Recently in MMORPG Category

I'm addicted to "Runes of Magic".

This might not want to be something my husband wants to hear since he's the one who brought me into it and I warned him long ago about the dangers of me and MMOs.

That's not an "I told you so."  It's an "I'm sorry I was right."  I wish I wasn't.

Either way, while I still have a life outside of the MMO, there's something that's changed for me.

One of the big things that prevented me from playing MMOs was the whole idea I had to have complete strangers join with me to complete a quest. 

Ya'll, this may come as a surprise to you, but most of the general public in the anonymous world of the internet and MMOs consists of blatant assholes.  Seriously.  The only reason Super Husband managed to even get me on this game is because we played together.  The beauty of playing with my local peeps is amazing.  The annoying fourteen-year-olds can drown in fire for all I care.

But, tonight, I have to say some of my attitude has changed.  Granted, I've met several peeps on the game who are quite nice, but we're still just acquaintances. 

Tonight, I spent three hours, three hours, with complete strangers, killing the hell out of a particular brand of monster to spawn an elite of their kind in order to finish a quest.  This was started by a rather high level peep who wanted to help several of us.

Let me tell you, I leveled up in appreciation far faster than in the quest we were dying to finish.

That particular person had been trying for hours already, and it took several more hours of trying before we reached our goal.  We had gone from congenial silliness to cannibalism out of boredom.  (Peeps started challenging each other just to create enough drama to make the monotony interesting.)  We started shouting insults on chat at the elite monster we were begging to spawn. We insulted and threatened the GMs.  We stripped naked and offered ourselves as bait.  There were offers to drag corpses through the woods. 

We offered to bake brownies!

Towards the end, it was pure unadulterated stubbornness: none of us were leaving until the Bastard spawned and at least killed someone for our efforts. 

There was a server maintenance planned for the night.  There was much speculation that the fucker would spawn just before the GMs took the game down.

We were a determined group.

It's amazing how that brings folks together. 

We're not talking some sort of real world situation that actually means anything.  Any other time, we couldn't give a shit.  The fact is we spent several hours not killing a bunch of MOBs but laughing at a self-induced state of boredom.  We put ourselves there and continued to suffer it and by the gods, we knew it and couldn't do anything but laugh.  That is what made the difference.

Towards the end, Super Husband was trying to convince me it was doable another day.  I knew it was, but what I couldn't seem to communicate was that it wasn't doable With This Group Of People.  He seemed to sort of understand, but he didn't really.  We had killed through it together, laughing, making fun of each other, saying stupid shit, continuously agreeing we were all insane, so, by the gods, we were going to finish it together!  At that point, we had simply gone too far together to split up.  He would've understood had he been playing.  He didn't because he was concerned about me.  I can appreciate that.

I can also hope he appreciatea there are times when shit needs to be finished.

About the time Super Husband was really getting demanding, the Bastard spawned.

Holy hell.

There were choirs singing on high, and several worshiped Its presence.  (Emotes can be incredibly funny.) 

Hours of our lives gone, and finally, finally we were about to reach our goal!

And, we didn't know what to do.  We stood there looking at it but no one had a plan.  We were so focused on the journey we didn't think about what we were going to do as soon as we were faced down with our goal.

Desperation to prevent our losing out to the plug being pulled on the servers made damn sure I was going to kick start this battle. 

My suggestion?  Have the highest level pull, the rest of us help kill, the priests keep us alive.  Yes, it's standard stuff, but apparently, everyone needed reminding. 

I have to tell you, there was a certain satisfaction that the Bastard didn't go down in one or two hits from our high level peep.

All I know is once it was done, there was immense satisfaction.  Someone actually mentioned that at this point we all felt like old friends.

Strangely, that's true.  We had shared several personal moments in our boredom.  Suddenly, we weren't just pixels on a screen waiting to kill an elite creature; we were a bunch of real time gamers who were slogging through a moment in the game that wasn't all that much fun but yet found ourselves truly enjoying ourselves through the connections we made.

And, that means something.

If you're reading this, you know what this means.  The internet and gaming has offered us connections that aren't the same as real life.  Some argue this is bad, but really, is it?  Suddenly, I know a woman in Florida who has three cats who is quite happily gaming in her off time.  I know a couple who game together (she being the corrupter in this case) when they aren't taking care of their relatively new relationship, one is diabetic.  These are connections.  Yes, they are virtual but connections all the same. 

I now understand why some people who have a hard time connecting with others in real life find so much fulfillment in the virtual world.  I've always understood a little.  I've made many friends online.  Hell, I met my husband online.  The difference is that some of those people don't ever wish to leave the online world.  I, however, at some point I actually like meeting my internet friends in the real world.  Virtual connections are awesome, but it can't replace that moment of seeing that person's smiling face and giving them a hug.

