Quickies Get Massive

More movement on the massive scale. WoW Players should be aware that Patch 1.7 was released today. It's a big one, with a new raid instance, Hunter changes, and the inclusion of a new type of server (Roleplaying PVP) available. Get downloading. City of Heroes has seen Issue 5's Release, with a new zone, new power sets, and a big tweak to the Blaster archetype. Late last week a whole bunch of new City of Villains Beta invites went out, and Gamespot has a rundown on the upcoming stand-alone sequel. Major changes are afoot in Everquest II's Producer Letter, with changes to combat, classes, items, NPCs, buffs, crafting, and grouping. Is it even the same game? On a final non-commercial note, CNet has news that the Second Life virtual world is now free to enter, with the Linden Dollars economy expected to prop up the costs associated with running it. Interesting. From that article: "Currently, Rosedale said, "Second Life" has 45,000 members and is growing at about 10 percent a month. There are now more than 16,000 acres of owned land in the virtual world, and new land sells for about $129. Users must pay a fee of about $25 a month to maintain their land. Thus, Linden Lab is earning about $400,000 a month without ever factoring in membership fees." Update: 09/14 05:50 GMT by Z : Cutriss rightly points out that I overlooked the interesting Ballista Royale update to FFXI. Additionally, a new patch for Dark Age of Camelot was released today, and the main site revamped for the upcoming expansion.

Comments

I'll give it another shot

[QuantumG]

Second Life is a shopping mall with no actual gameplay, but what the hell, I'll give it another go. Maybe I'll actually find someone this time who can show me the 1% of user created content that isn't shit.

Re:I'll give it another shot

[Anonymous Coward]

www.Neualtenburg.org

'nuff said.

Re:I'll give it another shot

[Weeb]

Send Enabran Templar an IM saying "porcine masterpiece" once you get in-world. I'll hook you up with my robot avatar. Definitely isn't shit. :)

Re:I'll give it another shot

[eggstasy]

So is the web, and you're on it!
Of course it has no gameplay, it's not a game.
The whole point is that you have fun creating stuff.
You know, vaguely like Lego blocks? Except you have a heap of different shapes, that are infinitely customizable, and a scripting language with which you can do anything, from simple doors and cars, to complex physics simulations, and massive distributed systems.
Or, of course, if you're not the creative type, you can socialize and buy stuff, play house, attend events, have cybersex with hot nubile avatars who may or may not be 50 year old men, the works.
There's also a heap of games to play inside it, all created by users.

Re:I'll give it another shot

[QuantumG]

Ok, I've played it all day long. I'm still bored out of my god damn mind. What's worse though, I've come to recognise what the future will be like. When we all have access to programmable matter, the world will look like Second Life - a wasteland of absentee land owners dictating what you can and can't do on their land. You'll try to pick something up and the operating system of Earth will intercept your actions and stop you whispering gently into your brain "the owner of this object has not granted you permission to pick it up". To put it in collocial terms, physical objects in the future will have DRM built in. Welcome to the opposite of freedom.

Re:I'll give it another shot

[Reapy]

I think you either like sl or you dont.

For creativity at its finest, check out the burning life sims this week. They will all be gone by the 19th though, so hurry up :)

When you get there, you will be greeted by a wonderful giant chess board, playing out four famous games in sequence against itself, and it only get's more interesting from there.

Re:I'll give it another shot

[pnice]

Did you get a cyber-slut from one of the bars? I remember reading about how big the paid cyber sex thing was in Second Life.

Re:I'll give it another shot

[jafuser]

Most of the stuff I make in SL is given away for free with open source. It's up to the creator what permissions they put on objects.

You have the following options to set on any object you create in SL:

- Modifyable
- Copyable
- Transferable

In the first year of SL, a sizeable portion of the content creators were quite willing to give away free and open source content. However, more recently, SL has attracted a lot of people who get involved with it just to make money. I have no real objection to this, but it has become quite an overwhelmingly large crowd now, which sort of taints the impression new residents may have.

If you look around though, the freebies are still there and the people who make them are still there; it's just that they are quite buried away in the massive sea of virtual malls, clubs, and casinos.

