This article has been up for a long time, as a matter of fact, I am not even sure that Godchecker is even still being updated. But, for what it is, its pretty much feature complete. Today, I’d just like to call a few new folks attention to the article on the numbers important in mythology around the world, highlighting such favorites as
Zero. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. Is there a God of Nothing? Or could this be the sign of the Cosmic Egg?

Half. This is the number of HAIURI, the half-there God of the Xhosa people in South Africa.

One. This is mostly for mono Gods such as YAHWEH or ALLAH. As in: “I am the only one and don’t you forget it!”

Two. Lots of twins, dynamic duos like the Mayan HERO TWINS, and good/evil opposites such as AHURA-MAZDA vs AHRIMAN. In Rome, JANUS has two heads to look backwards at the past and forwards into the new month of January.

Three. A certain Australian tribe only ever learned to count up to three. Anything after that is simply ‘many’. Now threes are many. There are triplets, triads and triple alliances. All FATES, GRACES, NORNS and Destiny Spinners come in threes. Even a certain mono God named JEHOVAH has jumped onto the bandwagon, claiming to be the Three-in-One.
The swinging sixty. If you remember the sixties, you probably weren’t there.

Seventy-two. This is a number favoured by one of the Jade Deities of China and is reached by a system of multiplying the value of lesser deities which is quite beyond our comprehension.
Eighty-six. The ORION Pregnancy Testing Kit. A carving on a mammoth tusk depicting Orion as seen 32,500 years ago. It contains 86 mysterious marks which seem to correspond to the days Betelgeuse is visible from Earth. Pay attention: 365 days of the year minus 86 equals the average gestation period of a human baby.

Ninety-Nine Names of ALLAH. Another mono God who wished to up his numerical stakes.

And, of Course…

Forty-two is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. At least in Magrathean mythology. According to comedic luminaries such as Douglas Adams and John Cleese, Forty-Two is the funniest number in the Universe. It is also the mystic number which obsessed Lewis Carroll when he was writing about Alice and Boojums.

I’m not trying to be combative, but I really, really want to try a real mystery game or something where the game isn’t so combat driven. I just lack the talent for it, I think. Or maybe I am not attentive enough. Or maybe it’s the players thinking of stuff I don’t. Whatever. I’ll just have to draw it from every angle or something. I’ve done crazier stuff. That will have to be in the summer. Just rolling dice to kill Orcs is just bumming me out. Maybe a detective game that can be played as a campaign.

So is this a microblog?

My roommate is just starting out with his “web presence,” and I am sort of acting as tutor to him, since I’ve been doing this for a while, and since one or two of his sites are, in fact, related to gaming I think it is totally an excellent idea to promote him here. Woot for long-winded unnecessary jusfification. Now, I have looked at very little of this wiki in and of itself, because I am currently playing in a sort of canonical game right now(I think) and wouldn’t want to spoil it, so I really can’t offer much of a review. Fortunately, it is free. WOOT.

*Edit-Apparently the harassment that triggered my writing this was not, in fact, Blizzard. Just a Phisherman. Nonetheless, my criticisms still stand.

Two days ago, I got an e-mail from Blizzard Entertainment accusing me of trying to sell my World Of Warcraft account. Regardless of the fact that the e-mail is fraudulent, I feel offended by this because of the fact that I decided the game was lame and stopped playing shortly after level 25, feeling very cheated(and angry for having given in to peer pressure), and now am being harassed for by somebody who can’t even make a legitimate hack to steal my account with, I figured I would list, plainly, for the next company to develop one of these games, what would make it not suck, like World Of Warcraft does. All that unadulterated disgust I feel for MMORPG’s does nothing constructive. Instead, I’m going to list what I think would make a fantasy MMORPG not suck.

• Persistent worlds should have persistent characters. The player characters should become AI controlled(See Below) when the player logs out. All experience based penalties for player character death should be removed. This will also make it easier for those of use who go outside in the real world, too.

• AI control should have a list of player-like algorithms a la the Infinity Engine games, plus a slider system detailing attributes such as aggressive-passive,  courageous-cowardly, et cetera.
• Real Estate. Players should be given the option of purchasing an in-game home where they can store stuff, and where other players can break in. Also, sneak attack does not a rogue make. Burglary should be possible, as should beefing up security with technology, magic, animal companions, and the like.

• There should be no player factions at the start of the game. The fact that you are a night elf doesn’t mean you’re necessarily a benevolent tree-hugger. Maybe that works in a RTS, but in an RPG restricted alignments based on race are RETARDED. It denies an important part of the decision making process. NO STARTING FACTIONS!
• Don’t make everything a matter of going to a questgiver, accepting the quest, performing the task, repeat. Even the raids follow this basic format. If you keep doing this, you may as well make a single player game.
  • Make things interesting! Here’s an idea: Random zombie apocalypse! 24 in game hours where, if you die, intead of going to the graveyard you turn into a zombie for 1 hour first and fight against other players. For those who do not want to play a zombie, have 3 zombie AI’s. Slow Shambler, Rotting Quick, and Speedy Infected. Have some similarly wild and crazy extreme event happen once every month on a random day.
  • Here’s another! OMG that NPC kid said “The best item in the game is on top of that hill,” everybody fight over it! Why the hell not? It’s an MMO, give the players a reason to interact!
  • See if you can allow guilds to create their own quests.  An initiation rite that involves a custom in-game magic item specifically linked to the guild and it’s membership, for starters, would make joining a guild seem a lot less like a lame excuse for friends that eventually turns into an over-regulated raid obligation. I know this might be difficult to implement, but just give it a thought.
  • That took me what, like 20 seconds? People get paid the big bucks to think of  less cool stuff than this.
• Get rid of the class/level system. Instead, go rank-advancement based, and make the differences smaller. I mean for everything. Skills. Hit Points. Magic spells. Hypothetically – Each enemy is now worth from 1-5 XP and you spend from 1-100 XP to advance a skill. Each skill becomes more difficult to advance as it increases. The player can choose a set number of skills that start at a considerable advantage, 45,40,30,25,20. Skill resolution becomes percentile based, and anybody can get any skill, with a limit of 1/12 the total number of skills. Now all the characters have ceased to have identical skills and levels of power. People can actually play a different role than every other player of their class and level.
• Make creating/enchanting items not boring, tedious, and inflexible. Give people a chance to put more than one enchantment on an item if they have sufficient levels in the enchantment skill. That way, they can elect to not just build up to the epic items and be another cookie-cutter level80. Also, Don’t make it a new design to dye a shirt a different color. I can tie-dye in my kitchen.

Make the MMOS different from the single player games in any way you can, PLEASE! I hate the cookie cutter characters, the silly, stupid quest format, the fact that people disappear when they log out, the lack of customizability, and the frankly racist alignment system. It drives me crazy when a game has potential but rejects that in favor of more of the same, safe, monotonous gameplay.  Make it worth paying monthly. Make having other players a meaningful part of the game. And most of all, allow the characters to be DIFFERENT!