ESO and Homage

 I haven't seen much homage in The Elder Scrolls Online, but I'm not sure it isn't there (I won't get every reference), or if it's just that the game world is so huge. Also ESO doesn't have much room for homage in that, since it has five previous games that the writers need to either build from or build towards, there is a lot of lore and culture that is already set and needs to have a presence in the game. 

In the most recent expansion preview, one of the quest characters says, "I'm as fast as a leaf on the wind..." This is reminiscent of a line from the much-loved series, Firefly, where the character Wash occasionally says "I am a leaf on the wind" when piloting the ship through whatever danger has come about at the moment. I'm not sure if it is actually a Firefly reference, the two might just be inspired by the same thing, but, I think it's a good chance.

But I also ran into a skeleton hanging from the ceiling in an icy cave, along with a sword which was nearby stuck in the ground. This is a copy (of sorts) of a similar cave in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which itself is homage to Star Wars, where Luke is hung up in the cave ceiling (as a snack) and has to use the force to get his nearby light saber. (I didn't get the sword in the photo though.)

ESO and Huge Guilds

 I recently noticed something that I am sure has been obvious to many people who play The Elder Scrolls Online for some time--that, although in-game, guilds are limited to 500 accounts, by using Discord you can effectively have guilds that are much larger.

How does this work? So for instance, you might have the Netch Lords, with almost 500 people and officers. The officers decide to make Netch Lords II. The officers are the same in both in-game groups (well, technically, guilds, but they are the same guild). The guild hall is the same (this is a long story as it differs from WoW, with no housing, and EQ2, with both houses and slightly distinct guild halls--in ESO a player buys a large house and shares access with everyone in their guild, thus, a guild hall). The members, however, are different (although sure besides the officers there could be regular members who are in both, as you can belong in up to five guilds). This means that, for instance, the in-game guild chats are distinct. Yes, officers make announcements to all the guild groups. And guild events can and do include everyone from each of the guild groups. But, the important thing is, that members of both groups (or however many guild-groups there are, I'm in one guild that is the fourth grouping, so like Netch Lords IV, and there are three previous guild-groups, each with about 500 members), are all members of the same Discord server. So all Netch Lord guild members (I, II, III, etc.), have a shared communication channel via Discord. Communication and community are inexorably intertwined (and as you can see they share the same root in English, from Latin). 

I'm not really sure how to label such groups, although that isn't a big deal and they exist whether there are clear labels and distinctions. The world is beautifully complex, there are grey areas. What I mean is, if you just have the Netch Lords, you can say "this thing here is a guild." But if you also have Netch Lords II and III and there's a Discord, then the Netch Lords I is a guild but not in the way it would be without NLII and NLIII. You could say "there is a guild, called the Netch Lords, and it is comprised of three... things... guild groupings within ESO, and there is one Discord server for all of them, and that's in part why we consider these three in-game 'guilds' as one, larger guild." Possibly players have come up with good terminology for this kind of thing, perhaps in Reddit or in-game.

So, you end up with guilds that are quite a bit larger than 500 people, although they are not exactly the same as one singular guild in some ways. Some of my previous work looked at large guilds in ESO and only considered singular large guilds, I see I missed this aspect, although the findings for how guild leaders manage large guilds, from my experience so far in two large 500+ guilds, seem to hold.

(I made up the name Netch Lords, the Netch is a floating sky-jellyfish originally from the game Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and it is also in ESO. If there is a guild with such a name, my example here is not trying to be reflective of it.)

Recent Reads

Two books I recently finished and want to mention:

Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
Ken Kocienda (Picador)

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
Mary Norris (Norton)

They have some interesting parallels:

• Neither author is primarily a non-fiction writer, but one writes code and the other is a copyeditor, so the right words in the right places are their craft.
• Both books are indeed about craft. It’s more than a job.
• Both books start out in a way that initially threw me, but later serves as important context.
• Both end with the death of a person in the story, for Kocienda it is Steve Jobs, and for Norris it is a fellow copyeditor at The New Yorker, Lu Burke. 
• Both copyediting and coding, in these stories, are a combination of individual work and, quite importantly, team effort. 
• Both tasks are, on the surface, guided by rules, but yet there is a huge human and creative element in both of these jobs which make them more than a task (thus, craft). 
• I was sad to reach the end of both. 

My favorite chapter in Kocienda’s book was about figuring out the iPhone keyboard, which really was uncharted territory. My favorite chapter in Norris’ was about dashes. I won’t give any spoilers, each book is a journey worth taking. 

One section I will recreate here is Kocienda’s seven items which he uses to describe and summarize the Apple development process (pp. 247-248). I think they work really well for writing, or at least academic writing: it’s craft. Kocienda helpfully includes examples in each item, stories from the previous chapters, I will omit those. 

1. Inspiration, which means thinking big ideas and imagining about what might be possible.
2. Collaboration, which means working together well with other people seeking to combine your complementary strengths.
3. Craft, which means applying skill to achieve high-quality results and always striving to do better.
4. Diligence, which means doing the necessary grunt work and never resorting to shortcuts or half measures.
5. Decisiveness, which means making tough choices and refusing to delay or procrastinate.
6. Taste, which means developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole.
7. Empathy, which means trying to see the world from other people’s perspectives and creating work that fits into their lives and adapts to their needs. [For academic writing, I feel this is about the audience.]

ESO Traders

The Elder Scrolls Online, which is a great game (although very different from the Elder Scrolls single-player series), has an unusual global market system that varies considerably from those found in World of Warcraft and EverQuest II. In those older games, there is a large global market (by server, I mean), and all players can buy and sell on the market. But in ESO, in order to list goods that other players can find, players have to be in a guild, and that guild has to bid on a trader every week and win a trader ever week. In order to buy from that guild, you have to find the right trader in the world. Thus, some traders are seen as better than others, as they have a better location (easier to get to, usually). 

I wrote about the trade system in a paper a while ago, and IIRC the best data I could find (one of the wikis) indicated that there were around 160 traders in the world. But now, and more recently with game expansions (more parts of the world, with more traders), I was listening to a Twitch stream and the streamer said there were 239 traders. (I don't recall which streamer it was, it may have been Stardancer who is part of the ESO Stream Team). 

For some reason (trying to be accurate), I felt like that should be a blog post. 

Edit: Okay yes, in WoW there's the whole Horde/Alliance thing, and mostly you can only trade within your faction.