Author Archives: Dennis

World of Warcraft and Role Playing

I always thought online roleplaying games sucked as roleplaying games, and I still think so. With so many players interacting in the same environment at once, it only takes one jackass to ruin the roleplaying, so you’re constantly roleplaying on the level of the lowest common denominator. That’s why people quickly forego roleplaying when playing an online roleplaying game. I think “online adventuring game” is a better term for it, since that’s what you’re left with.

There are certain roleplaying elements that are enforced by the game, such as that you can’t access certain storylines because it wouldn’t be according to your race, class or profession. Or the reputation that you build through your actions in the game that has consequences in the way that NPCs will interact with you, or will interact with you at all. But those are all things that define the boundaries of your role and within that created scope you’ll have to do it yourself, but you can’t, because the game just doesn’t lend itself towards roleplaying.

An interesting observation by MooCow on this very subject.

On a Date With my Mother

For my mother’s birthday, somewhere in early December, I promised to take her to see a classical piece in the famousConcertgebouw here in Amsterdam, arguably the building in the Netherlands with the best acoustics and home of the Royal Dutch Orchestra. It took me a long time to find something appropriate to go to, and through a stroke of luck, Sam who works for one of the major sponsors for the Concertgebouw could get some free tickets. We went to see three different pieces.

The first piece was very atmospheric music, almost as if written as the score for a movie, by Dutch composer Hans Kox, calledSix One-act Plays. It was directed by American director Dennis Russell Davies. The second piece, again directed by Davies, was a very experimental piece by the American composer Elliott Carter called Dialogues, with a strange but beautiful piano part for Japanese guest pianist Maki Namekawa. I didn’t like that bit so much, too modern, too experimental. Then, after the break, we got Sergej Prokofjev’s really epic, grand and theatrical Sixth Symphony, which was awesome.

My mother loved the music, as well as the dinner we had with Eva and Sam before hand. All in all, it took a while to set it all up, but it was worth it.

Hectic Times

The coming few weeks/months are going to be pretty hectic. Going to see Moulsari soon, after that I’ll have to move, just in time for Jim, Tex, Lindsay, Simon and Jan to come over. And then on top of all of that I’ve got some serious contract anxiety issues coming up as well. Somewhere in July my contract runs out, and it’s not entirely sure yet whether I’ll get a permanent position here.

Things have been really very turbulent between Moulsari and I. We’ve been trying to be patient for such a long time now, and we both have the desire to make the next step and live together, but there’s always something that prevents it. At the moment Moulsari has applied for her work visum in the U.S., which means, most likely, that she’s going to be there for at least another year. Considering our circumstances it would be easier for Moulsari to move here, than it would be for me to move to the U.S., or India. Considering she’s from India and they’re on the “oh, you must be here as an economic refugee” list here in Europe, it’s not going to be easy for her to move here, unless we get married. It’s not impossible, mind you, but a bit of a bureaucratic drag.

Anyway, “Dennis’ Issues” in a nutshell. When it rains it pours.

World of Warcraft

Since a couple of weeks I’ve been trying to dig my good friend Gyou out of his self-inflicted social isolation, brought on by the online RPG World of Warcraft. I do this by calling him on friday night, right before I leave Kung Fu, telling him that I’ll be over for an evening of junkfood, Top Gear and talking. He then proceeds to shout threats of violence at me, and I hang up the phone. Ten minutes later, I ring his doorbell. He doesn’t open. Nor does he answer his phone. I ring his doorbell again, this time continuously until he disconnects the doorbell, at which time I know he’s in the hallway leading to the front door, so I talk at him through the door. He then tells me that I don’t understand him, and don’t realise how he needs to reach 54th level, or how he’s the saviour of Teldrassil, or whatever and then he opens the door and we have a cool evening together. :)

So while we were talking this friday, he was telling me a bit about World of Warcraft. Now, I have traditionally disliked online RPGs because they’re not really RPGs. They’re more like hack-and-slash games that you can play online. The stories are usually appalling, the graphics even more so, and, well, the quality was not what I wanted them to be. I’ve long since come to accept that they’ll never really be an RPG since the setting and circumstances of play simply don’t lend themselves for it. True roleplaying is an intimate thing, and with 1.5 million others running around, intimacy is few and far between. So, I promised myself that I would give it a shot when the graphics and gameplay would be better than it had been.

World of Warcraft is beautiful. It’s also set in the familiar world of…*gasp*…Warcraft. On monday, while I had the day off because of some obscure national holiday, I installed the game and continued to play for several hours. I was mightily entertained. I might actually like this game. :)

Dedication

iMDB wrote:
The producers of the film El Maquinista (The Machinist) claim that Christian Bale dropped from about 180 pounds in weight down to about 120 pounds in weight to make this film. They also claim that Bale actually wanted to drop down to 100 pounds, but that they would not let him go below 120 out of fear that his health could be in too much danger if he did. His diet consisted of one can of tuna and an apple per day. His 63-pound weight loss is said to be a record for any actor for a movie role. He since gained the weight back for his role in Batman Begins.