The BBC had another “ZOMG China sure loves them some online games” story this weekend.
The kicker… they have a picture of what is credited as “a gamer in Beijing’s internet addiction centre“.
“Learn From Lei Feng Online” suddenly makes more sense. It’s methadone.
Meanwhile, here in America World of Warcraft guilds linked to orgiastic debauchery. No. Really. (I blame AFKGamer for linking to what seemed to be a sane forum. I KNOW BETTER NOW!)
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Hmmm… is that a T1 line hooked to his bed, there?
I met some guildies from UO years ago. Weekend in Vegas, no monkey business. The next week one lady turned out to be a stalker. Yay! Wanted to leave her husband and children to be with me because we were “soulmates”. I had never flirted with her or anything. Unfortunately she had my home address, my email address, my goddamn phone number(because I was an idiot). Fortunately, by coincidence I moved about a week before she was insisting to “come visit” me, and managed to dodge her.
Two months later, one of the guys in the guild I had met, who is about to get married for the second time, starts sending me emails about how he has feelings for me, and if say the word, he will call off the marriage to “be with me”. Christsakes.
These were normal(I thought) people I’d known for well over a year through UO. We joked, we adventured, but we never hit on each other or anything like that. We just had a good time playing the game.
Ever meet guildies in real life again?
No. Fucking. Way.
Cheers
Under the new system, your online character becomes less and less effective. After three hours, the number of in-game “experience points” for, say, killing an opponent are reduced by half.
Duh, any addict will tell you that once your drug of choice starts diminishing the return, you start hitting the harder shit. Sure, it’s WoW right now, but that’s only a gateway drug that eventually leads to Eve Online. Those poor…poor bastards.
http://www.mmorgy.com/
Please check sanity at the door before clicking.
You say to check your sanity at the door,
like you’re gonna get it back?
Scott Adams was right. The holodeck will be the death of mankind.
I used to go to regular gatherings with people in GemStone III a long time ago. A lot of people (including GMs) who played that game lived in my area and I got a girl’s phone # from another girl I knew in the game who said she lived near me. We had cookouts, parties, sometimes just went to ren faires in small groups. This was in the mid 90s so it wasn’t like there were thousands of people playing that game back then. Was fun to get to talk about the game with someone for once who didn’t get that far away distracted look halfway through the conversation and realize they had something else really important to do.
I also dated about 5 different girls from that game and almost married my “in-game” wife in real life. This might creep some people out, I don’t know, but I’d been talking to her for so long in game and sometimes on the phone that I didn’t get that nervousness I normally get meeting new people when I first met her. We knew each other so well it wasn’t like the first time we’d met, just the first time we’d physically seen each other.
I’m willing to bet this kind of thing will become more commonplace. People seem to “click” with each other in games just as in real life, it’s just a lot easier to hide stuff in a game (aka stalker above).
Since then, about 10 years, I haven’t had more than phone call conversations with anyone from online games I play. The last one scared me because she was a crazy woman, but heck you can meet those on the streets too. :p
It’s pretty common for people in guilds to meet each other irl. Not sure whether they actually have orgies, though.
I do know one couple married their online bf/gf in real life even though they were from different continents.
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