I declare that the girls voted to do nothing, and the boys did not notice that the vote took place and gave a bunch of views to videos that do not fall in the region of "somewhat important, but not too important" that has the potential to be funny.
The girls can now either accept that what I said is true, that "if you don't <redacted>, it's because you're stupid", or they can continue to pretend that the boys are smart.
The question: "are girls being honest when they say they don't want people to be sexist?"
"tv tropes successful plan"
Missing Steps Plan - TV Tropes
no . . . "tv tropes plan all outcomes lead to success"
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnspokenPlanGuarantee
___
Update 17 Jul 2026, 01:46
The last seven posts, including this one, have one recorded view each. I apologize to that reader (if not bot views). I don't apologize to anyone else for acting like what I said above isn't important. Just as anyone could give me $0.01 to allow me to talk about this idea, anyone who has access to the Internet could make me feel like someone is reading this weblog. I don't know how views work, like if clicking on a post actually gives it a view, but anyone could comment.
The following thoughts are, probably, ultimately because my random song picker selected this:
Wed Jul 8 10:14:43 AM MDT 2026
skip 56: sleep/T-ara - Bo Peep Bo Peep 티 아라 ＊ MV [9403-9CptH8]-audio.webm
-20.527908 dB -loop 1 [57]: sleep/The Four Seasons - Summer in G Minor, RV. 315 - III. Presto [NVc1bg6Omeo].webm
When I was choosing music to listen to on YouTube a few days ago, I scrolled up in the terminal, saw this, and decided to instead listen to the version of this song found in Naxx Heroic Military Wing soloed Mage by Pai.
This may have been why I decided to randomly check today (a few hours ago, could be called yesterday) whether Mione's solo of the last boss of Siege of Orgrimmar was still on YouTube. I thought of watching it, and then remembered that I said I wouldn't engage with any content from anyone who might be interested in me. When I said this, I was thinking of new content (old content isn't competitive in the algorithm and so giving old videos watchtime doesn't really matter), but it's what I said. I have never watched Mione's video.
I have seen a few clips of the encounter, I think. Like, there is a giant wheel? I thought it was ridiculous how large the boss is (both because of conservation of mass, and because of physical scaling laws like ants being really strong only because they're small). I hope that the reduced maximum camera distance, changed ~10 years ago, has allowed WoW to have smaller bosses.
And so it was that when I was thinking sad thoughts about being alone, I thought of Maydie's PvP video and considered watching it just to make a point. And then I remembered the Naxx solo video by Pai, as well as the original 'soloing a raid boss' video: Paladin solos Lord Kazzak. (Aka Why Reckoning Got Nerfed. More info in The Unedited Kazzak Solo Video; I think the complaint in its description, "I'm also admittedly frustrated that whoever uploaded this video decided to strip the words "Do It For the Lobster" from the end", was the result of a YouTube bug where the end of a video could be clipped if audio ended early. The other two videos both have those words at the end now, but might not have in 2007.)
Also, the fight at the end of the first half of Toaru Kagaku no Railgun season 1 (before the theme song switches in the second half).
So it's like a complaint: "these things don't require talking to other people." But it's implying that if something didn't require talking to other people, I could do it. This might not be true. Some somewhat difficult things that I have done: getting a good score on the game that Jared Bernstein, chief economic advisor to US Vice President Joe Biden, linked on his site in 2011. This involved like swinging balls in a pyramid-themed game, and some levels required precise cuts of multiple ropes. I ended up having to actually use a mouse, which I didn't do when PvPing on the first World of Warcraft arena tournament realm in 2008 (but that might also have been because the mini-sized mouse I had caused my hand to cramp).
I did solo various bosses in Aion, but it probably wasn't too impressive.
Example: in Aion, spreading wings to fly when standing on the ground was a specific animation. It was faster to do a normal jump, and then spread wings in the air. Flying had a combat advantage, as it was faster. I never really got good at this technique. Gliding also had an advantage: a certain ability, maybe the fear spell, didn't work on a gliding opponent? Or maybe you wouldn't move around when feared if you were sitting; this might have been in WoW? I just sort of remember that I was aware that either gliding or sitting could have an advantage, but I was never really able to pull it off in a fight.
I remember that I tried to solo a mini-boss guarding an artifact or something on a floating rock next to a fortress in the Abyss, and survived for a while doing it, but never got a kill. I might have been interrupted by PvP, or maybe I just couldn't do it.