But, now, I can see how for some people it can be pretty damn close.




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I think it was also good to find others who play as couples.  MMOs are joked about being the stomping ground for eternal virgins, so I was very happy to know that Super Husband and I weren't the only geeks bonding through an MMO.  Makes us seem less pathetic at any rate.

You know, there are a lot of people who make fun of gaming addictions, and hell, I'm one of them.  Of course, that's like the pot calling the kettle black all things considered, but you know, I still get out of the house.  I still cook actual food.  I have married an actual live human man.  I dress in funny clothes on weekends and pretend to be in the Middle Ages while said husband dresses in armor and beats people with sticks.  As much as I game and would probably chew the foot off of whomever told me I could never game again, I still feel rather proud of Super Husband and me for managing to balance gaming and life, even if at times, gaming wins over things like art projects.

Thing is, though, we know someone who is as bad as all the anti-gaming groups want you to believe.  He's a great guy, but he does nothing else but World of Warcraft.  That's it.  Oh, I shouldn't say nothing else because he has finished school.  He's got credentials out the ass for computer programming, but it's a little hard for him to find a job since he has no car since he spent every extra cent from student loans on his gaming rig.  It also doesn't help he has no teeth from all the junk food and Coke he lives on.  He hides it well under that unkempt beard, but you know, most potential employers are put off when you reek because you haven't bathed in days. 

Now, granted, he is a worst-case scenario for the single gaming addict.  And, you know, I truly hate when people hold those like him up as examples of why "gaming is evil".  Look, some people for some reason - maybe it's their predisposition for being anti-social or have an addictive personality, I don't know - get sucked into that fantasy world.  It's easier to meet people that way and easier to talk.  Real life is damn hard and damn scary, so yeah, I can see why some people might hide away.  (Gods know there are times I've wanted to do that.)  Is it healthy?  Nope.  Is it advisable?  Nope.  But, is it what all gamers are like?  Fuck no, and screw those who say otherwise.  Those are the very people who have never gamed in their lives.  Just like assholes who want to ban movies or books they've never seen or read.  Knee-jerk conservatism.

However, I will say, if he was just by himself, I might care even less.  I still don't think it's healthy, and as a friend of my husband's, I do wish he'd try to better his situation, but if he were alone, there's not much I can do.  He's a big boy.  He makes his own decisions, and he's got to figure this shit out for himself.  We can point it out, but until he sees it himself, it's all just words.  Problem is, he's not alone.  He lives with his parents, and they don't like it very much.  And, that's where it becomes a problem.  If you're only hurting yourself, then, well, that's your choice, even if we think it sucks.  If you're hurting yourself and others, well, it's kind of selfish and cruel, but unfortunately, it's not something a gaming addict sees.  They see their gaming as their only outlet and get very offended if you suggest it's a bad thing.  They're not hurting anyone, right?

Yesterday, a lady who'd been helping us at the spa was telling me about her husband.  She says to me, "He's playing World of Warcraft which is this huge online game..." 

I grinned at her unconsciously.  She got slightly offended, but then I explained that, sweetie, you have no idea how aware I am of such things.

Anyway, apparently, she is a WOW widow, to the point it almost caused a divorce.  Yes, it's like Oprah, but not as insipid.

Thing is, she doesn't mind that he plays, but she does mind that they have to schedule their family life around his raiding schedule.  I can see that.  She's not a gamer.  She's not even really a geek.  She likes the occasional console stuff that the kids share, but nothing beyond Guitar Hero or something.  Normally, I am wary of a non-gamer marrying a gamer because typically, it doesn't bloody work, but it sometimes does if the spouse is at least accepting of the hobby, which she is.  She never once said to me that she wanted him to completely stop.  She just wanted him to find some self-control.

I can see this.  When I met Super Husband, he was huge into EverCrack.  Being a gamer, I was just fucking thrilled he gamed.  Being a girlfriend, I was thrilled he knew when to put it down.  Wednesdays were his raid nights, so I never even tried to schedule anything on those days.  Sometimes there were other raids, but it was understood that Friday was our time, whatever that might be.  It worked, and he still gamed.  But, apparently, this poor woman doesn't have that kind of compromise, and when I told her how we worked it out, she was flabbergasted and jealous.  I found that very sad. 

Granted, yes, I missed classes for an entire week once to play Final Fantasy VII, but you know, I did eventually venture out into the shocking rays of the evil daystar.  Maybe I just don't "get it," but I, personally, don't see why a gamer, even a hardcore gamer, can't make time for other social activities.

