The lost art of gaming

I started playing online games in the late 80's. Back then you dialed into a board on a modem and the game was text only. The first really good one had a limit of 30 players at a time and was called Tele-arena. It had six classes, 30 levels, and if you died you rolled up a new character. It was hard and the players were tremendously serious. I actually had someone track me down while I was on a date to inform me they had passed my character in level. Luckily the date was also a gamer.

Recently I tried playing Age of Conan. It is certainly a lot more attractive than Tele-arena. Beautiful sunsets, clear water, and green fields. If a player kills you after a few seconds you are teleported a short distance where you are reborn without losing any experience or even your buffs. And yet in the chat channel there is a constant flood of people whining about being killed. Wtf mate?

Warcraft had the clever idea of making the game so easy that anyone can succeed. It has the illusion of gaming, but all it really takes is time. With the huge success of Warcraft other companies began cranking out new mmog's. These companies are looking for a recreation of Warcraft so they can make lots of money. The guys in charge run room temperature IQ's, make 150k+ a year, and couldn't tell a good game from pong.

So we have a couple million of us true gamers floating from game to game looking for a challenge and being subjected to, and I exaggerate not in the least, games that 5 year old children play successfully. My best friends 5 year old daughter plays Warcraft amazingly well. I was on a raid about a year ago and someone said "shit" in the ventrillo channel. Several other players asked that we watch our language as the main tank was an 8 year old.

If one company would step up to the plate and make a really challenging game they would get a nice solid player base. It wouldn't be tens of millions of players like Warcraft is. Possibly not even a million people, but the people that did play would be very faithful and would probably be willing to pay a little extra each month for a game that challenged them.

When you die in a game there should be a penalty. The death penalty should be severe enough that it will take many hours, or even days of play to recover from. To get through an instance should require precision team work, and strategy. To solve a quest should take some thought. Unless it is a futuristic game there should not be a small map in the upper corner showing your exact location. No one running around with a sword should have a GPS in their backpack.

Someone please bring back gaming!

Political Concepts

When I saw this cartoon I laughed and wished we could get Bill back in office. Recently I have been thinking about how screwed we are as a nation and thought I would put forward an idea I had.

I think that one of the requirements for being president is that they have familiarity with being an American. All the presidents in my life time have been that 1% of Americans that have 99% of the wealth. These people have less concept of what being American is like than the workers in London.

I know that one of the requirements for being our President is being rich. It is a sad fact, but none the less true. So how can one of our rich elitists become familiar with the life of the masses? I would like it to be a requirement that each president take a 40+ hour a week job making an average or lower income for four years of their life. During this time they would have to live completely from their earned wages without any form of help including gifts. This job should be average as well. Something like an office worker, or postal delivery, but not vice president in charge of wining and dining clients.