Minor point: during the last few months that I was playing, I was saving up a lot of resources (like enough for 10~20k potions) for certain crafting recipes that required taking the Divine Fortress in the Abyss. This was the potions that restored both health and mana. It was cheaper to make one potion that restored both resources than it was to make two potions that restored them separately. Although I played the healing class, with potions on a 30-sec cooldown the healing from the combined potion would be significant when soloing a boss. After servers merged, my faction was finally able to take the Divine Fortress for the first time, and I got the crafting recipes. But I stopped playing shortly after that, and so I was never able to try soloing bosses with the better potions.
So this might be a case of "if I only had X", gets X, "well if I only had Y as well". Actually not like "Airman ga Taosenai", which I'm again linking as the Hatsune Miku cover with 764k views, rather than the original video with 3.8m views and English translation. In that song, it's "if I only had X" and then "I could get X if I had Y, but I can't get Y either".
(I'm not talking about the artifact boss. I think it is likely that I didn't try that more because of PvP. My class was probably best for soloing bosses, as the other healing class had lower healing throughput and simply outhealing the boss's dps was difficult even with infinite mana from potions, but other classes scaled better in PvP. I was not interested in PvPing against someone who picked the strongest class, bought expensive gear to boost their chances of winning, and then spent all of their AP to stay at Rank 9 so that they would get 600 or 900 points for killing me but I would only get 120 points for killing them, which is less than I would lose for a death. Also there were some kind of quests for killing people with a certain rank, which I never learned about. Note that this situation, of 'dedicated PvPers being much stronger than a typical player but also worth less points than a typical player', is the exact opposite of good PvP reward design, and basically the reason why Aion died.)
If no one talks to me, and no one does anything as a result of what I say, what is the point of saying anything at all?
___
Update 17 Jul 2026, 04:57
If a group of people are all affected by a change, and the average benefit to the group is positive, then at least one person must have a positive benefit. If no persons have a positive benefit, then the average benefit cannot be positive.
If I said more, I'd have to be unreasonably vague with <redacted> so I'll just stop here.
___
Update 17 Jul 2026, 14:44
This update is bad because it harms the narrative that I'm sad and this made me stop posting. But it's sort of like, mixing a thing to cause things to happen, due to chemistry. They start in a state where nothing is happening, but the 'favorable' state is one where things have happened. Mixing causes random changes in what things are close to each other. It's unpredictable, like with the 'Missing Steps Plan'. But it's also inevitable, like with the 'Xanatos Gambit'.
Mione made private most of the videos on her YouTube account, but left that Siege of Orgrimmar video, and her Lich King solo video, up. It's kind of like, she felt those were her most impressive accomplishments.
So I'm sort of bragging now. I was thinking how, in Aion, I only went to the Arkanos Sky Temple Sky Temple of Arkanis once, and I don't remember much of it. There were the flowing mane dog-like mobs, and platforms, but I don't remember the end boss, for example. Now that I'm saying this, I do sort of remember one thing: that the XP was bad for someone in the group, maybe me, because of the level differences in the group. I think this might have made it into my suggestions of how to fix the game; to change how these XP calculations worked, so that the goal of preventing dungeon boosting was still met, but situations like the one I was in were less punishing (where one player was a bit over the mobs' levels, and another was a bit under). But in general, there was actually zero story for the dungeon, and so it was just 'an activity that one could choose to do, for XP or item rewards'. Many players, like me, would prefer to do PvP instead.
When I was reviewing Aion screenshots a few months ago, there were some that showed a situation that I do remember; this is the 'bragging'. I was looking for PvP, and found a bunch of low-level characters. I didn't attack them, but I let them attack me. They did almost no damage and so I just stood there, maybe moving around a little. Then, a character close to my level attacked me, and I sprang into action to fight back. This would not be a 'bragging' situation if I did not win that fight.
I'm making a heroic attempt to find those screenshots. After no less than 38 screenshots where I found an elephant-like creature and posed next to it like a tourist,
I exploited my way to the top of this plateau to place my kisk, or personal resurrection point.
These last two screenshots were taken just five seconds apart, at 23:25:30 and 23:25:35 (in the time zone where I was at the time, probably same as server location). I don't remember Aion's day and night cycle length but it might have just changed to dusk during those five seconds. (Alternative is a change based on camera location.) So anyway, I then went to look for PvP, and this happened:
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| Aion1875.jpg, 2010-05-08 23:48:32 |
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| Aion1876.jpg, 2010-05-08 23:53:12 |
This player killed me five minutes after I first encountered them. I apparently ran from the zone where I encountered them, meant for like lvl 20~25 characters, into the nearby main base for their faction, Eltnen Fortress.
