I was in, and still am, a discussion about MMO’s and particular pieces to them. There was a few questions I was asking of a veteran community and the responses were fantastic. The two questions were:

1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and ‘cool’

2) What one thing that hasn’t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?

After back and forth and seeing answers I came up with my own two answers.

1) A completely thorough and robust ’social’ networking system. I want to be able to communicate, chat, mail, in game out of game, all of it, with anyone anywhere with nothing more than a click or two before entering ‘chat’. Be it a fully integrated VO system or actual in game chat, let me do the thing you want me to, within the framework of an incredibly USER FRIENDLY interaction system. Not only that, but don’t make me ’search’ for the methods and means to do this, make it easy for me and make it as user friendly as anything else you will ever put in your game, more so if you can. I want that one stop one/two click amazon.com experience to be the most I need to do to ever find/talk/interact with my friends, or my potential friends.

2) Make me feel heroic on day 1, minute 1, until I am done playing the game. There are quests, there is gear, there is some semblance of story that can at times make me feel, look, heroic. But damn, I want to be a hero all the time right? By heroic I mean make my actions and choices MATTER in a way other people can see. Not only visually, but damn if I do something ‘heroic’ in a heroic world should people know that beyond the folks in my group? Killing rats with a rusty short sword to get money and experience so I can start to become heroic is not it, not even close. Aren’t you creating a world that needs a hero? Aren’t you creating a world calling for millions of heroes? That doesn’t work if only a few of us can ever get that feeling. Well it does for the few but the rest of us ‘are not worthy’ to the few.

The challenge to me is what people define as ‘Heroic’, and finding the most common ground there. Hey, that’s going to be my next question.

1) Has any game ever made you feel like your character was really heroic?

2) If yes, what game? Why? Was it an acquired thing or was the game designed to make you feel that from start.

3) Does being heroic need to be exclusive to you?

The last question had more to do with thinking about City Of Heroes. I played a small amount of time in that game, but in a ‘city’ or ‘world’ where everyone is a hero, is anyone really a hero?

IPhone user? Want a REALLY cool, fun as hell new app? Check out a game called Fieldrunners!!!! The funnest tower defense game I’ve ever played.

The cool part? Well in addition to the game being cool as hell, it was created by an engineer here at 38 and a small group of his friends. It was ranked #12 on the most downloaded apps as recently as Wednesday! Congrats to Jamie and the guys at Subatomic Studios, LLC!!!! I haven’t read a review below 5 stars yet.

Tampa tied it up last night. Didn’t see much of the game until the last 2 innings due to flying back to Boston from Night to Unite in San Francisco. Had a chance to meet a ton of people across the industry. Congratulations to Miyamoto-san on the recognition of his industry inspiration and lifetime achievement! It was an honor to meet him and talk with him.

Great to meet a bunch of folks from all over the world.

If your flight lands 5 minutes early and you sit at baggage claim for an hour waiting on your bags?

Spinnakers in San Francisco has the best Crab Alfredo in existence.

I have bias both ways for the teams in this World Series. I still am in touch with a few folks from the Phillies organization and am hoping like hell they win, and at the same time I am pulling for Eric Hinske to be on the Roster and do something special as well as hoping Kazmir throws a gem or two. Add to that Joe Maddon, whom I met when I was 14 years old and who was hugely instrumental in becoming a professional baseball player is someone I’ve always had immense respect for and thought the world of. This guy, much like Don Zimmer, is a baseball ‘lifer’.

So I’ll make my prediction for game 1. Starting with Cole Hamels, who I think is one of the 4-5 best pitchers in the game now. He’s on and to me a guy that good being on in October means bad things for the other guys. I think he’s going to spin a gem and I also think Burrell goes deep at least once. That’s as scientific as I can get on this. Phils win game 1 7-2 behind Cole’s strong 7. Going to be very interesting to see how Kazmir handles Utley and Howard. I always project how I’d use other guys stuff in facing them and I know what I would do their first AB’s to setup the game, and the series and I’ll be interested to see how Scott approaches them.

