Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 3,859 - 3,870 of 6,170
WoW is technically also not a game. It's a substitute for making an effort in real life.
Gee, Corwin, how do you really feel? A lot of MMORPs can be addictive. I notice Wired keeps featuring articles on Half Life and I wonder if they are getting money from that game or if a player just writes for Wired.
Almost any hobby can be a way of avoiding "RL". I have a friend who dates someone who thinks he's "almost" a professional volleyball player (he's in his 40s) and everything he does is volleyball. He hasn't had a job in 2 years and the only social activities he'll go to involve the people he plays with. Not much different than your WOW nerds and old EQ fans.
I have been accused of hiding from RL myself. Please try to hide your shock. Here's how I see it: it's all real if I do it and as long as I pay my bills and respect others, who cares how dorky I choose to be?
Posts 3,859 - 3,870 of 6,170
Gee, Corwin, how do you really feel? A lot of MMORPs can be addictive. I notice Wired keeps featuring articles on Half Life and I wonder if they are getting money from that game or if a player just writes for Wired.
Almost any hobby can be a way of avoiding "RL". I have a friend who dates someone who thinks he's "almost" a professional volleyball player (he's in his 40s) and everything he does is volleyball. He hasn't had a job in 2 years and the only social activities he'll go to involve the people he plays with. Not much different than your WOW nerds and old EQ fans.
I have been accused of hiding from RL myself. Please try to hide your shock. Here's how I see it: it's all real if I do it and as long as I pay my bills and respect others, who cares how dorky I choose to be?
Real life is made up of a lot of things..including having fun with things you like bots, and RP games etc. I choose to be pretty dorky, and I love it. HURAY and welcome to the Dork Side!
Heimdall has made it into the top ten most developed bots. I'd like to take everyone out for a meal. Do you all like indian food, with lots of the Black Ale?
Mal, if it's free, I'll learn to love it. 
And Bev, re-reading some of the things I wrote, I can see that they read more strongly than I intended. I normally say "it's a substitute for real life" rather than the effort line, but for some reason I didn't think that would play well this time.
I'm impressed by the efforts of the Blizzard team in making WoW and turning it into an industry beyond a mere computer game. Obviously it is a good product. Five million users can't all be wrong, and if they're willing to pay for the privilege it's there choice.
And you're right about the whole "it's real life if I do it" thing to. I just worry a little when people respond to the question "Hey what're you up to tonight, wanna come out?" with "Nah, I've gotta stay home and level my character." That sort of addiction is something I've only ever really encountered in WoW users. (Granted, maybe it's the geek version of "Sorry I'm washing my hair that night" and I should just take the hint
Secondary sidebar: Valve (the creators of half-life, half-life 2 and many of its mods) do not make any additional money beyond the sale of the software as far as I'm aware.
Going back to the other stuff, any comments about time wasted hiding from real life I can just as easily direct back at myself. I spent the better part of two years doing very little with my spare time apart from playing Team Fortress Classic, a game that was old before I started playing it. For someone who has enough unpublished writing and unfinished stories to sink a Japanese whaler (actually that doesn't sound like such a bad use for it) it really was a terrible use of my time.
This brings me indirectly back to some of that identity on the net thing from twenty or so posts back that I wanted to get into. The thing I wanted to talk about goes something like this:
I've been a member of this community. I've always enjoyed the forums here for it's intelligence and general good humour.
Typical PF forum dialogue:
PF User: Let us have a discussion, at some length, staying on topic, running to many pages, about Quantum Mechanics and the nature of all things Quantum. Let this discussion become a heated, thriving debate, but let there be open disagreement without resorting to name calling at any stage.
PF user 2: And then once we have reached an untenable impasse, let us simply agree to disagree and move on to similar discussions of identity, Plato and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Etc, etc (This isn't a dig at the anyone by the way. These discussions impress me [when I can follow them] and boggle me [when I can't].)
Now I am also part of the Team Fortress Community (what's left of it) in my part of the world. There I have a different screen name (one which, harking back to my previous post, oddly enough does have a great deal of personal significance. I have also enjoyed the forums there too, but compare and contrast if you will.
Typical TFC forum dialogue:
K|lLERz0R: kk, lookin 4 a clan to scrim us next Sat. Any takers?
R1CKO: Yeah, me and the boys will.
village_idiot: We'zar gonna distroy youse. Youguys are teh suxor.
R1CKO: Just like your mum v_i
K|lLERz0R: lol
Granted it's usually a little more clever than that, but you get the basic idea.
