Sorry I have not been posting for a couple of days. I have been away, hanging out in Baviasi which, as I am sure you know, is in the Tash Murkon region of the Arvachah constellation. Still lost? Me too.
MMORPG is an LLA (ludicrously long acronym). It stands for “massively multi-player online role-playing game”, and the biggest by far is World of Warcraft. More than eleven million people around the world pay good money every month to stomp around in an on-line imaginary world. That covers the “massively multi-player” bit. As for the role playing; well you decide to be an Orc or an Elf or something else that sounds like it comes from a kid’s fairytale book, and looks like an unlikely genetic cross between a circus clown and Thomas the Tank Engine. And then you then spend hours collecting things, killing monsters and visiting cities to do a bit of shopping. Just like real life really, apart from the killing monsters bit.
The more you play, the more you progress in skills and wealth, and so you gain levels which give you access to more skills and wealth, bigger monsters etc. Once you have played for a year or so, you realise you are just doing the same thing all the time, just at higher and higher levels; and then you stop. At least I did, although I will admit it was difficult to walk away from a character I had spent so much time and effort in developing. There is a communal aspect to this too. To take on the more difficult quests, you need a team of people to work with online. So you have to walk away from them too.
But I did manage to break the 2-3 hours a night habit and vowed I would never get myself sucked into one of these time and money wasters again. And I didn’t. Then last week I had an email from a friend in America, pointing me towards Eve Online. I should have deleted his mail, but curiosity got the better of me.
Eve Online is another MMORPG. Unlike World of Warcraft, which a child of ten can probably pick up in an hour or so, Eve Online is a frighteningly complex challenge which a child of ten will take weeks to understand, and a child of my age may never be able to get to grips with. To get you started there are a several days worth of tutorial missions and I have spent several hours playing the first few and I feel like I have not even scratched the surface of how this thing works.
This is my ship. I shall call it “The Doomed”:
I doesn’t help that the game is set in space, where nobody can hear you scream “this is too complicated!” Space also means loads of space to explore; hundreds of star systems with thousands of planets. There is mining, combat, trading, corporations, skills, ships and blah blah blah. My brain shuts down at all the things I could do if I knew how to do them; which I don’t. What adds to the fear factor is that, at any one time, there are around 50,000 people flying around in the same space; all of whom have a much better idea than I do of what is going on, and most of whom want to kill me.
Here I am, about to dock at a space station where I can undertake many tasks, none of which I understand:
But, the most worrying thing of all is that I can see that, having worked through the several years required to understand how everything works, you could get sucked into the universe of Eve Online and spend far to many of your waking hours being a spaceman rather than someone who actually has a life (not that I do, to be honest). My American friend, who has a much bigger brain than Spike, has been playing for around three weeks and seems to be getting the hang of it. I asked him how much he played. “Around forty hours a week” was the reply. Can I afford to dedicate that much of my life to this thing and still have time for all the other meaningless pursuits I wish to enjoy?
Probably not. Perhaps I should go back to World of Warcraft and just be Thomas the Orc with a red nose.
Comments 🔗
2010-05-12| Qon saysi miss the ‘cool factor’ of games but the time consumption part i don’t. ah, to be a kid in this day in time is heaven for those who love gaming!
2010-05-13| Spike saysGiven that your life revolves around racing radio controlled cars, I think it is fair to assume that the kid in you is not dead yet. May I recommend an Xbox and Forza Motorsport 3? Total car porn.
2010-05-13| genuinej saysWe’ve been down this road before. I repeat, an acronym is a WORD formed from the initial letters of the several words in the name, e.g. NATO, ASEAN, WHO, AIDS etc. MMORPG, LLA, FBI, SWMBO, etc. are abbreviations. IANGTTYA!! (I am not going to tell you again)!
2010-05-13| Billy saysGJ … I think I can speak for all when I say that your pedantry was missed …
Your linguistic contributions always remind me of a Microsoft manual, wordy, probably technically correct - and completely fucking useless ..
Welcome back …
2010-05-13| Spike saysgenuinej, how I have missed you! Welcome back. Just for clarification, was that a five pint comment?
2010-05-13| genuinej saysSpike, sorry but I can’t remember. I think it was probably a two bottles of red wine comment as I’m still jet lagged, totally pissed off and so, so sad that I’m not in Thailand. Roll on November. I’ve booked the flights but have yet to inform SWIUI (she who is usually ignored).