"It's only a game." I've used those four words myself, without
really thinking about their implications. Once, my boyfriend's guild had
carefully strategized and planned for a raid in the Plane of Fear, in
pre-expansion Norrath. They had several hours of painstaking success before
the entire raid was slaughtered, thanks to a train brought by a

When Lucy hides and
finds herself in the snowy forest of Narnia, she doesn't keep reminding
herself that she's just walked out of the back of a wardrobe. Alice may
realize that she arrived in Wonderland by way of a looking glass, but
she eventually starts interacting in her new surroundings. When I'm in
game, I don't always think about the login screen, or the fact that the
dragon that's trying to crush me to death is entirely a creature made
up of pixels.

"It's only a
game." When someone says that to me, it implies that I am wasting
my time, that my experiences in Hibernia, or Norrath, or Rubi-Ka, are
all trivial. Online gaming has become as much a part of my life as commuting
to work, making dinner, or vacuuming the house. My husband has resorted
to those four words when I cry real tears over an in-game experience.
Never mind the fact that he doesn't understand why I cry anyway (that's
another column for an entirely different website!), my tears are the equivalent
of his anger. Our relationships with others, whether as a guild striving
for a goal, or a group of friends, sitting on the dock, talking about
our troubles, have the potential to impact our emotions in a very real
way.

Although it sounds
like a rare-spawn NPC, the hippocampus of the human brain is crucial to
our ability to remember both factual memories and memories of events.
According to some scientists, memory is the ability of the brain to create
new nerve networks, but the order of these networks isn't oldest to newest.
The networks exist within our entire cerebellum. If we understood why
we remembered certain things, and in an order that varies from person
to person, we might be a step closer to curing Alzheimer's and other debilitating
illnesses of the brain.

The first person I
met in Norrath was a level 3 wood elf ranger who asked if I wanted to
form a group. It would be easier to kill things with two of us, my boyfriend
assured me from across the room where he was busy preparing to die at
the point of D'vinn's dagger, again. So I accepted the group, and I made
a friend whom I have kept through all these years. We found out, after
about nine levels, that /tells are a wonderful thing, since he wasn't
sure that a ranger was his preferred class, and I met about a dozen more
rangers, and another bard. I joined a guild, watched the guild dissolve
under the weight of real life conflicts, joined another guild, and helped
to lead a guild. Well, that wasn't exactly the order of things, but do
you remember what you did at work six years ago? I probably could name
some of the projects I was working on at the time, but not in any particular
order, not unless something truly extraordinary took place.

J.M. Barrie, the author
of Peter Pan, is quoted as saying: "Someone said that God gave us
memories so that we might have roses in December." I met some really
wonderful people in those early years of my online experiences. I still
know how to find some of them in the real world. I've lost touch with
others. Much as it hurts, less and less as the years march onward, to
think back to the breakup with your first boyfriend or girlfriend, it
hurts to remember the people who you used to see every night and who vanished
without a word. As guilds fall apart and as online worlds lose their luster,
I can still smile as I think back to all the friends who kept me amused,
alive, engrossed, and annoyed. They are my roses in December, the best
and brightest as I sit and wait for the next unexplored frontier.

Relationships aren't
the only part of online experiences that can influence our perspectives.
The memories of online relationships are felt, as much as remembered,
but what about the places, the NPCs, and the events of our gaming days
and nights? Some of my favorite experiences in MMOs were the firsts, and
these firsts didn't always involve killing a tough NPC. Sometimes it was
being killed, like my first fall from the heights of Kelethin, or the
first time I drowned in the waters of Felwithe, because I had no idea
how to get out. Maybe it was being killed, then going back to exact revenge
later, as with Kizdean Gix, or a griffon (hey, wait, that's not a griffawn!),
or Broon and his Cyclops brothers in Karana.

Writer and philosopher
Stanislaus Lec once said "You can close your eyes to reality but
not to memories." My first steps into Solusek B might not have been
real, but the train of kobolds that flattened me completely certainly
seemed real. The frequent falls, when I lagged and my travel song ceased,
from some height above the Burning Wood into a nest of angry hornets.
Those falls were frightening enough to be real. The tears I cried were
very real when the fire giants summoned me into lava and the raid leader,
who had cajoled me into participating several levels before I thought
it might be wise, logged. Fortunately, my virtual memories of the incident
are tempered with the friends that I didn't even realize I had.

I thought I'd lost
all of my items, the guide said he couldn't summon anything and so I sat
there, naked save my "swimsuit" from character selection, outside
the zone. While I waited, and waited, and waited for a GM response to
my second petition, slowly, my demise became news and my friends logged
on. "Do you need me to come and sit with you?" someone offered.
"Do you want my X, it's just sitting in the bank anyway?" others
questioned. I didn't accept. I couldn't. After all, my lambent armor and
my Staff of Writhing were earned through my own adventures and misadventures.

"It's just a
game." I admit it, I've said it before, but I won't anymore. After
all, I cannot discount the relief that flowed through me when my items
were returned. Neither can I trivialize the excitement I feel when I am
able to catch a glimpse of the future in the screenshots or sketches of
Vanguard. What will I be able to see? What danger awaits me and what opportunity?
I'm anxious to create new virtual memories, and so I will venture through
the login screen again.