And, maybe that's the answer.  Maybe those who get addicted like that aren't always hardcore gamers.  Gamers who have been gamers all their lives seem to be the ones who manage to strike a balance of some sort.  Yes, I know that some of those addicts are lifelong gamers, but it seems like I keep running into those who weren't always gamers but got sucked into the MMO world and never really found their way out.  It's like their psyche has suddenly discovered a new playground, an imagination it never knew it had, and refuses to come out again.  I got the impression that her husband has only ever played MMOs, so it makes me wonder. 

As I said in the previous post, for a long time, I avoided MMOs simply because I know I have the ability to disappear into a game for days at a time.  And, maybe, if I had started them in college that's what would've happened, but being an adult, even an immature one, still requires certain damn boring obligations, like maintaining a job so you have a roof under which to game.  It's a trade off.  Either way, in a weird way, I can kind of understand how one would get to that point.  I definitely have the kind of personality that could spend all my waking time doing things like gaming or chatting.  I've done it.  Lots of times.  The difference is I've recognized my weakness and had to set limitations.  It sucks balls, but that's the way it is if I want to do things like party with friends or go to cons or be inspired to make art or do sexy things with my husband.  As much as I love the gaming, I'm not willing to give all that up.

I'm hoping that her husband isn't either.  Since the divorce didn't happen, I figure he must not be, so there's that at least.

Now, on a complete flip side of that, the devious part of me told her what to do to at least make herself feel better.

See, he plays on a PVP server.  I told her she needs to log in, make a character, level it up, and then beat the crap out of him whenever his gaming annoys her.  Yes, I know that it's potentially turning her into a gamer, but I don't see that.  She's not a gamer.  She is, however, a determined woman.  I can totally see her doing such a thing, and you know, nothing would get his attention like being bitch-slapped online and then finding out it was his wife.  Might open up some communication, who knows?

That, or I'm just as wicked and devious as I've been told I am.

Here I thought I was just, you know, helpful.

So, the point of this post?  Well, I seem to have been confronted with this kind of problem a few times in recent years, and while a little scary, I have yet to see how it's an insurmountable horror that should warrant the banning of all games some feel is necessary to prevent the destruction of our youth or whatever their going rant is.  Yes, for some, the only option might be to give up gaming, but for most, I think it's possible to just sort of retrain one's self into achieving a little more balance.  It's hard as hell, but it's possible. 

I almost think it's the universe's way of point out to me that yes, I will be confronted with shit like this from stupid anti-gamers for the rest of my life, and it's important I have a counter-argument, for instance: "Gee, my brother played Mortal Kombat as a kid and is not only married and has two kids, but when his first kid was a newborn, he was playing Doom 3 with her lying in his lap, and yet she has still decided Jesus needs some of her toys because the three gifts he got from the wisemen were lame."**  (We won't mention that same child once, in some surreal kind of innocence, tied up all of my stuffed animals to the legs of my coffee table like some weird bondage barnyard.  She is a girl after my own heart.)

Besides, I've played games from the time Atari first hit the market (screw you, I'm not old!) until now, and while, yes, I definitely have a twist of mind, I'm pretty sure it's inherited.  My mother is twisted as hell, but she's never gamed.  Take that and put it in your conservative "video games are the evil" ass.




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**True story.  I am a screaming heathen, but you have to admit that's adorably cute, even though I'm pretty sure when she becomes a teenager she'll wonder why Jesus never figured out that he could have totally used that walk-on-water trick to win a few free drinks.  She is my niece, after all.

When we lived on the other side of town, I frequented the Hobby Lobby that was on that end.  In said Hobby Lobby was a geek boy who liked me.  I'm assuming he liked me because after the day I walked in with my iPod on my arm and he discovered it was playing a song from a Final Fantasy soundtrack, there wasn't a time I could be wandering a random aisle and he wouldn't show up.  Most people would find that creepy.  Because he's about 16 years younger than me, I thought it kind of cute and flattering.

Oftentimes, when he'd happen to check me out at the register, he would ask me, "Do you play World of Warcraft?"

My usual response was, "Dude, I have a life."

Well, I had been tempted many times to try it because, as everyone knows, they've become the AOL of junk mail CDs.  I can't count how many of those "Free 14 Day Trial" CDs I've thrown away.  And, I did that because, say it with me, I have a life.

Or rather, I choose to have one.  You see, I also know my limitations.  I obsess very easily over games.  My obsessions are okay if the games have a conclusion, but MMORPGs don't really have that.  You can get all the levels and armor and achievements, but they will always add more.  It never really ends.

The other problem is I don't like the general public in my fantasy.  14 year-old trolls piss me off.  Not because they're rude or crude or socially unacceptable, but because I know little bastards like that who would never pull that shit in real life because they know I would smack them like the little bitches they are.  The anonymity of the internet can really blow during those moments.