That 7-2 score could be 15 runs off in Philadelphia when they go there. There are a lot of fly ball hitting guys in both lineups and I’ll be interested to see if the cold mitigates the park in any way, however I don’t see it.

55 foot fastballs aside, last night was amazing. Watching them do what they did was breathtaking, gut wrenching and many other things, all occurring within what felt like 5 minutes of time.

The thing CHB, Bob Ryan and so many other self proclaimed ‘experts’ can’t explain to you, beyond the normal rhetoric and column filling scraps they now turn out (which is desired at this point, far more than seeing CHB’s comic book fro even one more time) is what it truly means.

Let me see if I can help out.

What does it mean to win/lose in the most extraordinary comeback ever by a team facing elimination?

Well if you win there are some no brainers. You live to fight another day. You get to throw your ace one more time. You still must win two more games. But beyond that, what does it really mean? Until the game starts tomorrow it means absolutely zero. More on that in a second.

What does it mean to lose that game? No question it was a quieter flight than it could have been, much more sober as well. Every single member of that organization had the thought at some point “Damn, 7 more outs and we are in”. Seriously bumming you out sort of stuff. But I would guess based on the presence of players like Eric Hinske, Carlos Pena and a few others, there was not a lot of time before they started to reach out inside the clubhouse, and the flight, with the “So what? We still only need to win one more game” talk and guys quickly went to neutral and many likely went over to that positive place competitive people go when they need to change their state of mind.

But, exactly like the winning scenario above it all means absolutely zero on it’s impact until pitch 1 of game 6.

Now there will be some players on one team or the other, maybe both, that will take the effects of this game and it will absolutely impact them tomorrow, but that’s the minority.

That all changes when Shields delivers his first pitch tomorrow. Now, if you want to find a ‘physical’ tangible edge that the Sox might have, not over the Rays, but over other teams in this position, it’s there. It exists and it’s the very same reason you saw what you saw last night. There are enough players from 04 and 07 to impact the guys that weren’t. One pitch, one hitter, one AB, one inning and one play at a time. That’s the only mindset, imo, that you can possibly come back and win when you are facing 3-1/3-0 deficits. When 25 guys and coaches buy into that, and play with that single mindset, unreal and never before seen things happen. You don’t have to win 3 straight, 4 straight, no one wins 3 or 4 in a night. You have to win the 1st, then the 2nd, and so on. You might lose one, tie a few, but you just have to win 1 more inning than the other guy. When men of this caliber of talent allow themselves or are coached to understand this mindset (Thanks Big Don Kalkstein!!) they do things no one outside of them thought possible.

Now that’s not going to beat Tampa, the players are.

But what is going to happen tomorrow, mentally, is some of this. You have the entire world, outside of the 18 guys on the field, just waiting for what you think and feel should happen. The guys are not doing that, the game is way too hard and involved to think or waste that mental energy in that direction. But, the very first ‘incident’ changes everything. By that I mean this. Look at the last 4 games. Starting with TB jumping out early in 3/4/5 you had a fan mindset of “Holy crap we can never win if we keep giving up huge leads”. To some extent that hits the players, but I always felt it hit us far later than it did you. By the time you are griping before game 6 for the 5th consecutive day about giving up runs early we as players are generally done with that and onto something else. I’d argue it’s basically us operating under the law of averages, just knowing it’s not going to continue. It’s the same reason success sabotages itself, we just can’t believe it’s going to continue, history tells us as much. It works both ways. But there does and will come a point when it permeates the dugout, and onto the field. The X factor is the teams, situation and history. Remember “Don’t let us win this game, don’t” from 2004? We felt it, we thought we believed it, and after game 4 we did. Did that affect the Yanks, hell no, but it didn’t matter to us because it affected us, at least some of us, and in turn we affected each other.

