By I play computer games. I started on the console with Atari, but I had to play at friends’ homes because for whatever reason, be it girls shouldn’t play games, I should be studying instead of gaming, gaming is inappropriate, etc. Then my family got the Nintendo Entertainment System and I played Super Mario Bros every day. Eventually, I graduated to Super NES and then it kinda stopped there for consoles for me. I didn’t like the complicated game controllers and it seemed like a lot of the games were sports centered which I didn’t care for. I remember watching friends play football games and I no longer saw the appeal.
I moved on to computer games. When I started college, a friend introduced me to MUDs (Multi-User Dimension), specifically JediMUD. It all just looked like scrolling text on the screen, but there was so much more to it. There were battles, DTs (death traps), and most importantly, loot! The game was mostly moving in a cardinal direction 1 square at a time and you journeyed, whether to explore new areas (carefully, because if you didn’t read the description you could land on a death trap and lose all your equipment!) or go to a known place to get loots. The object of the game was to become powerful to down bosses to get their loot to equip so you can be even more powerful and the cycle repeats.
This JediMUD was a new concept to me… There were many people from all over (not just physically located near me), connected online, and playing this game at the same time. This was when the internet was mostly restricted to universities (i.e. AOL didn’t even exist at the time). Even though we were all playing the same game, we didn’t necessary interact with each other. It was like an alternate environment where we were taking up (virtual) space and going about our business and could form friendships and communities.
This fascinating new game had different classes to choose from, alignments to think about, it was basically my first introduction, unbeknownst to me, to nerd fanfare. I had never heard of Dungeons and Dragons or role playing games or anything of the sort. Even today, I don’t know if I would participate in an old school D&D session, but I sure do appreciate what came out of it. All that imagination and creativity to spawn computer games and eventually the genre: MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games), MMOs for short.
My husband is the one that got me into MMOs, he’s a big game fanatic. (Fun fact: He played D&D in high school.) Everquest was the first MMO we played. When we entered that game we couldn’t believe our eyes. It was like MUD had come to life, as if a visual overlay was put on all the text scrolling from the JediMUD that we played together. Obviously, the world was different, but it had the different races and classes to choose from and alignments to consider, and the exploration and battles, and of course finding loot.
Fast forward to the present and hubby and I have played numerous games and mostly MMOs together. We have fun playing computer games (he also likes to play console games, but that’s his problem 😉 ). We are currently playing WoW (World of Warcraft). This game… We’ve quit this game numerous times and we thought we successfully quit the game after going SEVEN years without it. Well, we came back in 2016 at the launch of their latest (at the time) expansion, Legion. It was fun times, but it lasted about a year and the joy faded fast after that. It was like a second job and it was the same old, same old. Also, WoW time gated the sh!t out of Legion and it got boring being told how and when to play the game. We couldn’t just enjoy the game and move on, we had to play on their timeline and be given breadcrumbs about the storyline that should’ve all been given to us at the release of the expansion. But, I digress…. We quit the game (again) right before the last raid tier (Antorus, The Burning Throne) came out. We couldn’t even see it through to the end of the expansion.
We re-subbed for the current expansion, Battle for Azeroth (BFA), but it was only because we had some money left in our Blizzard Wallet from converting WoW gold to Blizzard money back when we quit Legion. So, we basically got the game for free and just paid the subscription. Seemed like a good deal. We decided to play the game as casuals since that seemed to be Blizzard’s target audience. I mean, why else would they dumb down the game so a 5 year old can play it? Why else would they reward the casuals-that-never-want-to-do-the-hard-stuff-but-feel-entitled-to-the-best-rewards in the game? Well, the game was fun as a casual. We played when we wanted and didn’t feel pressured to be the best geared, the best ranked, the best of any thing. We played some alts (alternate characters) and everything seemed fine. Well, this is now 6 weeks into the game for us (I know this because I got an achievement last night for downing 6 world bosses that come out once a week) and I’m already feeling how I felt a year after Legion came out, i.e. bored and tired of the same crap.
But wait, when did this turn into a WoW bashing? Let’s get back on track… Let’s see, I was talking about playing computer games and how I started and where I am today… Oh yes, well, I was searching for new blogs to read and I came across a post about BFA crafting (I had entered “Crafting” in the search). I was reading it and thought, should I write about my gaming experience? Do I need to start a separate blog site for it (i.e. a gaming blog)? Then I started examining why I thought I needed a separate site. Well, people seem to prefer narrow focused blogs, i.e. Cooking, Photography, Gaming etc., which makes sense. After all, if I want advice/news for cooking or taking pictures or gaming, I’d want to read about it from experts, or at the very least, enthusiasts who are passionate about what they do.
But, my blog isn’t about a narrow focus, I don’t even know if it has a focus. It’s an outlet for me and to archive things I have done and experienced, and to share what brings me joy. If it brings joy to others then I’d consider it a great accomplishment, but I don’t expect everyone to have the same interests as me.
Then, my thoughts went down another path and perhaps I didn’t want to write about gaming because there’s still a stigma (in my mind) against gaming. Gaming is a waste of time, gaming isn’t productive, etc. basically, game shaming. There’s been a noticeable shift and gaming is definitely more accepting now a days, I would even say it’s “cool”. Look at the tournament prize pools, the amount of money top streamers are making, and TV commercials (mostly cell phones and their capability of playing popular games on them). However, I still hesitate to write about it or talk about it to others and even want to down play my joy at playing computer games.
Well, this post is to say I play computer games and I find great joy in doing so. My only concern at the moment is what kind of picture do I post with this? I’ve decided to set the Featured Image as my current main character: Brinova, Resto Druid. Her transmog needs some work, but that’s for a different time. Anyone have a cool transmog/character outfit they want to show off?
#WhatBringsYouJoy #NoShameInYourGame #ComputerGamingIsFun #PlayingComputerGamesIsCheapEntertainment #IHeartGaming
Cindy Lee Mattison 