This post is about personal, non-game stuff, so feel free to skip it if you’re not in the mood.

I mentioned very briefly last week in my Cart Life review that I have Depression, or Depressive Disorder, or whatever we call it now. I don’t know exactly when it started, but I suspect it was probably about a decade ago. I also don’t know why it started. Well.. I sort of do, but there’s no one thing, just a bunch of little things that seemed to grind me down over time.

Of course if you asked me I would have denied it. I have always believed that everyone is a little crazy in their own way, and life is just tough sometimes. And really I’m pretty privileged and have it pretty good in the general scheme of things, so what was there to be depressed about? Eventually those reasonable thoughts were joined by other ones, ones that said that if I felt hopeless all the time it was my own fault for not working harder, for not being prettier, or smarter, or kinder. Occasionally I would engage in dangerous behavior or call myself terrible names, but it was nothing more than I deserved.

A few years ago that I decided that perhaps I should see a therapist, because that seemed like a thing that miserable people do, and I found a nice woman who I met with a few times. After about our third appointment though she commented that I seemed like a “good person who was overwhelmed by things”, and I was so horrified that I skipped my next meeting and never went back. Not horrified at her, of course, but at myself for so selfishly misleading this professional into thinking that I was I was a good person.

I like that story, or at least I like how well it describes how after time Depression changes you so you literally cannot recognize help when it is in front of your face.

I feel chagrined now, typing that, because I am not the kind of person who likes admitting weakness. To be perfectly immodest, I consider myself to be pretty damn smart, and good at reading people. How can I be held hostage by my own brain? That’s stupid — I’m perfectly able to think my way out of things. Plus big pharma is pretty terrible, and Depression is kind of a First World Problem. Pills might work for other people, and good on them, but they weren’t going to help me.

So this is going to sound really weird, but what finally pushed me over the edge to getting more help was Wil Wheaton. While I respect his work and his dedication to not being a dick, I’ve never considered myself a Wheaton fan in particular, but his post about depression from back in September appeared in one of my social networks. He wrote of his life shortly after starting medication, “I felt [my wife's] hand in mine, and realized that I didn’t have any lingering tension or unhappiness just buzzing around in my skull. I was just enjoying a walk with my wife, and holding her hand.”

I thought to myself, “Shit, man. That sounds pretty damn nice.”

And so I started medication a couple of months ago. I went though almost four weeks of taking the pills and was just about at the point of chalking them up as yet another thing that I fail at, when.. somehow things started to change. Perhaps events in my life weren’t exactly the way I had perceived them? Maybe I was being my own worst enemy? Out of curiosity I tried to notice when I thought cruel things about myself. I felt guilty about it, a lot at first, but being kind to yourself is like a muscle. It’s not second nature yet, but it gets easier every day.

I feel so much lighter now. Somehow in the last month I started laughing more, and I’m better able to determine my own needs. I’m the same person I always was, but now the screaming banshee of failure in my head is turning into just a whisper.

I wrote this mostly because I was convinced to pursue medication because of blog posts just like this one telling me that it’s okay to want to be better. It’s only fair that I pay it forward, so to you, dear reader, I say: if you read any of the above and thought to yourself, “That sounds great, but it won’t help me because I’m (beyond help / hopeless / culpable),” I think you’re wrong.

Talk to someone close to you, talk to a doctor, talk to a therapist, just start talking. Tell them that you need help. It’s okay, and you’re worth it. Depression isn’t a punishment bestowed upon the weak and unworthy, it’s an illness. You deserve to know what it’s like when you’re on your own team.

I would like to dedicate this post to the official RIFT forums.

As something of a veteran of MMO expansions at this point, I generally know what to expect. There’s always a period of adjustment, and feeling overwhelmed by all the new content. If you game has character levels usually the cap is increased. You know, the usual stuff for WoW and WoW-style themeparks.

And yet, each and every time an expansion comes out it seems the official forums explode with shock and dismay. So let’s just clear up some things about the usual MMO expansions that we all need to learn to accept, okay?

Yes, you have to level.

