Can You Only Love an MMOG
Once?
By Cody
“Micajah” Bye and Jeff “Ethec”
Woleslagle
Stepping out onto the
frozen tundra, a gust of chill wind tickles your legs. Your wooden club
is held tightly in your right hand and a cracked wooden shield is in
your left. The battle cries of your kindred echo off the glacial walls
of your icy homeland, and you eagerly wade out into the maze-like
white-blue corridors. The tundra is your homeland, and you’re
ready to defend it. You do not fear death.
For many of you, the initial narrative passage may remind you
of your first steps in the original Everquest, wading into battle with
your Barbarian Shaman. It was a journey many of us took; you began
leveling your character in the frozen wastes surrounding the Barbarian
home city in order to eventually delve into the depths of Blackburrow
and climb back up and out again. Everquest was the first MMORPG for
many of you and it still holds a nostalgic piece of hearts across the
world. This was a magical world that many of us entered into, and it
caught us by the heart-strings, dragging us along into its lore and
adventure as we tried our best to enhance our own worth in the eyes of
our online friends.
By exploring the lands of Norrath, many of us may have
found our one and only true MMOG love.
However, there seems to be no going back to that original
journey that we took in Everquest, when jumping online to adventure in
Norrath was what our thoughts were concerned with throughout the day.
Whatever love we once had for Everquest remains squarely in the past,
nestled against our other fond memories of times we can no longer
experience. I’ve personally tried reinserting my avatar back
into Norrath time and time again, but I find that my time spent in that
online world is generally apathetic and I quickly move on to other
realms.
Throughout our travels, Jeff “Ethec”
Woleslagle and I have had many discussions concerning MMOGs and the way
they affect our lives. While both of us have differing viewpoints on a
number of subjects, our experience with MMOGs has been very similar. We
both played the original Everquest, and we’ve never quite
found anything else like it. According to Jeff, the French have a
saying, “You can only love once.” Is the same true
for the games we play? Can you only love an MMOG once?
Falling in love with an MMOG is
href="http://discuss.extremetech.com/forums/thread/1004378658.aspx">an
easy thing to do,
especially when you’re young enough to still have the
excitement and anticipation of delving into a new computer game and the
inexperience of many years of playing these sort of titles. Like Jeff
and I, you may have
href="http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/stratics/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=657&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1">fallen
in love with your first MMOG that you ever
played, spending hours upon hours going adventuring in the untamed
wilderness and learning how to do quests and defeat the monsters found
within the dungeons you crawl into. Or perhaps it was the second MMOG
you tried. Or the third. But you probably have at least one massively
multiplayer title that you truly loved.
alt="professions" title="professions" name="photo_j"
border="0" height="113" width="150">
When you leave your MMOG, expect some changes to occur
while you're away, like what happened with the NGE and Star Wars
Galaxies.
Like love in the real world, it often doesn’t work
exactly as we planned. People – and games – change
over time, developing new tendencies or habits that we may or may not
appreciate. Games offer a very serious conundrum, however, in that
there’s always something newer, fresher, and sexier lurking
on the horizon. Initially, you may leave your game world because
you’ve found a different game; or perhaps your life outside
of gaming needs more of your attention. Whichever is the case, once you
leave a game, it’s often impossible to find that
“loving” relationship back again.
Due to the ever-changing nature of MMOGs, you’ll
find that the game isn’t the same as when you left it. Your
character class may be different, with different abilities (for better
or worse) and the landscape around the areas you inhabit may have
changed as well. If any expansions were released while you were away,
there could be a whole new race living in your world! These changes
often come as striking blows to most gamers who expect their world to
stay the same.
Even the players you left may be different. Perhaps a few
other gamers left with you as well, looking for new games to try their
luck on. Characters that were of your level may have advanced even
higher, and now can’t even level with you very well. Your
guild may have expanded or disbanded, leaving you to be a
“new guy” again or as an orphan.
alt="DAoC World" title="DAoC World" name="photo_j"
border="0" height="119" width="150">
When you do decide to return to your old "flame", make
sure you aren't expecting the same sort of experiences you had when you
left.
But, in the end, none of these things impact us as much as any
bitterness that you harbored towards the game before you left. Often,
games don’t leave us; we leave games. Although a game may
have some nostalgic qualities, there’s often a reason behind
leaving a game in the first place. It could have been that you were
subconsciously getting tired of the grind, thus you allowed your
“real life issues” to bring you back to reality. Or
maybe it was that nerf put on your class that broke your back, and you
went looking for a game that would allow you to play a truly balanced
character. Whatever these issues are, it’s often ignored when
you look back at the game. Nostalgia is an incredibly strong emotion,
and it’s something that easily pushes all our other logical
thoughts aside.
With this clearly on the table, again the question comes up:
Can you only love an MMOG once?
Honestly, there is no “concrete” answer to
this question, because each individual player is different. There
probably are players out there that have successfully returned to the
games of
their choice, finding new life in them with new guilds and new friends.
By looking across
Internet forums,
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=16346">including
our own, you’ll find multiple
href="http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/1445791#1445791">examples
of gamers that have
href="http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?gameid=9&setview=forums&post=1449207&bhcp=1#1449207">quit
their favorite games only to want to
play them again.
Before you attempt to return to the game you love –
or loved – make sure you steel yourself. The game will be
different than when you left it. Things probably changed.
It’ll take some getting used to, but – like any
real life relationship – if you put work into it, you may be
able to find your true love once again.
As readers, consider your own
MMOG story. Which MMOG did you first fall in love with? Why did you
leave? Did you ever go back, or try to go back? Let us know by
style="text-decoration: underline;">
href="[email protected]">emailing
us or
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?p=150955#post150955">talking
about it in the forums!
Ten Ton Hammer is your
source for editorials
about the MMOG industry!
