Ass-hattery: Is it localized or industry wide?

Today was another day like most. I was over in an area of Northrend, killing some quest mobs, pretty much doing the usual. So I take down a Lasher, loot it and the instant my character stands back up, some ass-hat runs over, harvests it, and runs off. No asking, no waiting to see if I needed it, just hit and run.

Now, I know many of you call this ninja farming. But ass-hattery is a much better term. Ninjas are at least cool. Ass-hatters are just a form of bottom feeder that should be weeded out by the mechanics of the game.

Which brings me to the title of this post: is the game not engineered properly, as a wide array of people have complained from the start? Or is the game perfectly engineered and designed to intentionally get us to duel or fight each other? Personally, I think it is the first.

There is no logic in letting someone else take your herbs, minerals and what-nots. If a person gets to a node first, that should be the end of it. I even have a friend who trains mobs at other miners so he can mine their node while they die. He figures it’s a game mechanic, so it’s okay. And hey, if ya don’t like it, tough luck. But, may I remind everyone, when these types of people are being ass-hatted by another of their kind, they get all kinds of pissed.

So, the rush-to-the-end crowd gets their flying mounts and goes back to hit all the stuff they passed while enlarging their e-nis. Those of us who know how to enjoy a game get the shaft, and that’s “just game mechanics.” That just doesn’t make sense. But at over $164,000,000 coming in a month, who am I to tell Blizzard anything?

  • $164,450,000 a month
  • $1,973,400,000 a year
  • $7,893,600,000 over 4 years
    NOT including expansions, character transfers, name changes…
    (I know these figures are a bit off, but I can’t seem to find reliable info on the odd pay system that China is privy too.)

Man, now that is a Blizz-e-nis!

Yet we still have gold farmers, spammers, griefers, carebears, and ass-hatters. Makes ya wonder what Vivendi does with it all… You should look him up some time. He has a fairly interesting habit of buying and selling every business under the sun.

The main question in my mind these days: is this going to be the future programming norm so people can have a false sense of “hardcore” play style? You know, “I took it from you, and you can’t do anything about it.”  What would be a programmer’s mindset on an issue that is so easily bot’ed? Your computer recieves a signal that you’re within range to mine/pick/gather/etc. a node of some sort, your add-on interprets that signal, stops your character and begins to collect the node.

Meanwhile, the guy who doesn’t bot or add-on his system gets the shaft. So, by allowing this manner of gathering, only one person can mine a node, and no matter how fast the human finger is, a machine will beat it. How about locking nodes to the person who got there first? If the botter beats me, ok, but if it comes up as I’m collecting nodes, it should not be rewarded for botting/nabbing my node.  Or am I just displaying cookie envy? How about a single node interaction that gives you all of the items a node has to offer? Too easy?

I would love to hear from the people out there who remember the original EQ. Or better yet, the first MMO, The Realm. Do you remember the nodes in those? Or even Ultima… I tend to build my characters for long-haul existence and invest most of my game time on skilling and killing. Being a social player has never really been my thing. So, having had little time to chat it up with other players, I could use some direction on the accepted norm for gaming these days. Personally I would rather not be ranked as an ass-hatter, so I will avoid harvest humping for now. ;)

I’m Ark,

and that’s my angle on it.

Now I have to get the cat off my axe and rip a few plasto-chords! …or something like that.

6 Comments to Ass-hattery: Is it localized or industry wide?

  1. Julien's Gravatar Julien
    December 8, 2008 at 3:16 am | Permalink

    I’m amazed WoW doesn’t tag nodes… LOTRO originally didnt, but they cracked down real hard on Gold Farmers about a year and a few months ago and basically now gold farmers/sellers are a thing of the past. They implemented a node tag system so the first person to use it would have claim over it. So even if you were interrupted by a mob that node was still yours. Of course, I’m not much of a crafter in general and stay away from all that node grinding unless I quite literally have nothing better to do.

  2. Onigato's Gravatar Onigato
    December 8, 2008 at 3:52 pm | Permalink

    The problem I see with this idea of tagging nodes to a specific person is… What if someone tags it and doesn’t loot it? That node will forever remain, unable to be picked by someone else. We’ll create a new way for players to grief each other. Even if you set a time limit, it would still be frustratingly (is that a word) annoying to find a node and be unable to farm it unless you wait around…

  3. Julien's Gravatar Julien
    December 9, 2008 at 3:34 am | Permalink

    I have never experienced node tagging in LOTRO and so I’d assume its close to Ark’s idea of how it should be done. It’s only ever stopped me when I tried to ninja a node from someone else (yes we’ve all been assholes at some point or another).

  4. Onigato's Gravatar Onigato
    December 9, 2008 at 12:32 pm | Permalink

    I’m such a carebear… I ran across an alliance paladin fighting two mobs near a mining node. I waited to see if he would tap the node. He did and I moved on. Keep in mind, I play hoard on a PvP server. Most people would have ganked the bastard… heh

  5. December 9, 2008 at 3:00 pm | Permalink

    I once got stuck in the node of a node of a node of a node of a node….

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