The power of the multitudes

[zhai]

I have an Escapist feature up this week, "Someone Stole My Magic Sword", with many thanks to Dave Weinstein and, of course, to Michelle, for coming forward and sharing her story. There was a lot to compress here -- my interviews with Michelle alone totaled over 5,000 words -- but hopefully we got the meat of the story across. I know I say it for

Comments

[maggiedr]

One of my biggest frustrations with gaming, make that particularly mmorpgs, is that the complaint noise is so high, that it drowns out real or valid issues. And I personally knew many people who'd traded off their accounts, then decided they wanted back in the game, and of course, just had to have their precious avatar back. They would call EQ customer service and claim the account had been stolen. People's friends and relatives--in one case, a guy's mother--would steal from each other's accounts or delete stuff because they were pissed over stuff.

When I was heavy into EQ, I knew the game was acquistion-oriented to many players, but it was a social experience for me. EQ put players through unimaginable (by today's standards) quests and dungeons which required over 12 hours or more to complete. Yikes, don't get me started, but let me just say that losing an epic weapon in EQ represented weeks, possibly months, and the time of as many 30 people working to help a player acquire that. It was nuts, and I was nuts for playing as long as I did. But I did have a lot of fun, and made friends that I've kept. That never happens in games I've played since then (except for DAoC).