My new distraction from productivity...

...is Wizard 101.

It's quite possibly the cutest game ever that still has enjoyable gameplay. (Except for maybe Fur Fighters on the Dreamcast. That was Halo with fuzzy animals.)

And, like all my favorite games, it's free.

However, the chat system is super annoying. For one thing, many of the players are under 13 and can only use canned chat. Everyone older than that may use general chat, but the filters are severe and edit out anything not recognized by the system's dictionary, including many common emotes and abbreviations.

In some ways, this is a good thing. It eliminates profanity and encourages proper spelling (HOORAY!) in one fell swoop. Since the game promotes itself as family-friendly, the heavy filters and restrictions make perfect sense. And players 18 and up can choose to enable Open Chat, which is strictly monitored but not filtered. However, you can't enable Open Chat unless you pay to subscribe to the game. And damned if I'm going to spend money just to be able to say damn.

You can't really evaluate Wizard 101 on the same terms as Dungeons and Dragons Online, which is always full of lively dispute about stats, rolls, classes and saves. And you can't even compare it to the awkward sexual tension that often characterizes common chat in Perfect World.

Let's just say I don't play Wizard 101 for the scintillating conversation or social interaction. I play it because it's fun, cute, and totally addictive.

I enter the forum fray. Also, I have another assignment.

I feel a little more legit as a gamer now that I've started posting in forums on The Escapist.

The number of replies to my first thread was really exciting! So far it has more than 1600 views and more than 100 replies. (And I promise no more than a dozen or so views were me sitting and hitting refresh every ten seconds.) That's really nothing to write home about, in comparison to some of the other threads, but it's still cool.

What wondrous, insightful topic did I unfurl before the masses? "Who are the strongest and weakest female video game characters of all time?"

By strength, I don't only mean ass-kicking abilities; I also mean depth of character and relevance to the storyline. By weakness, I mean shallowness, passivity, and existing for little more than eye-candy.

I asked for the opinions of fellow gamers because I'm writing a proposal for a book about female video game characters. (As of right now, I'm not going to actually write the book, just the assigned proposal. But I'm having to do so much research I might as well go ahead and write the thing.)

And now, I invite you, dear readers, to answer the same question. Strongest and weakest? Best and worst? Awesomest and most useless?

Jade Dynasty... the game that plays itself.

Jade Dynasty is great. I've never had more fun not playing a game.

It's good-looking. The environments are pretty and full of blossoming cherry trees and such. The music, however, is less than stunning. It's pleasant, but it's bland, plinky, tuneless stuff. Also, the developers ripped one track straight from PWI and stuck it in Jade Dynasty, hoping no one would notice. Some of the ground textures looked a bit familiar, too.

One of the most interesting things about Jade Dynasty is this: everyone is sexy. Character creation was disappointing in that I had 7 faces to choose from and 7 hair styles to choose from. No control over coloring or build. So, of course, I kept running into clones of my character, which was annoying. On the flip side, it's impossible to create an ugly character. All the same, more options would be nice. I wanted to make another Mary Sue.

Jade Dynasty seems to have a more structured plot than PW. The problem is that it doesn't make any sense. You travel from area to area finding out more about the life of some great hero who turned into a great villain and now nobody knows what to do with him. Why should you care? Frankly I don't see what this noble Shaw Danon of Jadeon, who defected and became the villainous Velonus of Vim, has to do with me.

This brings me to the subject of factions. The terminology is confusing, because in PW a faction is what Jade Dynasty calls a clan, but in Jade Dynasty a faction is what PW calls a class. Your faction determines your weapons, armor, and skills. You have five choices, and here's the rundown on each:

• Jadeon, pompous pricks in bathrobes with swords.
• Skysong, happy healer monks.
• Vim, who use two swords stuck together.
• Lupin, crazy dancers who use circular glaives.
• Modo, gothic ninjas with claws.

I find it highly entertaining that the first two of these factions are arbitrarily labeled "Good" and the other three "Evil," especially since at the earlier levels the difference between this so-called "Good" and "Evil" is pretty hard to see.

How does Jade Dynasty handle? Pretty well, over all... perhaps too well. There are many convenient features, my favorite of which is Auto-route. This allows you to click on a destination from your quest menu and your character finds the shortest way there.

Once you're near your quarry, you can press another button to "Invigorate"--automatically attack everything in range. All you have to do is check every once in a while to make sure nothing has killed you.

If you do get close to dying, you can Meditate to regain health and magic power... also experience points. Continuously. For doing nothing. I once left my character meditating overnight, and when I woke up in the morning he'd gained five levels.

The first fifteen or so levels are ridiculously easy, too. Enemies are stupid and sluggish, and you start out with a skill that kills them in one hit, anyway. It's possible to get to level 15 in one evening and still have time for Facebook.

