Well, it's high time I posted something here so I've decided to start something with MMOs.
There are a fuckload of these things out there and all of them seem to offer free trials. Some of them are more lulzier than others.
For refence, the following seem to be ripe for the picking:
hXXp://www.furcadia.com/download/ <- FURRIES (need I say more?)
hXXps://signup.worldofwarcraft.com/trial/index.htm <- Fantasy (Works on Windows/Mac)
hXXps://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=102321&bid=&nogreet=1 <- Sci-Fi (works on Windows/Mac/Linux, does not require a real e-mail and I've led a few successful raids with some anons I rounded up)
Any specific plans?
I'd be up for doing something in MMOs, but I'm not sure I can stomach Furcadia.
I cant stomach Furcadia either, and I dont have any WoW games at all.
A fair few of us have Neverwinter Nights, as I recall, and Ratatosk has mentioned setting up a guild or something. That might be a good place to start. Its also fairly cheap, since its been out for a few years now, and should run like a dream on any decent home computer.
i play wow... so im keen.
though im not addicted enough to play in the pay servers, only the hackt ones like wowscape or aleajecta.
but im keen :)
Quote from: davedim on March 22, 2008, 01:16:01 PM
Any specific plans?
I'd be up for doing something in MMOs, but I'm not sure I can stomach Furcadia.
That's entirely up to you guys. I'm just throwing the idea out there as MMOs are ripe for this sort of shit. I don't know how much I'll be able to participate. Some of you may have noticed I haven't been around much (due to IRL demands).
I would suggest the following traits for selecting MMO(s) to have fun with:
1) Free and easy to sign up for
2) Easy to run (preferrably OS agnostic)
3) Has a rabid fan base
Some MMOs can be efficiently trolled by a small group (EVE appears to be one of them from my experience, easily text flooded, easy to use ASCII art, and it already seems to be relatively dense with /b/ tards), others will take large numbers (Furcadia comes to mind, perhaps we should bring this to the attention of Anonymous and GNAA).
The first order of business would probably be hitting teh Google and finding as many cheap MMOs as you can. The big ones (like WOW) will be harder to troll as there is a large population and a reasonably effective moderation system in place, the smaller ones tend to be less heavily moderated as well as poorly coded (exploits may be exploited to lulz some lulz, lulz ). The smaller ones also seem to have a very loyal fan base that takes offense to anyone making light of their beloved game.
Of course, a lot of what goes into deciding what to go for will depend on the techniques you want to use. If you want to turn the players against the company, selecting a game with heavy-handed moderation might be your best choice. If you want quick easy lulz, the opposite, etc.
Like I said though, it's entirely up to you guys.
Quote from: barumunk on March 25, 2008, 03:37:56 PM
i play wow... so im keen.
though im not addicted enough to play in the pay servers, only the hackt ones like wowscape or aleajecta.
but im keen :)
Hacked ones?
Care to elaborate?
Quote from: Ten Ton Mantis on March 27, 2008, 03:53:43 AM
Hacked ones?
Care to elaborate?
I'm assuming he means private servers with no monthly fees?
Quote from: Ten Ton Mantis on March 27, 2008, 03:53:43 AM
Quote from: barumunk on March 25, 2008, 03:37:56 PM
i play wow... so im keen.
though im not addicted enough to play in the pay servers, only the hackt ones like wowscape or aleajecta.
but im keen :)
Hacked ones?
Care to elaborate?
hhehehehe yeah by hackt, i meant cracked :D
ie private (moderately buggy, but free) wow servers
wowscape ±3000 pop.
aleajecta ±100 pop.
Oh yeah, that reminds me: Lineage 2 (that game Horab was obsessed with) I think has free servers too. Aurora? Borealis? Something with a name like that.
RUNESCAPE: EVERYONE GET BANNED FROM IT!
Indeed, Runescape seems a prime choice to me. Sad I was actually enjoying it for a time before I found REAL mmorpg's.... :sad:
Here's a free one. Looks horrible.
http://flyff.gpotato.com/ (http://flyff.gpotato.com/)
I suggest a private Ragnarok Online server.
I mean, we do have Liquid Echo (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=liquid+echo) on our side.
Where the hell has Echo been anyways? I haven't seen him in a while. Then again, I guess I haven't been here too often.