I can't remember if the blue boots I was wearing at this point were the ones that gave +20% speed. But in the first screenshot, I had just used a Greater Running Scroll, which gave +30% run speed. If a strong character used this item, then a group of weak characters each had to use it as well or they simply could not catch the strong character, and it wasn't really a cheap item. In the second screenshot, I had used three of the scrolls in the second row of abilities, which I think were these running scrolls, and this player, Sameena, may have had to use a similar amount when chasing me.
In the next screenshot I took, 17 minutes later, a nearly-dead player is just barely visible hiding next to guards at the upper right, and I haven't used any running scrolls during this time:
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| Aion1877.jpg, 2010-05-09 00:10:23 |
Typical bot clearing activities,
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| Aion1884.jpg, 2010-05-09 01:05:48 |
I killed a player, I was killed by a higher-level player without bothering to screenshot it but it's visible in the chat log (1 scroll and 1 potion used in 33 minutes, engaging PvP gameplay), and then I encounter the same bot again:
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| Aion1885.jpg, 2010-05-09 01:07:41 |
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| Aion1886.jpg, 2010-05-09 01:40:22 |
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| Aion1890.jpg, 2010-05-09 01:47:44 |
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| Aion1891.jpg, 2010-05-09 01:48:02 |
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| Aion1892.jpg, 2010-05-09 01:48:23 |
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| Aion1893.jpg, 2010-05-09 01:49:29 |
Note "Hoesay inflicted 488 damage on Brutal Zombie", compared to Sameena inflicting 85 damage on me (PvP damage was reduced by something like 40%), or the player Diash visible in the combat log in Aion1876.jpg doing just 11 and 9 damage to a mob.
Screenshots 1894 to 1901 are another two bots with the same scenario with a private store message, which I guess I'll include because they show the game environment and that killing one mob gave 16k XP, so the PvP kills might look like a lot of XP compared to WoW but not that much:
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| Aion1894.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:07:44 |
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| Aion1895.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:07:55 |
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| Aion1896.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:08:35 |
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| Aion1897.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:08:59 |
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| Aion1898.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:09:14 |
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| Aion1899.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:10:10 |
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| Aion1900.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:10:41 |
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| Aion1901.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:11:23 |
I think it's fair to say that a game where players can get the same rewards with no effort as they can by actually trying won't be as popular as a game where rewards require effort, and one where botting is banned but there are still a lot of bots (being dishonest and breaking the rules is rewarded, instead of being punished) will be even less popular than that. (The reason for these screenshots was likely so I could submit a report on the website, with the screenshots attached. Clearly, if a character is resting in one screenshot and fighting a mob in the next screenshot, they must have stood up, and a real human would see the private store message.)
I note from combat log, "Mourna inflicted 860 damage on Kerubiel Looter", and the Grayson bot had already resurrected by the time I killed the Mourna bot.
Then I encountered a real player.
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| Aion1902.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:14:09 |
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| Aion1903.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:31:55 |
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| Aion1904.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:37:29 |
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| Aion1905.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:38:47 |
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| Aion1906.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:39:58 |
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| Aion1907.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:41:05 |
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| Aion1908.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:44:07 |
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| Aion1909.jpg, 2010-05-09 02:44:41 |
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| Aion1911.jpg, 2010-05-12 14:55:19 |
Random screenshot, I really think 'GDKP' gold bid systems are better for situations like this:
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| Aion2843.jpg, 2010-06-15 11:37:24 |
Aion had such a system as a built-in option, but no one in on US servers ever used it. I only ever used it once, on the tough, mammoth-like world boss for which I assembled a group for the specific purpose of using this loot method on an interesting item. (Then I won the item with a bid, and then gave it to the person who needed it.) It was just a single bid, hidden I think. I think the system I thought of, where lower bids have the opportunity to match the highest bid with a lower chance of winning the roll, is better (and of course, otherwise I wouldn't suggest this system when I already knew of other systems).
Point: when you have no idea what an item is worth, and everyone is bidding on it with the intent of selling it. Like with this screenshot: looking at it now, I have no idea what these two items are worth. Most likely the staff was more valuable than the ring, and I got the staff. I would have preferred an outcome where both me and the other player got equal value from the shared effort, which is exactly what gold bid is for.
If you bid too low, you feel bad if you lose it. If you bid too high, you also feel bad. But if you bid low, and the other player bids low, then the lower player can still match, and you both have about an equal chance of getting the item.
If one player gives a low bid because they don't know what the item is worth, and other player gives a bid exactly equal to the item's value, then both players get exactly half of the value: one player gets the item and loses half of its value in gold, the other gains half of its value in gold.