If the Sox jump out early, which I think is important but not crucial, not only will Ray’s fans be thinking ‘oh no’ the first time we have a RISP early, but if we throw a few runs across early and Josh is even remotely himself, it will hit them. How hard and how much is a TBD but it will. At that point they will be at a severe disadvantage because the Sox will be operating with a mindset that could not be farther from that. Now that’s a hypothetical, completely, because Shields could absolutely come out and dominate and make it moot. Nothing, and I feel comfortable in saying this as an absolute, nothing on the planet affects momentum more than the starting pitchers. That’s both pre game and in game, in the post season. Josh’s credentials, regardless of his last two, are already impacting the game. I guarantee you they invaded some minds last night. If he’s on early, and they score early, that momentum generated last night will go to another level.

The one overriding thing to remember here though, for each team, is this.

1) Tampa has spent 6 months being told by some ‘expert’ or another they were ‘going to fade’ or they would not hold up by people that just don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Time and again they ‘held up’ and time and again they earned the respect of people that know the game. They earned their place here, and that in and of itself makes them every bit as capable of going to the World Series as anyone.

2) Boston has history, and that’s not irrelevant, not even close. There is ZERO ‘can we do this?’ going around in the clubhouse or the front office, zero. No need to ask, it’s been done, and it’s been done by the very guys in this room. They will take the 1 pitch at a time approach and if Josh is fine they will win.

Put experience in one hand, poop in the other see which one fills up faster. The ‘lack’ of experience Tampa Bay has is 100% completely irrelevant in this context. It’s served them well far more than it has ever hurt them. Not to mention the guy steering the ship is someone who has been badly mislabeled and branded as ‘quirky’ or ‘outside the box’. This guy is a quality human being, every bit the solid person Tito is, and like Tito is a baseball lifer. Joe Maddons team will win or lose on the field. They won’t be unprepared, over matched or anything else. Don’t forget this guy managed his team in the AL East and won more games than anyone. Both teams will be ready, and at the end of tomorrows game it will come down to those same old cliches the media hates to hear but knows are true.

Regardless, like 04 and 07 there is a feeling, and players don’t really think like this but more so fans and others, that we are now playing on house money. Every team ever in the situation the 04 and yesterdays 08 team went home. Their season was over. So once again you’ve got a group of guys who done something that’s never been done before, trying to do something that’s never been done before, again. I like that, they like that, if you’re a Sox fan you gotta like that too.

I’m saying Sox 7-1, Papi goes deep again, Petey has 4 hits and Josh goes 7, punching out 9 and Sox nation exhales, even if just a little, for one night…..

Me to comment, respond, or articulate on the comments made by Dr Morgan. I have not spoken with Craig in two weeks since our last ‘check up’ but the comments he made were his own. He, unfortunately, like me has little to no filter when asked about things he feels comfortable with knowledge wise. My arm and pitching, and shoulders, are certainly topics he is smarter than anyone I’ve ever met on.

However, like so many times before, the timing is horrific. I apologize to anyone being asked to respond or comment, this is not the time. The team is and will be focused on beating Tampa, as it should be.

Regardless of how anyone feels about the ‘what ifs’ involved here, they are irrelevant. What’s done is done and even though I’d kill to be able to take the ball right now, I can’t. No one gains from looking back and wondering what if, most of all my teammates or the organization.

My arm feels fantastic, I’ve thrown quite a bit over the past month to know if I wanted to get ready for camp I most assuredly could. The bigger task will be to get my ankle ‘fixed’ or ‘right’ again for the first time in 5 years.That, along with the immense amount of work needed to strengthen my shoulder/arm and all that goes with that.

The comments made by Craig were done in context I have no clue about. I don’t know who/where or what he was speaking about or to, and don’t care.

If I make the decision to return it will happen when/where and how it needs to and no one will know about it until I’m actually ready to pitch. If I don’t then I’ll continue steering the 38 Studios ship as best I can, help Shonda raise our 4 kids and continuing enjoying the hell out of being a dad that is actually home more than a month or two a year.

A bunch of people have been asking me about both of the topics.

I don’t know John Lackey beyond a few conversations. He seems to be a real nice guy and he’s a damn good pitcher. I heard his comments last night and before commenting there is one real important piece of information many members of the media fail to acknowledge, downplay or just refuse to admit.