I have a theory. Jade Dynasty is a relatively new game; it's only been out for four months. I think the developers are trying to get a lot of really high-level players quickly. There's a chance that in future updates and patches the difficulty curve might steepen as the ranks of Jade Dynasty players swell--right now, there aren't a lot of players, and they're spread out over too many different servers.

I still recommend Jade Dynasty. I mean, why not? It is free, after all, so there's nothing to lose except some hard drive space. It's pretty and relaxing. It's also a great game for multi-taskers, since you can play it without actually playing it. If you don't find that self-defeating, you'll love Jade Dynasty. If, however, you're an experienced gamer looking for a challenge, or an internet socialite looking for a new community, Jade Dynasty might not be a good choice for you yet. Check back in a few months or a year when it's not fresh on the market anymore.

Believe it or not, this review is the condensed version. If you want the 3 1/2 page monstrosity I wrote for class, let me know and I'll get it to you.

WoW fails to wow me.

I haven't gotten back into my Perfect World routine after this summer's hiatus, so I figured this would be a good time to branch out and give some other games a shot. I think being familiar with other MMORPGs would give me better perspective when I'm writing about games.

So far, I've tried three other games. I haven't played any of them long enough to write a book about them, but I'll give you my impressions of each: World of Warcraft in this post, and Guild Wars and Jade Dynasty in future posts.

How could I honestly call myself a gamer if I've never played WoW? It's probably the best-known online RPG, associated with the stereotypical nerdy, anti-social, micro-managing, unhygienic, acne-prone men living in their mother's basement. (This is unfair and untrue.)

Downloading and installing the 10-day trial was pretty quick and easy. Dialog boxes were helpful and friendly but never condescending. I was feeling pretty good about it when I actually fired up the game.

I only played the game for about 15 minutes. I spent 10 minutes of that in character creation trying to make a night elf pretty.

Other people have done it. I've seen the screenshots. But I'm not sure how they managed it with the rather limited options. There's was no way to make her not purple, not have creepy blank eyes, and not built like a rap star's girlfriend. Honestly, I never really thought of elves as being chunky, but even her ears were fat. I checked to make sure the window's resolution was correct for my wide-screen computer--yeah, I had it set correctly. The models are just on the thick side.

Obviously there's a different aesthetic in WoW than what I'm used to, but that's O.K. Lots of people still like it.

I gave up and entered the game. The first thing I noticed was PURPLE. Well, I guess it makes sense that purple elves should live in a purple forest. I looked up some screenshots of other areas, and not everything is purple--there's a lot of variety in the terrain and environments. I rather like that. Very majestic. I just wish I didn't have to start off swimming in purple.

The interface was honestly a bit overwhelming. There were zillions of toolbars right away--most of them were empty, waiting to be filled up with skills, but they still intimidated me. I found the chat system cumbersome, probably just because I was used to different controls.

Speaking of chat, half of my chat window was filled with gibberish. Excuse me, orcish.

Then there's the combat. Instead of double-clicking on things to attack, use, or talk to, you left-click to select and then right-click to activate. This strikes me as counter-intuitive, but again, I'm just used to something different.

I think I killed one wild boar, or whatever it was, before I decided that WoW wasn't for me. I wasn't a fan of the way it looked or handled.

In retrospect, I think I just didn't give it enough time. Unfortunately my 10-day free trial is up. But it's not too late for you. Don't write off something that so many people love just because I fussed about the chunky night elves. You might join the legions of diehard WoW addicts, even if I don't.

Link to study on gender identity and avatars

When my friend Tamar learned about this blog, he showed me an article from Investigaming on gender identity and gaming avatar preferences.

This study says that there is surprisingly little difference between male preferences for avatar choice and female preferences. Both genders seem to prefer exaggerated, over-sexualized body types; however, both genders also prefer less-revealing costumes. Both genders shun negative female stereotypes and are attracted to positive stereotypes--I'm pretty much quoting the article, here; what's an example of a positive stereotype?

I do wish I could get Meirizhu some more modest clothes. Light armor in PWI apparently consists of bra, miniskirt, and heeled boots.

Anyway, go ahead and check out the article here. I, for one, am skeptical of its validity, since the authors don't mention their research methods. But judge for yourself. It's an interesting read, at least.

Introduction

Hello, everyone, and thank you for visiting my blog! Here I'll be chronicling my adventures in Perfect World, an MMORPG. I'll be focusing in particular on what it's like to be a female player and how my female characters are treated. What a fun project! It combines so many of my interests: writing, gaming, and quasi-feminist ranting!

Perfect World International is structured a lot like World of Warcraft (WoW), but it's prettier, more Asian, and FREE.

If you're interested in online games—or even if you aren't—go ahead and check out www.perfectworld.com. You might find Perfect World as enjoyable as I do! And if you play on the server Sanctuary, you can meet my characters. I'll introduce them in the next post.