LOST, the MMO
My husband showed me this hilarious entry about Lost. I have to say, this guy shows more insight and knowledge about MMOs (or CRPGs as he puts it), than many gaming commentators and experts!
I did some grinding in LOST for a couple of seasons, and he’s right about the show. My favorite quote, though, is his description of MMOs, because it’s so perfect, and it smacks a bit of the whole “Emperor has no clothes” scenario. We’d like to think otherwise, but MMOs are pretty simple:
I love them despite my frequent realizations, while playing, that in-game progress is largely chimeric. When you’re a level 1 squire it may take you two minutes to kill a rat; when you are a level 9 knight you can kill a rat with a single stroke–but you don’t fight rats, you fight ogres, and the time it takes you to kill them is … two minutes. Your environment levels up as you do, such that you are pretty much playing the same game all the time, albeit with cool new equipment and a more impressive sounding rank. The excitement you feel upon leveling fades almost immediately, as you start accumulating experience to reach the next stage.
For the record, at level 74, it took me 2 minutes 34 seconds to kill a young wurm, so he’s using some fuzzy math right there.
But he did idealize the perfect endgame boss – A Giant Ambulatory Sentient Coconut. The Sleeper would have nothing on this guy.
Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (0)