So here’s the deal, folks: when you play an MMO that includes character levels and they release an expansion with a new, higher level cap.. you’re going to have to level. I know, I know, it’s so unfair, insert the rending of clothes and wailing of small children.

And hey, I kinda dig it. I don’t like levelling either, vastly preferring the more open-ended level cap activities. But man, I knew it was coming and that’s the way these games work. At my super casual pace I predict I’ll spend about 5 weeks getting to level 60. Storm Legion should be around for at least 18 months, or 78 weeks. That’s a pretty small part of the time to be leveling.

Yes, your old gear will no longer be good.

Expansions are, generally, gear resets. I too have had to put hard-earned, attractive raid gear in the bank when I picked up a superior, ugly green item, and it made me a little sad. But hey, that’s how this whole thing works.

A gear reset every couple of years is often a good thing too. They give players a chance to switch mains with no damage to their raid team. They give new players who may have joined the game halfway through the previous expansion a chance to catch up. It levels the playing field.

Besides, if you hit 60 in your top-of-the-line level 50 gear wouldn’t you be kinda bored? The fresh level capped character is honestly my favorite period of an MMO because everything is an upgrade. Achievers rejoice!

(And don’t start with the “time sink” complaints about the gear grind. That’s like saying that watching 40 minutes of Law and Order is a time sink when you just wanna know who did it. Gear treadmills are the entire point of Everquest/WoW style games, otherwise you really don’t have much of a game there.)

Yes, new content is hard.

At the end of an expansion’s life, there usually isn’t much new under the sun. People have had a year or two of gear collecting and running content. Progressive nerfing makes things easier, as does progressive buffing of classes. We can slam through dungeons in 15 minutes while watching television on the other monitor because we’ve run it a million times before and have excellent gear.

Then the expansion hits. Gear is reduced to a mish-mash of whatever we can put together, and we have no idea what any of the mechanics are. The new dungeon content is scary and mean, and we die a lot.

This too shall pass, my anxious player friends. Again, in another month or two we’ll be a lot more familiar with the fights, and have filled in many more holes in our gear. We’ll understand our new specs better, and have taken the time to read all the new spell icons. New content is tricky. Patience is key.

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Certainly some of these things could be changed from the original design outset (I’d be interested to see an MMO with no character levels, for instance), but that’s not really going to happen unexpectedly in the expansion for a WoW-style MMO.

So suck it up, buttercup. In another six weeks you’ll be 60 and experienced and better geared and then you can start the 12+ months of whining about how you’re bored at level cap.

A new Humble Bundle deal was released today: the “Humble THQ Bundle” features Saints Row 3, Darksiders, Metro 2033, Company of Heroes, and more. As of writing the average bundle price (which you must beat to get all games) is $5.31. In short, this is a really good deal.

In fact, I was saying as much on G+ — I bought two copies of the Bundle, one for myself and one for a future Secret Santa recipient — when I was informed that in fact this Bundle is bad. Even Ars Technica apparently agrees, or at least thinks there’s enough there to report about, with today’s article titled Humble THQ Bundle Threatens to Ruin the Brand’s Reputation.

Oh lord. Spare me from video game hipsters.

Look, I think my history of writing shows that I am all about sticking it to The Man when it’s deserved, and personal purchasing power. And that is pretty much why I think trying to attack Humble Bundle for not being “indie” enough is like shooting ourselves in the foot.

Point the first: The Humble Bundle makes no promises of being independent games only. Yes, they produce the Humble Indie Bundle and it’s been pretty great for both consumers and indie developers. And I’m sure there will be Humble Indie Bundles again in the future. (In fact this was confirmed by the organization earlier today.)

However, it’s not like the Humble Bundle was a huge source of exposing unknown titles, the developers of which will now go hungry. Most of their previous indie games were pretty well known in gamer circles before they hit the Bundle, like Braid, Binding of Isaac, and Trine. For me, the Bundles were more a case of “oh, I’ve always meant to pick those up” than discovering totally new titles.