If the item is worth 100k but neither player knows this, one player bids 20k, and another bids 50k (both trying to stay below its true value), then the player who gave a more accurate bid will probably win the roll (60% chance their roll will be unbeatable, and chances are even otherwise, so 80% chance to win). They are being rewarded for being smarter, or if they have better knowledge, for giving a more honest bid. Whoever wins gets 75k of value (100k value item, minus 25k to other player).
Well, here is an unsoloable boss that someone lured to guards:
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| Aion2835.jpg, 2010-06-15 10:19:36 |
Random screenshot for reporting a bot, that shows my status message, "I am a turtle desu",
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| Aion2857.jpg, 2010-06-15 20:07:05 |
Screenshots of the player, Kunoichi, who is in my friends list:
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| Aion2319.jpg, 2010-05-22 15:15:48 |
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| Aion2462.jpg, 2010-05-31 17:21:36 |
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| Aion2465.jpg, 2010-05-31 17:22:04 |
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| Aion2469.jpg, 2010-05-31 17:26:44 |
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| Aion2472.jpg, 2010-05-31 17:27:56 |
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| Aion2474.jpg, 2010-05-31 17:29:29 |
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| Aion2475.jpg, 2010-05-31 17:36:16 |
Random screenshot of aether collection while flying, in enemy territory:
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| Aion2250.jpg, 2010-05-19 22:45:44 |
An unusual male character:
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| Aion2396.jpg, 2010-05-30 10:34:23 |
Pretty spell graphics:
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| Aion2388.jpg, 2010-05-30 09:28:30 |
Random screenshot showing that my faction, Asmodians, had less control over the contested areas than the other faction, Elyos:
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| Aion2747.jpg, 2010-06-13 09:41:12 |
Lvl 50 green-quality item crafted at great expense being worse than the lvl 28 blue-quality item that I already had:
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| Aion2748.jpg, 2010-06-13 11:11:57 |
Compare World of Warcraft Classic, where a blue-quality item is generally about as good as a green-quality item five levels higher. (Though actually this screenshot is about the power of item enchantments and manastone sockets, with lower-level items being much cheaper to enchant.) A game where most items have value to someone, vs a game where many or most items are strictly worse than some other item with the same cost, with no ability for player-driven demand to influence these prices.
The first fortress siege that I went to, with focus being on all the enemy players visible as red dots on the minimap, and chat messages about important NPCs or players being killed:
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| Aion2858.jpg, 2010-06-15 20:52:05 |
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| Aion2860.jpg, 2010-06-15 20:52:27 |
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| Aion2861.jpg, 2010-06-15 20:53:30 |
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| Aion2862.jpg, 2010-06-15 20:54:02 |
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| Aion2863.jpg, 2010-06-15 20:55:18 |
Another player resurrects me after killing several enemies, and I turn on PvP ranks to see what rank they are:
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| Aion2864.jpg, 2010-06-15 20:57:08 |
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| Aion2865.jpg, 2010-06-15 21:20:17 |
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| Aion2867.jpg, 2010-06-15 21:21:55 |
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| Aion2868.jpg, 2010-06-15 21:24:54 |
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| Aion2870.jpg, 2010-06-15 21:28:03 |
The 3 Abyss Points I gained from the player who was stealthed near my body, with plenty of red dots still visible on the minimap:
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| Aion2871.jpg, 2010-06-15 21:31:26 |
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| Aion2885.jpg, 2010-06-15 21:45:54 |
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| Aion2886.jpg, 2010-06-15 21:46:21 |
Random boss that I soloed, three levels below me, as well as a rare mob that ought to have been tuned to be much stronger (mentioned in the chat in the third screenshot):
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| Aion2890.jpg, 2010-06-16 11:37:28 |
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| Aion2891.jpg, 2010-06-16 11:37:49 |
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| Aion2898.jpg, 2010-06-17 15:33:48 |
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| Aion2899.jpg, 2010-06-17 15:37:28 |
The 6-dot hero boss for which I assembled a group to test the GDKP-like loot method, only to get disappointing loot:
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| Aion2964.jpg, 2010-06-17 21:41:46 |
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| Aion2965.jpg, 2010-06-17 22:01:33 |
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| Aion2966.jpg, 2010-06-17 22:01:41 |
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| Aion2967.jpg, 2010-06-17 22:54:40 |
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| Aion2968.jpg, 2010-06-17 22:54:49 |
Camping the rare spider mob, but did not win the tag on her:
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| Aion2974.jpg, 2010-06-18 00:26:55 |
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| Aion3023.jpg, 2010-06-18 00:48:23 |
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| Aion3049.jpg, 2010-06-18 01:05:07 |
Another random boss whom I soloed, without screenshotting directly after:
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| Aion3057.jpg, 2010-06-18 15:23:22 |
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| Aion3058.jpg, 2010-06-18 15:24:34 |
