personal-history
Latest
Seven years, seven months, seventeen days
This isn't about World of Warcraft directly. This is about a time when I found myself looking for a job, and found something better. This is about how I ended up at WoW Insider.
The Daily Grind: What first drew you to your current game?
My memories of 2004 grow hazier over time -- that was a decade ago, after all -- but I still remember what first drew me to World of Warcraft, and it wasn't a longstanding love of the strategy games. No, what engaged me was the fact that it promised a break from the tedious group-based slogs and aimless wandering that made up the MMO landscape at the time. After playing Final Fantasy XI for two years, the idea of being able to just go out into the world and do things and have actual quests was so intoxicating that it could be legally called a drug. It's been many years since WoW was new and many years since it was my main game, and what keeps me in the game is not what initially attracted me to the game. But I do remember why I bought it in the first place, during a time when it seemed almost impossible to find and was first breaking subscription records. So what about you, dear readers? What first drew you to your current game, even if those attributes aren't the reason you stick around now? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What game got you into MMOs?
The first MMO I ever played was Final Fantasy XI, but that wasn't what first got me into MMOs. If I hadn't played Final Fantasy VI years earlier and fallen in love with it, odds are I also wouldn't have cared much about Final Fantasy XI. As far as I'm concerned, that's what got me started down the road. For that matter, I probably wouldn't have kept playing MMOs after leaving FFXI rather disappointed if my next game hadn't been City of Heroes. For some people, MMOs history is a one-link chain that starts and ends with seeing a specific game and thinking it looks cool. For others it can be traced back to a litany of games that led to both your present and future choice of virtual worlds. So what game got you into MMOs? Was it your first MMO, another game that led to your first MMO, or even something as silly as a card game that led to you making the right friends? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Soapbox: Gaming addiction isn't about games
When I was 21, I was miserable. I was stuck in a long-distance relationship with someone I couldn't trust and could barely see, I was stuck with no real career opportunities, and I had my entire lifestyle ripped away from me unexpectedly. I felt like I was willing to climb, but I didn't see any handholds out of the pit I was stuck in. The only thing I looked forward to was the end of the day, when I could crawl into a game and let my actual day-to-day life evaporate into memory. I wasn't an addict. Barely. This isn't a plea for sympathy; all of this happened years ago, and it's not where I am now. Things got better. This is a talk that we need to have about addiction because the few times that addiction gets brought up, it's addressed by people who seem to have only the vaguest grasp of the games involved. Addiction isn't a result of game mechanics or playstyles or subscription formats or anything else. It's a result of people.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Remembering my time in City of Heroes
Not long after my first column on the City of Heroes shutdown, I received an email that contained several of the testimonials from this full-to-bursting thread on the Save CoH boards. And they're not the only ones out there. There are countless stories about what the game means to people, ranging from the silly to the sublime, stories that can only really accumulate in a game that's run for eight solid years. When it comes to recollections about the game, I'm not Mercedes Lackey or Scott Kurtz or even Eric Burns-White. I'm what the byline says: a mild-mannered reporter. But I'm also a guy with a lot of feelings about the game, one that I've been playing on and off for nearly all of its eight-year run. To be blunt, I've got the microphone and you don't. So I'm going to go ahead and throw my hat into the ring when it comes to remembering City of Heroes, starting with the game that I played at launch for less than two weeks.
Ask Massively: Massively is one of those multiple-robot Transformers edition
The technical term depends on how much of a fan you are and whether or not you want to be a jerk. The only term that has been officially used with any regularity is "combiner," which describes nicely what's going on but isn't terribly evocative. "Gestalt" is always a popular fan term, but it's also clearly the sort of term that bored 20-year-old psych student comes up with when talking about a cartoon online instead of doing homework. You know what? Let's just say we're a supergroup, like Asia. That's easier. So while you're queueing up "Heat of the Moment" and cursing me for getting that song stuck in your head for the next four days, it's time for Ask Massively, which this week features questions about the staff's opinions on games past, present, and future. Fun for everyone! And of course, you can send in your question to ask@massively.com, or you can just leave it in the comment field.
The Daily Grind: What's your briefest MMO dalliance?
There are some games that we play for months on end and never even bat an eye at the timing. And then there are games that we are given for free and never pick up after two days of play, even if we have no particular reason for leaving them behind. Usually we talk about the games that suck us in and transport us to a new realm, but it's wrong to ignore the games that don't make it very far out of the shrink-wrapped bundle. Maybe you always wanted to like City of Heroes, but after four trials that didn't grab you it just wasn't worth the effort. Maybe you had pre-ordered Star Trek Online and decided after the pre-order early launch that you didn't actually want to play it any longer. Or perhaps you'd played on World of Warcraft for one night, then heard about the endgame and walked right back out without looking back. What game has had the shortest lifespan for you as an active player? If it was a game that you did pay for, did you do anything to try and recoup the loss?
