Kabalyero

A MMORPG Sweat Shop just opened in our area. The name sweat shop
really boggles my mind because I don’t think you’ll ever break a sweat
working in one of them. Why? They are fully airconditioned! Ha ha ha!

Anyway,
I first got the news about it from my nephews and there were some
posters posted around the area. They tried to apply but they were told
that they were only accepting girls but that later changed. Gender was
no longer a problem but you must be at a certain age to apply.

Here are some information which I was able to gather:

• It seems that the business is located inside a house and are operated by Koreans
• They are hiring onlinegamers at the age of 17 to 24 years old
• Work is by shift and it’s 12 hours per shift
• Workers are paid 100 pesos a day (more or less $2 per day)
• The place is fully airconditioned with top of the line gaming rigs

My thoughts: 17 is still a minor here in the Philippines and minors
need a special working permit from the Department of Social Welfare. If
they don’t have such a permit from DSWD and they have minors working
for them then they’re operation is illegal. 100 pesos per day is way,
way, way, way beyond minimum salary and a 12 hour work shift without
overtime pay is also illegal.

At first glance, you’ll immediately know that the business is
operating illegally. I guess they paid off some local government
official to be able to put up a shop.

The problem here in the Philippines is that laws are very weakly and
are very poorly implemented specially in many provinces. Corruption is
very high even in the highest goverment offices. So, it’s not suprising
to see foreign businessmen to open up businesses that doesn’t comply
with existing laws. SAD but TRUE!

Visit MMORPGREALM.com

Contrary to popular belief, MMORPGs are not made for players to have
fun. They are made so that who ever has the rights to the MMORPG can
make as much money as possible. There is no profit to be made from an
MMORPG that goes out of its way to make a game more fun to play. On the
contrary, features that make a game more fun like story-driven quests
and even minimally realistic AI are deterrents to profit. The reason
for this is that the way MMORPGs attempt to maximize profits is by
cramming as many players as possible into the same server resources. By
doing this they are able to maximize income (since each player
typically pays monthly dues) and minimize costs (since buying and
hosting servers cost money). Thus MMORPGs developers actually go out of
their way to cut corners and sacrifice gameplay and security features
for the sake of the almighty dollar. This results in games that provide
only a mere shadow of what single player role-playing games offer.

This
is why MMORPGs are plagued with what basically boils down to be the
same type of boring, monotonous gameplay, in which all there is to do
is wander around vast expanses of wilderness looking for infinitely
respawning monsters to kill that in reality pose no real threat to
anyone. The only other thing to do in MMORPGs is to go on quests that
simply slap on some ludicrous objective which thinly veils the fact
that you are still going to be doing exactly the same thing. That is,
run around killing infinitely respawning monsters. A classic example of
this is being asked to kill the respawning boss monster and having to
wait for twenty other people squatting in line who also want to kill
and loot it. Another common slap on quest is having to spend hours
looking for some common respawning creature in order to gather large
quantities of the creature’s body parts which can then be traded in for
an item that makes your character more powerful. The only motivating
force that exists in these MMORPGs is the desire for players to gain
better equipment and advance in levels to make their characters more
powerful. This way, they can show off how much bigger their sword is
compared to the next person’s. In fact, developers have learned to
cleverly encourage this type of mentality by providing Arenas and
Contests who’s sole purpose is to provide a venue where players can
actually prove that their swords are indeed bigger than somebody else’s.

To fool their players in to thinking that the game is more fun than
it actually is, MMORPGs use three simple simple tactics. The first of
these is to sugar-coat the game with eye-candy and flashy graphics.
While the graphics may impress new players, in reality, it does little
to actually improve the amount of fun you have in the game once you
actually get down to playing. The second cheap trick that MMORPGs
practice is allowing hundreds of levels of advancement which keeps you
perpetually hunting respawning monsters to gain that little bit of
extra power. Finally, MMORPGs love to flaunt the fact that they can
cram thousands of players in to the same server. While this may seem
like an attractive feature at first, all this does is make players
ignore each other in the same way that you would end up ignoring
everyone else in a crowded city street. In fact, about the only
advantage that having so many players on the same server offers is that
you will have more people to compare the size of your sword with.

from PLDTplay’s Neverwinter Nights website…