Old Mogo

"The plants said, 'We will fight the stone with root and stem and seed. We are patient. We will win.'"
- Skyshroud Myth of the Forest, Burgeoning

Years ago, I used by play a glorified version of Progress Quest called Domain of Heroes. At the time, it was in its early beta stages and discovering game-breaking imbalances became a regular occurrence.

Anyway, I've often said that I seem to have a knack for finding such things - and somehow I ended up with a nigh-undying character affectionately named Mogo (of the Green Lanterns). Being built with raids in mind, it obviously got a reaction from many of the game's old rich, since Mogo was annoyingly disruptive in terms of farming purposes - to the point of having hundreds of players attacking him to no avail. It was mostly a waiting game - and I often left my machine turned on while I did other things. The thing with this setup is that it was a battle of attrition, and invasions could go on for hours on end - long after I've left the keyboard to do more meaningful things.

In the end, the developers caught wind of this and, despite it not being an exploit (and more of an oversight of the game mechanics), toned things down. Mogo was still as annoying as ever, but things became more manageable, that is, as long as I didn't get my hands on better equipment - something that I no longer wished to pursue at that point.

Sometimes, I wonder why people often throw themselves at seemingly insurmountable things, especially when they know that these gambles eventually become everything-or-nothing over time. Sometimes life does seem to be a messed up version of the gambler's paradox, especially for those who have been jaded by chronic cynicism and other pretentious-sounding whatnot.

I am then reminded that more often than not, especially where things really count, success is often cumulative while failure isn't. Maybe if these things were quantifiable in numbers, I'd like to think that one could never go below zero (unless he or she offs themselves, which is pretty retarded) - it's just that people have different perspectives of how high the scale goes and how far each step is from one another.

I guess we as people get as much feeling of accomplishment from a long series of small wins as from occasional big ones.

In the end, Douglas Adams may have been spot on with the two words he wrote on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Don't Panic. Things will always seem complicated - and everyone else as as scared shitless as we are - but I guess it's alright as long as we try to move ahead.