Merlin Mann is a personal hero of mine, for 2 reasons.
- He does what he loves.
- He does it while being afraid of it.
Take this example where he is in plans for giving a talk about being afraid of “pretty much everything”.
He has passion. I hope to find mine before it’s too late to do it.
A friend of mine has said in the past that he misses the grouping aspect of EQ. He has recalled that his love of the game was tied not so indirectly to having to spend time with actual people. I agree with him, but one thing I hated about EQ were those very same groups. I hated that you had to sit on some designated hillside or ridge and monotonously kill the same mobs over and over again while watching your experience bar creep along.
See, I groups I was in rarely talked much. We were friendly, sure, but there weren’t any real lasting impressions or friendships formed there. The ones I remember, I was guilded with. I continued logging in long after I would have quit playing the game to talk to the members of Guardians of Order, and I didn’t have to form a group somewhere to talk. It was fun to do things with my friends, sure, but guild chat allowed us to yak about whatever we wanted wherever we wanted. In fact, I think it was about the same time as the Luclin expansion, you could chat with people in game from OUTSIDE THE GAME.
I started playing WoW the day it released. About level 20 or so, I found a guild called Stormwind Brotherhood. Not long after that, I split off with a group of people and we formed Edge of Dawn. I spent countless hours online talking, laughing and instancing with the people in my guild, while solo questing whenever I didn’t have other things going on. I remember so many things we did together, so many laughs, our “quotable quotes” collections of funny things said, inside jokes… I still think about people I only ever knew by a screen name and haven’t spoken to in years.
Looking back at random groups, I don’t remember a single person from them.
I recently started back to WoW. I’ve played and quit 4 times in the past. During Vanilla WoW, when I was in EoD, I quit at the end game because of the grind. In Burning Crusade, I migrated to a different server (EoD had dissolved and its members scattered to different servers) and quit not long after when I found what appeared to be the rejects from other servers had all congregated in one place and I couldn’t find a decent group of people to hang with. In Wrath of the Lich King, I found a guild that I raided with up through the first several bosses of the end game instance and quit because it stopped being fun. This time, I held out on a guild, swearing that I wouldn’t need one. I ended up joining one because it turns out that being guilded gets you an experience bonus, cash bonus and mount speed increase, and joined one that welcomed people that just wanted the XP bonus. I found a core group of what appear to be real life friends that just have a good time and formally joined them because there’s no raiding pressure and the people remind me a lot of the friends I made in Guardians of Order and Edge of Dawn.
So this train of thought is, I’m sure, a derailed mess by now, so what’s the point…
I guess it’s that I love the social aspect of these games, but random groups just aren’t memorable for me.
(Originally written on May 29th, 2010)
My father brought me some things from my grandparents today. My wife and I just bought our first house a month and a half ago and they sent some items they no longer need, being in their 80’s and opting for a small condo that’s easy to take care of over owning a house they only use part of. In amongst some of the items, I found myself remembering them hanging in their kitchen or sitting on my Grandfather’s desk. I was instantly transported back to a simpler time, in their house in Ohio, vividly picturing every detail of their home.
I remember reading a story once about a platter. Ornate and beautiful, it sat on the table at countless family gatherings and holiday meals. At one such gathering, the platter was broken. Seeing her casually discard the shattered serving plate, the owners children asked her why it didn’t bother her that this item that had been at so many events and held so many memories had been destroyed. She responding by saying that the item itself held no memories. The memories were hers to hold, and the platter was just an object. She wasn’t out anything, really, as the important things were still locked away inside her head.
I can agree that items themselves hold no memories, but for me, those otherwise unimportant items are time machines that take me back in time and space to another world, full of laughter and excitement and love and joy. The smell of a pillow that was sent to me today brought tears to my eyes. Items that used to adorn my grandfather’s desk have taken up residence in my office.
I find myself wondering what my grandchildren will have of mine. What items they will treasure because of the time and place they visit when they gaze upon them.
