Gamer's Confession
Tonight just as I was about to shut things up for the day, Vincent came over to the office. We had a cigarette together and I finish packing up my laptop. While I was doing that, he was inviting Ben and Vic for a game of DOTA. If you guys don’t know what DOTA is, it’s actually a role playing game(RPG) incorporated from the World of Warcraft(WOW) for LAN network playing. I refused profusely despite their consistent persuasion. I just couldn’t.
It brings me back to the early days of high school. Around form 1 to 3. I was hooked to online RPG’s. This was way before the time of WOW and any other online multiplayer RPG. This was the time of text-base online RPG! Yes folks, text-base…you heard it right. How you may ask can someone be so engulfed into text-base games. Well I guess it started from those game books, which was text-base fantasy, where you would play this character and jump to different pages of the book as you chose a direction in which your hero would go or the choices he makes. Some would lead you to death, a battle with some warlord or sex with a hot princess. Okay, I was just making up the sex with a hot princess part but you get the jeez of it.
I remembered being quite close to a friend, Chiat, during that period. He was the one that got me into this text-base RPG called zMUD. MUD stands for Multi User Dungeon.We were very fond of this world called Arctic and more specifically we hung out in the city of Tarsis. Arctic players will know what I’m talking about. Sorry about all the fantasy jargons. I still remember Tarsis was in the south of Arctic and a lot of quests could be done to the south of Tarsis as there were high experience points to be gain from the creatures you killed there. It was good for leveling when you were around the level 12-20 area. I remember playing a Cleric, which I named Siobhan. I actually named it after Brian McClair’s (he is an ex-Manchester United striker) daughter. So when you play a character to level 25 and above you get to put a title on it. It’s kind of like a Datukship for their world. Siobhan’s would be Madam Siobhan McClair, Healer of South Arctic.
I also remembered after the Armageddon (the programmers do this every once in a while just to refresh everything for a new start – I’ve personally have been through one, it’s like you are just going about your business and “ARMAGEDDON” appears in the middle of your screen and you can’t log in anymore), I played a Paladin, which was basically a Warrior with magic powers. Good with blades and freezing people. Also because the game was text-base, you couldn’t see a physical form of your character in 3D graphics. You move from room to room by typing N S E or W representing each bearing of the compass and you would have to read the description of the room. The words do the fighting for you. Sentences such as “You have obliterated the little bunny with your sword” would describe how you hit your opponent. The harder you hit the more brutal the word becomes. For example, the word obliterated in the sentence could be replaced with “miss”, “barely hit”, “very hard” and so forth.
A lot of people including Ben did not grasp on the concept. He gave me that “so where’s the fun?” kind of look, but it was all we had back then. Where RPG nuts like me actually got to share their experience with other RPG nuts from around the world. Interacting online from your own home on those Pentium I’s running on Windows 98. Feels very nostalgic thinking back. It did however leave a black mark over me. I would get so hooked to leveling my character and being in that world rather than mine. I think there was a time when I was barely off the game. I would be on it literally the whole night until it was time for school the next morning. Then slept in between classes and got back to the game once I got home. It made my grades slip and did poorly in my PMR exams. My mom went nuts because I sky rocketed the phone bills! We were on dial up still then, so you could imagine the phone bill got very expensive if I was on it every night.
That was when I decided that it was time to take a bow. I shall play RPG’s no more. Well that didn’t last long. Once I got a better computer, I started playing NWN and Diablo. Those were all fun but mostly for single player or LAN games. I feel that I have totally quit RPG these days. Nothing I touch on the PS2 or my Mac is RPG, they mostly consist of Arcade and Adventure games. My favourite genre being sports ie: Pro Evolution Soccer Series, NBA series and also the fame Need For Speed series. Mafia games are cool too. I would say Championship Manager is the closest game I play these days that is to a RPG.
Now, Ben’s been telling me more and more about WOW, trying to get me into it but I shall not succumb to RPG ecstasy. A Full blown 3D graphics multiplayer online game! I fear if I start this one, I won’t be able to quit. Yeah it seems harmless at first. Follow them over to the internet café for a 1-hour game of DOTA that will go on for 2-3 hours. Then slowly get the groove of RPG again. Then start WOW, so I can play for home and build on a character and watch him grow into an ultimate bad ass in the game. Just too much to handle, don’t think I can take it all in. Must not succumb….
