This below is an instant message I got from an old DAoC guildie (take note of the name of said guildie) regarding my activities in City of Heroes.

[12:25] Antiroleplay: so i hear you’re a roleplayer!!!1111
[12:25] *** Auto-response sent to Antiroleplay: Playing City of Heroes. My global chat handle is @Turk
[12:26] Antiroleplay: it’s true!

Next I have a screenshot. Nothing special about it. Unless you zoom in to the full size image and read the text in yellow.

I wonder where Anti heard this information? Below is an in game chat log from the guild chat channel that is mandatory you stay in character.

[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: No wonder no one eever finds this guy, living in ze sewers for 200 years, I wouldn’t want to find ‘im either.
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Oi don’ know what you wuz expectin. It’s the bloody sewers after all, eh?
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: eh? Another english?
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: sounds more…canadian.
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Pfft.
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: Your canadian eh?
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Oim Nick Wicked, an’ Oim a bleedin Rock star, mate.
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: hm..
[SuperGroup]Nick Wicked: Canada! Oi nevah ‘erd such a thing.
[SuperGroup]Sofie La Mystere: ah’ve never ‘eard of you.

And here is my in game tell to this “Nick Wicked” person.

[Tell]–>Nick Wicked: your such a putz
[Tell]Nick Wicked: hahahahahaha

So you see I’m not the roleplayer here. I just don’t swing that way. Unlike Nick Wicked.

Gawain tries retail Hellgate: London. Below is his e-mails to me detailing how it went.

From: Gawain
To: Turk
Date: 04/21/08 6:56 PM
Subject: And now a report.

7:00 – Hellgate Installed.
7:10 – Startup. Hellgate Begins autopatching.
7:20 – Patching Complete. ERROR: You must download the patch from the website.
7:45 – Patch Downloaded. Patch Installed. ERROR: Game is already patched with the latest version.
7:46 – Startup. Hellgate Begins autopatching.
7:55 – Game startup complete. Loading. Game is running.
***HURRAY FOR HELLGATE!**
7:55 – Character Creation
7:56 – Character Creation Complete.

Chat window still borked.

This doesn’t surprise me. I hope he got some screen shots of it. Here is the post from the beta when he first had the chat window problem.

From: Gawain
To: Turk
Date: 04/21/08 7:06 PM
Subject: Further Reporting

Visit to knowledge base on hellgatelondon.com = useless
Visit to forums = useless.

sigh.

Again not surprised he didn’t find any help in the Hellgate forums. Not one Hellgate Dev responded to Gawain’s forum post when this stuff happened in the beta.

From: Gawain
To: Turk
Date: 04/21/08 7:21 PM
Subject: Update

8:21 – Uninstalled.

I’m not surprised Gawain lasted as long as he did. If the bugs didn’t get him, the souless Hellgate gameplay would. The game had so much potential. It’s a shame the Hellgate Devs all had their heads stuck up their own asses.

Played some more with DarkIzer the newb, While me and his son drank Diet Pepsi at my house he was enjoying Coors Lite at his house. Here is the highlight of yesterdays City of Heroes session:

Important lesson learned. Don’t drink and play mmorpg’s.

Still playing City of Heroes. I’ve been playing mostly in the mornings with my healer bot (action shots below). I only played with my friend (the newb) once last weekend. I figured out one mystery. I would send him tells in game when I saw him online and never get any responses back from him. As I found out he plays with the chat window minimized. Because it’s in the way of seeing whats going on. That is the reason he gave. From his newb point of view I guess I understand. There is a lot of stuff on the screen. It is probably a lot to deal with all at once.

For those of you that keep track of these things or are just curious (or bored even) here are two shots of Gawain’s good guy. The first one shows his bio (here is his badguy bio). The second is just a heroic pose.

I also joined the guild that Gawain’s hero is in. They are role players. The server we play on (Virtue) is the unofficial role playing server. But I wasn’t quite ready for this role playing thing.