I think the important thing for anyone checking out SL is to find someone to mentor them, otherwise it's just too overwhelming for most people. SL is very flexible (read: complex) and yet quite poorly documented, so it's handy to have someone to bounce questions off of. There are a lot of places you can get help though (in-game "Live Help" volunteers, IRC, wikis, etc).

Re:I'll give it another shot

[QuantumG]

One option I did not see was the ability to make it so those taking a copy of your objects cannot subsequently turn off the allowed to copy bit. In a world where everything has DRM you need a share and share-alike license more than ever.

If you're interested in the PvP/RP server..

[wuie]

don't bother right now with it. The queues are already 600+ with people waiting for hours just to login and make a character. Blizzard limited the maximum size of the server's capacity so that starting areas won't be jam-packed. Wait a couples days or a week until making a character.

Re:If you're interested in the PvP/RP server..

[geminidomino]

Heh. How's that for irony. The one thing that could have possibly convinced me to renew.

Maybe in a few months, when it's clear whether or not the RP/PvP servers are the same unenforced Clusterfucks that the RP servers are.

$25 a month, isn't a bit stiff for a MMORPG?

[Zangief]

The title says it all...

Re:$25 a month, isn't a bit stiff for a MMORPG?

[joechip]

The game without land is free. You can get an account with a small amount of land (512sm) for $9.95 a month ($7.50/mo quarterly, $6/mo. if you pay a year at a time). That small bit of land is essentially free, as you can buy it with your "starter money."

If you want more land, there is a tiered monthly fee structure beyong the normal fee. Land can cost you anywhere between $L3-$L5/sm. The $L is currently trading around $US3.50 per $L1000.

Alan Palmerstone - SL resident since June 2004.

Re:$25 a month, isn't a bit stiff for a MMORPG?

[Zangief]

Thanks for the info. I was confused by the article that I didn't read :D

Re:$25 a month, isn't a bit stiff for a MMORPG?

[jafuser]

The title says about as much as saying "$25 a month, isn't a bit stiff for a web host?" (sic).

You can get a free account which you can use to explore and create content just like anyone else. The free account is quite sufficient for all but the most full-control-obsessed land owning requirements.

If you need to own land for your project, you can still keep your account free and rent land from other players (on negotiated terms), or you can upgrade your account to pay a monthly hosting fee to own land. You can own as little as 512 square meters for $7-10/month, or one or more whole regions for $195/month.

Keep in mind too, the company that runs SL isn't creating artificial scarcity with land like so many people assume. Each region of land (65,536 square meters) requires one server-unit of resources to be maintained for running things such as:
- the simulator itself
- the Havok physics engine
- local asset storage and transfer
- synchronizing updates to active agents within and near the region
- running hundreds or even thousands of user scripts

The result is each region requires a decent piece of hardware to run without noticably lagging the region's simulator (incurring "time dilation", slower script execution, etc).

So the title is wrong. You can enjoy SL for free. And even if you pay, there are many pricing tiers between free and a full region. According to their Land FAQ, it is $25/month only if you absolutely need to have complete ownership control over 4,608 square meters of land.

PS: BTW, An odd quirk in the current economy makes it actually profitable to buy a minimal (512 sq m landowning) annual subscription, assuming the virtual currency (L$) value holds above a L$1000:US$3 ratio. The landowning accounts receive a weekly grant of L$500. At the end of a year, that comes to L$26k, which is currently valued at more than the price of the US$72 annual subscription fee.

Yes, because the article lies (it's $9.95/mo).

[Anonymous Coward]

Second Life access is free ($0 a month) - you can visit the entire world and build objects in the public sandbox (you just won't have any permanent place to keep objects other than in your inventory).

With a monthly subscription at $9.95 a month, you can own up to 512 square meters of land. It's tiered above that, though, so you can spend quite a bit if you want to rent a huge plot of land (but you can easily sublet to groups of friends if you want).

See these three pages for details:

http://secondlife.com/pricing/
http://secondlife.com/vland/cost.php
http://secondlife.com/vland/fees.php

You can even buy an entire virtual island for $195 a month should you wish - if you wanted to build a virtual theme park... or whatever you want to use a huge plot of virtual land for. Think of it like renting a private server in other games like Battlefield (which can be equally expensive).

Re:Yes, because the article lies (it's $9.95/mo).

[Reapy]

Someone please mod this up informative, i don't know why this is at -1...

