Ok, so what is Eulora disrupting ?
Given the raging success of the previous "Ok, so what is Bitcoin disrupting ?", I guess it's time to make this a series.
I. Real Economy. Unlike every single other MMORPG out there, Eulora coins are hard coins - each worth one satoshii. So no, if you find a Sword of The Zodiac +12 the game didn't just make it up out of the ether - it's accounted for, somehow, somewhere.ii Every penny you win came out of someone else's unfortunate trials, every penny you lose will be picked up by someone else somewhere later. In fact, the S.MG report to come for this month will actually list player assets as a liability on the bottom line, right above shareholder equity. That's real virtual economy for you, in point of fact a lot more real than any virtually real economy out there, such as for instance the economy of the United States. This would be what I call disruption.
II. Real Open Source. To quote from #eulora,
thestringpuller diana_coman: hacking the game through the client?
diana_coman thestringpuller kind of, I guess, lol. For the moment more like trying to figure out the code with the hope to improve a bit the game experience afterwards as in: automate repetitive tasks.thestringpuller Reminds me of Eve.
diana_coman Wasn't Eve anti-bots?thestringpuller So is WoW but it didn't stop people from using them. Tis like dinosaur island without the geneticism. (dumb facebook puzzle thing)
diana_coman well of course, but as far as I understood Eulora is actually pro-botsmircea_popescu diana_coman Eulora is actually pro. and ima write an article detailing it.
To quote from the in-game help,
Eulora is free as in freedom. The source code for each release is available for anyone to download - and modify! In fact, we don't even release binaries, instead we retain independent contractors to compile (and sign) binaries on the basis of our source releases.
Whatever modifications you may wish to make to _your_ client should work just fine, just as long as you don't break the communication with the server. Make sure you keep backups somewhere, and always remember : modding is not merely tolerated in Eulora, but outright encouraged. If you make something cool show it to us, we'll most likely help you spread the word - and there might even be a job offer waiting for you. If you feel like taking a first step, the text you're now reading probably resides on your HDD in the /data/help.xml file. If you modify that file and restart your game, you should see here whatever you wish to see here. Give it a spin, it's fun!
This committment to freedom goes a lot further than merely not being batshit-insane when it comes to modding, unlike pretty much every other publisher out there. We don't censor words. You can, as far as the game is concerned, be as much of an asshole as you can possibly stand. You probably won't make too many friends that way - but then again Eulora does not require you to make friends. You can play and will be able to play and enjoy playing it forever without the undue pressure to "form groups", "parties" and so on. In any case, there are no GMs, no bans, none of that crap. Hopefully the game can stay that way.
It's not that MiniGame is not following the dismal road uniting Elite and Blizzard, it's not that MiniGame is not making it difficult for a "linux version" to even exist. There is no such thing as a "linux version", linux IS the version, stuff's written in C after all.
Time to put this entire "platform" bullshit to rest : if Eulora is not running for you the way you want it to run for you, the reason is strictly and can only ever be strictly that you didn't feel like making it do whatever you want to make it do. Play it in text mode if you feel like it, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't be able to!
And this is what I call disruptive. Yes, I'm aware it's very, very banal. But banality that's unthinkably uncommon is the very definition of disruption.
3. Real Representation. As has been pointed out to me, the Eulora player models do not currently wear anything under their skirts - so if you jiggle the camera enough you can get a screenfull of a roughly pixelated something that may well be a gluteal cleft adorned by an anus. The reason, I imagine, is that the modeller could not be bothered to put even more work into the things (they're pretty marginal atm), and so they were left in a rather natural state. There's nothing wrong with this. I do not care. If you do care there is something wrong with you. If you think children of any age seeing nude adults is a problem "for their mental well being", your own mental well being is in dire straits. You really imagine cavemen went around wrapped to the chin in hotel bedsheets like women in '70s US movies ?
As I've instructed Advertising to deal with publishers wanting to know if we're interested in adult or non adult placement,
mircea_popescu tell 'em we do not intend to futher the nonsensical distinction between "adult" and "non adult". The game isn't specifically either, and we don't care about which side.
To make it perfectly clear : if you think there is something called "adult" which by virtue of being "adult" is "unsuitable for children" you're broken in the head. There's no difference between this proposition and the proposition that we shouldn't discuss Christmas on the Internet, because you've lied to your children about it and think we owe you any cost and any inconvenience so that your lie might not be discovered. Get lost and fuck you, if you wish to lie to your children you will have to keep them in a hole you dug undeground with your own hands - I'm not coming to your house to dig a hole for you to keep your children in. I have better things to do with my time, and if you weren't terminally stupid so would you.
That, I would say, is disruptive.
So there you go. Enjoy disruption.iii
———- Currently, MiniGame is selling them for that much. Full convertibility (ie, where MiniGame is also buying them for that much) is intended once the game goes gold and its version number no longer starts with 0.
Nevertheless, because of the particular mechanism used to sell game coins, a certain level of implicit convertibility already exists. Specifically : MiniGame does not sell to random people, but only to selected merchants, which so far has been a list of two names : Mircea Mircescu (for my own use) and Grundin Goldskull (selected through a process where whoever wanted to buy the most coins got to be the official coin buyer). Should such a selected merchant run out of game coins to sell, he has the option to buy more from MiniGame, but not the obligation. He can also buy from players, if players offer them cheaper. And if players do offer them cheaper, he is at liberty to discount them in his own offerings to people buying from him. And so if the game currency inflates, you will be seeing game currency merchants offering it at 70% or 50% or 5% or whatever else the nominal price, wich will tell you all you need to know.
Practically speaking Eulora has a "black" market by design and deliberately, busy at work delivering the very valuable function of all "black" markets ever, which is to say keeping the true value of money known. And yes, this implies yet another thing Eulora is disrupting - the stolid, unthinking orthodoxy proposing that "black" markets are bad. Yes, they are - if you're both stupid and a thief. For people who aren't either stupid or thieves, actually functioning markets are required. Never trust a place without a black market, it's going to suck more than Soviet Russia ever did. [↩]
- This doesn't mean the players can't pay more for an item than its game-accounting value (ie, what the merchant pays). Of course they can - but they do so at their option, and in full knowledge of what's going on. Do you want Wooly Mushrooms enough to pay 175% on them, which is to say 1`365 for quality 100 ones or else 1`528 for quality 112 ones ? Go right ahead! Maybe you're right to do so and maybe you aren't, but you certainly know what you're doing.
How much is a Sword of The Zodiac +12 really worth ? In a system where money is actually meaningful, and meaningfully usable to do what money does, which is to say, quantify value and utility ? No Stones of Jordan here, just plain old satoshi. Much better a deal. [↩]
[↩]
