Dirty Roots

Some folks look at MMOs as if they were theatres sometimes, and they see the Evolution of Theatre, and they want to evolve the medium of MMOs from its roots in ceremonial combat, because there is this idea going around that theatres started out as ceremonial combat before moving into drama and comedy and soft-porn or whatever.

Thing is, theatres always evolve back into ceremonial combat after a relatively short trip through drama and comedy and soft-porn land.

Its not like EQ, where there's a Max Level and an End-game, its more circular, a blob of ceremonial combat and spectacles and circuses with spikes of comedy and drama and Skinamax coming out of it.

And why is that?

Because that's how humans work, they're born stupid, they get smarter and their tastes get more and more refined as they get older (although I think they never totally abandon the stuff they used to like), they have babies that are born stupid, and then they die.

And Tarantino is right, y'know, even though he probably didn't want to be, it all boils down to putting Asses In Seats, baby.

If you wanna do high brow type shit, then you gotta pay some serious attention, and catch on to the surges of enlightenment within the population booms like a surfer catches a good wave.

And it still takes a humongous amount of skill and attention to that particular wave to actually surf the wave well.

And then the ride is over pretty quick.

So mostly you just gotta float around wait for a good wave and produce spectacles and circuses whenever ya get bored and wanna do something creative.

And those little spikes of great art and stuff tend to do a little better when they're sorta like an optional path branching off a really great spectacle-circus anyways.

The whole ceremonial combat circus thing is actually far more important than it seems, its the foundation of everything else, it lends survivability to all the high falutin' shit you wanna do, so you prolly ought to appreciate it a little more, and not treat it so much like its an enemy that you could ever actually destroy, y'know?

Flowers don't do so good when they hate their own dirty roots.

That's all I'm saying.

Not that I'm an expert or anything on any of this shit.