Let's start looking for poorly administered ragnarok online servers.
I'm up for hitting runescape. That game pisses me off to no end. Plans?
Quote from: Ten Ton Mantis on April 07, 2008, 06:45:41 PM
Where the hell has Echo been anyways? I haven't seen him in a while. Then again, I guess I haven't been here too often.
He's been around.
I know how to contact him and I'm sure he'll be up for anything like this.
Also, how about AnthemRO (http://www.anthemro.com/)?
Incidentally, WoW doesn't let you speak when you're doing the free trial (unless this has changed recently). This is because they got lots of jackasses just making free trials over and over and spamming the hell out of things, apparently. I've never actually played WoW, but this is what I have heard from friends who do.
THE SIMS ONLINE IS NOW FREE
https://ea-land.ea.com/ (https://ea-land.ea.com/)
(http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/4373/12088229352te9.jpg)
I play EVE Online and it's a great game for screwing around with people. However that has a downside -- others have beat us to the punch. One of the biggest alliances in the game is GoonSwarm, which basically started as a joke when the Something Awful folks decided to invade the server en masse with free 14-day trial accounts.
from http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons?currentPage=4 :
The Goons, on the other hand, fly cheap little frigates into battle, get blown up, go grab another ship, and jump back into the fight. Their motto: "We choke the guns of our enemies with our corpses." Some other players consider the tactic a less-than-sporting end run around a fair fight, still others call it an outright technical exploit, designed to lag the server so the enemy can't move in reinforcements.
Also GoonSwarm was the first alliance to kill a Titan, a ship that's worth over $10K in real-world cash. Epic video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=LRlrFudaEs8
I've discovered a whole new world to troll in MMOS: They seem to communicate in large part on ventrillo servers. These are usually unsecured or poorly secured and could make for some epic trolling. Hopefully things will quiet down for me in the next few months and we'll be able to pull off something fun.
Hahaha I wonder if those old Ventrilo trolls are still posted at fugly.com? Shit, I haven't been on fugly for ages... I kind of forgot about it. :I
Quote from: Xooxe on April 03, 2008, 06:14:22 AM
Here's a free one. Looks horrible.
http://flyff.gpotato.com/ (http://flyff.gpotato.com/)
Ive an account for this but its really hard to troll as most people on it dont understand english from what i could tell.
As for wow, i play it often and mass group trolling does not work. The most effective way to do this is to play solo. Get invited to a group to go off and do something like an instance. Wait a while then start doing idiotic things which leads to getting everyone killed. After this happens twice or so people get really annoyed and become easy targets for open flaming.
Quote from: Nigel on April 30, 2008, 11:08:19 PM
Hahaha I wonder if those old Ventrilo trolls are still posted at fugly.com? Shit, I haven't been on fugly for ages... I kind of forgot about it. :I
Ah Fugly... <3
My GASM is currently runescape classic review (http://www.gaminghorror.net/runescape-classic-still-playable/) ... the original and best version of runescape!
EVE lets you buy game-time-codes, which can be redeemed for 30 days of free play. You can also buy a GTC and sell it to another player for EVE's in-game currency (ISK). So effectively there is an exchange rate between ISK and real-life money. Right now you can buy a GTC for $15 and sell it in-game to another player for about 160-170 million ISK. So this gives an exchange rate of about $1 = 10M ISK. Titans have to be built by players in-game, and the claim of "Titan = $10000" comes from taking the in-game ISK value of the materials needed to produce a titan and translating that into USD via the exchange rate.
However the ISK -> USD exchange rate (as well as the prices of the titan's materials) fluctuates rather a lot, so the $10,000 estimate in the video is definitely just an estimate.
... Why do I get the feeling that MMO GASM is just an excuse to spend more time playing MMOs?
Quote from: nostalgicBadger on May 23, 2008, 09:31:07 PM
... Why do I get the feeling that MMO GASM is just an excuse to spend more time playing MMOs?
Shhh you will blow our cover.
i used to play MUDs, "back int day"
i ballsed up one entire game by creating a clan of transexuals who weren't interested in fighting, we were called "girls on film"
I flirted my way to become an imortal and then invited more and more people into my clan...
at one point most of the people were just ont here to chat
m$
Quote from: nostalgicBadger on May 23, 2008, 09:31:07 PM
... Why do I get the feeling that MMO GASM is just an excuse to spend more time playing MMOs?
