I am an elf
A night elf to be precise. I've done a terribly thing. With just a little egging on from a friend, Tom, I succumbed after a years worth of holding out against World of Warcraft. For those who are blissfully unfamiliar, it's one of those Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or MMORPGs (why make an acronym like that?).
I've been playing for a week now, and while I'm already prone to game addictions, this thing literally sucks you in. The world they've created is immense, textured and beautiful. But the most amazing part is how much fun it is playing with real people. I've played games online before, mostly first person shooters, where the object is to kill all the other human players. This brings frustration, and annoyance when it becomes apparant that most of your online host are twelve to fourteen year olds who think calling somone gay repeatedly in overly squeeky pre-pubescent voices is the height of wit. Whoever introduced microphones to online gaming should be shot, and I don't mean virtually. But I digress, the point is, you play against, rather than with, your fellow flesh-and-bloodies.
In Warcraft, players have objectives to fullfill that involve killing non-human characters where killing is involved at all. Actually the process by which you could kill another human player is deliberately esoteric, and the state temporary. Instead, it is often necessary to team up, frequently with complete strangers, and I've been amazed by their levels of generosity and kindness. I've had people go well out of their way to help me, when there is no game mechanic to reward them for doing so. The internet has gotten a pretty bad rap for antisocialism. It's nice to see the fundamentals of human-relationships (making "friends") and a little goodnaturedness and altruism emerging in this context.
posted by delta at 8:48 p.m.
4 Comments:
Ha ha, say goodbye to your life. That game is just beautiful, not really my cup of tea, but Olly plays it lots and lots. I even know of someone who took 2 weeks off work to play it!
It definitely seems to be the biggest game of its kind for online communities, people helping each other out etc. Pretty cool I think, although sometimes when I'm sitting next to three guys talking about how they met up online, and were discovering this or that, and then they ran into this other guy, and it turns out that he had this buf... blah blah blah, you'd wonder why they don't do real stuff together as opposed to online.
This game seems to be an exception (as you yourself say.) I once saw a documentary on those school kids who were held hostage by terrorists in Russia. One of the survivors said that when he plaid computer games he always chose to be the cop, but that before he used to chose being the terrorist because all the games give them the best guns! I'm not saying that games should have the obligation of teaching kids morals, but they shouldn't be teaching them to associate the idea of being a criminal with that of pleasure and being the best either, that's corrupting them.
To be fair, I don't think you can blame games for 'corrupting' people. There are games that vindicate criminals (Grand Theft Auto is probably the best example of this) and games that encourage you to be the good person. In the end they're only games, and everyone has to make their own decisions about how they want to live their life. You're hardly going to become a terrorist because in counter-strike you were a terrorist and you always won.
And sometimes the idea of being a criminal is associated with pleasure and being the best... its for kids to learn that that pleasure comes with the price of losing your morals which being a criminal in a game would teach you anyway.
I agree, and would add in the context of this game, the single difference between the "terrorists" and the "counter-terrorists" is the equipment and uniform - the goal for both sides is to kill all of the opposing team.
Why is it acceptable to murder a game character so long as he's in the uniform of a guerrilla?
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