Meet the Team: Craig Withers
Once a week our writers will give you a glimpse into their lives, to let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more Meet the Team.
What do you do for Massively.com?
I contribute the weekly column, Behind the Curtain. Instead of having a real job on the site posting up actual news, I'm lucky enough to just hang around and ramble on for a few hundred words every seven days, in a general opinion-based format.
What's your favorite MMO?
World of Warcraft, easily. Like the T, I feel like a bit of a sell-out choosing WoW, but this is my time in the spotlight, and I'll pick whatever game I want to, and there's not a thing you can do to stop me!
Sorry.
My entry into the MMO world started with Star Wars Galaxies, which I still dabble in occasionally. I've also spent a fair bit of time in EVE Online, but haven't had an active account in either for quite some time.
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What games are you playing now, and what are your characters?
Are you deaf? I already said WoW. Jeez. My current main is a Draenei Warrior on Ghostlands EU, who is a smidgen away from 78, and would probably be closer were I not being made to waste my time with you lot. I've also got a 70 Forsaken Priest and Tauren Druid on Shadowsong EU. The picture up top there is of the Druid, who was my first character to 60 and 70. I'll probably have to dust him off soon, as I'm starting to feel guilty about leaving him alone for so long.
Why do you like MMOs so much?
Short question, big answer. The answer lies somewhere between the social aspects and the appeal of having an ongoing, continual investment in a lasting world. I truly believe that MMOs have the capacity to be the future of gaming. As 'Web 2.0' and 'social networking' becomes more and more a part of people's lives, the unique blend of social interaction and content (both user and developer-created) offered by MMOs will become the norm. I think we'll eventually see the day where people won't be asking if you play MMOs, but what MMOs you play.
What accomplishment in-game are you most proud of?
Finding a great guild, filled with people I love spending time with. I'm hardly a guild-whore, but I've spent time in a few guilds, and none of them have held a candle next to the one I'm in now. Almost all of us who play MMOs are in a guild, but it's rare that you find one whose temperament and ideals match your own, and I'm proud to be a part of my guild.
What's the most terrible, drama-filled, awful thing to happen to you in an MMO?
When my WoW account got hacked, a while back. I run a fairly tight ship when it comes to security on my PC – Firefox with NoScript, Zonealarm Pro, AVG and two different anti-spyware apps, but I still managed to get key-logged somehow.
That didn't really happen in an MMO though, if you want to be picky. I've been lucky enough to avoid any major drama in my MMO career thus far. I've watched a Guild Officer try to stage a coup, fail miserably, leave to start his own raiding guild, then fail at that and be welcomed back with open arms from an old guild. Apart from that though, I was kicked from my first guild for auctioning a skill book I won from AQ20 – a classic noob mistake if ever there was one.
If you had 10 more hours to play every week, what would you spend them doing?
I think I'd start playing Lord of the Rings Online. I was a huge Tolkien fanboy when I was growing up, so there's a rather substantial part of me that's aching to get into the game, particularly after hearing Mike evangelise the game on the last few episodes of our podcast. Or I might just play more WoW, it's 50-50 to be honest.
When you're not playing MMOs, what do you do?
Weep gently, until I get the chance to play MMOs some more. Work, I mean. I provide internal and external support for a large, multinational IT company. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I fix computers. Surprise surprise.
