And so Game Informer has finally had enough -- that took about two weeks of Dark Souls bullshit...

I really have to be careful, because I'm not in the business of getting arrested again -- yet.

I still have commitments to friends and the like to take care of, but too many more gamers like the pieces of shit I have to deal with on Game Informer slamming me because I basically gave up on Dark Souls and said it was a Tournament of Champions RPG and I may well have to give up gaming if I don't want to end up like that guy in the last post I wrote to you.

But, basically, I try to log in tonight and find about a five-day ban for "Aggressive".

Aggressive? Hey, Game Informer Mods, you ain't seen fucking "Aggressive" til you come over here -- and I left your head editor the link to this blog in my Tweet to him.

And these little fucks can call me an ass, but when I call them on their shit, that's "Aggressive". If that's the case, ban me now, revoke my subscription to your magazine (which I pretty much asked Customer Service to do!), and be done with it.

My contempt for the US gamer knows only enough bounds that I can keep myself out of jail for a few hours at a time. And that's basically ONLY because I have commitments in the real world -- otherwise, I'd be in prison and I'd probably like it (or be dead soon enough that it wouldn't matter).

Too many more like the elitist Dark Souls players, and that might not be the case much longer.

There is the occasional story which makes me think there are some people who get it...

I was running around the different gaming forums when I came across this little gem on Game Informer:

Grown Man Tracks Down and Chokes 13 Year-Old Black Ops Player

Glory, hallelujah! We finally get a gamer who has had enough and uses the one recourse that is going to actually provide a deterrent for these little pieces of shit who do this all the time!

Kids are not "going to grow out of it", and you are an ignorant fool if you think otherwise.

Yeah, he's going to jail for it -- since we seem to honor violence by those who are allowed to perpetrate it like the little piece-of-shit who got him to snap...

But still, good on him. Seriously.

Time to cut and run, Square-Enix...

It's good to see the online-gaming version of an alcoholic company (Square-Enix) has finally admitted that their new game is shit.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/09/27/wada-final-fantasy-xiv-greatly-damaged-franchise-s-brand.aspx

I'll leave this comment from the CEO of the company, Yoichi Wada, from today:

“The Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged," said Wada regarding Final Fantasy XIV.

You're half right, Wada-san.

You need to cut bait and run back to the types of games you are competent to create, and cut off this continued abortion to be a company which you have clearly demonstrated that you are NOT and WILL NEVER BE.

Get out of the MMORPG business, Wada-san.

Oh, THIS is fresh...

Got another message from the Galka-stalker ( :) ) -- and the reason I use your Galka name here is because your YouTube/Google handle is effectively impossible to pronounce or spell...

She got her signature deleted by a mod over on the official forums.

Well, she's pissed and fired off this salvo...

"Wow SE seriously? I post saying I'm AGAINST using Windower & bots & yet you remove it? Maybe Starcade was right...you're gonna regret supporting the cheaters someday SE. I play YOUR game without third party tools. Deal with it."
I'm no longer sure. Legitimate play no longer exists on FFXI. You lose all social acceptability if you aren't cheating over there. You can't sue them, because you basically get no rights at all, vis-a-vis gameplay, for your $12.95/mo (it might get you the right to log in, but they can grief you, deny you content, and basically run you off the game -- and you have no rights to redress for breach of contract, theft, and several other civil torts in the courts).

About the only recourse you have is to find some of these cheaters and go old-school on their asses.

Square-Enix and BG are in some sort of financial cahoots here. Cuddleslave, time to eject.

PS: You want a good example of this, and a good laugh/throw-shit-at-your-computer moment?

1) The entire "How to not get banned by association?" thread, full of people who openly should have their computers smashed...

2) Someone was actually told by a GM to simply restart Windower if that was what was causing their problems, completely ignoring that Windower is fucking illegal!

Fire that asshole!

And the shit just keeps on coming...

Got another message from Cuddleslave, who promptly deleted her attempt to help work on the test server.

Why, you might ask?

Because, almost instantaneously after her long wait to get the thing downloaded and installed, she's welcomed with screams that Windower is now apparently workable with the test server.

This, on the heels of Square-Enix, in what is either going to be the consummate "It's a trap!" meme moment, or else the admission of what many people have known all along, having players declare which game client(s) the players use...

If there is any accurate subjugation of the temptation that this is a trap to get people to be banned for Windower, I expect PC North American players to fall on about the breakdown that this BluGartr shithead posted on the BG forum.

(Effectively, a mock-up chart of platforms and the like in the form of a pie-graph, where:

• About 1-2% use PS2s
• About 5-7% use XBox 360
• About 10% or so legally use PC's
• A sliver uses the Vita
• and over 80% cheats their fucking asses off with Windower

Interesting side note: BG has it's own survey up on which platform the players use, and 95% of them use a PC for at least one platform of use of the game.

--------

This seems to run about the realm of a lot of the other gaming I do online...

