They might as well just scrap every other type of mission there is, as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t know why it is; I don’t pretend to be a psychologist.
Death says, “Yes you do! You do all the time! Just yesterday you were telling Anson his nightmare represented his latent homosexual love for you!”
You say, “Well, yeah, but EVERYBODY knows about THAT…”
Uh, okay, so usually I don’t pretend to be a psychologist. However, I have learned a tiny bit in my experience of MOGs, and the one thing that holds true is this: if you put someone – let’s say, me, for example – into a ‘dungeon’ or ‘mission’ or whatever clever word you want to call it, there is only going to be one of two results at the end of that mission.
- I die repeatedly in a rather gruesome manner and give up entirely on that mission
OR - I kill every single living thing in that dungeon. And some un-living things. And a piece of furniture or two.
This has really come to focus lately in all of the missions I’ve been accepting in Anarchy Online. Being a corporate (Omni-Tek) wage slave that I am (and quite content one, at that), I have no trouble being their lackey for any number of assignments. The problem is their fault, really. If there’s anything I learned from the Dale Carnegie course my company sent me to (which I spent the entire three days at enjoying the pool and bar – yes, the bar was IN the pool – how crazy is that? How on earth did they expect anyone to come out of the pool for some stupid course when there was a bar right there?), it’s that it is a manager’s responsibility to properly utilize their employees’ talents. Therefore, while my managers could have sent me to bartending school, instead they sent me to Dale Carnegie. As a result, I came away with alcohol poisoning and 2nd-degree sun burns.
Likewise, when the Big Giant Heads at Omni-Tek populate their Mission Boards with various missions, I have to ask them what the hell they’re thinking when they send me to find somebody. You guys know me. It’s not like I lied on my application at Omni-Tek or anything. In fact, I made it a pretty clear that I’m impatient and violent when I attacked the interviewer for suggesting I might be a tad overweight for fieldwork. But that seemed to work in my favor – they said they liked my ‘gumption,’ whatever that is.
But it’s pretty clear that I am not the person you want to send in on a hostage negotiation situation. Likewise, if you need someone found, don’t send me out expecting me to tra-la-la through the mission and merely sneak up to someone and give them a hug. No, my job on a mission is to pretty much try and melt the face off of every single thing I encounter.
Also, I like picking locks and disarming bombs. Don’t ask me why, but that’s a lot of fun. Maybe it harkens back to the time I figured out how to pick the lock leading to the janitor’s closet in high school. The janitor’s closet that just happened to have that loose air vent cover…that led right to the girl’s showers… Ah, to be young again…
Er…anyway, where was I? Oh, right – missions. It would not be this bad if you didn’t keep offering the good rewards on these ‘finder’ missions, too, you realize. If you give me a list of four missions, the first three of which are assassination missions that will reward me in a BLUE HOOD, and then one finder mission that rewards me with a NEW GUN, take a wild guess what I’m going to do?
That’s right, I’m going to take the finder mission and kill everyone anyway.
And the best part is that not only will I finish the mission successfully, but I’ll be given experience, too! It’s like some bizarre, deviant Pavlovian conditioning! Only a lot more fun – let’s face it, measuring drool is nowhere NEAR as fun as shooting people!
Look, I’m not trying to make myself out into some Manson or Ted Bundy or even George W. Bush. All I’m saying, right, is that I get further if, after I’ve gone to the effort of finding your friend, I slaughter them and everyone with them.
And hey, don’t bitch at me – if you hated me doing it so much, you’d stop giving me these assignments, wouldn’t ya? Exactly.
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