Stolen Pixels #7: Vulture Milk

[Shamus Young]

Stolen Pixels #7: Vulture Milk

In this installment of Stolen Pixels, Shamus Young observes that with great pie comes great responsibility, at least in the World of Warcraft.

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[mesh]

Bravo!, Good sir, Bravo!
I love the standard of your work Shamus, I hope you continue to write.

 

[pseudoidiot]

Great as always, Shamus! I laughed when you talked about it on your site and I laughed more reading this comic.

It should be interesting to see how much this stirs up all the fanboys this time around.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I liked this. A lot.

I mean, to start with, it was only so that the 3 copper pieces you got from rats, where due to selling the parts to an alchemist or someone who had a vested interest in seeing rats dead.

If you have to create a whole item, encumberance table etc. for each one though, it does make things a little stupid; so the idea of just swapping it for money happened.

(Although on EQ, I often found wolves with two 'wolf heads', three 'wolf tails' and two 'wolf pelts')

I'm glad to see you didn't make the joke about the Vulture Milk only coming from the males though.

 

[Rampancy]

Excellent work yet again, good sir. It always bugged me when I would slay a rat in some disease-ridden cellar, only to find out that until it died, it was richer than me.

 

[broadband]

nice one and ``I have to wonder how in the name of Arthas' frozen nipples´´- really funny

 

[Archon]

I'm in total agreement. Nothing annoys me more than MMO game design that pretends to present an "immersive world" while simultaneously suggesting that only mythic heroes can eat cheese, and that rats collect copper necklaces.

Even worse is when the world provides no basis whatsoever for explaining why *everyone keeps coming back from the dead* and just presents a blithe, pseudo-medieval realm where no one really discusses the fact that you can't die! Or even worse has the game's backstory revolving around the death of major NPCs.

 

[Loneduck3]

Perhaps if it was a BOTTLE of milk, instead of a glass. Then it wouldn't spill. The vulture could hold the bottle with it's talons. You see, when you killed that boar five levels ago, you killed a baby boar's mother. Fortunately, a friendly vulture was raising that baby boar, bringing it whatever food and milk it could find. But you killed the vulture. Now that baby boar is going to starve. I hope you're happy.

 

[DaveMc]

Ha! Nice job, and as usual, the accompanying commentary is my favourite part.

The best games I've ever seen in terms of sensible loot have got to be the Etrian Odysseys (1 and 2) on the DS. When you kill something, it drops only bits of stuff that you'd expect it to have, usually parts of its body: Moles give you "soft hides", carnivorous flowers give you "giant petals", and so forth. You can turn all these things into money, back in town, and then buy swords, armour, and other goodies -- the critters in the dungeon don't walk around with that sort of thing. (OK, so it's a bit of a mystery why the vendor in town is so eager for petals and bits of fur, but at least the monsters don't hork up full suits of plate mail when they die.)

 

[Dev Null]

Heh. I totally agree... while still basically laughing at myself for simultaneously not caring that my archer is carrying 2.5 metric tons of arrows...

Realism would be dull. But couldn't we have a slightly less laughable fantasy?

 

[Apathy Curve]

Depressingly funny.

It's the core problem with most MMOs: in the process of trying to make sure that every single player enjoys the same creamy-chocolatey goodness, the designers end up making the entire game world taste like colored tofu. As you correctly point out, "vulture milk" and other silliness are evidence of a serious game design flaw. But most players are so caught up in making the gerbil wheel turn faster they never even notice.

 

[CanadianWolverine]

Perhaps if it was a BOTTLE of milk, instead of a glass. Then it wouldn't spill. The vulture could hold the bottle with it's talons. You see, when you killed that boar five levels ago, you killed a baby boar's mother. Fortunately, a friendly vulture was raising that baby boar, bringing it whatever food and milk it could find. But you killed the vulture. Now that baby boar is going to starve. I hope you're happy.

*wipes a tear from his eye* Oh my, both this and that are making my sides hurt with laughter, thank you to both =D

 

[Dectilon]

"and that rats collect copper necklaces."

That's actually true though : / (sometimes)

 

[CanadianWolverine]

Yeah, rats and birds sometimes have a thing for shiny objects, many interesting objects have been found in a nest before.

 

[NobleBear]

It seems baffling that simply renaming items to seem more intuitive is too elegant a solution for Blizzard.

Maybe then making aquired items gradable would work, like, start with Beef Jerky then work up to Fillet Mignon.

 

[Karisse]

I love these things. Well done, once again.

 

[lesterley]

Yay! There's my priest, Racheala, making her premiere debut in a Shamus production. (The female in the comic is my character on the Kirin Tor server.)

Shamus told us the general concept of the cartoon while he was taking the screen shots. But I never thought it would be THIS funny! I'm still laughing out loud at the absurdity.

Good work, Shamus!

Leslee

 

[broadband]

Even worse is when the world provides no basis whatsoever for explaining why *everyone keeps coming back from the dead* and just presents a blithe, pseudo-medieval realm where no one really discusses the fact that you can't die! Or even worse has the game's backstory revolving around the death of major NPCs.

well in matrix online they used a emerency jack out procedure invented after the truce like a excuse for that, and they actualy talk about it on the game storyline.

 

[Shamus Young]

And thanks for the help Leslee. (You also appear in the next comic as well.) Couldn't have done it without you.

 

[sammyfreak]

Funny comic, but this perticular lack of immersion never bothered me in MMO's. I prefer the loot system that shares a vauge connection with the creature in question.