Pangya: Largely have stopped playing for the time being after it seems that you need illegal third-party operations to do anything over there. Hard to want to play when the top players routinely go well over 30-under par.

GSN.com: 35,000 on Lingo -- 22 words in 60 seconds... Yeah, who the fuck do you think you are fooling? And this is for credits which can be made into real prizes!

You know, there are days I almost wish I was still in jail... Too much more of this, and I might well be very soon. Hope I can make it to finish off with Square-Enix for XIII-2 before I either get shot or go postal...

Square-Enix fucks up again, and Blu Gartr shits all over... Gamestop!!!

The more I see what happens on BG, the more I am convinced that Square-Enix must be paying these cheatinous fuckers.

So I'm toodling around tonight and see a complaint thread on the recent PC release of Deus Ex Online by Square-Enix, including a coupon for a third-party online service which would be in competition with one which Gamestop either currently has or is about to unveil.

Hence, GameStop started pulling all of the copies, opening them, and removing the coupon, per their policy.

In fact, Square-Enix recently admitted that they were in the wrong, because they did not notify (as they were legally contracted to do -- not that Square-Enix' online division seems to give Goddamn #1 nor #2 about contracts.

So, even with that, everybody is shitting all over Gamestop on the BG thread, which you can find if you can stomach it.

Here's a few protips for the uninitiated:

1. If it's anywhere the public can get to, it's already been opened. If it's that much of a problem to you, then go find somewhere that can actually try to defend little scumbuckets from robbing the place blind. Given your mentalities, those places may become fewer and further between, but there you go...

2. If you believe the company is allowing Gamestop employees to play new games and then sell the slightly-used games as new, then you have a fraud situation, and maybe theft as well. Now, you being FFXI bastards, you probably know this term from the other side of the equation, but that's at least a civil tort, and you might even make the case that they stole the product to use it and could accuse them of theft.

3. Learn to take advantage of the rights and privileges you are afforded. Let me give you an example: When the PS3's were very hard to find around the time of the release of Final Fantasy XIII, the only place which had one was an older (and used) PS3 from a Gamestop here in the Inland Empire of California (yeah, the shithole armpit of the state, but them's the breaks). So, took it home, and found that the controller wasn't quite right. It was within the 30 day guarantee -- though I also purchased the one-year extension -- so I went back to another Gamestop, showed them the controller, they tested it, and then got me another (used) one which works as well.

But, of course, since your bread seems to be buttered by Square-Enix, you can't get past the fact that THEY WERE THE ONES IN BREACH OF THEIR CONTRACT!

Long Rant II: The concept of "What's Yours Is Mine!"

I guess the source of this long rant is basically examining this blog as a whole, juxtaposed with current events such as the London Riots, as well as several personal observations of people in the area in which I live.

I'm left utterly fucking flabbergasted as to where we have gone as a culture, especially in the last 3-5 years or so.

I guess it starts with a lot of the stuff that I saw in the piece on Internet trolls I've referred to numerous times from the New York Times Magazine.

Well, since that 2008 piece, it's clear that the “Malwebolence” mentioned there has gotten far worse.

“Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” – one anonymous respondent to the interviewer for the piece.

… completely forgetting that there are people who will DIE to your fucking “Lulz”.

(Or is that the point? A death is worth a trillion “Lulz” to you???)

Another incident noted in the Magazine article:

“Sherrod DeGrippo, a 28-year-old Atlanta native who goes by the name Girlvinyl, runs Encyclopedia Dramatica, the online troll archive [on which I do have an article about me]. In 2006, DeGrippo received an e-mail message from a well-known band of trolls, demanding that she edit the entry about them on the Encyclopedia Dramatica site. She refused. Within hours, the aggrieved trolls hit the phones, bombarding her apartment with taxis, pizzas, escorts and threats of rape and violent death. DeGrippo, alone and terrified, sought counsel from a powerful friend.”

She called a person who had this kind of an idea as to what made him tick for stating it out loud after his day-trading went splat for five figures: “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill four [billion] of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?”

The next year, he gave a talk to a convention for hackers in San Diego, high on drugs – one which got him in a lot of trouble with the Feds!

But, at the end of the day, the article tends to answer it's own questions about where a lot of this comes from:

“Why inflict anguish on a helpless stranger? It’s tempting to blame technology, which increases the range of our communications while dehumanizing the recipients. Cases like An Hero and Megan Meier presumably wouldn’t happen if the perpetrators had to deliver their messages in person. But while technology reduces the social barriers that keep us from bedeviling strangers, it does not explain the initial trolling impulse. This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.”

Well, that destructive urge has only gotten far worse, especially in the last 3-5 years. It is one of the main things I've railed about in- and out-of-game on FFXI, and it applies not only there, but elsewhere on the Internet, as well as in “real life”.

That destructive urge has been cultivated and encouraged in so many people seen as “privileged”, and, more and more, is being loosed in events such as The London Riots and black-on-white feral thuglet violence in cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and countless other examples of the early vestiges of what will be a Second American Civil War.

