Church Arsonist Pleads Guilty, But You'll Never Guess Why He Did It

Having been in the church insurance business I know there are a variety of people out there with grudges against churches that can actually provoke them to try and burn the building.  However, this one is unusual even for that crowd:

A Huntington Beach man pleaded guilty Tuesday to arson and other charges for setting three fires at an Irvine church and attempting to set a fourth.

Izad Chavoshan, 32, faces a sentence from Superior Court Judge Craig E. Robison on Aug. 19 ranging from probation to 20 years in prison.

Chavoshan pleaded guilty to three counts of arson, one count of attempted arson and a hate crime sentencing enhancement. He also has a prior strike conviction for criminal threats in 1998.

Prosecutors contended that Chavoshan drove to the Orange County Church of Christ in Irvine on three nights between Oct. 15, 2009, and Oct. 19, 2009, moved trash cans to the front of the church and set them on fire. Church employees reported the fires to Irvine police, who monitored the church Oct. 21, 2009.

Chavoshan returned to the church on that night and repeatedly threw a trash can at the glass portion of the front doors, according to a news release from the Orange County District Attorney's Office. He then removed a pack of matches from his pocket, lighted a piece of paper and attempted to push it between the closed church doors, prosecutors said.

He was arrested at the scene.

And here comes the reason for his arsonist rage:

Prosecutors said Chavoshan was disgruntled with the church's teachings against masturbation.

Well, he'll have plenty of opportunity to contemplate that issue in the state prison.

EQ2 Dungeon Tokens Testing Need Versus Greed

Lyriana's slow and steady journey through the instances of Velious is continuing, and I'm learning a bit more about the endgame armor system than I knew when I had my first piece crafted.  SOE has made some unusual choices when it comes to having items crafted from account bound group dungeon drops.  The system seems to be working, but it also blurs the lines between the traditional forms of need and greed.

Verifying Need

A tier three armor recipe

As detailed in Feldon's guide to Velious armor, there are three tiers of class-specific armor that can be crafted using tokens from the current expansion's single group (six players) dungeons.  All of these have in common the Primal Velium Shard, which will be familiar to players who are familiar with dungeon currencies in other games.  Your typical dungeon run awards somewhere between 3-5 shards, which are account-bound (as is most dungeon loot in EQ2, so that players with multiple level 90's can be flexible in which character they bring), and your typical piece of loot from the first two tiers will set you back between 20-33 shards, while the third tier wants as many as 45.

(In tiers 1 and 2, finding a crafter to turn your shards into armor saves you 5-8 shards off of the vendor price, and also excuses you from any faction requirements on the vendor.  Because you are going to need to farm up shards no matter what, and because the shards can also be used for higher tiers or "adornments" - EQ2's version of enchantments - most players head straight for the second tier; I've very seldom seen anyone advertise that they're crafting the tier one stuff.)

In tier two, also known as the Ry'Gorr armor because the NPC vendor is part of the Ry'Gorr orc faction, the player must supplement the shards with a polished gem.  The rough gems, which are account-bound, drop in regular instances and are rolled as regular loot.  However, as I learned when I went to get my first piece of armor, you can trade these items once a crafter has polished them - perhaps in part to protect players from being screwed by the random number generator (and the prospect that the gem will be a six-way roll if it does drop).

This means that we have a standard need before greed dungeon drop that sells for over a hundred plat on the broker.  In principle, you could inspect the players who roll need to determine whether they already have the piece of armor that can be crafted with that gem (or better).  Then again, is it legitimate to roll need because you can sell that gem for the plat you need to buy the gem for the piece you don't have yet, when you have no way of knowing whether the other rollers are doing the same?

The situation in the third tier gets even more complicated.  Instead of gems, the tier three armor costs the standard velium shards plus ore that is obtained by disenchanting regular loot items that drop in those dungeons.  In the tier one and two dungeons, I typically don't even roll greed on stuff my character doesn't intend to use, because someone else might at least have an alt that will use the account-bound gear.  In the third tier, I would need to obtain some of those drops to get the ore for my own armor, and, again, there's no good way to tell whether someone is rolling need for the gear, for the ore, for the cash to exchange for other ore, or just straight up for the cash.

Good idea?
On the one hand, I see where SOE is coming from with this system.  For the slots where I can have class-specific armor crafted, it's very rare that I'm going to want a generic dungeon drop, and that does reduce the system to a pure token grind.  That said, I don't know that I'm entirely comfortable with what this model does to the incentives in loot rolling, especially with cross-server grouping coming to the game possibly later this month.

Overall, the problem is a shortcoming of the genre-wide need before greed mechanic, rather than anything specific about EQ2's armor system.  I'm just not sure it's a good idea to have a system that tests community agreement of what constitutes need versus greed. 

Pondering Pandaria

MMO-Champion reports that "Mists of Pandaria" is "extremely likely" the next WoW expansion.  While some folks are unconvinced, I'm inclined to trust the MMO-Champion track record. 

Hindsight is always easier than foresight - my best guess would be nowhere near the mark - but this makes a lot of sense in hindsight.  Regardless of the success or failure of Cataclysm's world revamp, which peppered with a few new zones in previously blank areas of map, the more traditional model with a new continent makes sense as a follow-up.  If Pandaria does turn out to be located on a previously unknown South Seas island, it is a logical battleground for an invasion by Azshara and the Naga.  There are relatively few other combinations of location and antagonist that players have heard of (especially through the Vashj'ir storyline in Cataclysm) and that are not similar to past foes (The Burning Legion again, or yet another Dragon Aspect gone evil). 

