One of our guild members added an item to the guild hall a few weeks ago that has caused all kinds of fun. It’s a box with a big button on it, called an Overclocked Tinkered Control Button. When you mouse over the button, it says in all capitals WARNING! DO NOT PRESS BUTTON! So whatever it does, you can’t say you weren’t warned.
If you do push the button, what happens is – you die. Whatever your class, your level, raid buffed or in appearance gear only, you die. 10% durability loss, experience debt, the works. Very nice spell effects, but… dead.
So of course everyone has to try it, and of course we all secretly think “no, that can’t really be what it does.” But of course it is, and some of us laugh and curse the devs, and some of us just laugh, but we all appreciate the joke, and we all look forward to another guildie experimenting with the Big Red Button of Death.
(‘Course whenever a new victim comes along who wants to know what the button does, we don’t mention the “of death” part.)
Anyway, the point to this is a lot like my last post – when the company people are having fun with the game, it shows. EQ2 tends to be pretty fastidious. Sometimes the obsessive nature of quest and race equivalence can drain the fun out of the game, and a Big Red Button or a friendly GM can turn things around.
I liked the button so much I googled it to see if there were any blog comments. I didn’t find many, possibly because it’s a “Legends of Norrath” card game reward, and probably fairly rare. But what did turn up in my search was the blog of the developer responsible for the Death Button – Domino.
I’m thrilled to discover that Domino has a blog. As a tradeskiller, I’ve seen how involved she is with the community, and even had the opportunity to help her find a bug. (Elspaeth was my first tradeskill character, way back in 2004.) Her blog shows something of the thought process that goes into the game – and in this case, the thought process that goes into developing the Big Red Death Button Of Ultimate Death.
The reactions to the button that she reports are the same mix of bemusement, griping and hilarity that I’ve seen in guild chat. Even more interesting are the reactions of the team, who seem not quite to believe that they’re adding an instant death button to the game.
I’m looking forward to seeing what else she has to say about game development and gaming philosophy. (I left a comment to a different post that I need to expand into a post here. I hadn’t realized until I read that message just how many of my memorable experiences in online gaming are tired to unavoidable death.)