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| Aion3059.jpg, 2010-06-18 15:44:33 |
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| Aion3060.jpg, 2010-06-18 16:17:28 |
A 10k-stack of a crafting material, mostly purchased from bots which I then tried to get banned:
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| Aion3146.jpg, 2010-06-19 11:11:54 |
Notifications of important ability usage, presumably sent to all online players (imagine if in WoW Classic, faction leaders being killed was announced similarly). Second screenshot I think shows the high-ranked player who excused their lack of participation in PvP:
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| Aion3154.jpg, 2010-06-19 23:41:16 |
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| Aion3155.jpg, 2010-06-19 23:43:43 |
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| Aion3156.jpg, 2010-06-19 23:45:00 |
Finally! I think this is the PvP encounter I was looking for, but it doesn't show what happened next:
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| Aion3157.jpg, 2010-06-20 02:14:08 |
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| Aion3158.jpg, 2010-06-20 02:14:51 |
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| Aion3159.jpg, 2010-06-20 02:31:29 |
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| Aion3160.jpg, 2010-06-20 10:38:36 |
I would have stopped there, but apparently this is the actual group in which I tested the GDKP-like loot method. First screenshot shows 3.8 million XP debt, enough to cause several minutes of rez sickness (or soul sickness) every time I die, or maybe only if I don't rez using the kisk. A wiki for Aion says that dying with this much XP debt causes 3% loss of XP per death. Based on the change in my XP by the end, I died 15 times. I might actually have decided to do this in part so that I could lose XP, without doing the very lame thing of just flying up and dying multiple times that some other players did to remove their XP.
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| Aion3165.jpg, 2010-06-21 12:55:43 |
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| Aion3166.jpg, 2010-06-21 13:12:32 |
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| Aion3167.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:36:32 |
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| Aion3168.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:42:10 |
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| Aion3169.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:43:22 |
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| Aion3170.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:43:41 |
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| Aion3171.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:47:59 |
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| Aion3172.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:49:08 |
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| Aion3173.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:51:37 |
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| Aion3174.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:52:33 |
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| Aion3175.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:52:46 |
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| Aion3176.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:53:22 |
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| Aion3177.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:54:21 |
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| Aion3178.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:54:37 |
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| Aion3179.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:56:41 |
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| Aion3180.jpg, 2010-06-21 14:56:47 |
I would like to think that I took this screenshot because I used only a single weak consumable to solo this boss:
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| Aion3244.jpg, 2010-06-24 19:23:34 |
Someone reporting me for logging out, and saying that what I was doing was lame while camping the rift exit with eight people:
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| Aion3245.jpg, 2010-06-24 19:26:32 |
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| Aion3246.jpg, 2010-06-24 19:29:42 |
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| Aion3247.jpg, 2010-06-24 19:59:28 |
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| Aion3248.jpg, 2010-06-24 19:49:45 |
Buffs and chat show that I did move, maybe accidentally (like using an emote), after which I died once or possibly twice. My XP went up slightly, which could have been from a PvP kill. I would like to note that combat log shows "Ancientgladiator inflicted 1,384 damage on Thorntail Skyray", when I had probably 3.5k health. In fairness, although I made the post ~7 months earlier about fixing PvP, which may or may not mentioned the 'attention'-based mechanics that I first thought of for WoW, I don't think any MMO has implemented similar mechanics to make world PvP more fun in all of this time. This is just a graphic example: if the game rewards players for 'bullying' others by outnumbering them, some players will do it, and not feel bad about it at all.
Remember how in early WoW (22 years ago), I was participating in world PvP in Desolace, and I and other Alliance players hunted down an enemy Forsaken priest and she used /spit as she was about to die? And I didn't feel bad about the PvP encounter until I looked at the chat log and saw this emote? So I'm not blaming the players in this screenshot. I'm blaming the game designers.
Not sure if this is worth including: I crafted an item, which was apparently for a requirement for crafting progression, and it still probably wasn't good enough that anyone of the required level would actually want to use it.
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| Aion3250.jpg, 2010-06-24 21:30:18 |
Apparently it unlocked skill progression that let me make the potions that restored both health and mana.