SHUT THE FUCK UP! I'M ALMOST LEVEL 50!
\
:walken:
I made another account on EVE again and I found out they have their own radio station.
Long story short, the DJ had a troll related meltdown on air. I think EVE is the way to go with this, it works on any OS and making accounts is easy. Plus their fan base is pretty hardcore.
I've played a shitload of free MMOs. I think I can say from experience that RuneScape isn't a good choice. The community is full of six year old kids that would hardly put up a fight. Also, there's no global chat and a heap of servers. Swearing, URLs and email addresses are all blocked from chat. I don't think it's a good choice.
I recommend:
Tibia - Free, very tight communities on each server, as characters can't be transferred. Also has global chat and very few active mods. There are 'tutors' that will report you, but you're looking at between 24 and 48 hours average before a mod gets around to taking action. Lots of foreign players too. I think it'd be a good place to start. It's also GNU/Linux compatible.
Eve Online - I played the trial. It's free and doesn't require a credit card. Has global chat and one of the leading "Corporations" is Goonfleet, which I believe are all from Something Awful.
Dungeon Runners - Global chat and a player base full of angsty teenagers. I've listened to a few arguments there. It's very satisfying to get a fight started on global chat, then back out to listen to the players attack each other.
Meridian 59 - One of the first 3D MMOs. There are two English servers with maybe two hundred players on each, with between 10 and 40 people online on a single server once. The community is very tight-knit and constantly fighting over which server is better and whether or not the admins actually care about the game any more. In a good month, an admin will log in a couple of times. You could escape ban pretty easily there. It has global chat, but it drains your mana to use it. Just make a mage or something. The game costs around $10 per month. Pretty cheap.
That's all I can think of for now. Google the games, I'm lazy to provide links.
I've been playing Mabinogi in the early mornings lately since I finished the first season of House and my friend refuses to take the copy of the second season that has been sitting in his break room at work for a month. It might be fun to troll. What you eat seems to affect your characters weight and muscle definition, so it might be entertaining to eat a lot of cake until we all become morbidly obese and then stand in doorways since there's nothing anybody would be able to do about that and since you can't talk to NPCs unless you're within a few feet of them. Then again, people don't seem to talk that much anyway, and the "community" for the most part consists of people making jokes across the Trade board, e.g. "Sell> my body". Yeah, I didn't say they're funny...
On the other hand, Nexon might deserve a good trolling considering their business model for this game, which basic amounts to "Mabinogi is free to play! Here's the only thing: it's extremely skill oriented, and unless you rebirth, you're going to run out of AP. Want to rebirth? $7. Oh, you want to open a stand (it's actually just a blanket on the ground)? $10 for thirty days. Want a pet? Another $5." etc. The cash shop doesn't actually sell items, it sells the ability to play the game. Not that the $7 to rebirth is too much - that's still less than one J&B on the rocks - but calling it free to play is a little dishonest.
I considered mentioning Mabinogi, but the US version (The only English version that I know of) was restricted to American residents only, last time I checked. If you didn't have an American IP address, you couldn't play.
Although, we do have proxies...
Check the site - they just opened to international IPs.
I'm warning you though, it's a potential money pit.
Rebirth is inevitable if you want to play competitively, and that's at least $7 each time ( probably $9 once if you want to pick from 40 hair styles instead of 8 kind of ugly ones ), plus being able to open a store or have a reasonable amount of inventory is an extra $10 a month. In theory, you could sell things through chat or exchange for items that don't take up much space, like holy water, and then horde the holy water and just pay the $10 once in a while and sell it all at once, but it's still a money pit.
Sounds like a good game to target, in that case. I always wanted to play it, having loved Wurm Online, but Mabinogi sounds ridiculously expensive. Wurm only has a monthly fee.
Now that you mention it, Wurm could be a good game to troll, but it takes so long to get your skills up, I don't think it would be worthwhile.
I really don't think too many of us will pay any amount of money to troll outside of our regular ISP bill.
Quote from: Auguste on June 24, 2008, 12:56:22 AM
Wurm only has an optional monthly fee.
