Ah, let's talk about a tired subject - MMOs of old. Let me tell you something, I do not like the idea of playing old MMOs. I don't want to. I do not want to sit by a group of mobs, with a tank, X DPS, and a healer and pull one enemy at a time for .0001% XP. Sure, I'd love to sit down with a group and do a stationary thing, just not understanding that this is day 104 of 300 on my road to max level to actually play a game.

Some games are immune from this. In UO, you use skills to level them, so that's important. It's all about going around and trying to just stay alive with your stuff. Then get "stuff" then get dead. You get dead son in UO. It's true, that's the whole point of UO, it's a griefing simulator.

Anyway, spending a year or two to level up is dumb and that's why old MMOs are dumb. We look back at it lovingly because that's the only way things were done. That was "our" way of doing it. Obviously it's better, right? No, it's not, if it was everyone would do it. It was literally the only thing to play so it's the only way of doing it.

So, actually, let's talk about what's changed. There was no content in games back then. Like, very little. Massive huge empty words of copied / pasted trees and nothing. Camps of monsters. The objectives in the game all took months and that was to give the game purpose. There was no questing, beyond getting your epic gear. Which was obtain like a billion different items from things that were impossible and required a group of people who got nothing from helping you but you being a little bit more powerful.

Now games have content, like arenas and battlegrounds. They have things like raids that are interactive and require weeks to complete. They're scripted events that required group of coordination, not just like 200 people smashing face against the leg of some polygon. Take Wildstar, you can literally just sit around all day and play house. Decorating, getting decorations, whatever. Crafting too, you can just chill out at your house and craft all day if you want. That's a mini-game in of itself.

Then there is PvP, in multiple flavors. Warzones, arenas, battlegrounds, rated battlegrounds. There are raids and dungeons and daily quests. There are legions of things to do that aren't "sit around wait for a group." Don't get me wrong - I had fun back then! That was, before, you know, this "new way of doing it" showed up.

I don't mean to insult anyone - if you like wasting tons of times waiting on groups and taking forever to level, that's you. Not me, and apparently not the players at large. So, yeah, consider that.

In the Bush with Xerin

I hate frozen food. I made Shrimp teriyaki tonight and it was freaking annoying, I had to thaw the shrimp which takes forever and a half. If you google "thawing shrimp" you have like 29343 ways of doing it, half of them probably will kill you, half of the remainder will not thaw the shrimp, and the last 1/4th will thaw it given following the instructions perfectly. I, on the other hand, just opened the bag and let water run it. Least amount of effort.

It was good though. Cooking is great. Here is a quick MMO recipe for you.

MMO Nerds Homecooked Meal

• 1x Box of Hamburger Helper
• 1x Hamburger Meat (whatever you can figure out to buy)
• 1x Some butter (just guess)
• 1x Some milk (just guess)
• 1x Random seasonings (yeah I know you put lemon pepper and/or cayenne in everything)

Aight, step one pick up the phone. Step two call for pizza. Step three, go online and tell everyone that you're making a homecooked meal. Step seven, pretend like you're going to the bathroom. Step eight, pick up pizza. Step nine, raid.

No one cooks, so no one knows if you're telling the truth. Hey, I'm sure someone considers the pizza place home, so technically, home cooked!

You're welcome everybody.