Sound bites taken after a game are dangerous. As the author of WAY MORE than I should have been, I can tell you that regardless (speaking about a pitcher of course) of the amount of time between me leaving the game and the interview I am still ‘processing’ the game and very much ‘in the moment’. Emotions for me are raw for days after a game, much less an hour or two. You ask me about something that I’m upset/fired up or/excited about and many times I will give an emotional and probably more times than I would like to admit, irrational, response.

I am not making excuses, I’ll stand by everything I’ve said, apologize for my screw ups and move on.

That being said I disagree with his comments. The better team ALWAYS wins in October. Like it or not the better team wins, always. I don’t care what your regular season record is, it means zero other than to determine where we are playing.

He was mad, their season was over, it happens and I completely understand his emotional response. Don’t put too much stock in it. Fact of the matter is the better team won and he got out pitched, twice. I don’t care about ‘bloopers’ or the ‘field effects’, both pitchers started even, Jon out pitched him. October has never been, and never will be about pitching good. October demands pitching great, pretty much every inning of every game. Good gets you early tee times. Great gets you a ring. He knows this because he was that guy in 2002.

Contrast his comments with Mike Scioscia, class whether he wins or loses and he’s always been that way, even when he played. I’m old enough to be speaking from experience since I competed against him. What he said was true, they played their asses off but the Sox played better. Understand you are hearing from a team and players who had 8 months of competing together, coming out on top 101 times, and feeling as if it was ‘their year’, all 6 teams feel that way in October. It’s an amazing low when it ends. One minute you are sitting there with a runner on third, 1 out, 90 feet from a lead and heading back to California, thinking momentum will swing your way, the 10 out 11 streak is over and you might even be thinking about the Rays. 15 minutes later you are standing there knowing you are flying across country to pack your locker and go home. It’s an incredibly empty and very surreal feeling.

Speaking of that 90 feet and runner on third. As I understand it a player must only retain control and possession of the ball during the tag of a runner. I would assume that means before, during and after. The grey area I would assume comes in determining the ‘after’ and when that timing actually occurs.

At some point the ‘tag play’ is over right? That’s where I think the umpire interpretation comes into play. I thought the call was correct simply because Jason made the tag and sometime after that his glove hit the ground and the ball popped out. Unlike football I don’t think the ground matters for a ‘fumble’ on a tag play. For a catch sure, but not a tag play. I am sure someone will cut and paste the rule a some point.

Should be a fantastic series in both leagues. Holding to my Sox/Phillies World Series though.

What a win, what a series. 4 games that could have gone either way on one play or one pitch, each night. Mike Scioscia is a class act. He has NEVER been anything but classy in victory and defeat.

They earned this one and I can’t wait until Friday. I like the fact that this team and it’s advanced scouts now have 4 full days to prep for the Rays. Seeing them 19 times and scouting them during the season is nothing like spending 4 full days putting game plans together. This pitching staff will be 100% prepped on how to approach each and every hitter. If they can execute we’ll be watching the Sox in their 3 World Series in 5 years.

One little thing. It has happened many times before but I wanted anyone wondering, and it may be nobody, about the ‘news’ released by the Sporting News today. Their issuance of comments made by me about ‘retiring’ are certainly nothing new to anyone around here but the timing sucks. Every ounce of energy and coverage deserves to be spent on the 25 guys that just completed their first round win. I was asked by the SN about a month or so ago to respond to a readers question about next year, and I did, literally that same day. That ‘news’ was in their hands for an extended period of time and I am not sure why it was ‘news’ today. It’s not.

There is nothing new on that front and what I’ve said has not changed. If I did decide to come back I’d pitch the 2nd half of next season only, and that would only be after an extensive and extended program to get back to the point that I could do it.

The Sox can, and I think will, win the World Series this year for a number of reasons:

UPDATE AFTER GAME 2! Two really important pieces, that I think can mean quite a bit, or nothing at all, to different people. They are coming home, where they are about as good as anyone on the planet, up 2-0, and the league MVP or runner up has not had a hit yet, and the best post season pitcher active/alive has yet to throw a pitch in the series. Those things alone don’t mean much but when you say those two things and then say “but they are up 2-0 anyway” you have to like your chances. Being on a few different teams that have come back from farther deficits than 2-0 I can tell you the great thing about the Sox clubhouse is the guys inside will not allow any mentality other than ’step on their necks’ while they are down.