Two private store messages:
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| Aion3278.jpg, 2010-06-25 14:18:30 |
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| Aion3280.jpg, 2010-06-25 14:27:31 |
PvPvE, the boss is targeting me in the first screenshot:
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| Aion3281.jpg, 2010-06-25 14:33:22 |
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| Aion3282.jpg, 2010-06-25 14:33:41 |
Boss from Aion3244.jpg soloed again:
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| Aion3283.jpg, 2010-06-25 14:52:54 |
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| Aion3284.jpg, 2010-06-25 16:21:37 |
Large amount of unwanted XP from crafting, noting that I still had the materials for ~5000 crafts of the better kind of potion but had not learned to make them yet:
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| Aion3285.jpg, 2010-06-25 17:48:11 |
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| Aion3286.jpg, 2010-06-25 17:51:20 |
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| Aion3287.jpg, 2010-06-25 17:52:07 |
Me interrupting PvP so I could report a possible bot, but it might have logged out:
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| Aion3300.jpg, 2010-06-25 23:52:58 |
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| Aion3301.jpg, 2010-06-25 23:53:44 |
Divine Spark was my highest-damage ability, with a 20% trigger rate (proc rate) from the previous chain skill. I guess I found it notable when it was completely blocked by a shield effect.
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| Aion3302.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:13:54 |
I think I was probably happy that I could say, "do you know the glide trick" and someone just answered yes. I can't really say that I remember this player, Gljria. But in the last screenshot, I said, "wow i think it isn't a bot." Aion is a PvP game, and I think even people who are bad at PvP, and just bad at games, should be able to have fun even in a PvP game. You just need to reward skilled players for fighting other skilled players. (And don't have mechanics that make it impossible to have fun without first grinding to maximum level, or maximum gear progression after reaching the level cap, while avoiding PvP.)
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| Aion3304.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:38:23 |
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| Aion3305.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:38:41 |
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| Aion3306.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:41:09 |
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| Aion3307.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:41:42 |
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| Aion3308.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:43:31 |
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| Aion3309.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:46:28 |
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| Aion3310.jpg, 2010-06-26 00:46:47 |
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| Aion3311.jpg, 2010-06-26 01:03:55 |
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| Aion3312.jpg, 2010-06-26 01:15:17 |
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| Aion3313.jpg, 2010-06-26 01:17:12 |
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| Aion3314.jpg, 2010-06-26 01:17:52 |
I think I remember that the player Odyssus was only like lvl 25, despite doing what was probably 80% of my health with four attacks. I don't know if I had any further encounters with the player that are documented in my screenshots. I'm just going to assume that I did find the PvP encounter I was initially searching for, even though the two screenshots only show the first half of what I remembered.
I was going to stop there, but in these next screenshots: the player Odyssus is visible, but apparently doesn't know the glide trick. Another Elyos player apparently does know it, and I'm doing the logout trick to prevent them from fearing me into danger or something. And there was some method of communicating cross-faction intelligibly that I didn't know, and I was, in fact, PvPing after reaching Soldier Rank 3 and almost lost it due to my repeated deaths.
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| Aion3318.jpg, 2010-06-26 02:13:10 |
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| Aion3319.jpg, 2010-06-26 02:17:21 |
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| Aion3320.jpg, 2010-06-26 02:18:59 |
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| Aion3321.jpg, 2010-06-26 02:26:04 |
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| Aion3322.jpg, 2010-06-26 02:27:32 |
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| Aion3323.jpg, 2010-06-26 02:29:26 |
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Update 17 Jul 2026, 23:25
A bug. Screenshot 3312 was to show that the player was recovering the normal amount, despite having the Festering Wounds debuff. Then I did a duel with my group member, Victimized, to test it:
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| Aion3315.jpg, 2010-06-26 01:25:19 |
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| Aion3316.jpg, 2010-06-26 01:28:41 |
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Update 18 Jul 2026, 03:21
I pretend that my character in Aion had bad gear. Like, one of the bosses in a screenshot dropped a neck item, and it showed that the one I had was a lvl 25 green item, when I was lvl 35. Or the fact that several of my items were cloth, when I was a class that could use chain armor.
I might have been the best-geared character of my class at my level. It's all because of my staff, shown in a screenshot where I crafted a spellbook weapon. This was a drop from the rare spider mob. Which was in Asmodian territory. How many Elyos characters of my class ever got the weapon?
(There were better weapons, and better gear than what I had, but most people who tried hard to get good gear at a lower level were physical damage classes.)
If Elyos characters wanted to farm the staff, it would be difficult. Lvl 50 characters would win a direct fight, and keeping a kisk alive was difficult with people who were probably cheating with hacks to detect kisks (that's what I thought, without conclusive evidence). There was actually a really long glide, in Asmodian territory, that I managed to replicate once I had some items with +flight time, since it seemed an Elyos player had done it, maybe to place a kisk. (I think I once also saw an actual glide cheater, who glided vertically up from the ground, but if I could make that long glide legitimately, no reason to think the Elyos player cheated.)
