Jeff's MMO Weekly page 2

Another big story this week involves a player who is on a quest to become the biggest jerk in virtual space. The story, as covered in the general gaming press, is ostensibly about an Age of Conan GM. The GM in question is so unprofessional, the story goes, that he engaged in some cyber-sex with a player. To no one's surprise, he's been caught and fired.

Destructoid managed to obtain an interview with the player, Falstof. It seems that Falstof isn't just a gamer victimised by the oh-so-naughty GM. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Falstof deliberately enticed, manipulated, and entrapped the GM into some minor adult chat. In fact, the entire episode has a fairly humorous vibe to it. It even ends humorously. However, Falstof later blackmails the GM, demanding (and actually getting) money to remain quiet about the incident. Then, proving that he can't even extort someone honorably, Falstof arranged to have the pictures and story told on the internet anyway.

Falstof tells the tale as if he was the victim, but reveals much more than he'd intended. When he learned that his antics had gotten the GM fired, he found it humorous. What's worse, he expresses his clear intent to try this, and similar stunts, on GMs in other MMOs. A nice synopsis of this virtual humanitarian can be found at Wandering Goblin.

In other news, it's been reported that the guild Beyond The Limitation (BTL), a raiding guild in FFXI, had finally cleared all the major bosses in the game except one. For those not familiar with Final Fantasy XI, it's important to note that the game is considered very grind-heavy; nothing in FFXI comes easy, and this accomplishment by BTL took years. They are the only guild in the game that's ever gotten this far.

Of course, they sought to take out the last boss. After a lot of work, a lot of planning, and a lot of preparation, BTL finally cleared their way down to the hardest boss in the game, Pandemonium Warden. The battle between the Warden and BTL raged on...and on...and on....and then on some more. It went on for more than 18 hours, in fact. Some of the players passed out; others threw up, became ill, or had their craniums explode in a shower of blood and sparks (Ok, I made up the cranial explosion part, but the rest is real. Trust me.). The Warden morphed more than 20 times during the fight, each time healing himself to full and becoming more powerful. Eventually, the guild decided to quit, suspecting that the boss would either morph infinitely, or the encounter was bugged. Developer Square Enix has, to date, issued no comment on the issue.

Richard Bartle, one of the developers behind MUD, the pre-MMO text based adventure game, continued his long tradition of saying negative things about MMOs and the gaming industry in general. (Bartle is perhaps most famous for his scathing criticism of World of Warcraft.) This time, Bartle's target was the UK education system, and how it doesn't educate game designers properly. Bartle, who apparently hasn't worked on a game in decades, hasn't ever produced a game using post-1978 technology (you know, utilising things like moving pictures), and hasn't said a constructive thing about anything or anyone in recent memory, was nonetheless quoted by a bunch of naïve gaming reporters (like me!) world-wide. (Next week, a bunch of naïve reporters will cover a story about the guy who invented DigDug, and his disdain for BioShock.)