Games, Games, and more games.

I recently started playing several different MMO's. As most people know, I've been on LotRO for close to a year now, just a couple of months shy, and I stay in my little cubby hole on Windfola, away from prying eyes where things are quiet.

More recently, I started branching out into other games, most of them not exactly new, but just to spread my wings a little to prevent LotRO burnout, which happens from time to time if I don't spend some time away from my beloved world.

I've recently started, or rather, attempted to start playing three different games. The kindness from one of my friends gave me a Preorder Aion account, and that has been a good bit of fun so far.  I'm currently playing it with two of my kinmates from LotRO, and we decided it would be a one-off type game, where we only subscribed on months we know we will be playing it.

Aion:  • • • • •

Character Creation:  The system of character creation is complex, allowing you to fully morph everything from facial features to body size and dimensions. The only thing it lacks is any ability to more detailedly customize one's hairstyle, instead giving you a large number of preset styles to choose from.  Many of the styles are elaborate, decorated, and quite nice, for both males and females, with several hairstyles being shared between the two genders.  

There are actually only two races in the game, the Asmodai, and the Eylos. Despite what would seem like an obvious limitation to creativity with only two essentially human races, their character customization is so expansive that it is very easy to actually tell people apart purely on visuals without ever looking at their names. Those who are a fan of the more traditional fantasy races, Halflings, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, even Ogres, will find that it is easy to make a unique looking race in the style you'd like, with just a few clicks and tweaks of their system. Something that you don't find in most MMO's and is a welcome and refreshing change.

(More Pending)

A Lifetime of Gaming: Reflection

For most people, gaming is just a hobby, something that they do every now and again, as something to pass the time. In bygone days, you'd pick up a controller for an hour or so, then put it back down and continue on with your day. But gaming is more than a sum of the console and controller, more than the restrictions of the paper and dice. Gaming has changed from a past-time to a lifestyle. What's more is that gamer has become a catchall title for those who pick up any game and play it a little bit. Some gamers find it insulting, but I find it a refreshing change. No longer is being a gamer something that implies you have no life.

No, every gamer can now stand up and be counted with only the potential shame of the woefully uninformed. But how easily these 'new' gamers forget the grief they thrust upon the old-schoolers who were taunted and teased, bullied, and even beaten upon, because of their chosen 'hobby'?

We all game, in different ways, from our youth, into adolescence, and into adult-hood. But what defines a gamer? Someone who plays console games? PC games? Table-top games? Do online text based role-plays count as well? Who sets down these guidelines, and decides for us what is and isn't legitimate gaming? What about LARP? Are they gamers any less?

I wonder, sometimes, about the different labels that people choose to place upon themselves and others. I can honestly say I'm proud to be called a gamer. From Atari to XBox 360, Text-based to table-top and board games, single person RPG's to MMO's, I've dabbled here and there for the entirety of my life in different mediums that are considered part of the whole of a gamer's paradise.

At the dawn of a new year, 2010, I sit in contemplation about gaming and the impact it's had on my life. I've played games that have made me laugh, and made me cry, met wonderful people, and run across the most foul individuals I feel I've ever had the misfortune to meet. I've made solid friendships with people from across the world, and enjoyed casual gaming with my family over the course of my life. Gaming has had such a profound impact on my life. It has, in a way, shaped the person I've become, showing me the direction I want to go, fueling my imagination, and keeping my mind sharp even when the rest of me grew dull, giving me entertainment, an escape from the wretched monotony of everyday life, and providing me with a stable and ever expanding medium with which to fuel my creative impulses.

Do I regret committing so much of my life to gaming?

Never in a million years.

- J