Roleplaying games

Today I woke up and this question puzzled my mind. Seriously, I’m the only male, roleplay fan, that hasn’t even only tried to play WOW for 5 minutes? not even the free demo? probably yes!

To be honest I never ever approached that game because I was quite confident that… I would have been addicted. Knowing how good are the Blizzard guys, I suppose (because, as I said, I just saw some screenshots about WOW and that’s it) that I would have been “enslaved”.

I know another friend that entered the beta program, played the game for 10 minutes, and commented “it’s magnificent, a masterpiece” then quickly uninstalled it, and gave the beta copy to another friend, all this just to avoid to vanish from real-life! he has a family and a daily job… quite hard to play WOW and have to work/feed someone at same time!

Also considering how many ads you see everywhere for “WOW Gold Sellers”, I suppose that only looking at that you can get a good estimate on how that game can be popular.

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll try it - but surely not now. I’m too scared to disappear from real life.

Raids sucks!!! yes, they do.

I still remember some years ago when I was working in an office, and my cousin was a student. He was bragging all the day because he was doing raids. He was an EQ addict, playing an insane amount of hours per day (more than 10-12h!!). So obviously he had leveled up much faster than me, when I was just level 25 he was already level 50+.

Now one day, with his help, I manage to get around level 45-46, so that I can partecipate in raids too. They were doing a small raids in East Wastes. Ok so I am all excited after what my cousin told me, expecting the unbeliveable from the raid.

But what happens ? first, the meeting. Some people are late. Others arrive, notice that most are missing, so start saying “BRB GOING TO BUY/SELL SOME STUFF” - and so on.

Result = 1h passes before all people are finally ready to start the raid.

Ok, I wait, then finally everyone is there and I start to think “now the full will begin!”.

No, I was wrong again. We must reach that particular location so we can enter the plane of Fear (or another thing, don’t remember now, too many years have passed!). We have to walk for interminable minutes to get there. Then do some fights on the way.

Another hour wasted.

Then finally, the raid starts. What a disappointment. Surely we were killing uber-monsters that I would never have been able alone, but was not fun. A giant mess where all tanks were screaming, casters casting, etc. almost zero strategy.

And surely, zero fun. Then after we found a no-drop item, the usual battle to get that item. Minutes and minutes wasted discussing who should have got it.

Well, after 2-3 raids, I canceled my EQ account. I went back playing some months later, but starting a new character. The real fun was when you start up and are an harmless druid/necro/wizard/warrior level 1. The first levels up to 20-25 are the most fun experience of EQ, definitely.

Unless you encounter a powerleveler or a gold seller - then you’re doomed!

Some people are nuts. Really.

I was one of them, but only for one night, some years ago. I had agreed to go out with some friends of mine. I knew there would have been also a nice-looking girl I met last weekend. Of course is easy to say that now, but I think that she was interested in me at the time….

So what happened, and why I’m talking about this in a roleplay blog? Because at those times, the hype of the moment was Everquest 1. Yes, the first incarnation, with that horrible 3d graphic (that at those time looked fantastic though). I was wandering with my level 6 female monk in the east commons, and got killed by a giant spider in a far away zone. Man, how good was the MMORPG at those times!!!

No gold sellers, no raids, no uber-players, no powerleveling… it was like a virgin territory to explore.

So, as I said I was killed and had the famous trouble of retrieving my corpse with all my precious valuables (that were really ridiculous, but I was just an EQ newbie at those times!). I had tried but there were too many monsters. And the time was running fast… until I realized that was already 8pm and I should have met with other REAL LIFE friends at 8.15!!! impossible of course since I was living 50km away, and had yet to prepare myself.

Guess what I did? I called a friend of mine telling him, with lot of embarassement, that I couldn’t come because of… that game! because I had to retrieve that damn corpse! my friend thought I was joking with him, but when he realized I was serious, he just said “are you nuts? fuck off!” and hanged the phone.

That night I was up until 2am playing EQ, until finally I got back the corpse with the help of one of the very few high levels character that was on the server. The morning after thought I realized how stupid I was. I got news that the sexy girl was there, and another friend of mine kissed her (and probably did a lot more than I know).

I said to myself “this will never happen anymore”. And luckily it didn’t. I kept playing EQ, but never started to play it if I knew that I had to do something important, in my real life, not the fictional life of MMORPG!