The Lonliness of MMOs: More Emo from Smelt

I've got MMO Attention Deficit Disorder (MMOAADD). How did I get this way? For over 2 years, I was in a monogamous MMO relationship. World of Warcraft held the key to my gaming heart. We had an amicable breakup, me and WoW. I agreed to go my own way and well, WoW has a million other players to keep it warm at night. But sometimes I miss WoW. I miss it's warm and fuzzy virtual comfort. But I think most of all, I miss my friends.

It's true that we still "hang out," we blog together, have regular chats over ventrilo, email and generally bug one another through whatever means possible. In fact, Rune and Pikky are still playing WoW, and the married in RL couple Tivy and Azzy are exploring Star Wars Galaxies together all over again. I suppose I'm the only one that's in this gaming fugue. Since letting my subscription lapse in Wow, I've played Age of Conan, Everquest 2, Warhammer, City of Heros, The Sims, Starcraft, various Xbox games and now...Runes of Magic.

What am I looking for? Well that's a good question. In terms of the MMOs, all the above listed games are at a minimum quite decent. In fact some of them have elements that are in my opinion, outstanding. But then, where they shine in one area they lack in another. Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on all these games? If you can afford it, maybe it's okay to have multiple subscriptions to multiple games? Am I just looking for the next WoW?

Honestly I think the answer is, "yes." I want the game to have the overall polish and be just as engaging and I want to be just as hooked as I was over 2 years ago. More than that, I want my friends to be just as hooked. I want to share the excitement and wonder and all the other possible gaming goodness with my little community. Yes, I know. It's a lot to ask for, but not impossible.

Make new friends in new games, you say? Meh. I suppose that would be the logical response if community means so much to me. However, behind the virtual avatars they are actually real people who live in real worlds and have real personalities. These are the people I click with and sometimes that is real hard to find. Beyond this central gaming fascination, we bond in other ways. Not so easy to replace if you know what I mean.

I suppose I will continue to wander around and try every new MMO that comes out - except Darkfall because that just seemed too hard-core for my crew. As of this writing, Tivy and I are playing Runes of Magic. I have to admit I was skeptical of "free" games, but this game is purty fun. I have level 11 warrior/priest. The game mechanics are very similiar to other MMOs so there's really no surprises. Right now I'm into seeing how many diamonds I can accumulate without actually putting any real life moolah into the game. We'll see how long that lasts. I'll update in future posts.

Beyond that, here are the next great hopes that will draw us all back to the same fold:

• Champions Online - Pikky is looking forward to this so I'll try it too, because I miss playing with my crotchety friend. I didn't really like City of Heros but the super hero genre definitely has an appeal.
  
• Star Wars The Old Republic - Azzy and myself are absolutely peeing ourselves over Star Wars Old Republic. I'm hoping that will be the next "big" game.
• Free Realms - Pirate puppies. Enough said.
• Aion - screenshots are stunningly gorgeous.
• Star Trek Online - obviously a ways from release date, but I'm interested.
  

The Lonliness of MMOs

Part 1: The Group

What's the point of massively multiplayer online games or what we geeks affectionately call MMOs? No, I'm serious. Why would I choose World of Warcraft over a single player game such as Fallout or Oblivion? Rationally the answer must include, "to interact with other people."

For the sake of argument, we can loosely define "interact" to mean a myriad of things. I'm sure that somebody out there might say that in all their years of playing MMOs they have not engaged in one single in-game conversation with another player. Well that's quite a feat, and somewhat sad. However, let's broaden the scope to say observing and/or playing in the same space as other people partaking in MMO activies - good, bad, ugly - is a form of social "interaction." One could not sit on a park bench and simply say because they do not talk to passerby's that they are not part of that reality.

So let's all make the leap and say we play MMOs because we want to be part of some community. But what happens when you find a community you really like such as a guild, a team, or a small group of friends and then that community disbands? Well, it kinda sucks.

As you may have noticed this little ol' blog is a collaborative effort by those I consider my "community." These are the closest friends I have made in online gaming. These are the folks that I can honestly say in the most glowing way possible...they don't bug me. Let me introduce them to you:

First we have, Tivara A.K.A "The Boss of Us." You think I'm kidding. That's your first mistake. Her /pimphand is strong. We have learned long ago that nobody puts Tivy in a corner! But that's okay because she's a solid gamer with an infectious laugh, and when we were doing serious group runs in Burning Crusade, she didn't wipe us THAT often.

Azrakiel is Tivy's RL hubby and the resident theorycrafting nerd. Shhh, don't tell him, but when he goes off on how spell A isn't as good as Spell B because stats X and Y don't stack and blah, blah, blah...well, I kinda tune out on him. I just want to kill shit. You know what I mean? But the thing about Azzy is that he'll give you the gold in his pack if you ask him. A serious stand-up type of guy. Although, he does have a deep fascination for the dark side and half-naked demon chicks. Let's not dwell on that.

My gaming soul-mate is, Pikkle. Although, he'd probably cringe at that statement. We're the misanthropes of the group, and have difficulty finding people who don't irritate us. He's a crotchety twenty-something dude who'd probably yell at you if you stepped on his virtual lawn. He's also perpetually impatient with just about everything except for his kitty, Storm. I dunno. I'm not even sure if he likes me.

The antithesis of Pikkle and I, is Runex. He is probably the most social of the group; people <3 this fella. Rune and I co-managed a guild together (we all did) but Rune is the GM proper and I, at one point, was his co-GM. I honestly believe that Rune was one of the reasons the guild ballooned to over 200 individuals. If it were just me running the guild, there'd be like 5 of us. Seriously.

So where are we at right now? Let's discuss that in Part 2, which is yet to come.