Comments on: Why I Have Yet to Play WOW http://unshui.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/why-i-have-yet-to-play-wow/ feng shui-less since 1965 Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:22:33 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: Gwen http://unshui.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/why-i-have-yet-to-play-wow/#comment-6 Gwen Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:32:41 +0000 http://unshui.wordpress.com/?p=57#comment-6 Sort of tangenting from your comment, but your last line both cracked me up (Fiero sounds like something that you'd find on urban dictionary) and got me thinking. As a young gamer, I was playing Nil which encouraged being creative and social. Other people my age probably played Mario Bros or something similarly cartoony. These days, stuff like COD or even GTA is being played by young gamers. While I'm not going to make any sort of tired point about "violence affecting kids" it does provoke an interesting distinction between what games I exposed myself to when I was younger and what is more commonly played now. I wonder how many current youngins will look back in ten years and say "man, those 5,000 kills I racked up in COD were all so awesome and made me into the cool person I am today. I had such a great time blowing stuff up and spraying bullets into people's faces." I wonder how many would bother to write a blog post about it. Sort of tangenting from your comment, but your last line both cracked me up (Fiero sounds like something that you’d find on urban dictionary) and got me thinking. As a young gamer, I was playing Nil which encouraged being creative and social. Other people my age probably played Mario Bros or something similarly cartoony. These days, stuff like COD or even GTA is being played by young gamers.

While I’m not going to make any sort of tired point about “violence affecting kids” it does provoke an interesting distinction between what games I exposed myself to when I was younger and what is more commonly played now. I wonder how many current youngins will look back in ten years and say “man, those 5,000 kills I racked up in COD were all so awesome and made me into the cool person I am today. I had such a great time blowing stuff up and spraying bullets into people’s faces.” I wonder how many would bother to write a blog post about it.

]]> By: Daniel Silverstein http://unshui.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/why-i-have-yet-to-play-wow/#comment-5 Daniel Silverstein Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:32:11 +0000 http://unshui.wordpress.com/?p=57#comment-5 I remember back in the day, even in the 90s, it wasn't considered cool to play games beyond Mario and Duck Hunt. I had to kind of sniff around to find the people who played video games before the era of the Playstation. Honestly, Penny Arcade was right. We do have Sony to thank for making video games appeal to the jock/MTV crowd. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I can't say. Obviously WoW wouldn't exist without the invention of MUDs, but it wouldn't be as popular without the PSX's innovation of mainstream videogame appeal. I don't play too many games online. I've always preferred single player stuff just because I don't have to worry about lag. Although, I will say, even though I was on DialUp for the longest time, UT2004 always ran smoothly. And I actually met Darren on Jazz Jackrabbit 2 more than 10 years ago. But when I played WoW, I didn't feel the same personal connection to any of the players as I did in tight-knit online communities such as JJ2 or, I am presuming, Nilgiri. There are so many people and so you don't get to know all of them as well. If you're in a Guild, though, you know them, but Guilds are like those tight knit communities of online games of old. Still, 12 million people and you inevitably will only know a few. Seems to me that Nil would still feel like the better experience simply because of the way the community worked. I know that I still have fonder memories of Jazz than I do of WoW. You get some cool stories out of WoW to be sure, but nothing that lasts in your mind as much as the feelings of fiero from the days or yore. I remember back in the day, even in the 90s, it wasn’t considered cool to play games beyond Mario and Duck Hunt. I had to kind of sniff around to find the people who played video games before the era of the Playstation. Honestly, Penny Arcade was right. We do have Sony to thank for making video games appeal to the jock/MTV crowd. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I can’t say. Obviously WoW wouldn’t exist without the invention of MUDs, but it wouldn’t be as popular without the PSX’s innovation of mainstream videogame appeal.

I don’t play too many games online. I’ve always preferred single player stuff just because I don’t have to worry about lag. Although, I will say, even though I was on DialUp for the longest time, UT2004 always ran smoothly. And I actually met Darren on Jazz Jackrabbit 2 more than 10 years ago. But when I played WoW, I didn’t feel the same personal connection to any of the players as I did in tight-knit online communities such as JJ2 or, I am presuming, Nilgiri. There are so many people and so you don’t get to know all of them as well. If you’re in a Guild, though, you know them, but Guilds are like those tight knit communities of online games of old. Still, 12 million people and you inevitably will only know a few. Seems to me that Nil would still feel like the better experience simply because of the way the community worked. I know that I still have fonder memories of Jazz than I do of WoW. You get some cool stories out of WoW to be sure, but nothing that lasts in your mind as much as the feelings of fiero from the days or yore.

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