My biggest gripe of late is FF11, FFXI, FFbiteme, or whatever you feel suits your current mood. In order to properly appreciate the hell I narrowly avoided, you have to understand my past MMO experiences. But to tell that tale, we're going back to the very, very, very beginning.
Ok, not THE beginning, as that would entail warnings about adult content. We'll start at age eight, or there abouts, and my first exposure to a computer game. I literally started on Zork, before it was properly called Zork, played on a TRS-80 home computer.
How can a eight year old appreciate a text based adventure game? It was interactive. It talked to me. Oddly enough, I'm not sure how, I knew that somebody made the game, I knew it wasn't magic, and had a vague understanding that there was math involved. But it was telling a story, and I was the hero. That was what mattered to me.
Because it was the early 80s, and my family didn't get a computer until the TI99-4A was about to get dropped like a flaming hot lead balloon filled with cyanide gas, my formative years were spent with a LOT of text-based adventures. While other (comparatively VERY well off) families were playing their Nintendo, we were watching dad trying to spreadsheet. (Incidentally, this was the first indication of the Y2K "bug". The date entry didn't extend beyond 1999. Yet another sign that a kid with lots of time, few friends, and a new toy really doesn't need flashing sprites to make his day).
Shortly before we moved to Fayetteville, NC, we aquired an IBM PCjr. Those in the know realize this computer prompted one of the grandest advancements in gaming, the graphical adventure. Specifically, King's Quest. Supposedly, King's Quest was the result of a direct request from IBM. They were looking for a way to show off the 16 color display, a significant technical achievement for the time (1984). King's Quest was the end of the text based adventure game as we knew it.
Just before the Fayetteville move we got our hands on Wizardry. The PC version. Before I moved to Fayetteville, that was all I had in the way of RPG goodness. CGA line drawings and learning what Ninjas and Samurais were. I didn't know they were cool until that game.
Later, Starflight sucked up a lot of time. I still love the memories of that game. What really surplants that game, though, is Pools of Radiance. Wow. Not WoW, but really amazing all the same.
This time there was D&D, I didn't have to buy miniatures, and there was exploration that I could enjoy. At the time it had revolutionary game play. I still prefer the turn based play, but I'm not going to harp on that.
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