City of Heroes archetype changes

[snuf23]

Blasters were not the only ones to get big changes.
Controllers for example had changes which siginificantly affect their play style. Controllers can no longer have multiple pets out, their area of effect holds last half as long and take twice as long to "cooldown" and damage dealt by controllers to targets that are held has been increased.
Other classes have also had big changes and there are global changes to character defense levels and strength of PVE bad guys.
There is a lot of speculation that these broad level changes coming after the game has been out for over a year, are to help balance the game in relation to the upcoming City of Villains. City of Villains will offer new character classes (although utilizing some of the same power sets) and has a large PVP and base raiding component.

I5 for COH

[MagicDude]

Issue 5 for City of Heroes has not gone over well with most of the players. Many people are very critical of the massive nerfing that took place with this issue across all of the archtypes (better known as classes). As well, COH is still lacking in any kind of end game content. Once you get the level 50, the only thing there is to do from there is to roll up a new character and start over. I believe this is the effect of what is probably COH's most unique qualities, no economy. There is no loot huntning in the game, which I think makes the game more enjoyable with no griefing or spawn camping or doing the same quest over and over again because the ending boss has a 2% change of dropping the legendary boots of butt kicking. Your only job is to go out there and bring villians to justice which is great. However, it doesn't provide your character with many incentives to get to level 50 since gameplay just hits a brick wall after that since there's no benefit to being lvl 50 in terms of making your character better. Most of the previous updates have added mainly low and mid level content, but many players are salivating for something like a lvl 50 only zone chock full of high end content, rather than your only option being to become a noob again and go do Lt. Wincott's Hollows missions for the 5th time.

Re:I5 for COH

[snuf23]

Once you get the level 50, the only thing there is to do from there is to roll up a new character and start over.

What? You don't consider running the Hamidon raid over and over again to be something to do?

(OK, so neither do I)

I think City of Villains should add additional higher end options with the base building, raiding and PVP zones. It remains to be seen however.
I don't think World of Warcraft has a great approach for high end content either. The necessity to run the same dungeons over and over again to get your uber loot is annoying. The high end crafting and faction stuff is even more repetitive (i.e. running a quest over 800 times so you can get a purple striped cat mount).

Re:I5 for COH

[Edgewize]

The end-game raid content doesn't interest me much, but I'd pay a monthly fee just for the CTF Battlegrounds... so much fun, it should be its own game!

(And if Blizzard were owned by EA ... it would be!)

Re:I5 for COH

[Rhys]

And this is why I know of 1 account remaining in a former guild of friends of 8 RL players. Nerf nerf nerf your revenue stream. Not very bright.

The pathetic thing is half their nerfs were to fix herding, which wouldn't have been a problem in the first place if the'd implemented collision checking while jumping as well as while moving.

If you're a CoH player you'll have noticed when mobs run to follow you, they won't overlap, but when they jump they will. The CoH devs have come out and said "it is too computationally expensive to do it!" which is total BS since they're already doing it on walking-around collision checks and when you're herding there are a *lot* more of those.

My bet? They tried it on an internal build, had a bug nobody saw, and it always said they were in colission. Thus, can't jump, thus blasters/defenders people can use small ridges to perch on and kill in 100% safely.

EQ2

[Shads]

The eq2 changes are utter crap basically. I've been in the beta and early on they really seemed to listen once we got down to last 2-3 weeks the devs shut up and quit listening to the players. I wouldn't really call the game playable anymore for alot of classes. I'll be glad to be able to actually play the game again in a reasonable manor in the next month or so after they patch it 30-40 times to fix all the very broken stuff everyone in beta reported the past few weeks.

Second life may be free, but still requires cc...

[stienman]

Second life may be free, but it still requires credit card information. And here I was all ready to sign up and everything.

May not be an issue for most people, but if I'm not going to pay, I'm certianly not giving them payment information.

-Adam

Another Big Change

[Attar81]

Just looking through the release notes, and it says that they've reduced the number of targets for area of effect powers. This includers blasters final power (like nova) and also looks like it will nerf fire tanks (the biggest source of power levelling). This is huge.

What about FFXI?