So, the point is this: the level penalty for spells. Low-level characters could not land spells on higher-level characters. Consider this justification:
"If all the low-level players who go through rifts for PvP are misbehaving gankers with ridiculous gear, then it's better if they can't fight off lvl 50s who come to clear them up."
In this scenario, the solution causes a change from "many gankers acting badly", to "fewer gankers acting badly". This solution only makes any sense because of the level-based rifts, which prevent lvl 50s of one faction from going to the leveling areas of the other faction.
But suppose it's not 100% gankers going through rifts. Suppose it's 90% gankers, and then me, definitely not a ganker. This solution discourages the gankers, but it also discourages me.
If it's only 5% gankers, then the players who enjoy even fights will be discouraged when they can't fight back against lvl 50s who unfairly intervene in fun PvP, while the gankers will suffer less discouragement because they have speed boots and speed scrolls which let them run away. Both gankers and honorable players will go through rifts less, but the proportion of gankers will increase. This may seem to retroactively justify the solution that seems to have no downsides when it's 100% gankers going through rifts.
The goal should not be to "have fewer gankers going through rifts than without the chosen solution". It should be to have many honorable players going through rifts for PvP, because if you don't let players PvP in a PvP game, they will quit.
One argument that some players used to justify design decisions by the developers was, "if the low levels are too fun, players will not be motivated to reach the level cap and participate in fortress sieges." This logic is a bit worse in a game where you get XP from PvP kills, but it mainly fails because the incentives are the same on both factions. Maybe the mistake that people make is, "I only communicate with players within my own faction inside the game, and so I will assume that people on the forums are probably also from my faction and any changes they suggest are changes that will primarily affect my faction, with the actions and incentives for the other faction being unchanged or being less affected."
Even though it's wrong from a game design perspective, it's a logic that can affect the playstyle and thinking of individual players. In this case, the motivation or deciding factor is "benefit to the group". But the same logic can occur when the motivation is "benefit to the self". It's when people think, "the early game, or leveling, doesn't matter. The real game starts at the level cap." Even if there are no fortress sieges to participate in, people can still use logic like, "progression at the level cap is time-gated with a slow trickle of progression, so starting that trickle sooner will always be better." Or, "if most people are already at the level cap, then most people don't care what a character does at low levels, so I shouldn't care either and should rush to the level cap, even if I need to buy a boost."
People who don't really care what the majority thinks may not reach this conclusion. But what happens when "people who don't care what the majority thinks" become the majority? Do they really not care, even when they could gain group advantages by deciding to care, and saying that others should care?
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Update 18 Jul 2026, 04:34
ask AI question that is basically, 'should aliens who are nothing like humans fight each other or be at peace?' But with additional layers of complexity and unnecessary details. Like, 'they have five arms each, with green tile-like decorations on their spiky sides. They value an object called <word>. Should they cooperate in making <word> or take whatever <word> they come across. (Compare umbrellas in Japan.) Keeping track of <word> ownership has a cost. What do you think about the value of someone considering this question, does it improve their thinking and lead to a more healthy outlook on life or is it a stupid question that distracts from more important problems?'
"Is it possible to form a group that is not fundamentally about 'X behavior/attitude/characteristic is better than alternatives'?"
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Update 18 Jul 2026, 04:56
I basically always put 'white' in quotes like that, but I don't know if that works as a question. Most people don't do it. So using the quotes marks someone as separate: either they consider themselves to be unlike all the people who don't use quotes, or they are so unperceptive that they don't notice that it isn't a typical thing to do and that people often react negatively towards people who act differently (who are "weird"). So without the quotes, the question is,
"Is there anything wrong with white people acting like they are in some way better than other people?"
My youngest sister didn't like the movie Bright (2017). She viewed it as a simple premise of 'orcs are black people'. I don't know how much influence Will Smith had on the plot, but four pieces of evidence that someone (director, etc.) didn't want the audience to think that: 'black' people are introduced with a similar culture as in real life. Similar music to what people expect, similar culture ("attitude towards neighbors"). I have the impression that 'block parties' are more common in poor neighborhoods, whether they are 'black', Hispanic, etc. Poor people in general have smaller houses, and so they are more likely to want to go outside of their house, like on the porch (and less likely to have constant air conditioning that requires windows to be closed and is wasted if outside). So, in areas with acceptably low crime, poor people are more likely to hang out around their neighbors, which is what happens at the start of the film.
Second, the orcs in the film are not "ballers". 'Black' people in the US have a stereotype for being good at basketball.