1) I would assume that Jon Lester felt and knew he could do it in October prior to game 1, but having another stellar October line on his resume did nothing but solidify that to him, and now to the rest of the world. This kid is as legit as they come, wants to be the ace, and labeled that or not will pitch like it again in this series if called on, or in the next series if not.

2) The Sox outscout, and out prepare any team I’ve ever seen or been a part of. I can’t, and won’t go into detail but the tools provided to the coaching staff, and players, to prepare for an opponent are so far beyond anything I have ever had access to or seen during the REGULAR SEASON that it would blow you away to see what they do for us when there is a week to prepare. If you’re ‘baseball smart’ and not someone that makes the ‘too much information makes me screw up’ excuse, you go into a series as a pitcher or hitter with every possible weapon you can imagine, and then some. Going into the World Series in 2004 I had my own long and exhaustive scouting reports on that entire Cardinals lineup. Being allowed to sit in on the advance scouting meeting with the scouting staff and coaching staff presented me with additional information that I guarantee you helped me get more than 3 outs that night. Like 2001 I didn’t throw 1 pitch in the Angels series or Cardinals series I hadn’t thrown in my head 100 times. No situation arose in either game that I was not totally prepared for or hadn’t been made aware of through my reports, or information provided by the team.

2A) The kicker to all that is ‘Tek. Take that information and hand it to a guy who knows better than anyone I’ve ever thrown to, how to disseminate that and apply it to the man on the mound, starter or reliever, and you have a lethal weapon. Tek understands EVERY single hitters weakness, and every pitchers strength and more times than not understands how that pertains to ‘the moment’.

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The boys are playing some good baseball right now. They certainly haven’t conceded the division but their fate is in Tampa’s hands for a Division title. Getting in to October play with 7 or more days off is a huge plus in allowing everyday guys to get as many/few at bats as they need to get rested. To allow injured players to rest, in Mike’s case, or get back and see how they feel, in JD’s case.

But for me, by far, the biggest and most important piece is allowing your 3-4 starters to do what they need to do to get ready. You don’t concede any games, and they won’t, but at the same time you know you are one of only 4 teams that has games on the schedule past Sunday, and you get your starters and your bullpen lined up to be completely fresh and rested, but not too rested, when game 1 comes around. Josh will be as fresh as he needs to be, Paps, Oki and the bullpen will be completely rested as well. It can’t be overstated how important it is for the bullpen as well simply because you will ride your relievers as hard as you have to, to win in October. Hell look at the ‘04 post season MVP stats Foulke put up. He pitched, and dominated, pretty much every night.

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This post by Mark Jacobs of Mythic is a riot!.

Having wondered what the messages that were popping up in game were, though we figured it out soon after, had us laughing quite a bit the last day or so.

Gold farming/selling has become a polarizing subject and from what I understand a nightmare for companies to police.

An MMO is so different in most cases because the in game currency is either central to a characters life and progression, or in rare cases a mere afterthought added for flavor.

It’s led to great discussions here at 38 and it seems to me that having another few years to watch how the space plays out, and watch how other companies address the problem will only help us in implementing at launch methods and devices to rid the worlds of these bottom feeders.

I absolutely believe you have to engage the player base in helping to police this aspect of the world but at the same time employ mechanics and tech that allow much of the work to be done without human intervention.

As a player PLEASE give me the ability to one click report them, and let me see action ASAP. WoW nailed their ‘report spam’ but is there really anything other than gold selling that qualifies as SPAM? I am disappointed that my ignore list can only be so long in WoW since players generally make it very easy to ignore (anyone that even mentioned Don Santos hit my ignore list awhile back) but I want more in depth tools to get players/companies reported/banned as well as more tools to allow for interaction between friends regardless of servers too.