/Pizza

Okay, let's it get it over with. Yeah, I know the /pizza thing is more played out than harvesting in Antonica for hours to get some lazy dwarf's rancid boots. I mean, once something is on Leno it's out of the province of your average everyday blogger.

Still, I couldn't help but comment. For those of you who haven't heard of this amazing innovation, typing /pizza into your chat window will open a window to Pizza Hut where you can order a pie.

On the serious side it raises the possibility of more intrusive ingame ads. Can you imagine "This quest was brought to you by Pepsi!" Or how about "26 paly looking for xp group in the BankAmerica dungeon?" FedEx billboards on the Griffon towers perhaps?

Also, if you were able to pay for your cheesy deliciousness in gold (which you can't) would that make Pizza Hut a player on the secondary market a la IGE?

It also plays into every MMORPG gamer stereotype - an overweight person who is too into a game to get out of their chair to order the damn pizza by phone.

On the humorous side, I found SOE's presentation hilarious. I mean the graphic of Lucan makes it look like he is going to disembowel you after you get your pie. I think Antonia Bayle would have been a stronger sell.

Of course, the jokes write themselves. Some examples of /pizza substitutes I've seen on the forums (none of them mine) are: /mountaindew; /life; /woman (forgetting of course as usual how many women play EQII); /toilet. Well, a cartoon at ctl+alt+del does a better job than I (check out /lazy under the archives).

Although this story is a tad old there are fresh developments. On the forums today we get a reminder from dev Blackguard that "the "/harry potter" and "/star wars" commands, those are entirely hypothetical and are not to be taken literally." My god, are you kidding me? Were there really that many middle-aged guys frantically typing /emmawatson over and over in their chat windows?

So, what do I think of the whole thing? Well, I've been typing /pizza into every computer keyboard since my Atari ST. Heck, I even tried it on a typewriter once. But this is the first time it did something.