(Whether it will be a Class, Race, or Generational War is unclear.)

This is basically the kind of attitude that we have to deal with. This is from a “man” named Jason Fortuny, and is an attitude I've seen countless times in all different fora, not just on the Internet (so it is certainly not unique to him):

“Of course, none of these methods will be fail-safe as long as individuals like Fortuny construe human welfare the way they do. As we discussed the epilepsy hack, I asked Fortuny whether a person is obliged to give food to a starving stranger. No, Fortuny argued; no one is entitled to our sympathy or empathy. We can choose to give or withhold them as we see fit. “I can’t push you into the fire,” he explained, “but I can look at you while you’re burning in the fire and not be required to help.””

If this is the case, then complete “pwnership”, complete OWNERSHIP of one's entire existence is the final goal. Effectively, “What's Yours is MINE!”

“I” can tell “you”:

• Where you can go level

• What NM's you cannot ever hope to have an opportunity to kill

• That you will always suck and never gain the acceptance of the playerbase, so please get off our fucking game

• When you will be allowed peace and quiet

• Where you can be allowed peace and quiet (Often read: at no time and no place!)

• Whether you'll have a place to live when I'm done with you

• Whether you can basically live at all...

The new methodology in life means these little fucking thuglets can control your gaming experience, your Internet experience, what is considered “true” (just try editing Wikipedia once or twice for a good example of that), all the way up to your livelihood and your very life itself!

They want to own your character, computer, game, livelihood, and life!

They can go arson down a 150-year old furniture store in London, taking countless people out of their livelihoods. Two people were arrested (one was 15!!), and, if convicted, I would hope they fucking fry!!

They can do the same to a century-old pub, to the same effect!

And the fact is that THESE FUCKERS DO NOT CARE ANYMORE!

Their lives, absent the abject nihilistic destruction of all around them to make them the most important or most socially preferred in their circles, are OVER. And that's just as prevalent in prominent game-cheaters as it is here – the only difference is the scope of their damage!

And the only way that's going to be answered is in kind. The only way it's going to be answered is to understand that there is no way this is going to end until these people are violently held to account for their actions (and if the law can't do it, then Doug Llewelyn be damned!), else they will win.

Why will simply "taking back London with brooms" not work? Because there's more and more of them every day, and not all of them are insane/nihilistic rioters out to jack every piece of electronics and effectively leave London in fear because they are in control of when the next set of unrest sweeps England!

(An unrest which has already claimed a national-team soccer match and several tournament and league matches, as well as countless millions in damage, including a block-long Sony distribution plant – burned to the ground.)

In FFXI, it is now common belief that the cheating players are the ONLY REASON the game still exists in August of 2011!

In Magic the Gathering, it's believed the cheating players there were the only reason the game took off to the levels of a Professional Tour, with the likes of Mike Long and his ilk stinking up the joint.

That, as more and more people believe either they or a significant amount of the population have no further hope of improvement, that this kind of terrorist action (or the feral black-on-white “wilding” becoming more and more prevalent in the United States' cities) is the only means of advancement, socially or otherwise!

And the thing is: You can no longer control what's going to happen next. They glorify it, they encourage it, they believe it's the only way to play/live/operate (depending on scope).

If you don't want your ass jumped, they get to tell you where to go, how much to carry, etc. and so forth.

This is no longer just Vana'diel, people – this is real life, and it's the same – fucking – shit.

In fact, if they can drive you to a fetal position in the corner of your apartment, then so much the better to them – not only do they get “Lulz”, but you're an easier target when they start kicking down the fucking doors and finishing the fucking job they started!

I said that, the day I got arrested was the last day of my life that I had something to live for. In fact, on my Twitter, on the 13^th anniversary of said day, I said:

“Just "celebrated" 13 years of having nothing but stuff to live _against_.”

And that's just it. I finally got off the canvas at one point, recognizing I would never gain the acceptability of this world, and basically told a lot of it to go fuck off.

Not only do I have nothing to live for, but trying to find something which would be enough to do so with would land me in prison. (One of the reasons I believe I'm heading there in rather short order!)

But if it comes down to what I think it's going to come down to, then the pressures have been increased – and not just from the trolls...

But from types like Icanhasbailout from The Market Ticker Forums who posted the following call to arms on the site:

“You guys do realize that simply declaring war and eradicating the dependent class is the most efficient and honest method of achieving the end goal, and perhaps the only one which has a real-world chance of working. This may end up being the de facto solution simply by virtue of needing to do it to defend ourselves from the rampaging avarice of the FSA once their free **** is no longer being provided to them. A great number of these people are genetically defective and there is no hope for them or their progeny to ever become productive outside of the formal reinstitution of slavery (and even then it would be marginal productivity at best).”

Those with no empathy for another must come to a similar conclusion – and many do.

If you don't want to get your hands dirty, people, hunker down and stay down and hope they don't come for you.