The weird thing is, I fit in fairly well in both places. If two people, one PF person and one TFC person who both knew me were to meet in real life and bring up the subject of internet acquaintances, both could describe their version of me without for a second suspecting that they were talking about the same person.
So I guess my point on this one is that issue of the different versions of ourselves we put forward. Both are me, neither is me etc, etc. The one other thing I found also was the issue of transition from one to the other. When I first started coming back here I found myself doing the keyboard equivalent of biting my tongue (crossing my fingers perhaps) holding back on more cutting remarks that I might have used on the other site. Does anyone else find this? This switching of personas? Kind of like a teacher (and yes I speak from experience here) going from dealing with kids to dealing with adults.
Anyway, this post has gone on far too long (I've had to click "I'm still here" twice) and have really overused brackets. And if at any point I approached a point I sure didn't see it. Those of you who have read my ramblings have my sympathies.
And Bev, re-reading some of the things I wrote, I can see that they read more strongly than I intended. I normally say "it's a substitute for real life" rather than the effort line, but for some reason I didn't think that would play well this time.
I'm impressed by the efforts of the Blizzard team in making WoW and turning it into an industry beyond a mere computer game. Obviously it is a good product. Five million users can't all be wrong, and if they're willing to pay for the privilege it's there choice.
And you're right about the whole "it's real life if I do it" thing to. I just worry a little when people respond to the question "Hey what're you up to tonight, wanna come out?" with "Nah, I've gotta stay home and level my character." That sort of addiction is something I've only ever really encountered in WoW users. (Granted, maybe it's the geek version of "Sorry I'm washing my hair that night" and I should just take the hint
Secondary sidebar: Valve (the creators of half-life, half-life 2 and many of its mods) do not make any additional money beyond the sale of the software as far as I'm aware.
Going back to the other stuff, any comments about time wasted hiding from real life I can just as easily direct back at myself. I spent the better part of two years doing very little with my spare time apart from playing Team Fortress Classic, a game that was old before I started playing it. For someone who has enough unpublished writing and unfinished stories to sink a Japanese whaler (actually that doesn't sound like such a bad use for it) it really was a terrible use of my time.
This brings me indirectly back to some of that identity on the net thing from twenty or so posts back that I wanted to get into. The thing I wanted to talk about goes something like this:
I've been a member of this community. I've always enjoyed the forums here for it's intelligence and general good humour.
Typical PF forum dialogue:
PF User: Let us have a discussion, at some length, staying on topic, running to many pages, about Quantum Mechanics and the nature of all things Quantum. Let this discussion become a heated, thriving debate, but let there be open disagreement without resorting to name calling at any stage.
PF user 2: And then once we have reached an untenable impasse, let us simply agree to disagree and move on to similar discussions of identity, Plato and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Etc, etc (This isn't a dig at the anyone by the way. These discussions impress me [when I can follow them] and boggle me [when I can't].)
Now I am also part of the Team Fortress Community (what's left of it) in my part of the world. There I have a different screen name (one which, harking back to my previous post, oddly enough does have a great deal of personal significance. I have also enjoyed the forums there too, but compare and contrast if you will.
Typical TFC forum dialogue:
K|lLERz0R: kk, lookin 4 a clan to scrim us next Sat. Any takers?
R1CKO: Yeah, me and the boys will.
village_idiot: We'zar gonna distroy youse. Youguys are teh suxor.
R1CKO: Just like your mum v_i
K|lLERz0R: lol
Granted it's usually a little more clever than that, but you get the basic idea.
The weird thing is, I fit in fairly well in both places. If two people, one PF person and one TFC person who both knew me were to meet in real life and bring up the subject of internet acquaintances, both could describe their version of me without for a second suspecting that they were talking about the same person.
So I guess my point on this one is that issue of the different versions of ourselves we put forward. Both are me, neither is me etc, etc. The one other thing I found also was the issue of transition from one to the other. When I first started coming back here I found myself doing the keyboard equivalent of biting my tongue (crossing my fingers perhaps) holding back on more cutting remarks that I might have used on the other site. Does anyone else find this? This switching of personas? Kind of like a teacher (and yes I speak from experience here) going from dealing with kids to dealing with adults.
Anyway, this post has gone on far too long (I've had to click "I'm still here" twice) and have really overused brackets. And if at any point I approached a point I sure didn't see it. Those of you who have read my ramblings have my sympathies.
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