Confession Booth : I am a Gamer Chic

I have been playing MMORGS, and Firstshooter Games for a very long time. I’ve started  gaming, years and years ago, by playing Quake, I/II/III.

I remember, I had Dial Up internet back then, and it was a pain the ass to compete with the DSL players. Which lead me to using Speedbots, which are cracks/ hacks to enhance the gaming speed. And I became a pretty well known Frag Queen. So playing Quake I, was just awesome.

I’ve had friends on an old Chat called “Mplayer”, where you could do anything from creating Chatrooms, to watching people on Webcams, to playing cardgames and playing Quake. We all went in hordes to play Quake I, which had some orginial NIN tunes .

Just looking back at these times, yea..these were good times, on a Pentium I/ 166 MHZ, 8 gig of Harddrive, hah!

Anyhow, thats where everything started. Mplayer eventually shut down for good, I suppose lack of funds or bandwith problems. I don’t know, but we were all majorly pissed at this. And as it goes on the WWW, you loose contact with these people, who once you shared every free minute together with. I have one friend left from back then, and he found me on “Myspace”. The rest of the people…I don’t know what they do or of their where abouts.

Later on I started playing my very first MMORG, called “Star Wars Galaxies”! I started SWG on Dec 27th, 2003. The game was amazing, it seemed like an real world to me. I learned on how to become a Artisan, Tailor and later on eventually indulged in Combat. My first finished Profession ( Grind ) was Fencer. I thought Fencer’s were just more “elegant” then Carbineers, Pistoleers and the rare breed of Jedi ( back then it was rare…).

I went from Fencer to TKM, “Teras Kasi Master”, ( a few of us ) as roleplayed in the game, we were from an ancient Bunduki Tribe, and used the Martial Arts as our defence, against the imperial Empire aka Darth Vader.

I loved this game!

Til SOE, Sony destroyed the game with their retarded money making “game enhancements”, basicly ruining the game for the entire playerbase. We , the players, protested in

” Theed / Naboo “. Crashed the server numerous times by lagging the entire server up. The CSR’s, tried to stop our protests by adding spider like enemies who shoot at us ( I can’t remember the name of these spidery things ).

But we came back and back and back. Well long story short, SWG players eventually split up, by starting to play WoW, COV (City of Villains) and just went all their own ways. I toggled a bit longer in SWG, because most of us just didn’t wanted to “Let Go”.

So I picked up ” World of Warcraft ” and instantly hated the game! I wasn’t used to Gnomes, Nightelves and specially not USED to the mickey mousish/ cartoonish graphics. I played a little bit on my Human/ Mage andjust felt so lost in this huge Player Base. I didn’t knew anyone. Everyone was already a lvl 60 or close to it, and I was by myself. I fought myself through these endless Grinds and managed to become a LvL 43 Mage ( btw, which I still am today ).

The game burned me out. I didn’t had the backup of a guild or the chat on Teamspeak as I did have with SWG. Everyone in Ironforge seemed to be so ” ueber leet “, and sat on their 800 gold Rides, showing off to us low levels.

I eventually stopped WoW, and went back to SWG – my game! But only to find out, that those 100+ friends I had on my friends list are not in game anymore. I had tons of in game emails from friends, writing a fare well note to me and wishing me good luck….I fucking cried!

I loved this game so much, the daily talk with my friends and everyone just vanished.

So, I played a little and eventually found a guy from my old guild in the “Mos Eisley Cantina “! I was so happy to see him and we quickly went on Teamspeak to catch up on what happend. And it turned out that most of my guildies came back and we wanted to re/ create/ re – play a game , that just didn’t existed anymore.

After a few month, the hype was gone, guild issues and changes. And I was just pissed and about to delete every damn game, SWG, WoW from my PC.

Til one of my guildies told me about Second Life. I totally hesitated at first. He told me about the mature Adult Content of the game and how everything is so RP related. ( roleplaying ).

In SWG… we made fun of role players or shims ( HE’s that played SHE’s ).

But I was bored with SWG and gave Second Life a try. I was amazed at first how COOL this Virtual Reality was. I planned on creating things in game, and make RL money like everyone else. But this all never happend. I saw a huge community, who mainly was out to have ” AV – Avartar – Cybersex “.

The average Joe Shmoe, was able to live out his wildest fantasies in this game. It’s amazing and sickening at the same time. “Citizens” become Escorts, Submissive Slaves, or go all the way into the Marvel Hero “Gor”.

Basicly the majority of the  game is about Sex and getting pixel laid. Yes, you can even purchase your ” genitals and sound effects ” in game.

