Gaming... seriously?!?!?! Yeah it's a game, it's supposed to be fun.

So I am admittedly a gaming geek, that's not to say that I excel or am an expert at them just that I've had a lot of experience playing, from D&D to the numerous iterations of games/consoles at home, to the ancient hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, to online MMORPGS. I say this to explain where I am coming from in the next paragraphs of this blog. It was a conversation a friend and I recently had with regard to gaming in general. Specifically he asked me about my past experiences with D&D and it got me thinking that regardless of the platform it was all pretty much the same stuff except when discussing MMORPGS.

Several years ago, my husband was getting ready to deploy and thought that starting a Toontown Disney account for our then 4 year old daughter would give her and I something to do together when we were bored. Little did he know how much I'd come to take over that account but then again, my daughter enjoyed it too. It was fun wandering the different zones and seeing familiar Disney characters roaming the "safe" area of the game. And here we come to the crux of this blog, why is that people take gaming so freakin seriously? Duh, are there deaths? Of course but then again what will it ultimately cost you to revive, mend, get gags, travel back to where you were, replay the level ect. ect. ect. and if you want to scream and moan about said death what will THAT cost you in emergency medical issues involving the massive heart attack you just gave yourself over the unholy conniption fit you just threw which made your blood pressure sky rocket?

Does it sound like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill? Think again, youtube is full of examples of this, don't believe me? Check out this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04

Here is another example, when we used to play Toontown my daughter loved to watch me play and tell me where to go and dress my character ect. Once in a while when I felt that she understood how to play by herself I'd allow her to while I was making dinner or some other such thing. Remember this is a Disney game and she didn't even read yet when she was playing and for the most part she just liked feeling like a part of a group so here she was on a low level newb toon and she made the mistake of deciding to go into a cog building or place to fight which was well beyond her ability to handle on her own. And the 2 bigger toons who were with her took her up into the cog building to it's highest level said "goodbye" and teleported to safety while my child was left to cry and ask me why mommy why did they let me die mommy? It broke my heart. I wondered why people were such assholes to the extent that even the Disney name didn't invoke a sense of safety for my child.

I think therein lies the distinct difference between MMORPGS and say a nice clean game of monopoly that someone takes too seriously and throws the game across the room. In an MMORPGS you have no idea who is actually on the other end of the toon you are playing against because surely you wouldn't take your aggression from playing a real world game out on a real 4 or 5 year old sitting in your living-room or then again maybe you would.

It seriously kills my game playing buzz to be in a situation where here I am having fun jumping down the street (and yes I in fact LOVE to hop my toons around when I get the chance to)and I get someone telling me I'm not taking the game seriously. Or I do my best to heal/tank/bomb and get chewed out because of a group wipe. Honestly, I've actually two boxed tank/heals with 3 dps agro stealing mage/wizards and still kicked serious butt because well yeah I just rock like that. But why the buzzkill when the inevitable death or whatever misfortune should hit you during a GAME? Isn't the whole purpose of game playing to let off steam, to enjoy, to relax, to perhaps escape real life? Because seriously if I wanted to get my ass handed to me by a bunch of freakin faceless people whom I will probably never meet outside of Antonica, then why not just unplug, go watch tv and let my children and or husband dish out that little slice of happiness for me, instead of paying the monthly subscription fee to meet up with "Mr. Asshole" disguised as a cute half-elf named Stan.