.com would have pornography for sell, but I'm more than sure that our moderation team isn't going to search it out JUST to take action against you.

Common sense. If you use it then I guarantee that you won't see much moderation action against you.

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What is stopping you from saying "Hey, great idea. I like it. I have nothing to really add other than to show you that you're not alone in what you want"?

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Maybe its too long to type? /signed means the same while requiring less words .

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Well, Fury, that's just plain lazy. If you type /signed you are typing 7 characters. If you type "I agree" you are typing 7 characters.

Which of these two would foster a little more conversation? Both are simplistic and terse, but /signed tells me nothing. In fact, I feel it degrades my idea that you or anyone else would just sign it like it were some common petition found on OnlinePetition.com.

Should I post a thread with an idea, I would love constructive feedback for my idea. I'd like people to agree and tell me why. I'd like people to disagree and also tell me why. Because if my idea is good, I'd like you to give your opinion and maybe sway others. If my idea is bad, I want to change it and make it better.

/signed does nothing to improve the dialog between you and me. It does nothing to foster conversation between my idea being good or my idea being bad. It just cheapens my post because you don't want to type a few extra words.

I also happen to agree somewhat with Arcanaville's post. The moderators want you to discuss. They want you to say WHY you agree so that maybe we can get some sort of idea as to why you like an idea. It could even sway their opinion to read "I like this because it seems to enhance the play value of the game!" It's something simple, but it shows them that you agree because of a reason -- not just that you agree.

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That being said, if nudity or other NSFW things appear in blogs/DA accounts, some degree of onus rests on the parents of any children or teens playing and/or viewing these forums, either through monitoring the child's/teen's online habits, installing nanny software, or just flat out blocking those sites. The mods can't get everything, and believe it or not, nudity can be artistic and not merely porn.

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While you could be right about responsibility of watching a child, that's neither here nor there. Though the various legal acts have been repealed when it comes to pornography being viewed by children (COPA, CIPA, Decency Act), there are most likely countless other precedents in which websites were sued for having pornography that was viewed by a child.

Which, despite your objection, this game does have many children. The rating means nothing. It is advisory in nature, not legally binding. It does not guarantee that we only have 13 years old and older players. I have met parents who allow their 9 year old to play. That is their decision as a parent to allow a child to play the game. While they have agreed to the game, the child could mosey over to the forums on dad's account and be greeted by various imagery.

Furthermore, the line between pornography and art can be easily blurred. These are two concepts without intrinsic meaning like any other word. My concept of art is not your concept of art. I find modernist paintings absurd, some think it's the height of art.

So which would be the smarter response?

1) Allow pornography on the boards because of your meaning of art, then be sued for millions of dollars and have to go out of business OR raise fees?

2) Say no pornography and not be sued, but be accused of silencing your meaning of art?

Of course, there's more than these two choices. They could create special, age-restricted boards and such. However, it is still easier to say no and avoid lawsuits from overzealous parents -- possibly from many countries with very different pornography laws.

Though personally, I'd rather not come on to these forums and have a bunch of teenage kids sharing pictures in every forum. Not because I'm against pornography, but because it would easily pervade the forums and cut a swath through the actual, helpful threads. We have enough junk clogging the arteries of these boards, we don't need to add nudies.

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One last attempt at clarity:

I'm apparently having a hard time expressing my concerns about the impartiality of moderation. Part of the cause of this is that bringing up examples of past actions involving staff

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May I suggest that this is where you're finding problems? The past moderation, as I understand it, was nothing more than outsourced persons residing in foreign countries. These are not in-house moderators who were beholden to anything NCSoft had to say.

That has changed. Koschej and Niviene are completely in-house. I have even talked with Koschej before and he has told me that he was in the office mere feet from the working Castle. His boss is no longer a nondescript man in India who runs moderation companies.

So what does this have to do with past instances? Simply put, they cannot get away with the same stuff as before. The rampant favoritism will not be running about. In fact, despite speaking with Koschej on a semi-regular basis, I am more than sure that he will not hesitate to take moderation action against me. Why? He has a job to do, and I'm sure he would like to keep that job (even if it is moderating these forums).