I was hooked on this game for about 3 month during this past summer. I’ve managed to sell a little bit of  Art Prints, and get myself a small Cottage, by becoming a Premium Member, for $9.95 / a month. While I played SL, I became a Club Host, and hosted “Costume/ Best Dressed etc Events”. I’ve listend nightly to retarded Pop Disco and Techno and pretended to be the most happiest Hostess in skimpy Clothes, just to make a “few lindens ( the SL currency )”, and to blow it away by going shopping to buy more dumber outfits for the “Club Events”.

I eventually seperated myself from the “club scene” and gotten into Arts and took some TUI/ Builder Classes, to make the money I never made. My patience just gotten in my own way and I was upset again at all these retarded role players, pretending to be something they aren’t.

I guess, I mix to much real life into a game and can’t really get into the roleplaying aspect. So I pretty much dropped the game, and picked up WoW again.

It’s a back and fourth continuance of a gamer chic like me. I am looking forward to “Vanguard – Saga Of Heroes”, but I am sure the “Hype” will die out again. Because SWG was MY game, and Sony Entertainment ruined it for me.

I guess, a part of me died with this game (SWG) – because no other game could ever hold my attention and the fun times I had, like SWG.

The End-

zum~

WoW-nnui

By Mike Sellers

Since its release not quite two years ago, World of Warcraft has been the undisputed market leader in MMOs.  It smashed through the formerly unattainable one million user mark and kept right on going, now steaming toward 7,000,000 paying users.  WoW has blown out all previous expectations for MMOs in US, European, and Asian markets and keeps right on going.

And yet.

Last night I logged in to WoW for the first time in a long time. I visited my characters one by one, but didn’t stick around to play very long despite finally having an evening free to play.   I felt a distinct detachment from my characters and soon recognized my old friend, game ennui. 

Now I don’t mean to sound like I’m spelling doom for WoW (or MMOs in general!). Far from it.  I don’t know WoW’s sales numbers, but as far as I know their box sales remain at or near the top of the charts.  And of course there’s a much-anticipated expansion pack coming up that will give them a welcome, if perhaps temporary, bump in their usage numbers. 

But in my case, not only could I really not gather any excitement about playing these characters, knowing as I do that I just don’t have multiple hours per week (much less per day!) to play them, but the more advanced the character the more difficult it was to get back into. I could sorta drive my 22lvl hunter; my 37 warlock was almost incomprehensible — and for many more expert players such levels are “lowbies.” Remembering all those spells, weapons, abilities, talents, etc., just seemed like way too much trouble. And all the quests that were driving these characters’ progress were entirely meaningless now (this is the danger of external motivation—it’s just too easy to lose all sense of why I should care about an entirely artificial set of quests).

I’m involved, loosely speaking (given my lack of attendance), in several different guilds on PvE, RP, and PvP servers.  In each, multiple people I know — both those with multiple level 60 characters and those who have never come close to that — have sort of run aground on the over-and-over again gameplay, whether that’s yet-another-kill-X-creatures quest or yet-another-raid for yet-another-piece-of-armor.   

No one I’ve talked to dislikes the game; there’s no sense of having been spurned or that the experience has curdled.  But in even the best parties there seems to sometimes come a moment when, amidst the music and noise you and your friends silently agree “great party; we’re outta here.”   For some people that moment has come with WoW.  And I’m guessing that trend is only going to accelerate. 

So if this isn’t just a local phenomenon — if I’m not just hanging out with multiple groups of all the wrong people — then it seems possible that while WoW continues to be grow (bringing new people into contact with MMOGs all the time), it may be approaching that point where significant numbers of long-term satisfied players nevertheless begin to cycle off.  That’s not too surprising given the typical longevity of any individual’s interest in a particular MMO. 

But if that’s so, then two big questions leap out: where are all these players going to go, and, as I’m so fond of asking, what comes next?

I know for example that Vanguard is jockeying for position as WoW’s successor, but I wonder about that.  It is supposed to have more flexible grouping and a few other innovations (in addition to expensive and detailed, if perhaps less-than-stunning graphics), but when it comes right down to it, what’s the draw for games like this?  Are those struck with WoW-nnui (whether this is their first MMOG or their tenth), who may have taken a handful of characters to level 60 in WoW, and then stuck around or come back to see what’s new on the way to level 70 in the upcoming expansion, really going to be excited to  play YAMITG (yet another men in tights game)?  If a player has become bored with  the by now well-trodden traditional MMOFRPG gameplay, how will another game bring them a new sort of experience, and not just present old dwarves in new clothing? 

 IMO this is the question to which Vanguard, Warhammer, Conan, LOTRO, Hero’s Journey, and any other contenders must have a clear and ready answer.

