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healingmirthToday is patch day on WoW. Or, it would be patch day, if they were patching anything, and I don't think they are; the servers are down for maintenance. That takes longer to say though. The point is, the servers are down, on purpose, and Tuesdays are the day that WoW servers go down.
When you spend serious time playing MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games), your life is scheduled around patch day, to some extent. Depending on the game's mechanics and your dedication to playing, patch day can mean new features, broken features, new content to explore, reset timers on old content that you're farming for your alts, new recipes to discover, or a fundamental change to which three buttons you mash as you play your character. For some people, patch day is the day that they do laundry, run errands, or talk to their spouses while making eye contact.
I haven't counted myself as any sort of serious gamer for about two years, when I finally quit EverQuest and lost patience with World of Warcraft soon after. A few weeks ago, some old friends started playing EQ again, and I almost went back, but I just can't pick the habit back up. I logged in, ran around for 20 minutes, and talked to someone I didn't really like two years ago, when I needed to get along with him.
EverQuest is just too big. When I quit, there were fourteen expansions, and two have launched since then. I don't have any idea what the lore was for anything past expansion number seven, though I could probably tell you all the quests you need to do or factions you need to raise to get to the end-game content.
Lo, a barrier to entry! I am generally a big fan of barriers to entry in online games, because I am a horrible elitist. If I could segregate new players on their own server until they earned a driver's license for their character, I totally would.
Also, anyone who hops their character around in circles.
I think, though, that this is the first time I've been stranded outside the barrier to entry for a game. I'm sort of okay with it. I was really angry, really a lot of the time, when I finally quit EQ. Back when I used to enjoy playing, instead of feeling obligated to log in, I'm sure there were weeks when I spent 80 hours online, if not necessarily engaged in the game. At the end, I was just scraping by with 25 or 30 hours, keeping up 100% raid attendance out of pure cussedness and refusal to be run off by our lead cleric, and hating nearly every minute of it.
(There's a whole other post that I may make someday about the social pressures of being a well-geared healer or tank in a raiding guild. I'm sure someone else has written that one, too.)
On the other hand, WoW is easy, and I don't have to talk to anyone if I don't want to.
EverQuest was never as popular as WoW became, because it was hard, it required coordination between people, practice to play your character well enough to maximize the game mechanics, and huge time sinks looking for rare items. It's a little like I imagine boot camp. It's a lot like the camaraderie in the trenches of a dead-end job.
WoW is really, really easy. And in the year that I was totally away from WoW, it got even easier. This explains why, when I discovered that I had a week of credit on my WoW account, I got hooked again. I don't think I'm permanently hooked, because none of my friends play anymore, and the random idiots are already starting to wear on me, but I could be.
A bunch of my friends are playing on an EQ emulation server though, that's starting over from the beginning. http://www.project1999.org/ That might be just my speed.
When you spend serious time playing MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games), your life is scheduled around patch day, to some extent. Depending on the game's mechanics and your dedication to playing, patch day can mean new features, broken features, new content to explore, reset timers on old content that you're farming for your alts, new recipes to discover, or a fundamental change to which three buttons you mash as you play your character. For some people, patch day is the day that they do laundry, run errands, or talk to their spouses while making eye contact.
I haven't counted myself as any sort of serious gamer for about two years, when I finally quit EverQuest and lost patience with World of Warcraft soon after. A few weeks ago, some old friends started playing EQ again, and I almost went back, but I just can't pick the habit back up. I logged in, ran around for 20 minutes, and talked to someone I didn't really like two years ago, when I needed to get along with him.
EverQuest is just too big. When I quit, there were fourteen expansions, and two have launched since then. I don't have any idea what the lore was for anything past expansion number seven, though I could probably tell you all the quests you need to do or factions you need to raise to get to the end-game content.
Lo, a barrier to entry! I am generally a big fan of barriers to entry in online games, because I am a horrible elitist. If I could segregate new players on their own server until they earned a driver's license for their character, I totally would.
Also, anyone who hops their character around in circles.
I think, though, that this is the first time I've been stranded outside the barrier to entry for a game. I'm sort of okay with it. I was really angry, really a lot of the time, when I finally quit EQ. Back when I used to enjoy playing, instead of feeling obligated to log in, I'm sure there were weeks when I spent 80 hours online, if not necessarily engaged in the game. At the end, I was just scraping by with 25 or 30 hours, keeping up 100% raid attendance out of pure cussedness and refusal to be run off by our lead cleric, and hating nearly every minute of it.
(There's a whole other post that I may make someday about the social pressures of being a well-geared healer or tank in a raiding guild. I'm sure someone else has written that one, too.)
On the other hand, WoW is easy, and I don't have to talk to anyone if I don't want to.
EverQuest was never as popular as WoW became, because it was hard, it required coordination between people, practice to play your character well enough to maximize the game mechanics, and huge time sinks looking for rare items. It's a little like I imagine boot camp. It's a lot like the camaraderie in the trenches of a dead-end job.
WoW is really, really easy. And in the year that I was totally away from WoW, it got even easier. This explains why, when I discovered that I had a week of credit on my WoW account, I got hooked again. I don't think I'm permanently hooked, because none of my friends play anymore, and the random idiots are already starting to wear on me, but I could be.
A bunch of my friends are playing on an EQ emulation server though, that's starting over from the beginning. http://www.project1999.org/ That might be just my speed.