Turk is now a member of League of Misfits!
[Team]Turk: do I need to say anything?
[Team]Turk: can I just say thanks
[Team]Turk: not a lot of chatter
[Team]Lowblow: yeah go ahead.
[SuperGroup]Turk: Thank you for the invite into the team.
[SuperGroup]Acorn Avenger: Hi Turk!
[SuperGroup]Acorn Avenger: I’m the Acorn Avenger!
[SuperGroup]Lowblow: ((they’re rude, turk, don’t worry. except for acorn avenger who is not rude but awesome instead.))
[Team]Turk: jesus their talking to me
[SuperGroup]Acorn Avenger: [[naw, I’;m rude OOC, AA is just nuts]]
[SuperGroup]Lowblow: ((ok, I take back what I said then.))

I have a number of problems about role playing my character. First and foremost is the fact my hero is based on my old high school era comic book. So granted there is not a lot of character there to play with. I guess I’ll have to come up with something or use the crazy angle G uses. Some of it is just weird. To speak ooc (out of character for the newbs) you use double brackets at the beginning and end of the ooc text.

[[This is dumb.]]

Which to me is dumb. For now I guess I’ll just not say much in the guild chat channel. I think I’ll talk DarkIzer into joining up too and then make him open up his damn chat window.

I’ve introduced my best friend to the mmorpg genre with the game City of Heroes. Like me he is a comic book fan. So it was the perfect game for him. I am a little jealous of him this being his first foray into this kind of game. I remember the excitement I had when I took my first steps into Dark Age of Camelot. In a way he is lucky. He will have more than a few advisors to guide him in this type of game. I wish I had someone there when I first ventured into DAoC. I can remember all kinds of stupid shit I did as a newb. Here are some screenshots of me and him:

I can’t wait to introduce him to other elements of the genre. The human element like guilds and grouping with complete strangers. So many things he can learn about right away instead of having to go through trial and error. I am so jealous of him. To have his newb perspective of the world. I kind of get bummed out when I think how quickly he will become jaded when he sees all of the human waste that do unfortunately populate these types of games. What a fun time!

And yes that is a girl character I’m using in the game. Call me old fashioned (and a bit of a sexist). But I think a woman should have some set roles in both real and virtual worlds. So when I make a healer I usually make it a girl. A warrior? A mans work. Healing in my book is like making babies, cooking, and cleaning. All the job of a good woman. Seriously though I just like looking at a cute ass now and then instead of a dudes backside I’m usually looking at in these games.

Closed my two World of Warcraft accounts. Time is good till beginning of april (so farm my gold farmer) or so. So bored of WoW. Me and my best friends kid (my nephew) have been playing it every saturday for awhile now. I just can’t go on. Time for a change of pace. Going to reopen my City of Heroes and City of Villains accounts. Probably going to buy a second box and have the nephew play with me on saturdays. The superhero angle of CoH may even get his dad into a mmo. I like to make posts like this just to keep track of how long I play these games for any stretch of time.

I was checking some links that lead to me and found Wikipedia’s entry Night Auditor. Wikipedia has a textbook description of what a Night Auditor is and what they do. Here is the first paragraph:

A night auditor is a hotel employee who typically handles both the duties of the front desk agent and some of the duties of the accounting department. This is necessitated by the fact that most fiscal days close at or around midnight, and the normal workday of the employees in the accounting department does not extend to cover this time of day.

Very textbook. It lacks the real world flavor that this Everything2.com entry has:

“Night Auditor” is the glorified term for a hotel front desk clerk that works the graveyard shift (typically 11 P.M. to 7 A.M). This is a nice job if you don’t like dealing with people, but those few that you do have to deal with tend to be mentally ill and/or intoxicated. An upside to this job is that you’re likely to be hired or keep this job despite your incompetence or criminal record, as no one else is willing to work this shift. The usual tasks involved in this job include checking guests in and out of the hotel, running end-of-day reports for the management, making coffee for the early birds, and playing lots and lots of solitaire. Common symptoms of being a night auditor include the inability to see in the sunlight and considering more than one car sharing the road with you to be “traffic.”

This was funny enough for me to write about. I also feel it is a dead on description on what night audit is really like today. The Wikipedia entry may have been more accurate ten years ago or perhaps in a big hotel. I know my job is more like Everything2.com description. Back in the day I did some accounting type duties, but not anymore. Which I think is one of the side effects of some of the software that hotels use. It’s easier for the computer to do the accounting end than it is for the dumb human that is hired to do the night audit.