By the gods . . . I wish we were the 300!
We’re not even a baseball team . . . and neither are they.
Once, my virtual self stood on this ground with 100s before me and 100s at my back. It is an odd thing to face barely double digits on ground that once teemed with friends and foes.
I was here . . . they were here . . . explosions, encounters and excitement!!!
Now . . .this is almost . . . surreal.
Before me is a huge base with just a few defenders . . . and attacking the base . . . just a few. It’s pretty futile really. The built in bonuses of this and that don’t matter when the game devolves from massive to minimum.
Suddenly, the game is oddly personal. I mean, if there are only a dozen of us and a dozen of them . . . eventually you kind of sorta get to know theirs and yorn.
It’s no more about the weight of circumstance, but the circumstances of dueling. You kind of get a sense of that guy will kill me and I will kill that guy. It’s a very personal game now. Unlike WOW, we can talk across factions and . . . we do.
“Nice kill”
“Good jorb”
“Where is everybody?”
They are gone . . . to other games . . . greener virtual pastures.
It now feels like the cartoon of the wolf and the sheepdog (It’s a wolf? I thought it was a coyote. Seriously, why would a wolf try to eat a roadrunner? This makes no sense. It’s the Coyote and the Roadrunner, right?).
Yet, the question isn’t “where is everybody”, but “Why are we still here?” I suppose it is because someone has to turn the lights out. Maybe it’s a bit of nowhere else to go. Or is it the contempt of familiarity? Perhaps, it is just the mirror mirror on the wall. We’re just exiles no where near mainstreet. Nah, it's just spite.
All I know is it costs me nothing more than $4.99 a month and my time and there is a place that is dying and where I can still stand and where I can close my eyes and see . .. and recount . . . battles and histories and . . .
I’m running backward along a shore trying to keep an eye on a gnome. I think those baddy bastards over there are Kobolds.I know down the cliff there are Murlocks. Why is it always harvest season in Westmarch? Wait . . . is this Alliance territory? Why would I remember such a thing?
What were Guildenstern’s (or was it Rosencrantz?) last words? “There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we'll know better next time. ”.
XXX
P.S. For a list of all the references, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to . . .
First off...OMFG, I love that line from R&G... possibly my favorite.
ReplyDeleteSecond, yah I read about the shut down and I've experienced something similar, back in the MOO days. They were gonna turn off the lights in PointMOOt and we had the day and time. Someone organized a mass suicide, a la Jonestown, and someone else wrote a program (MOOs were programmable by players) we could all use, and at midnight on the given day, we assembled and died wiht our boots on. It was very very creepy.
On the upside, I'm still having fun in WoW playing my own games often, I'm not a gear whore so I don't always fit with the guildies. See ya soon? I hear you're back for comps! woot.