There are a few obstacles Blizzard has to deal with, if this is the expansion.  Panda haters are going to hate, and Panda lovers aren't going to be happy unless the race is playable for both factions, as Rohan suggests, which would be a first.  That said, I see no niche for a Brewmaster class, even if Blizzard does want to take the PR hit for marketing drunken cartoon pandas in a game that kids play, which might mean no new class.  WoW expansions have always included either new races or a new class, and Blizzard had previously suggested that two new races every expansion would be tough due to art requirements.  One new, neutral race mitigates that concern by halving the art requirements, even if two panda factions require Alliance and Horde colors.

There's also the issue of China, which was rumored to have prompted the removal of the Pandaren as the Alliance race for the 2007 Burning Crusade expansion.  Six months ago, I would have guessed that Blizzard no longer cared about China due to the likelihood that the government would refuse to approve the next expansion no matter what its contents.  However, after a rocky period that saw WoW China shut down outright and the Wrath expansion delayed by nearly two years, Blizzard seems to have finally mended relations; Cataclysm reportedly hit China a mere seven months late.  I don't have a good answer for this question, other than that Blizzard apparently thinks they can do something involving Pandaren - perhaps the Chinese version of the expansion will have all the Pandas find-replaced with Worgen? 

In the end, my guess is that Pandas, much like EQ2 Beastlords, will arrive because people want to see them.  Yes, some people will argue that this is WoW jumping the shark, but others have been asking for the Pandaren at every Blizzcon since the first.   By the time you're talking about a seven year old MMO, your target audience really should be your current playerbase.  Very few players who have stuck with the game through Cataclysm are going to walk off because they think Pandaren are a joke, while players who have already made the decision to leave are free to mock the move as validating their departure.  Sounds like as good a choice as Blizzard could make under the circumstances. 

A Visit To Tatooine

I recently had the opportunity to take that Star Wars MMO people are talking about for a spin.  Though I can't say that this was anywhere near the top of my priorities list, I decided to bite - it was a limited time offer that not a lot of people will get. 

There were something like eight character classes to choose from, but I didn't have that much trouble picking one given that this was not a character that is going to be around forever.  With respect to everyone who gets excited about Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and Stormtrooper-equivalents (seriously?), if I'm going to spend an hour in a Star Wars MMO, I'm going to pick Jedi.  A couple appearance customization choices later and Farwel Stawag (Farewell Star Wars Galaxies - see what I did with those links?), an Ithorian Jedi, was ready to zone in. 

An eye trunk, my Jedi has.

I've never played SWG before, and I don't expect that I ever would have, were it not for the coincidence of upgrading to a Station Pass shortly before the game's final billing cycle.  As it was, I figured it was worth an hour of my time to take a quick look at the game before Lucas pulls the plug, if for no other reason than in case I decide I'd like to tourist the game's final world (galaxy?) events. 

I'm never going to know what this game was like before its notorious "New Game Experience", or even what it is now for those who still invest time in a product that is slated to come down in a few months.  Based on my early impressions, though, I can say that this is not the Star Wars MMO I would have been looking for if I was in the market for one. 

Why narrate the intro, when you have the Star Wars slanty text license?

Many details, including races, lore NPC's, music, and even the opening text crawl, are right out of the films.  Unfortunately, the feel of the game is about what NGE critics have always said - an attempt to retrofit a more action-based combat system onto a game that was not designed for it.  Tacking on a few quests to kill 10 Tusken Raiders does not bring this game up to par for what I'd expect of a modern quest-based solo MMO.  When I hear about what the game was before, it seems like a big price for SOE to exact from the players of that era for a revamp that would have faced an uphill battle even if the effort wasn't best known for driving the game's most dedicated fans away in dramatic fashion. 

My Jedi gained a few levels on the NGE's introductory space station, helpfully populated with lore NPC's and generic kill quests.  By level seven, I could throw my stick or knife (apparently handing out lightsabers to new Jedi is a line that even the NGE would not cross) and fire off force lightning.  In a game like WoW, this progression would have been fine.  In a world that is specifically set prior to The Empire Strikes Back, it seems weird to see Jedi of all shapes and sizes firing off force attacks every which way.  I suppose I should be grateful for the lack of lightsaber - I find the concept of whacking something with a blade of pure energy that can cut through anything and only doing 20 damage pretty darned stupid looking, whether or not they got the sound effect right. 

By far the more interesting part of my visit to the game came when I finally zoned off of the starbase and onto Tatooine.  There, I saw players with familiar vehicles and gear, going about their lives amongst NPC Jawas and Tusken Raiders.  Personally, I was a bit lost, since the highly structured introduction does very little to prepare the player for the wide range of crafting, factions, and other things that await in the game's real universe.  Even so, I have to tip my cap - this part of the experience was actually different from what other MMO's offer. 

(Aside: To the extent that this was not the Star Wars MMO I am (or am not) looking for, is whether TOR will be.  On one hand, I can definitely appreciate the concept of effective use of a license; Rift put a lot of effort into their original world, but I may actually have a better idea of what my level 7 Ithorian Jedi with an hour of play time is like than my level 40 High Elf with many more hours under her belt. That said, I remain skeptical primarily because I didn't enjoy the gameplay in Dragon Age, and nothing I've heard from people who have actually played TOR (as opposed to watching promo videos) reassures me that TOR will be different.) 

Regardless of what happens with TOR, the MMO community is losing a unique experience when SWG closes its doors in December.  Though this game is not something I was interested in, right down to the end, I still offer it a sad final salute.  No one wins when an MMO closes down, especially when even its revised state is still somewhat unique in the current market.  Moreover, SWG's continuing community demonstrates that some folks who have weathered all of this game's trials are definitely going to miss it when it's gone, and that's a day that none of us are eager to face.  

When riding off into the sunset, who needs a mount when you can have a speeder?
It hopefully does not smell worse on the inside.