Fixed. My bad.
Well, Mabinogi is "free" so you wouldn't really have to pay outside of your ISP bill.
It could get expensive, but that's only if you actually want your character to be strong. You don't need to be a strong character to troll. Although I don't think you can spam global chat.. I don't even know how you use global chat, to be honest. I'm not sure there is one. So you know.. Like I said though, you could go hunt foxes and eat a bunch of meat, become morblidly obese and then form lines in front of / circles around NPCs so nobody can get to them. I would be down for that.
Morbidly obese pool closing? I'm sold!
Also, I have never seen a GM, and considering that there are at any given time three bots spamming ads for currency trading and power leveling in the starting town, I'm not convinced that there are any.
Quote from: nostalgicBadger on June 24, 2008, 08:52:01 PM
Also, I have never seen a GM, and considering that there are at any given time three bots spamming ads for currency trading and power leveling in the starting town, I'm not convinced that there are any.
Somehow I'm not surprised. Nexon has the most fucking useless GMs I've ever seen, outside of Tibia. Years ago when I used to play MapleStory, I ended up quitting because of all the botters and trainers. After weeks of trying to notify the GMs, I just gave up. I'd say either Maple or Mabinogi are good targets. Should be easy to troll with no admins to stop you.
Auguste - unrelated to trolling, but botting would be probably too complicated for most coders for me to imagine a bot being released in the near future. The combat system is a little like playing rock-paper-scissors and every successful attack ends in knock-back, so if you're not paying attention and just clicking, there's a good chance you never get a shot in. I wouldn't say it's impossible to bot, but I've done a quick sweep of google and nothing worthwhile seems to be available right now.
Unfortunately, no private servers either.
Either way, if you want to organize some kind of Mabinogi trolling, I'm down. I have an extra Nexon account, I could make a ten year old boy and see how round I can get him.
I'm not really into MMO's but I'll offer some advice from an organization point of view / brainstorming:
- Whatever game you pick has to be something easy to access. Stuff that you can access with a ten year old computer and a dialup connection. It needs to be free. It needs to be simple to understand
- What do you do when you get there? I assume some kind of prank or massive event. Like all the discordians meeting at X spot to protest against the local NPC government (or whatever). Play should be noticeable to the local players, even if they're not in the immediate vicinity. (unless you're picking a really high traffic area)
- People should be able to participate without having to level up or play the game that much. A good example is World of Warfact's corpsespam phenomenon. People will make a character with a funny name, then die somewhere, then quit that character forever and never respawn. There will then be a dead body there for all time.
- Think of a new way to jam the game. Don't do anything that'll get you banned (like spamming global chat or whatever) - do something that people don't expect you to do, and have fun doing it.
- Since it's a role playing game, you might have fun playing explorer characters, or people who seem to be horribly out of genre. Like a star trek away team landing in a fantasy MMO, or time travelers, or IRL people who somehow got zapped and got stuck inside the computer game like TRON or Captain N and the Game Masters or something
- Create a scenario where random players will play along with your shtick. Like if you set up a cabal of wise-men who live on top of a mountain and offer people wisdom, try to make it funny enough so that people will tell their friends "you gotta climb that mountain and talk to those guys"
back when Ultima Online came out, I made the world's first MMO door-to-door salesman. (no joke)
I spent all my time learning carpentry. Then I'd go door to door, asking people if they wanted any cabinets, chairs, whatever. I often got killed. But a lot of people thought it was HILARIOUS.
Heh, I kinda like the out of place troll. We need to find something where the players are all hardcore about roleplaying though.
There're a fuckload of "role-play intensive" MUDs. Actually, every third MUD seems to demand role-play.
Yeah, but you probably won't be able to attract a lot of people to a MUD. Need something flashier.
Also, MUDs are the devil.
Well, the only other thing that comes to mind is Wurm Online, which I mentioned before. Rather than a traditional MMORPG, it's an MMO fantasy simulation in which you can build houses, roads, dig mines, build cities, so on and so forth. As such, some people take it very seriously.