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A reason why one insulting post is allowed to stay but another is not is all most people are asking for.

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Koschej and Niviene are two people. Lighthouse and Ex Libris are two more. Those are probably all the moderators we have. Can you imagine how many reports they get a day? I have moderated large forums before. You can easily get anywhere from 100-300 posts reported a day. You have to clear every single one of those posts. Now, with all due respect, imagine that you come into work for 5 hours and you have 500 reports you have to clear. You have to look at each one, compare them to the rules, then make the judgment call as to if it is disruptive.

Now imagine that every single one of those 500 reports could result in 500 people asking "Why?"

I want you to then answer one question for me:

How is it that after 500 reports which possibly result in 500 objections that 1 post makes it through?

In all honesty, some of you are expecting perfection from Koschej and Niviene. They're not perfect. They're going to miss a few posts. They're going to make the wrong call. They're even going to disagree with each other about how it should be handled. That is the nature of being a human moderator. As users, we have some choices but two stand out to me:

1) Demand answers and bog them down with 500 reports, 500 demands of reversal, and endless posts about clarification...

2) Trust that they really do not want to lose their jobs and will use their best judgment and best abilities to improve these forums.

The choice really is yours on which to follow. Personally, I'd rather they not quit in frustration because of a small few who want to pester them with endless loopholes and countless exceptions. Our moderation team has been doing a pretty good job versus moderation of old.

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Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil and sometimes /signed is just, "hey, great idea i like it." and I have nothing more of value to add other than to show that the OP is not alne in their opinion/idea.

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What is stopping you from saying "Hey, great idea. I like it. I have nothing to really add other than to show you that you're not alone in what you want"?

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That's no fair, we can't make fun of Joke Thompson anymore.

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12. No Legal Action threads.

Using the forums or PMs for encouraging, promoting, endorsing, or inciting any kind of legal action against anyone is strictly prohibited. Such content will be removed, and the author's posting privileges may be permanently suspended as a result.

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What is worst is even some of the mods are guilt of this.

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Ya, can we get a ruling on this?

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Honestly, you're picking apart a solid rule here. It's pretty clear what the rules mean. Talking about Jack Thompson is one thing, but threatening to sue him is another.

Talking about Marvel v. Cryptic is one thing, saying you'll sue someone is an entirely different one. I think it's pretty clear that you can discuss happenings and events, you just cannot threaten action on these forums.

Maybe instead of lawyering and loophole-finding, we could actually suggest clear ways to improve the rules. For example, I think it would be a great addition to have a rule on "Armchair moderation". It only serves to be abusive and, often, hinders moderation as a moderator must take multiple actions. It would be nice to see these people asked to stop so that forums can discuss posts and not what each other things is right or wrong, good or bad, or against the rules.

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That part is what needs clarification. It appears that any mentioning of the community team that isn't praising them will get deleted. Even if it's not attacking them in any way.

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Honestly, I think you're engaging in a large amount of hyperbole at the moment. There are multiple critical posts in this very thread of the new-old rules. They all still exist.

There's a very large difference between "I don't agree with you and here's why" and "I don't agree with you, you suck."

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Using radically flowery verbiage to say nothing more than "yes" or "no" should be slapped just as hard as saying "yes" or "no". Especially when you consider that it's specifically a smart-alec attempt to skirt the rules and look cool doing it.

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To engage in some quality logical fallacies, this sets up a really questionable hill. When is someone being capricious and when are they being discussant? When are they offering these false, skirting words? That's where we trust that the moderator team will fill their roles appropriately. They have superiors to whom they must answer and it is not us.

In all frankness, I believe that if you cannot post more than a couple words than you have no business discussing on forums. These boards are meant to be bastions of discussion and idea exchange, not Online Petitions and 4chan express. We should aim for quality, not quantity. Even if you cannot find much to say, it is much more conductive to discourse if you say something other than "/signed". That tells us merely that you agree, nothing else.

I'd rather read a long post in reply which essentially said "I agree" than read 50 /signed posts. I get much more out of the long-winded, rambling nonsense that boils down to "I agree with you!"

