Dragonball: Evolution review, Eve online vs WoW

Now, I know you're thinking, 'well, you should've expected that!' but I was overwhelmingly surprised with how good the Speed Racer movie that came out last year was (if you haven't seen it, go do that) and had moderately moderate expectations for this one. I didn't expect it to be of the same caliber as Speed Racer, nor did I expect it to fully take itself seriously, but the movie was thoroughly underwhelming in a sad yet somehow funny way. I think one of the friends I saw it with described it best when he said it was like a bad fan fiction about Goku in high school that someone had made into a movie. The acting was worse than you'd expect in a George Lucas film (Grandpa! Nooooo!), the plot was overwhelmingly contrived (and had very little to do with Dragonball the TV series as I remember it). Worse, the cartoon world was represented very poorly on screen. Where Speed Racer had amazing color schemes, effects that matched the sets, and sequences lampooning the original animation, Dragonball Evolution was blandly costumed and decorated, had strange devices and ki blasts violently clashing with regular modern sets, and featured the worst attempt at interesting wire-fu I have ever seen in a movie. That said, it's quite funny -- I'm not sure if this is intentional at all. I kept rocking back and forth from nervous did-I-really-pay-eight-bucks-for-this tittering and full out guffaws until the movie ended, with occasional short breaks for bewildered puzzlement or snarky comments.

The movie sure as hell isn't worth seeing alone, but if you can convince friends to go, do it. Not like Fast and Furious is worth watching.


Eve Online keeps popping up in my wow-related conversations, and now on both AJ and WoM. One of the many unique bits of Eve is that the developers of the game have sponsored regular elections for player representatives that have regular online meetings with developers to voice the concerns of the playerbase. Jasi mentions in his blog that a similar system could work for WoW, but fails to realize that one is already in place. Although there is no formal system that players are privy to, the Community Managers that you see making those blue posts all the time are essentially full time CSM delegates. While they are not elected by the players, the CM's devote their professional time to the game. CSM delegates are volunteers that have (in at least one case that I can think of offhand) had to be replaced mid-term. Although CCP (the company that produces Eve) had contingencies in place for this, and CM's can potentially quit or get fired, it still stands to reason that professionals are going to be more reliable than all but the most zealous volunteers.

I mentioned previously that CM's are not elected by the players, and I think that's fine. If I wanted to be playing a game where I called all the shots, I wouldn't be playing WoW. All role playing games are about you living inside of someone else's fantasy -- that's what makes it interesting. I already know all about the dragons up in the caves in the northern regions, and what their weak spots are, and who killed the lord of that border province in my game world. I don't know what's coming next in a different person's imaginings.

If the CM's were elected by players, I think it would get too close to me playing my own game. Being employed rather than having to constantly fight for their spot means that they can push for what they think is right, even if it's unpopular. I think this is the better system, as long as the CM's are reasonably intelligent and at least help raise interesting issues with the developers. I'm a firm believer that very rarely is something OP, but more often more adaptation needs to happen from the other side.

Additionally, I don't feel like the Eve community voting and the WoW community voting are clear parallels. The Eve community is more unified and plays on one server, and corporations (roughly parallel to guilds) often band together in alliances, the larger of which have thousands of players in them. It's easier for a well known player who (for example, totally not talking about Jade here) might be part of a small gang pvp rp alliance to campaign behind those and other issues and push issues related to them. The player would have a reasonable chance of having interacted personally in game with a large number of the voters (and even more through GIANT WALL OF TEXT FORUM POSTS OMG) and would likely be known by reputation to others. In WoW? Sure, you know Neilyo's good at PvP, but I don't even know if the guy can dps a heroic to save his life, let alone make insightful decisions about critical game issues while catering to my playstyle. The eve guy (who isn't Jade Constantine)? I feel like I know him.

Finally (and I'm just going to drop this in a one sentence no support statement here) I think the Eve community is more mature and more capable of handling things like this than the WoW community. Look at trade chat. We don't want these people voting.

In short, WoW players already enjoy nearly all of the benefits of the CSM system, and the other factors don't port over very cleanly.