Fears of Turkey’s ‘invisible’ Armenians

By Sarah Rainsford,  BBC News, Istanbul

The head of the Armenian Orthodox church is in the middle of a controversial visit to Istanbul. Karekin II has in the past angered Turks by accusing them of committing genocide against Armenians at the time of World War I. Turkey denies the charges of genocide.

I thought it was a perfectly simple question.  I had gone backstage to interview the conductor of an ethnic Armenian church choir after a rousing performance at Istanbul University.

As the choristers packed up their manuscripts, we chatted for a while about the music and the conductor was all smiles.

Then I asked his opinion on the conference his choir was singing at – the snappily labelled “Symposium on New Approaches to Turkish-Armenian relations”.

I wondered if he thought the event could help mend fences. Within seconds, he was edging away from me, apparently deeply uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to talk about politics,” he pleaded, “we just came for the music!”

It was a telling insight.

Closed borders

Turkey and Armenia are neighbours who might as well be a million miles apart. Diplomatic relations have been frozen for over a decade; their mutual border is closed.

Part of the reason is Turkey’s support for the Azeris in their conflict with Armenia. But the direct dispute is over a matter of history: The death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in eastern Turkey during the dying days of the Ottoman empire.

Armenia wants those deaths recognised as genocide. Turkey refuses to accept that term. For Armenia and its vast and powerful diaspora, getting recognition from Ankara is a mission so important, it is almost a way of life. But here inside Turkey, ethnic Armenians have chosen an uncomfortable silence over confrontation.

I visited Anush and her brother Vartan in a leafy middle class suburb of Istanbul. Their apartment was typical of the area, but with the odd design twists, like knotted dried flowers on the table that reminded me of my trips to the Caucasus.

“Turks still ask me where I come from,” Vartan told me, as his sister brought in the tea. “They seem to have no idea there used to be hundreds of thousands of us here.”

Uneasy existence

Anush and Vartan are just two of some 60,000 ethnic Armenians who still live in Turkey – a land their ancestors have inhabited for almost 2,000 years. It is an uneasy co-existence.

“We’ve lived with violence ever since I was born,” Anush told me. “Graffiti on our churches, abuse on the streets. I still think twice in some areas before I say my name openly.” For previous generations life was even tougher.

Anush’s parents barely speak Armenian, because their parents worried they would stand out and when Armenian militants began assassinating Turkish diplomats in the 1970s, Turkish Armenian families here made themselves more invisible still.

It is hardly surprising they do not normally voice an opinion on what happened in 1915. Anush and Vartan are a rare exception and, even so, I have had to change their names.

We know exactly what happened, Vartan told me.

He said his Armenian great grandparents were forcibly deported south, accused of siding with Russian troops against the Turks. They handed their children over to Turkish neighbours for safety and never returned.

There is a similar tragedy behind every Armenian door here, but the local patriarch has banned his community from discussing it – if they want to keep their jobs in Armenian churches and schools.

“It’s fear,” Anush told me simply.

There have been some early signs of change here. Last year a university in Istanbul hosted the first discussion of the genocide claims in Turkey ever to question the official line. It was hugely controversial but it happened.

And now international pressure on Ankara to re-examine its position is increasing. Vartan welcomes that but he senses a rise in aggressive, nationalist feeling in Turkey in response.

“If other countries force this issue, it will be terrible for the Armenian people here,” Vartan told me quietly.

“If you plunge a man into boiling water, he will burn,” he said, “but if you increase the heat gently, he could get used to it.”

‘Pseudo-citizens’

Unlike the Kurds, Turkey’s Armenian population is an officially recognised minority with certain rights and privileges. But despite that – and despite their silence – Turkish Armenians seem like pseudo-citizens.

I began to understand the price people like that choirmaster pay to live in peace in Turkey

Anush told me that in one school text book Armenians are still described as separatists with an eye on Turkish land. History books carry the official view of 1915, of course, with the Armenians exiled as traitors.

And even now, in Armenian schools here, ethnic Armenians are banned from teaching certain “strategic” subjects – geography, sociology, morality, history.

As we talked into the warm evening, and glasses of tea gave way to Armenian cognac, I began to understand the price people like that choir master pay to live in peace in Turkey.

To many Armenians abroad their silence is a sort of treachery. For Anush, Vartan and the others it is about protecting a fragile peace.  But it is all built on the shakiest of foundations.

“I am positive. I do have hopes for Turkey,” Anush told me as I put on my shoes to go.

“But I don’t remember ever feeling truly comfortable living here. Always at the back of my mind is the thought that one day I may be forced to leave.”