So, I resisted MMOs for a long time, much to the pouting of Super Husband.  When he met me, he was so damned thrilled that I gamed that he was filled with much glee, but my lack of MMO experience definitely left me a little lacking in his eyes.

Well, several months ago, he convinced me to try one of those WOW trials. 

I have to tell you, playing with Super Husband was tres fun.  I realized that as long as I played with people I knew, the whole MMO thing wasn't so worthy of derision.  It was like an advanced version of two-player.  I was digging it.

But, we hit another brick wall: the subscription fee.

The solution? Runes of Magic.

Look, guys, I have to tell you, I've read all the "it's nothing but a WOW clone" reviews, and they always miss the vital important aspect of that fact: it's fucking FREE.

We don't play MMOs enough during a month to warrant a monthly subscription, and I hate to tell you younger gamers out there, but when you start getting into things like student loans, mortgages, and insane needs for things like food, utilities, and a really nice theater system, suddenly things like WOW subscriptions are just silly.

Yes, Runes of Magic is a WOW clone.  So?  Seriously, it's still fun.  It's still pretty.  It's still FREE.

Funnily enough, that wasn't what inspired this post.  What inspired this post was another MMORPG that runs along a whole other vein.  This would be Dungeons and Dragons Online.

Now, this started out as a subscription game that was choking mightily against the tidal waves of EverCrack and WOW.  But, unlike other struggling MMOs they figured out that there was a way to appeal to the rest of the world who wanted to play without having their credit cards charged.  They decided to go free and offer certain items, races, quests, and services for a cost.

Some people might shrug and think, "What's the point?"  The point is they still have a massive amount of content for those of us who can't let an MMO take over our lives, but if we find we're getting more and more immersed, we can either take a subscription or just buy things to enhance the experience.  And, in a completely awesome move, you can earn points when you solve quests and actually use them to purchase other quests.  So, yeah, some quests you can only get with real world money, but at least you don't feel ostracized for playing free.

For those who like to gripe just to hear themselves gripe, this is very much not a WOW clone.  Sometimes, I long for the ROM interface, like ease in following other players in a group or the leveling system, but the differences have their own advantages.

DDO might be a little on the hard side to level, but you don't have tedious collection quests to fill your leveling time.  Most leveling is done with actual quests!  What a concept!  I wasn't so sure about some aspects of the controls at first, for instance, it's rather hard to follow your group members.  However, that's all balanced out because, well, when you're in a dungeon it's just you and your group.  No other random players to kill your intended target forcing you to wait through a 2 hour respawn timer.  I gotta tell you, that's hella nice.  And, when you're done with the quest, you hit a "finished" button and you go back to the entrance and are able to hit town and collect your xp.  Damn convenient if you ask me.

Then there's the obvious bonus in that you only get loot out of treasure chests or NPCs, so there's a definite lack of those shiver-inducing questions like, "Where does a goblin in a loin cloth hide a long sword?"  Um....eeeeeeewwwwwww...

Despite what most players will admit, most MMOs have a definite forumla, and it's a formula that works.  You have gathering quests to extend the playing time and give you mindless leveling.  You have massive raids to enhance that whole social experience of the game and actually affect the challenge levels. 

DDO is a different kind of MMO.  Well, of course it is, it's based off of a table-top gaming system, and they try very hard to keep that feel.  Instead of a a small group of people gathered around a table trying to beat down the latest quest, you have that same small group meeting around an online network.  There's something to be said for that small group experience, whether your members are local or spread across the world.  There's an immersiveness to it that's lost when you're beating the hell out of a boss in a dungeon and some level 50 wanders by and smacks it for you.  Going into a dungeon setting and knowing you are the only ones there and all your decisions affect your group and only your group, and damn, where the hell did the cleric just go?  Yeah, it's a special challenge on it's own, and that challenge only adds to the fun.

And, that's the thing about DDO, while there are drawbacks in comparison to other MMOs, it finds other ways to shine.  Is it perfect?  By no means.  (Ya'll, seriously, no quick button for targeting enemies?)  But, it manages to salvage the fun times of table gaming and bring it to the computer screen.  Other MMOs like WOW or ROM can't really be compared if only because they are so different which makes them likable in their own rights.

MMOs are starting to feel a little cookie-cutter in their attempts to clone the WOW success, and they do offer something new when they can, but it's nice to find an MMO that has its own style.

DDO is unapologetic, nor should it be otherwise.

Repeat after me, gamers: variety is the spice of life.

Now, go play outside.




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Admittedly, I'm finding the very non-JRPG feel of MMOs really added to their appeal.  Yes, I cut my gamer teeth on JRPGs.  Yes, I still love said style of games as evident in my ardent drooling on all things Final Fantasy, but the non-linear aspects of the ARPGs are very nice.  Besides, sometimes, you just want to set fire to that random cow.