What strikes me about this environment (MMORPG) is the powerful immersive effect it is able to wield. I'm playing largely on a small Mactintosh laptop screen. (Yeah, that's right Windows people; I have an nVidia card in my little Mac laptop.) Sometimes I move to my second, larger external monitor, but even that is only 17". Yes, the graphics are stunning (hopefully you checked out the screen shot on the muster entry) Yes, the background sound is evocative. But how immersive can an environment be on a 12" laptop screen? Plenty. Here's proof.
I logged in and checked the chat window for James. Sure enough, he was out and about, and at a new level already. On the map he appeared as a slowly moving circle, but in a land I did not know. Not too long thereafter he discovered me as well and invited me to join him as a marauding party member. Of course I did. He came to me, as I did not know how to get to wherever it was he had been wandering around. We hooked up (literally, I put myself on follow James, and let him tow me.)
Soon we were back in his newly discovered land, Stormwind. It was a human village, though of course, all manner of creature wandered there abouts. We rushed out to explore this virgin land, virgin to us anyway. Almost immediately a highwayman attacked us and we fought back in our now usual manner. James at the front, swinging his mighty axe (mightier than the last time we had forayed); me and Belpad behind him, tossing all manner of spell and charm.
The loot we stole from them we killed was new and different, as was the land around us as well. Gone were the snows of our old haunt. Instead we were in forest, with gentle hillocks and noisy creeks and steams. In addition to the usual rabbits, we now saw deer and cows...and things almost too terrible to be true: spiders larger than a man. These we were able to kill handily. Nevertheless we were feeling very jittery, not unlike a the lone wanderer traveling along on the deserted highway at night...which, you see, is exactly what we were. We did not know foe from friend in this new land, and we did not know from which direction attack and challenge might come. We did not know the manner of these creatures' pleasures: would they attack us as a gang, falling upon us in stealth? Would they come down from the tops of hillocks too tall for us to keep a watch?
We did make it through that long night. And we did learn the nature of the creatures and the land in this new place. But throughout our journey, we both did later confess, we felt afraid.
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