[Cutriss]

What is it with Slashdot and not covering FFXI? Every time there's a MMORPG wrapup, it almost always gets omitted from the newspost in favor of WOW (understandable), and then far less populated MMOs.

FFXI has the North American Ballista Royale gearing up for team-based PVP tournaments which will eventually be held on a server-versus-server tournament level. A new update will be out in October that will add new zones and expand the functionality of the NPC buddies that were added in one of the recent patches, and a host of other new things. Also, with TGS right around the corner, everyone's expecting the official announcement of the new expansion pack, which will be included on the FFXI release for the Xbox 360.

Re:What about FFXI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tou'll notice that Lineage and Ragnarok Online don't get covered that often either. Wonder why? It's because they're played mostly in Asia. Which, coincidently, does NOT include a very large group of Slashdot readers.

Slashdot readers come primarily from the US, and then secondly from English-speaking countries and Europe. FFXI isn't exactly popular in Slashdot's demographic. Not surprisingly, Slashdot primarily covers news that it thinks its readers will be interested in. FFXI isn't one of those things.

(Other than when they required people to access their servers on the SMTP port, causing a large group of people to get cut off. That was pretty funny and deserved the Slashdot coverage it got.)

Re:What about FFXI?

[Dragoon412]

It's because FFXI is an evil, twisted, abortion of a game that's tanked miserably in the US.

FFXI requires a degree of sadism and time investment (it can literally take hours just to find a group, and this isn't rare) that seems high even in comparison to Lineage 2. The economy has been utterly devastated by farmers, and encounters (and therefore groups, which are absolutely necessary - you can't even blow your nose in FFXI without a white mage to help you) are so demanding that you often won't be admitted into a group unless you have the absolute best equipment available. Which means either, A) competing with professional farmers, B), farming for gold for days to buy the most trivial equipment, or C) shelling out to the farmers on eBay.

FFXI isn't covered because it's not a game, it's punishment in digital form; it's a damned job with no benefits and no pay. It's a game so slow, boring, repetetive, and frustrating that even old-time EverQuest players say "whoa, that's too much." "Playing" FFXI is like choing on tinfoil while a donkey kicks you in the nuts and a midget in a bondage outfit sodomizes you with a red-hot, spiked dildo.

Re:What about FFXI?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is NOT flamebait. If anything, this is glossing over the amazing turd that FFXI is on gaming.

Everything said by the parent post is completely true. Everything.

It's not popular in the US. It did tank miserably in the US and Europe. Groups do take hours upon hours to form. (And once they do, they usually rapidly break up.) The economy is dominated by farmers. There was a Slashdot article a while back about them banning eight hundred farmers. This was news because they never had before. And they never have since. Encounters are literally so demanding that you MUST have the absolute best gear or you're literally useless (unless you're the white mage, who's essential and will simply be less effective) because you'll simply never hit the opponent.

Ultimately you're left with three choices: competeing with farmers, farming trash mobs for HOURS on end because they don't drop anything useful (most popular solution), or buying from the farmers.

FFXI is a job. There's a reason they call the classes "jobs" - because playing them IS a job.

The parent post isn't Flamebait. It's Informative. Please educate yourself on just how horrendous FFXI truely is before calling it flamebait. There's a reason FFXI isn't popular in the US and Europe, and the parent post covers why very well.

If anything, he was too kind to it. It's really worse than the parent post leads you to believe.

Final Fantasy XI is a horrendous game, and it simply isn't worthy of Slashdot coverage in any way, shape, or form - other than the really silly things (like when it got blocked because it was using port 25 to connect) which are just tech news.

Re:What about FFXI?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you describe sounds like any other MUD or MMORPG I've ever played.

When I get back from work I want some entertainment, not more drudgery.

I am glad some companies have figured this out, and legitimized item trade, so I don't have to deal with idiots trying to rip me off on eBay. More games should allow me to buy the stuff and levels, and just let me enjoy the game I bought and pay for on monthly basis!!

www.neualtenburg.org

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just about to post a link to N'burg but you beat me to it. :)

Extra content, no monthly fee

[spyrochaete]

Let's not forget this week's Sorrow's Furnace update to Guild Wars

No mention of Shadowbane's Lore server?

[SeekerDarksteel]

Cmon, what's up with that! It's an extremely important new direction in...

