split/screen co-op

Massively Multiplayer Epic by *Kirbopher15 on deviantART

I am wondering why people think it is easier to build teams in a few minutes online when it cannot happen in real life.

My husband Dilyan has become a World of Warcraft player and is a Hunter nearing level 79 now. Every evening when I grab the Xbox 360 controller to start up yet another Mass Effect 2 session, he sits on the PC for yet another WoW game . What I most often hear him say while playing is : “Why is nobody doing what they should do?” or “Why is that guy just standing there, not defending himself?” or “Why is there no order in this raid? Everyone is doing just what they want, nobody is in charge!” ect.

My dwarf hunter Indnur on his white ram

3 March was a national holiday over here and I took the Friday off for an extra long weekend. I spent almost all of it in Azeroth. I’m so engrossed in World of Warcraft as I never imagined possible. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I regret not playing it earlier, because I’ve definitely enjoyed great games in that time, some of which better than WoW. But I do admit that all my reasons for not playing it have been proven wrong.

Over the past four days WoW had me glued to my PC in a manner no game has done in a long, long time. True, I was committed to the Fallout series for almost five months before embarking on my journey through Azeroth, but still.

The other night I half-awoke at a kick from Vanya who must have been signalling that I was snoring. I remember being indignant at that as I was only doing the blue-icon quests, which in that semi-conscious state I was in represented quests that did not cause vibration of respiratory structures.

Only one other game has entry to my dreams and it, too, is a Blizzard title. Whenever I play the original Diablo, I always fall asleep to an image burned into my visual memory long after I’ve exited the game: of chests yielding loot.

Dungeon by *eWKn on deviantART

A window pops up centre-screen. I hit the join button and it begins.

We’re in a dark and small room that seems overcrowded. Are all those people here to join our group? I thought there’d only be five of us. Oh, wait. Some of the characters in the room are NPCs. I still can’t tell the difference between them and real “people”.

Nobody’s standing still but me and it’s hard to keep track of who is doing what. I anxiously monitor the chat window for a whisper from Maerwo, the only person I know here. But he’s silent.

Last week I joined Lord of the Rings Online and my starting of a new MMO game prompted an interesting discussion with a couple friends are experts in the field, so to speak.

I was first amazed with the number of character races and classes I had to choose from. It was a bit confusing and our conversation started from there.

An incredible display of skill in the beta of World of Warcraft Cataclysm. The video is a bit long, but it is worth it

At first I was agasp. I might have even been adrool. I’m a sucker for artsy graphics, so I sucked hungrily. I’m gay for fantasy RPGs, so I turned.

Hit the jump to see what else happened.

Like stamp-collecting, the hobby of coin-collecting is usually associated with rich, wealth-savvy people. The kind of people who, rather than buy shares in a mutual fund like regular small-fry investors, prefer to invest in violins. The kind of people who sprinkle their muesli with caviar and gold and drown them in champagne. The kind of people…

Okay, envy bout now over. Hit the jump for more coin talk.