Musings on the Role of MMO's

Second Life.....an interesting place. A place to explore, to build, to meet new people, to create both friendships and virtual items. I wouldn't call it a game as most are fond of pointing out. It is a simulation, though differing from life within life, as the rules are much less stringent there.

Forgive me as I ramble. As most of my SL friends know, I have insomnia and may not always be in the most coherent state of mind. Anyhow, I came to SL from EQ by way of EQ2, NWN, CoH and Vanguard. While I still visit those games once in a while, even WoW when one of my old guildmates drags me over, it is SL that has been occupying my time. A friend once told me they had tried it, but 'there was nothing to do there,' he put forth. I disagree, although it is more the finding of what you -want- to do there that may be the dilemma.

As I said above, there are many who wouldn't call SL a game. It's not set up like WoW or any of the plethora of MMO's hitting the market where you visit and there's quest after quest or certain goals for you to attain. The goals are yours to set. The game is yours to make (if you deem it as such). The whole setup is much more subtle than 'go forth and bring me 5 large candles, and I'll reward you with yonder bigassswordofkoboldslaying_00013'. However, it is just as addicting and just as much of a time drain to those of a certain mindset.

I suppose I should explain my own mindset. You see in the games I mentioned above, I was always a social gamer. Not that I wasn't good at my role; I'm much too competitive for that, but for me it wasn't -about- having the biggest sword or the best armour or even being in the uber raiding guild that made the game more like work than work itself, it was about the people. To me one-hundred or, hell, even sixty plus people I'm -forced- to interact with just to accomplish something drives me crazy. I want a smaller group of close friends I can spend time with. Chatting, goofing off, talking about whatever comes up, even sometimes going and killing monsters.

So that's the mindset, I suppose, of a P&P roleplayer, which is of course my background. Try bringing sixty people to a table with a Dungeon Master and watch as the hand of (insert deity here) comes crashing down upon them until there's about six or eight left. "Ahh now we can get down to business," he laughs, searching for the stats for the dragon encounter as the crushed outcasts wander away dejectedly.

In olden stories it took -one- special person to slay the dragon. Sure the Jabberwock would take more than a few to their doom, but in the end it was always just one who brought it down. Then came the concept of the fellowship.....the party of adventurers, aiding and assisting one another, but still very small in number. The party was the mainstay of P&P games of old. I suppose it was both for management reasons as well as roleplay that the setup was party-sized, but it still worked well. A party of six to eight -could- bring down a dragon.

Now we have graduated, or perhaps de-evolved to a system whereby it takes hordes and hordes of people to bring down a single dragon in the fallacy that this creates an epic scale.
This doesn't even take into account the near absolute lack of any role playing, other than the choice of class and race, apparent in the games now. I've been told that WoW and DDO both support smaller 'raid' sizes now. In DDO that makes sense, going back to the whole party based model -of- that game's parent. WoW.....well if it builds community beyond l337 uber kiddies calling each other n00b then I'm all for it.

Anyhow, I've strayed a bit, but I suppose some background was necessary. The lure of actually building something in SL, the act of bringing it to life through scripts, the having others interact with your creations, is what has been the impetus of my time spent here of late. Also I've met some of the most fantastic roleplayers to further drain my time spent there. I'm a decent builder now, and I'm -getting- better at scripting. My RP has been edited by the sale of Fullton, but that is a post for another time. I've met many friends and hope to continue to meet more and to spend time with them. So for now this rambling is at an end and I'll see you in SL! :)