(Picked up today)
Admittedly, I didn’t reread everything up there, but I can say this… I know that I want to leave a mark on this world. I want my life to touch the lives of others. I want to go back to school, finish my bachelors and my masters and start teaching freshman psych at a local college. I want to work toward my PhD and become a tenured professor. I want to pour out into the minds, hearts and lives of young adults, inspire them to do something they’re passionate about, and leave the world a better place than I found it. I want more than my grandkids to look on my life with fond memories. I want my students to look on their papers or research or just the lessons learned in my classroom and remember with a smile the time we spent together.
That’s not so much to ask is it?
This do something creative every day easily becomes “do something creative a few times a week”. I’ve not really had much spark my interest to write recently, but I’m doing my level best to put something out there, so I’m going to borrow from others and post my favorite thing that happened today.
My 12 year old (she’s 13 in a month, ouch) and I had a nice talk about her life and what she’s doing, who she’s interested in. It’s nice, as a dad, to have your kid come to you and talk about how things are in their world. For as much as I know I’ve screwed up as a parent, I have to have done something right.
Author’s note: I wrote this during a slow day at work. I was distracted and I’m sure it shows in the construction of the post. Please keep that in mind before flashing your grammar cop badge and taking me to task over anything here. I’m just trying to post at this point. Once I’m in the habit, I’ll take to editing a bit more carefully.
My first video game system was an Atari 2600. I also had and Atari 1200XL PC, with the external storage device that used magnetic audio cassettes for media. It hooked up to your TV for a monitor and would play games, too. A member of my family or I have owned a SEGA Genesis, a first gen NES, a Super NES, a Nintendo 64, a VirtuaBoy, an Atari Jaguar, gameboys, 5 Nintendo DS/DSi, 2 Xbox 360’s and a Nintendo Wii. I’ve also gamed on several different PC’s over the last 20+ years, starting on an old Packard Bell PC.
I’ve got memories of the 2600 and gaming sessions with my best friend Brian from when I was 8, playing Pac-Man and Q-bert (I sucked at this game) and Frogger and River Raid and Yars Revenge and Pitfall… we’d play for hours. We used to have competitions to see how many Pac-Man levels we could beat without using the tunnels on the side.
I’ve got memories of playing The Secret of Monkey Island with my little brother watching me. There was a used ship salesman in that game that waved his arms around screaming “BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!!!”. I’d participate in the fun and always get a laugh out of The Brother.
I’ve got memories of playing Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest.
Then came the Internet. Diablo co-op games with my best friend of the last 13 years was my first exposure. But my greatest memories came out of 2 games. Everquest and World of Warcraft.
The friend mentioned above, that introduced me to online game play, is a power gamer. He wants to see the content as quickly as possible, get the stuff, and move on. I read the quests (usually), immerse myself in the story, etc. But the part that I really liked about EQ and WoW was the people.
I was introduced to EQ by an old friend I haven’t seen or spoken to in 10 years. He told me about how awesome the game was, about how it was SOO much better than EQ2, and even went so far as to buy me the game and the first 2 expansions so I could come play with him. I logged in and got hooked. I was introduced to a world I previously couldn’t have imagined. A fantasy novel come alive and a group of people I remember, albeit all but 8 of them only by their character names, to this day. I still think about them from time to time and about how lucky I was to have that group of people to spend time with.
I have the same feelings about the early days of WoW. I started playing the day the game released and, shortly thereafter, joined my first guild. That group eventually self-destructed over a bad leader with a large number of us departing together for greener pastures. That group of people really made the game for me. We played to end game content in what we called “casual hardcore”, we had a family feel that I haven’t been able to replicate in any group since.
In this day of “the game starts when you finish leveling”, I miss those days of having a virtual family to spend time with just chit chatting. I hope I find it somewhere, someday, but for now, I’m looking. Maybe I’ve romanticized the way things used to be, but I think that I’ll find what I’m looking for someplace.