Conjecture for the masses

Like most MMO fans, I’ve been geeking out for two years now about the new Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. Every week of late has been what I lovingly refer to as ‘Nerd-Tastic Friday’. Every update is usually met with a lot of conjecture and supposition based on the little bit of information that’s released. A few weeks ago, the developers released some information that there would be space combat in the game.

This, of course, led to a flood of blogs and posts in various forums drawing conclusions that had never been nailed down. We gamers just love to draw out the future based on our own desires. We’re far from the only ones though; any political analyst can serve as proof of that statement. But there’s a flood of hatred that pours out from media outlets and ‘normal’ people who look down their noses at gamers as if we’re some sort of sub-species. Geekus Ownicus Maximus. Fuck yourselves for taking your point of view far too damned seriously.

The world is full of people hearing what they want to hear.

I vividly remember playing “Telephone” when I was a kid and laughing at what the original message was to what came out on the other side of the line. For those un-initiated in this childs game, here’s the synopsis. The teacher (or leader) says a phrase to the first child. That child in turn passes the phrase onto the next child. This continues down a line of children and finally, the last child then recites the phrase back to the teacher. Simple phrases like ‘Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers’ can turn into ‘Peter stuffed a pickle up his pecker’. You can imagine how that amuses the young and old alike.

It’s the same thing with games (or anything else for that matter). Something is reported and then the community begins to draw conclusions based on their vast knowledge of the industry, or whatever reasoning they give. Even simple rumors spin out of control and developers have no chance to stop the wildfires until the game goes live.

There was a great rumor that spread when Star Trek Online was in development. The rumor was that the graphics and game play engine was a refined version of the one used on Second Life. This rumor led to Star Trek fans taking one of two sides.

Pro – it’ll give the game a more free flowing dynamic…which usually translated into dreams of cybersex starring Vulcans and Klingons.

Con – it would make the game too open and be too much like Eve Online and thus, people were up in arms and swearing off of their vast movie and series collections.

The rumor was proven to be false of course, but not before numerous Developer Blogs squashed it hundreds of times. In fact, it wasn’t until Closed Beta that the rumor mongers shut up long enough to see that the rumor was false.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that while conjecture is fun, it should in no way begin to affect the industry (or the world) as a whole. Draw your conclusions, write out your wish lists, but don’t drink the fucktards Kool-Aide. Just remember that a rumor is a rumor until the open hand of reality slaps you upside the fucking head.