Third, "Fairy lives don't matter today".
Fourth, the police officer who says that his ancestors in Russia fought against orcs thousands of years before. 'Black' people are generally considered to be the people who come from the region south of Europe, not east of it.
"Are black people better in some ways than other people?"
The fact is, 'black' people are sensitive to the possibility that people think, secretly or not, that 'black' people are worse than other people. So questions like this often get interpreted under the assumption that the questioner is attempting to change people's attitudes, most likely to the detriment of 'black' people.
This is, rather, investigating the nature of groups, for science. Do 'black' people in fact think that they are better than other people in some way, as the question in the previous update suggests all groups might? (If the group is about an attitude being better, not a characteristic, then it follows that believing the attitude is better is better than not believing it's better, and so people within the group are better than demographically similar people outside of the group.)
As might have been apparent, the reason I asked the original question is its relevance to game design. Is it possible to prevent harmful effects when most characters logged in concurrently in an MMO are at the level cap? Or should MMOs have the goal of preventing this outcome, so that players don't end up thinking of "players at the level cap" as a group that's better than players or characters outside of the group? (Since if they do think of it as a group, and it's the majority group, then it can negatively influence game design.)
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Update 18 Jul 2026, 05:39
This made me think of how when someone in chat asked Pey why she was playing Alliance for the launch of WoW Classic, I responded in chat that it was because Alliance was better, of course.
People used to joke about faction rivalries among WoW players, back when it wasn't possible to group with the opposite faction for instanced content. But some people really did sort of think that way; some WoW-related video that I watched part of recently had a clip of a young person saying that they wouldn't be friends with someone who played the opposite faction in WoW.
When I saw that Pey had switched to Horde, I went and found the stream where she deleted her Night Elf priest, after giving away all her stuff to a random player. (Edit: and I noticed that she hadn't reset her sub counter, which I had commented about when I was watching her. It was at something like 100 out of 10.) She didn't really say much about why she was doing it, and she even suggested it was a stupid thing to do since it meant having to relevel when all the other streamers were getting close to 60, and Alliance has long been the more popular faction in Classic (before the Horde got Blood Elves as a 'pretty' race).
It seemed likely that the reason she did it was just that she's used to playing Horde. But maybe that wasn't the only reason. I actually don't remember if she got unbanned on Twitch before the first OnlyFangs, but that first guild was on Alliance. Is it possible she has avoided Alliance because of my comment in chat that "Alliance is better", which I might have said when she wasn't even at her computer?
Edit: but she did play at least one gnome mage on Hardcore. The clip where she blinks into a tree stump and dies.
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Update 18 Jul 2026, 06:05
00:45
If no one shares the idea within three days (260 ksec), I'm not interested in anyone who has had contact with or participated in a government conspiracy, even if it means I'm not interested in anyone and even if someone shares it after that time has passed
I'm worried that since I mentioned Pey, it could give someone a reason to do nothing. I think Pey has acted in a way that suggests she might have read something on this weblog, like when I mentioned her, and she didn't stream WoW for several weeks; but I wouldn't say I think she would fall into the categories mentioned above.
Person 1: "Why didn't you do X"
Person 2: "I didn't do X because I thought it wouldn't be to your benefit"
Person 1: assumes that Person 2 is wrong
Reasoning: "It might seem that acting in a certain way would benefit you, but in fact that isn't true, because I'm a bad person."
For example, when I said to Mei that if she didn't reply to me or something within about two days, that I would kill myself. She did not reply.
Suppose that Demi Rose is interested in me. If I had said, like in 2018 to pick an arbitrary year, that if she didn't share the idea within three days then I wasn't interested in her, would she have done so?
Doing this is the X mentioned above. I don't think she would have shared it within three days if I had said this.
She might have reasoned, for example, that she didn't share it immediately upon learning of it. And yet, she may have felt that sharing it was important. I felt that the sleep paralysis she had a few days after I first linked it to her on Chirp Club was directly related to her knowledge of the idea. So, she could have thought that not sharing it made her bad, or that perhaps it didn't make her bad but there must be a reason Y why people who didn't share it weren't bad, and that if she shared it merely because I had said this thing, it would mean she was bad.
What I said today is something that does not point at any specific person. Perhaps there is no government conspiracy. Perhaps there is one, but Demi Rose has had no involvement with it. A conspiracy, by definition, involves more than one person, and the stated consequence is one that also concerns more than one person. Many people feel it's easier to do a thing that helps many people, than to do a thing that only helps themselves.
This is the reasoning. I have been using logic for 15 years. (Note irony.)