It brings me back to the early days of high school. Around form 1 to 3. I was hooked to online RPG’s. This was way before the time of WOW and any other online multiplayer RPG. This was the time of text-base online RPG! Yes folks, text-base…you heard it right. How you may ask can someone be so engulfed into text-base games. Well I guess it started from those game books, which was text-base fantasy, where you would play this character and jump to different pages of the book as you chose a direction in which your hero would go or the choices he makes. Some would lead you to death, a battle with some warlord or sex with a hot princess. Okay, I was just making up the sex with a hot princess part but you get the jeez of it.
I remembered being quite close to a friend, Chiat, during that period. He was the one that got me into this text-base RPG called zMUD. MUD stands for Multi User Dungeon.We were very fond of this world called Arctic and more specifically we hung out in the city of Tarsis. Arctic players will know what I’m talking about. Sorry about all the fantasy jargons. I still remember Tarsis was in the south of Arctic and a lot of quests could be done to the south of Tarsis as there were high experience points to be gain from the creatures you killed there. It was good for leveling when you were around the level 12-20 area. I remember playing a Cleric, which I named Siobhan. I actually named it after Brian McClair’s (he is an ex-Manchester United striker) daughter. So when you play a character to level 25 and above you get to put a title on it. It’s kind of like a Datukship for their world. Siobhan’s would be Madam Siobhan McClair, Healer of South Arctic.
I also remembered after the Armageddon (the programmers do this every once in a while just to refresh everything for a new start – I’ve personally have been through one, it’s like you are just going about your business and “ARMAGEDDON” appears in the middle of your screen and you can’t log in anymore), I played a Paladin, which was basically a Warrior with magic powers. Good with blades and freezing people. Also because the game was text-base, you couldn’t see a physical form of your character in 3D graphics. You move from room to room by typing N S E or W representing each bearing of the compass and you would have to read the description of the room. The words do the fighting for you. Sentences such as “You have obliterated the little bunny with your sword” would describe how you hit your opponent. The harder you hit the more brutal the word becomes. For example, the word obliterated in the sentence could be replaced with “miss”, “barely hit”, “very hard” and so forth.
A lot of people including Ben did not grasp on the concept. He gave me that “so where’s the fun?” kind of look, but it was all we had back then. Where RPG nuts like me actually got to share their experience with other RPG nuts from around the world. Interacting online from your own home on those Pentium I’s running on Windows 98. Feels very nostalgic thinking back. It did however leave a black mark over me. I would get so hooked to leveling my character and being in that world rather than mine. I think there was a time when I was barely off the game. I would be on it literally the whole night until it was time for school the next morning. Then slept in between classes and got back to the game once I got home. It made my grades slip and did poorly in my PMR exams. My mom went nuts because I sky rocketed the phone bills! We were on dial up still then, so you could imagine the phone bill got very expensive if I was on it every night.
That was when I decided that it was time to take a bow. I shall play RPG’s no more. Well that didn’t last long. Once I got a better computer, I started playing NWN and Diablo. Those were all fun but mostly for single player or LAN games. I feel that I have totally quit RPG these days. Nothing I touch on the PS2 or my Mac is RPG, they mostly consist of Arcade and Adventure games. My favourite genre being sports ie: Pro Evolution Soccer Series, NBA series and also the fame Need For Speed series. Mafia games are cool too. I would say Championship Manager is the closest game I play these days that is to a RPG.
Now, Ben’s been telling me more and more about WOW, trying to get me into it but I shall not succumb to RPG ecstasy. A Full blown 3D graphics multiplayer online game! I fear if I start this one, I won’t be able to quit. Yeah it seems harmless at first. Follow them over to the internet café for a 1-hour game of DOTA that will go on for 2-3 hours. Then slowly get the groove of RPG again. Then start WOW, so I can play for home and build on a character and watch him grow into an ultimate bad ass in the game. Just too much to handle, don’t think I can take it all in. Must not succumb….
posted by ian at 1:08 AM
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