Character History and Personality

Gaming History

I have quite a lot of experience with the gaming genre. Generally I have been playing video games all my life from the tender age of 3 and enjoy all types of games. I usually play RPGs, FPS, Light gun games, action games, RTS, puzzlers, and platformers. My range of knowledge is very wide and broad on console platforms. I only started to play computer games when the game of starcraft came out. SC broke the ice for me and revealed me to the world of actually playing with people on-line.

Back then though, MMORPGS were still foreign to me. My first MMORPG was Ultima Online. I couldn't do much because it was very confusing memerizing all those commands they had and I had serious lag problems with a 56k modem. When I first came into the game though, what was very awkward was that I asked myself "What is there to do?" So I ran around, explored, killed some stuff and quit.

The MMORPG after that was Everquest, in which the same thing happened again. The overall gameplay was too slow for me and I could only get from one place to the next with a good SoW. Everything else was dreadfully slow and fighting was almost too boring because you have an auto attack and you only occasionally push more buttons to do extra attacks. The world was also simply too big and I got lost really easily. This was mainly because EQ had a very steep learning curve.

What really got me into the MMORPG gendre was the game Ragnarok Online. It was in beta back then and was overally free. I had a hard time getting a credit card from my parents back then. It was a very beautiful clean 2d game with 3d elements in it. There was no confusion at all what to do as I got into it for the first time, which was get good stuff, kill stuff, and get leveled. Simple as that.

As I got more and more experienced I realized that there IS other things to do in the world when you are just dropped inside a 3d reality with not necessarily any direction. Everyone has their own playing styles and what they want to accomplish and in which coincidentally creates many MANY problems just like in the real world. I played RO for 3 years by now and I got to an extremely high level before I stopped. Leveling got boring, the high end content was not going to be implemented until months later and my dream in becoming first to max level disappeared.

Ragnarok Online also was not a very balanced game. Warriors and melee units would always get their asses handed to them. Through this I have worked in and out of what a good mmorpg should be and how to play it. I have also played many other smaller MMORPGs. What was really interesting was the FFXI beta recently. I found the game was absolutely beautiful and had many intriguing features I liked. It, however, had many gameplay flaws. I'm playing many smaller PC games for now and I am anxiously awaiting the WoW beta. I have studied the game extensively to get myself a head start.