Plus The Humble Bundle has had multiple interactions with Double Fine games like Psychonauts, which while not a “AAA” title certainly dances on the line of “indie”. Apparently that was okay, though.

Point the second: Big developers/distributors should actually be encouraged to seek out alternative pricing schemes, such as the Bundle’s “pay what you want”. If you listened to yesterday’s podcast we talked about how many brand new $60 games we’ve bought in the last two years compared to sale or indie titles, and it seems like the big titles are losing that war. Why not explore other pricing strategies, rather than just blindly keep trying to sell $60 games that maybe hit a sale price of $30?

Like, by buying the Bundle but refusing to give any money to THQ or whatever to “send a message” (as I see people encouraging each other to do on Google+) we’re just telling THQ and other big companies that unique pricing structures will fail. Letting the consumer decide what they want to pay will fail. I turned the charity slider way up and the THQ slider way down (although not off) myself, because I have the ability to do that thanks to the Bundle.

Again, why exactly do we want to tell big companies to stay away from innovative pricing systems that give us more purchasing power? Why not welcome them to the Bundle fold, indie or otherwise? It’s not like it’s a “AAA” bundle that we have to buy for $60 and all the money goes to a giant bonfire in the office of EA’s CEO.

Point the third: Charity. I’ll be totally honest — the $10 that I gave directly to the American Red Cross and Child’s Play through my Bundle purchases this morning would be otherwise earmarked for lunch or something. The Bundle gets charity dollars out of my budget that otherwise would not go to any group. Like, this is a good thing.

Point the fourth: The Humble Bundle people are not, in fact, coming to your house and threatening to shoot your dog unless you buy it.

I realize that this Bundle differs from previous ones in that it requires Steam and Windows, and the games are from a big publisher. I also realize that this is trying something different, and there will be the old standard Bundle that we all know and love again soon.

Basically, the way I see it, a bunch of nerds are getting all snotty about an organization that raises millions of dollars for charity and provides cheap games for consumers because.. there’s no Linux version. Usually nothing sets me off faster than when some industry or media person calls gamers “entitled”, but man, some days we kind of deserve it.

I’m fairly certain that this post will irritate some people, so let’s start it off right with a quotation from an established blogging shit-stirrer, SynCaine:

“[Transient, casual members] are a nightmare. They don’t show up enough to be reliable for in-game planning. They aren’t active enough to generally follow the flow and social structure of a guild. And at the same time, they will show up sometimes and can’t be completely written off when considering numbers, but often can’t stick around to fully see something through like a siege.”

SynCaine’s post was as much about the number of hours that a person plays each week as it was about their commitment to a game, but I’m more interested in the latter point.

Ever since WoW hit its peak and then started to fade it seems the general mood of both the playerbase and the industry is to move towards MMO design that requires less commitment. Group sizes got smaller, subscriptions disappeared, and content became easier or gained “easy modes” like LFR. MMOs have gone out of their way to eliminate mandatory social interaction (or any social interaction, in some cases) and support a “drop in, drop out” playstyle.

These things are all well and good, but what has the cumulative effect been so far? Obviously my information is anecdotal, but those folks who were sick of WoW and wanted things to better suit the anti-social, transient player? They’re currently.. still sick of MMOs. They played some of the new hotnesses this year like Pandaria and GW2, and now they’re bored and cranky again.

The people who I see playing and enjoying MMOs now are the opposite of the transient player, what Rohan calls the Extended player. It’s the people who schedule a weekly activity, who find a game they like and stick with it, or who seek out group content. It’s the people who have committed in some way to their game.

So here’s my hypothesis: for various reasons WoW got extremely popular and suddenly lots of people were playing MMOs. But that was just a fluke of the times as much as anything. The fact is that MMOs are a niche genre that appeals to a smaller group of players, and the genre is now sloughing off those people who were just kind of along for the WoW ride. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that — WoW was crazy good fun in its prime and online games were still kind of a novelty.)