*guffaw* aha, oh man, almost managed to keep a straight face on that one.

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[andy_fish]

I agree that it's annoying. But in this case, it's not a sleazy marketing thing to make it easier for you to make an impulse buy. It really is necessary. Free characters start out with a base allowance of Linden dollars, so they need the credit card check to prevent someone from making a ton of throwaway emails/accounts and harvesting the money.

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[zztzed]

You can also use a PayPal account to sign up, but depending on how you feel about PayPal I guess that could be worse.

Runescape

[Deltaspectre]

Can't forget the $5 game that is Runescape..

Updates all around the board every week

No surprise about Everquest 2

[cpu_fusion]

Its the "Raph" way to have to overhaul large portions of the game post-release. It basically has to do with the game being launched a year ahead of time. The same thing happened with Star Wars Galaxies.

The formula is basically:
1. Release game a year early due to market pressures;
2. Overhaul entire game a year later;
3. Don't profit.

Buy-bye EQ2; the tendrals of the FSM do not bless you.

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[MBraynard]

Your complaint no longer carries any merit with anyone so it's not even worth posting on /.

Some loser always brings that up on every MMORGP thread - right along with the guy who whines about the way you pay for the game (up front+montly fee).

It's so irrelevant you should be moderated off-topic, not 'insightful'. It's as relevant as telling us "Gee, I'm blind and deaf and have no arms or legs, so boo hoo for me, I can't play Second Life" (which is so bad if you had arms or legs you'd want to cut them off within a day of playing that meglomaniac fest.

I bet you're also one of those clowns who is afraid to use shopper loyalty cards to get a discount because they track your purchase history. Or refuse to pay for cable TV because it has commercials.

I see someone else suggested you use a paypal account. Boy do they not know someone as anal retentive as you.

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[Retroneous]

Your complaint no longer carries any merit with anyone so it's not even worth posting on /.

And your vitriolic reply so obviously is. Since when did "your complaint does not affect me" = "your complaint carries no merit with anyone"?

Fuck you very much for sharing.

End game? What end game?

[KingSkippus]

Yeah, I've heard some people (I don't know if I'd say "many") complaining, too. Don't take this personally. Since "many people" are critical—not you—I'm giving you the benefit of a doubt that you're merely observing, not complaining.

COH is still lacking in any kind of end game content. Once you get the level 50, the only thing there is to do from there is to roll up a new character and start over.

(Insert standard lament about how people don't roleplay here, so I can move on to stuff that pertains to this comment...)

End game content? You mean after you've won? Isn't the point of a role-playing game that there is no end of the game?

Congratulations, you've reached level 50. So what? Keep logging on and give advice to new players. Hang out in Atlas Park and act like, well, a hero. Listen to The Cape Radio and dance with the DJ's. Write some articles for my virtual newspaper or my CoH wiki. Join the Taxibots and volunteer to teleport heroes around. Host a costume contest. Host a trivia contest. Host a scavenger hunt. Jeez, man, show us why the MM in MMORPG makes a game more fun!

And what's so bad about rolling up a new character? So your badass übertank finally snagged the Hero of the City badge. What would you do if your primary power was the ability to heal other heroes? How would a Warshade fare in the Arena? How can you make the most of those weird powers that hardly anyone else has? In other words, there's always something different to try and do, so get back out there and have some fun!

Look, I know that sometimes the game can be tedious. Whenever I find myself getting bored, I finish what I'm doing if I'm with a team, and bounce to something different, usually something a little more creative than doing Officer Dave's missions yet again. If all fails, ping me at @KingSkippus and we'll figure out something to do to break the monotony. Whatever you do, just please don't become one of those folks who follow this guy's satirical advice. (non-Coral)

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your complaint no longer carries any merit with anyone so it's not even worth posting on /.

As someone who doesn't have a credit card, use a shopper loyalty card, or have pay TV, or use PayPal, I'd like to think I still have the right to free speech. I'm a citizen, not a consumer.

Progress Quest

[KingSkippus]

Yeah, brag about all your games's updates. I'm just pissed that there hasn't been any updates to Progress Quest in, like, forever. :-(

Re:End game? What end game?

[Walkiry]

> And what's so bad about rolling up a new character? (...) How can you make the most of those weird powers that hardly anyone else has?

