Social Experiment: MMORPG + Life EPISODE 0

I'm about to embark upon something so challenging, so brash- it boggles my mind even trying to prepare the blog to report on this feat of impossibility. [WoW players read: Taking an end-game scenario by yourself]

I'm going to attempt to balance life and WoW in an appropriate manner. DUDE- BREATH, you're going to pass out. I'll try to explain. I've got a family- wife, 2.5 kids (I figure 2 dogs = .5 kid?). I work at a LAN center part time, helping out a buddy who owns it. Seems like quite a few people are playing this World of Warcraft thing. I'm royally confused, because Warcraft is that game with orcs, where you build these cities up and try to dominate the universe or something. I think it was Warcraft 2 that I played. I hear there is actually a Warcraft 3, maybe I'll have to check that out.

ANYWAY. I was informed there were no building towers to defend cities, no ordering hordes of soldiers around to attack things. (though apparently there is something called the Horde- it always sounds like they are saying whore when I hear them, so I chuckled politely to fit in. It turns out I'm not even close there...) They say: "It's a MMORPG you noob". Oh, ok. So it's something I need to spend vast amounts of time on, building my character in order to achieve...what? Fame? Virtual Fortune? I'm still slightly confused.

Let me back up here, I'm a FPS player. A console player at that. I have an xbox, I want an xbox 360. I play Halo 2 mostly, and have started to play Battlefield 2 on the PC. (I'm a staff sergeant now.) I used to look at the RPG players like silly D&D addicts that need their virtual social communities. Enter that fateful day when I downloaded a 10-day trial of World of Warcraft.

This is apparently not an easy thing to do. The first attempt took 5 hours, with a corrupted setup file. I then found out the World of Warcraft client is almost 3 Gig in size. Yikes. Second attempt was successful, but then I needed to get from version 1.5 to 1.84. I went down to the LAN center- copied the update patcher thingy. Now I'm good to go. I think.

I've heard stories about people (usually referred to as n00bs) who rush into an MMORPG not picking the right class for what they want to do, people laughing at them when they ask for help- etc. This will NOT be me. I researched websites, spoke with level 60 (is that good?) WoW players and thought about what I wanted to play. Priest it is. I was warned it wasn't really fun, and it's really hard to level up, but screw that- I play medic in Battlefield 2 so I'm healing people in WoW. I figure I'M human, so that's probably what I should choose for race?

Next episode we'll go over my first adventures into MMORPG lands. Nerddome, here I come.

LAN Gaming centers

Today I answered a question I've had for awhile. Why are LAN Gaming centers successful? When you look at it, a place with consoles and nice PCs for people to "rent" for a few hours to play their favorite games, it seems like an ok idea- but people make money doing this.

I think the core of gaming centers is the community. Are you a gamer? If you are, I bet you've either heard of or are actively a part of a gaming community. Even though some of the people who come to gaming centers have nice computers, they still come to the center week after week. It's the environment they seek, the comeraderie they receive with fellow gamers. They can join a team with someone sitting next to them.

While teamspeak, and ventrillo somewhat stifle the need for gamers to be in actual proximity to each other, there's just something to be said for reaching over and pounding the guy next to you for no-scoping you when you're about to get the last CAP.

Electronic Entertainment - not your Daddy's video games...

I was watching TNT last night at around 8-9pm. I think it was the Mavs and Spurs playing. Something happened that really make me sit up and pay more attention. I saw 3 different video game comercials in a row during a first quarter commercial break. On the surface, that doesn't really mean all that much- one of the commercials was for NBA '06. It was the fact that there was 3 video game commercials in a row during prime-time coverage of a sporting event. If that doesn't scream main-stream demographic, what does?

Video games aren't just for the 1337 nerdz0rZ anymore- not real big news, as gamers we've seen this coming. What intrigues me more is the $$ in the industry- again we've known that gamers do spend money, but it seems like developers are starting to aggressively go after the main-stream public for those dollars now.

Yes, I realize I'm a nerd for pondering these things, but at least I'm comfortable with it. :)