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Sony Online Seeking Queen of Everquest II
KingSkippus writes "Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and Stuff Magazine is seeking a real life look-alike for Everquest II's Antonia Bayle, Queen of Qeynos. In preparation, it has launched a Web site that will go live on May 17. The winner will receive a modeling contract with SOE and a photo spread in Stuff Magazine. Perhaps pictures would make lucrative auction items as well?"
This coming from someone who never was much into MMORPGs, what sets Everquest apart and makes it so crack-like?
The same thing which psychologists have found makes just about any activity addictive/compulsive: a random distribution of positive reinforcement.
Whether you are training an animal to do tricks, or conditioning a person to waste their life, the most reliable way to do it is to reward the behavior some of the time. Give the rat a food pellet one time out of every three times he hits a lever (on average, but without a predictible pattern), and it will spend it's little life hitting that lever long after you stop giving the food away.
This is also why so many people sit in dreary casino's, playing those mind-nummingly dull video slot machines while telling themselves they are having fun. Every once in a while, light light up, bells ring, and you get some of your money back. Plus, every time you loose, the machine shows a cartoon of wheels spinning in such a way to imply that you "almost" won!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Okay, maybe it's bad form to reply to my own submission, but just for the sake of more useless information, here are some links to wallpaper photos of Antonia Bayle.
Picture 1:
800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, Oh my god, she's HUGE!
Picture 2 (for dual monitors):
1600x600, 2048x768, 2560x960, I can hang this up in my bedroom!
There is also a bio of Antonia here (flash site) accessbile by navigating to The Game / lore / people.
And if anyone is remotely interested, her voice in the game is provided by Heather Graham. Come to think of it, whether or not anyone is remotely interested, her voice in the game is STILL provided by Heather Graham.
And sorry, TFA actually says that SOE "encourages women (sorry, fellas)" [my emphasis, their parentheses] to send in pictures. Okay, that's a lie, I'm not really sorry at all.
Antonia Bayle hasn't been around for years - she's a new character in EQ II. I think the character you're referring to is Fironia Vie, who looks the way she does because she's a goddess, not a normal human woman.