While reading many of these replies I find myself somewhat flabbergasted by the negative response and the loopholing. For a long time, we did not have predominately-displayed rules. In fact, I often found myself asking others if they knew the rules. They did not.

From the rules I have read (and I have read them all), I find absolutely nothing that is unreasonable or unexpected. In fact, many of these rules are borderline routine for a message forum. When you run message boards, your entire point is to foster discussion. It is to allow discussion on a forum (gee, where have we seen this word?) in which all people can discuss openly. The only way this is remotely doable is through requests and demands of constructive discussion.

Some specific rules I think I want to reply to:

First off, /signed is not a valid reply. Arcanaville or anyone else can post the most succinct, amazing post about anything and everything. /signed is not a good reply. It does not improve discussion in any way. In fact, it doesn't even represent your opinion beyond "I agree"

I also do not believe anyone deserves explanation of action by a moderator. Is it a nice, fun courtesy? Absolutely. I would love to know why I've had my post changed by an unseen hand. That does not mean I have any right to it. If I broke a rule, I deserve the recourse. I deserve the edit, I deserve the deletion, and I deserve the ban. I agreed to that the second I signed on, posted on, and frequented these forums. I can easily deny these terms by signing out and never returning.

Forums such as these need these rules. I appreciate Koschej taking his time to actually do them. I wish they could be much more clear and explained, but many of these replies would find some loophole.

Thank you Koschej and the others that approved these rules. Here's to hoping they are followed and enforced with zealous awesomeness.

Who is Mys? Who isn't!

Ok, that was corny. I'm a 24 (workin' on 25) year old college student from Arkansas. I am majoring in Psychology and minoring in Cultural Anthropology. I graduated high school in 2001 and took 5 years off, which saw me raise both my niece and my nephew as well as work my butt off for a video game website. I've been to E3 as press, though I wasn't able to make it to the CoH booth that year (it was really, really busy). I did get to see Warhammer Online, though. The first version. It didn't look a thing like it does now!

I speak two languages (English and a good amount of Spanish), have never traveled outside of the country, and never even been north of Missouri. My favorite color is red, I like long walks on the beach, romantic dinners by candle light, and movies that make me cr...wait... Ok, everything after red was a lie.

I am a male, in case the name makes you think otherwise. I am not married, but I do have a boyfriend of over 5 years. I think he may be gay. It really is the least important thing about me.

I do my best to never take things seriously. Life is one of those crazy little rides. Like the teacups at Disney. And, unfortunately, I don't have a picture of me. I have taken very few pictures in my short life so far. I probably have less than 10 pictures of me, and none of them are recent.

So there you go, a little bit about Mysidia. Now stop calling me "she"...or give me influence because I'm a hawt chix.

PS: My name? Jeff. I still don't know if I'm THE Jeff. I can only hope to have such an awesome dream be true.

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yeah - you assign on a one-slot-at-a-time (it looks like) basis.

And they can't give too many freebies, or some people will never use it :P

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Ok. And my issue isn't it's just 2. It's that they're 2 picked per server. I think the 2 associated with I12 improvements should be across all servers due to increased powers...but it's a minor issue I have. I still plan on buying 5 for $20.

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When you buy slots you get 1 slot to assign to a server of your choice (or more than 1, depending on how much you spend). Like the Rename and Server transfers, once done it's permanent.

The free slots (both i12 and vet reward) are simply free uses of the purchase system. So 2+ freebies to distribute as you choose.

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Ok, so the 5 I buy with $20 will be selected too? I ask because I don't see that on the announcement. It seems omitted in this case, but it's there for the previous freebies.

My only issue is the 2 free initials, but I'll be able to survive

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As I read it, you get anywhere from 2 to 6 free slots when it goes live. It's not 2 per server, it's 2 free (but still 2 more than you had before). So if you get all 6, you can add one slot each to six different servers, or can add three each to two servers, or any combination you want.

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Well, there's the 2 free I12s, the 1 per 12 months, and the buyables.

I was just trying to keep them separate when I posted. So when I said "2 free" I meant the initial pre-Veterans free slots.