Only problem with that is the people that take it seriously are all on the strictly no-grieving server (Home) and everyone else is on the PK server (Wilderness). There's no point in trying to destroy other peoples' work, but it might be fun to build a Discordian theme park, or something equally creative. I think it'd be a great way to piss off the role-players, but it'll take time and effort to build it.
There's no mandatory subscription, but it may come in handy. The only other problem I can see with this is that you constantly need to eat or your actios will take longer and longer to perform, and it takes ages to cook food. We could buy it, however.
Would there be any point in mentioning Second Life?
Granted, Second Life basically trolls itself, but a lot of the scripting work I do lately is in Second Life, so I could contribute to amusing things happening.
Second Life could be a good idea, but there isn't much I can say about it, as I've never played it. However, when I thought of Second Life, I immediately thought of furries for some reason, and then Furcadia, which as far as I know, is practically the same, except with furries and angsty teens cybering. If anybody can figure out how to make their own maps in it, I think it could be fun to hit.
Before I realized that people who liked to roleplay animals tend to like to roleplay having sex as animals, I think I played Furcadia briefly when it came out. The game I never got since it didn't have a combat system =( but I think I did used to make and script maps and I might have had a bot that I could place in doorways and he would only move when i told him to.
Good times.
People still play that though? That must have been ten years ago.
Yeah, likewise. I was thouroughly disturbed by the adults-only area. It was full of Pagans, wannabe-vampires and cybering.
I just installed it (and I think I need to slit my wrists) and created a character. It's just like I remember it. I think it'd be good to hit. I might try making some maps in it later on. It seems to work flawlessly in Wine.
Making Furcadia bots is a pretty good idea. I think it'd be fun to make a few to block high-traffic maps. Until they get banned from them. :|
All the memories are returning. I think Furcadia's perfect. There are shitloads of roleplayers spread across hundreds of user-created "dreams". Most of which I'm hoping won't have anybody to kick you out. And we could create our own Discordian Themepark. :kingmeh:
That's true. I forgot, can multiple people work on one dream? I'm kind of busy right now working a full time job, coming home and programming and writing record reviews, so my only leisure is an hour a night either of Mabinogi or watching House,
but if people are behind this, I'm sure I could pick up the scripting language again. Wasn't it called dreamspeak or something?
I think the language is 'DragonSpeak'. I have no idea how many people can work on a dream at once. I never tried to make one before. I don't have a lot of free time either, but I might try writing some DragonSpeak, see how far I can get.
You are brave, brave souls.
So I'm looking at the syntax for dragonspeak and...
OK, this doesn't even qualify in my mind as scripting.
This is basically English. It's also extraordinarily limiting. Basically what you can do in DragonSpeak is:
Animate ( move ) objects
Do the above on a timer
Make teleporters
Make steps ( basically teleporters )
Make readable signs
I don't know. Let's just troll them.
What if we each made a character that looks exactly the same, or we could use bots, and act like an occupying army? We could march in one day and position people in all of the doorways and.. I don't know, just generally screw with people for a while.
Then we all leave.
That sounds good. I don't know when I'll have time though. So far I have a cow covered in all kinds of absurd colours named 'Gaylord'. If time permits, later I'll make another character and cyber a few people BloodNinja style.
Something Awful did a lot of stuff in Second Life (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/second-life-safari/)
Very nice.
I think I remember reading something about the SA goons in Wurm Online too, but my memory sucks. I know the Facepunchers are there though.
Since it's a gigantic forum it's pretty safe to say there are goons everywhere...even here :tinfoilhat:
If HIMEOBS were real, it should have a presence in MMOs too.
I remember Something Awful's Second Life series, although most of it was not particularly original and basically just amounted to flooding events with particle cocks.
And what is wrong with a flood of cocks exactly?
I approve with any cascade of cocky nature.
We should flood with particle roosters.
Nothing inherently wrong with the flood of cocks, just that it had already been done by pretty much every beginning scripter ever.
There are more original ways to screw with Second Life. Actually, I've been promoting a system I designed to allow more interaction between the user and the environment, particularly of the environment on the user. Part of this entails a built-in physics system, and being able to trigger animations.
My plan, once I get enough people using the system, is to have some sort of event showcasing its uses, and right in the middle, trigger everybody to start doing the Thriller dance. And they won't be able to stop it.
this is the first time I have acutally liked something you said, nB. good idea.