And let me be clear — I realize that appealing to a wide audience will net the most possible dollars. I’m just saying that I don’t care, and neither should good MMO developers. The vision of an MMO as a commitment-free, socializing-free utopia doesn’t work, as a general rule. The vast majority of people in my own gaming group and in blogging circles who are dissatisfied with MMOs insist on playing them as single player games, and it just frustrates both them and the Extended players around them.

I started out 18 months ago or so believing that playing an MMO without any commitment to anything was possible and perhaps even admirable. Now, however, when Rohan says in his original post that “[Transient players] still need an endgame” my first response is, “No they don’t”. The idea of “Extended vs. Transient” or “Casual vs. Committed” isn’t new, but I’m officially so over the current popular thought that MMOs need to fit both audiences. Make a commitment to a social group or an activity or a hard challenge or whatever, or go find another genre.

October 19, evening – Preparations! Download any game I might want to play, make sure the streaming software is working, load up on healthy snacks. Go to bed early feeling smug about being an awesome adult who properly prepares for things.

October 20, 4:30am – Fire alarm! It’s just a false alarm but it takes two hours for the noise to stop and the cats to calm down and for me to fall back asleep. So much for smug preparation.

7:45am – IT’S GO TIME. Shower, pot of coffee, let’s play some games.

8:00am – But wait, what to play? Something soothing, not too complicated or loud. Sounds like it’s time to make a Panda monk! Apple Cider came by the Twitch stream to keep me company and give insider tips. I got to about level 8 over the course of a couple of hours. The Pandaria starting zones are very pretty and the quests were fun, plus I quite like the lady panda models. I also enjoyed the gender non-specific conversations with Ji Firepaw.

10:00am – Get another cup of coffee, and realize I don’t know what to play next. Something new-to-me, and with a little more action.. Ooh, Assassin’s Creed II, as highly recommended by Arolaide. I had no idea that there was a modern day framework for the story, and the art style of the game is awesome. I also helpfully stream me making faces and failing to jump over a box for 10 minutes. God bless the constant connectivity of our internet generation.

12:30pm – Quick healthy lunch and time for some RIFT. Someone in Twitch chat reminds me that there are “only” 20 more hours to go. Goodness.

3:00pm – Off to an appointment with Trion Community Manager Elrar to tour some of the shiny awesomeness in RIFT’s Storm Legion expansion beta. I locally record the whole the whole tour and end up with a 350gb video file. Everything looked amazing and Elrar was super nice. This was my first time doing something like this, and I tried to ask smart questions instead of just my usual things like, “Why is your game so awesome?” and “Do you remember taking a photo with me at PAX because that was the coolest?”

4:15pm – Tour over and now it’s back to the live RIFT servers to finish off the special Extra Life Corgi rifts. A non-RIFT guildie asks in Twitch chat what we’re doing. “We are running around the world opening events to see if they’re full of corgi dogs.”. I feel that this summarizes quite nicely why people both love and hate MMOs.

7:00pm – I am now “Grim Mercredi of House Fluffington”! I feel I have accomplished something with my day. I quickly cooked up some healthy hot food for dinner. We have enough friends around to do a group game, so it’s off to Dungeon Defenders! This game is the best thing ever with 4 players — it’s first person, team-based tower defense. We blow through the boss that stomped us last time and keep playing until another boss stomps us.

9:30pm – The East Cost folks who have been hanging around providing support start to apologetically head off to bed. I curse them good naturedly. Someone says in chat, “Only 11 hours left!” and I tell them to stop saying that. I love video games but 11 more hours seems almost insurmountable. Clearly I need to spice things up a bit so it’s time for some Bioshock, which I’ve never played. Unsurprisingly, it’s gorgeous and terrifying. I smack stuff around with a pipe wrench for a while until the first Big Daddy encounter kills me.

11pm – Maaaaaaybe it’s time for something a little more peaceful and a little less likely to terrify me. Sounds like it’s time for.. FTL! This turned out to be both a good and a bad decision. FTL is super fun, if a little unforgiving, and has a nice retro mellow vibe. However, it’s also low on action and full of tiny text which makes it not that much fun for people to watch.