I did that a lot, rolling new characters (I had 2 level 50s and a 45, a few 30s, a whole buch of 20s, and a few more under 10, the total being some 35 characters). With Issue 5, many of the things I was planning and changing for my characters went down the drain with a nerf rock tied around their necks, because I was trying those "fun" and "unusual" combinations. The game is still very playable if you follow the dev-driven pokémon powers mentality for your primary and secondary sets (gotta catch 'em all, gotta slot 'em all!), and the customization aspect has been clamped down far too hard for the re-rolling to be fun.

Blasters in general don't play all that different between them when you have to stick to your "role" of being glass cannon, controller powers aren't really that much different when you have to use them with a full primary to be any good (the handful of "defining powers" aren't really that hot post-nerf, so you have to slot up the AoE holds all controllers have, the immobilizes most controllers have, and so on), a stone tank isn't really that much different from an invulnerability tank once you spend 40 slots and 7 power choices to get your defenses up.

The day I5 hit test I happily went to the test server, deleted everything there, and started putting character after character in the copy queue to test how they'd play in the future, and one after another they fell extremely short of the game expectations. Imagine a nail, now imagine a hammer, and imagine that every copied character meant a mighty swing of the aforementioned hammer. My Ice/Fire "short range blaster"? Gone. My non-stamina, non-hasten, non-fighting pool (the cookie cutter trinity) Regen scrapper? Gone! My Invulneravility Tanker? So very gone. Gravity/FF controller? Tragic. Ice/Ice "hold 'em all" blaster? Rikti fodder. Energy/Energy "Glass Cannon" blaster? Well, what do you know, she's squarely in the devs' "vision", so she's fine! Too bad she was one of the few survivors. At the end of 3 weeks of intense testing I wasn't even mad or angry, I was merely sad to see that the game I had played and loved for over a year (since pre-release!) had been snatched away from me in one fell swoop, and one clear idea, that my only possible next stop was the cancel button.

I'm probably rambling. In short, I5 took a lot of choices out of players' hands in the name of balance, and very likely, in the name of open PvP for the upcoming expansion/standalone-game. Re-rolling is a lot less fun now, and so is tinkering with powers out of the devs' intended "vision," even those that are taken just for "fun." And when that is one of the most touted-out strong points of your game, that's a problem.

One last thing:
> Host a scavenger hunt.

I also did one of those. A pretty big one, in fact. I took over 800 screenshots all around Paragon City, with a /loc attached to it, and made a contest where people would have to enter the correct city zone and location to win a prize. When you entered the correct location for a screenshot, you got a code, and with that code you could pick up a prize in a huge prize board (28x32 squares) with over 25 million influence in prizes, a few cute things like the Winter Present Inspirations (a dozen of them), low level SO enhancements (the kind you love when you're under level 22), and even 10 Hamidon Origin Enhancements (the pre-nerfed variety). It wasn't exactly complicated (I had a step-by-step explanation, and many of these screenshots were of well known landmarks or buildings).

There were a total of 10 entries from people other than my two closest friends in the game. In 3 weeks the contest lasted, basically noone ever showed any interest. I kept an eye on the Apache logs, and the pages were just quietly sitting there on a corner. The first thing I heard from anyone regarding the contest

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[ivan256]

Generally the people who bitch about PayPal are the sellers. People spending money through PayPal (typically) don't get screwed.

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[MBraynard]

Sure. You also have the right to post here and tell us how many freckles you have on your left hand. Because that's a shared experience we all want to hear about.

You and the guy who modded his Xbox not to play pirated games or rip rented games to the HD - he did it just as a hobbyist - you two should start a club.

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[MBraynard]

And your vitriolic reply so obviously is. Since when did "your complaint does not affect me" = "your complaint carries no merit with anyone"?

Fuck you very much for sharing.

It's more like 'your complaint carries no merit with anyone' = 'your complaint carries no merit with anyone'.

And your welcome!

Re:Second life may be free, but still requires cc.

[Anonymous Coward]

You also have the right to post here and tell us how many freckles you have on your left hand.

That's about as interesting to you as your adventures in the commercial realm are to me. If you're allowed to post about your fucking trips shopping, why can't I post about my freckles? Why should I give a fuck about what a good little consumer you are? Dickwad.