As my friends and guild buddies will all know, I am a fairly enthusiastic player – at this point in my life – of a game called World of Warcraft. Well it’s called a game, but that conjures up an image of something on an xbox or playstation, or a single player game on your PC. WoW (as we players like to call it) isn’t a game in this regular sense, it’s much more. It’s part of a generation of games called MMORPGs, which stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. So what the shit does that mean, I hear some of you asking? Well basically kids, it quite simply means a game based in a virtual world populated by thousands of people, and you don’t so much play a game, but more you live in this world and take on the persona of a fantasy character, and adventure your way through a virtual life!
And that’s what makes it so fascinating and addictive really; you become totally absorbed in your character and those characters that you meet in the virtual world. So much so that you can forget that it’s all ‘virtual’, and start to believe that it’s all real. I should qualify that before some of you start thinking that perhaps I really have just lost the plot and should be given a room in a psych ward somewhere. By real I mean the characters in the game that become your friends in the virtual world are as real to you as every day friends in the meat world. You are aware that there is a real person behind them, even though don’t know that person, and you probably will never meet that person, and they won’t know the meat bodied you. However they know me as a troll hunter with a wolf pet, and I know them as orcs and taurens and undead and other trolls. All with their own personalities and personality quirks, all with a particular individual look about them, just like people in real life.
Right about now all the MMORPG gamers are nodding their heads in agreement, while the rest of you are all wondering just how far down the yellow brick road I am to mongo-land. Well my guess is that as time passes soon enough everyone will have heard of online games; chicks in relationships especially because it seems a lot of girls are losing their partners to online games. I also think as online games become more prevalent we’ll start to see an increase in girls making guys fill out an application form for the purposes of starting a relationship, which will have questions in it like:
-5a- Do you play online games (y/n)
-5b- Do you play online games more than 10 hours a week (y/n)
-5c- If yes then do you also answer to the name of Lunark The Righteous, or Thrug The Conqueror (y/n)
-5d- Do you consider your online character to be as real as me (y/n)?
Then down the bottom it will have a section in fine print that reads: Thank you for application, if you answered yes to all parts of question 5 then there is no way in hell I am going out with you. More, there is NO WAY that you are ever going to see me naked and play fun games in the bedroom! Why don’t you go and screw one of your virtual girls instead you useless nerd! Thank you, and thanks for trying!
I find MMORPGs fascinating too for another reason besides all the fun of living an alter ego and slaying dragons and demons with my friends; and that’s because I see it being a one of the ways civilisation will start to evolve. You all saw The Matrix, right? (If you didn’t then you’re a techno-dipshit and I have no idea why you are even reading blogs… since that’s techno… technically) So you will all remember how humans were basically jacked in to a virtual world with implants. In the short term I don’t see this happening, but say in 60 years, this is certainly not out of the scope of possibility. So let’s look at it then. Imagine being able to jack into a virtual world where we can create personas that look as good as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and the sex feels as real as a good solid shag right now! Cause really, sex is going to be the virtual world killer app!
As a sideline I remember seeing the holodeck on the Enterprise for the first time and Jordie was doing some whitewater rafting. I also remember thinking what a waste of time it was. If you can make anything, then for sure you’re gonna make a tropical island with just you and the swedish bikini team (or Chippendales depending on which way you swing, or if you’re a chick) and a shitload of KY jelly. Who the hell would go rafting?! Well it was a family show I guess, but you know, the holodeck would really be a place to live out porn fantasies! Anything else is really just fantasy!
So back to my main point, say you are a 140 kilogram woman with a neatly trimmed beard, or a 65 kilogram man living in your mothers basement because you’re useless, it doesn’t matter in an online world as noone will know the real you, but instead know your virtual personas. The woman could opt to look like Jessica Simpson with Pam Anderson’s breasts, and the slacker in the basement could choose to look like Arnie with Brad’s head. Isn’t that a recipe for fun! (I should point out that these images aren’t necessarily fantasies of mine, but just illustrations to make a point… really)! If they fall in love, it will still be real love because the feelings are still coming from within each person, that’s not computer generated. Even now we see marriages in WoW between men and women who love each other as characters. What reasons will there be to interact in a real way? All of a sudden distance will mean nothing, because in a virtual world, you can be anywhere at any time. From this point on, the possibilities for work and relationships go somewhere that noone can really yet imagine.
Sure it’s all pretty far fetched, but I’m sure back around 1900 they said the same thing about putting a man on the moon. It’s also the same thing my high biology teacher Miss Schulty said about me actually doing something meaningful with my life! I’m still hoping on proving her wrong at some point!
Padwanna!
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