11:30pm – Give up on streaming FTL, but fortunately That Angry Dwarf saves the day with a stream of the first chapter of The Walking Dead. I was expecting TWD to be more of a traditional action game, but in fact it is a gorgeous story-driven experience. It was extremely intense to play, apparently, but quite cinematic to watch while I repeatedly kill all my crew in FTL. (Oops, did I open the podbay doors again?)

Midnight – “Only 8 more hours!” Oh god shut up.

1:30am – Snack time again. I go and ponder my choices. Celery sticks, salads, frozen spinach, peanuts. Okay seriously, why did I buy all this healthy crap?! Who am I kidding? Bloody hell. I run to the corner store and buy a handful of chocolate bars.

3:00am – Even the West Coast crowd has gone to bed now. That Angry Dwarf breaks out I Wanna Be The Guy Gaiden on the stream while I play some more Assassin’s Creed 2. I think I’ve decided that Ezio is really cute, and video game characters are not usually my thing. For some reason I write that down as a crucial revelation I should bring up on the podcast later.

~ Unknown time ~ – I seriously do not remember what I was playing. I mean, I played something. Possibly many things. I can’t really account for my time though. I think at one point I booted up the Trion Extra Life livestream and remarked that they looked even more exhausted than I felt. I’m alternating ciders in between cups of coffee.

6:00am – The Easties start waking up. My attention span is getting shorter and shorter, and the next two hours (“Only 2 more hours!”) consist of a ton of games that I can only manage to play for 20 minutes a piece, including The Wonderful End of the World, Audiosurf, and Glitch. I also boot up RIFT and stare at the login screen blankly for a few minutes before I decide I don’t want to play it more today.

7:30am – I have been saving Tropico 4 as my emergency game, because it’s one of the few genres of games (city builders) that I literally COULD play for 8 hours without thinking about it. It is definitely time to break it out. I am tired, frazzled, and the sun is coming up.

7:35am – Nope, not even Tropico 4 can save me now. I leave it running and just put my head down on my desk for 15 minutes.

7:50am – “ONLY 10 MORE MINUTES” I shout in Twitch chat. What have I become?

8:00am – Is it over? Did we survive? I actually have to tell That Angry Dwarf to stop playing CS:GO so we can record the podcast and go to bed. Recording the podcast at 8am seemed like a great idea a week ago and seems like a very bad idea now, but it works out.

9:15am – Sleep time go. Overall I played way fewer games than I anticipated. Also, one thinks that gaming is pretty low impact, but it requires paying attention and using twitch movement or solving brain puzzles and starts to add up over a few hours. ThatAngryDwarf and I raised $650 for sick kids, and had a great time doing it. I’ll be back next year.. but not before then. And next year, I’m buying candy.

As some of you may personally remember, back in the summer of 2010 Blizzard tried to switch their World of Warcraft forums over to a “Real ID” system, where accounts would get tied to real, actual names that we players would use as our sole identifier. There was a huge backlash that eventually derailed the plan, but as I recall a fair percentage of the media coverage didn’t see the problem with crossing the streams between players’ real life and their orc.

Take, as an example, this quotation from a pretty dumbass article in TechCrunch about the whole thing:

Do you really think [the internet] is going to get away with harassing people who post on the new forums, a common complaint I’ve seen? “Now people will annoy me in real life!” That sounds like a one-way ticket to a lawsuit, courtesy of Activision Blizzard. Just because your name is “out there” doesn’t mean people are allowed to threaten you. Surely you recognize this?

Let’s fast forward just over two years, shall we?

“In Colleen’s online fantasy world, she gets away with crude, vicious and violent comments like the ones below. Maine needs a State Senator that lives in the real world, not in Colleen’s fantasy world.”

Oh yeah, dumbass article writers, no one would ever get harassed in real life because their real name was associated with a WoW character. I bet the Blizzard Activision law team is just raring to go on this one, too.

Of course Ms. Lachowicz chose to not remain a completely anonymous player (not that that means she deserves this nonsense), but isn’t it fortunate that the rest of us weren’t forced to make the same choice? Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, and occasionally extremely satisfying.