Here it is, the end of 2009 already and we have now our 12th anniversary as a gaming clan of adults coming up next spring. Hard to believe. It didn't seem like too long ago we had so many games going and loads of people touching all of them. WoW, has risen up and died down as bas as the American economy. Many other attempts to find the one game we can rally around have all been flashes in the pan.
As we start in 2010 to find that magical software that bring the majority of us back onto a single game, here are some of the things that have gone on to help put is in this odd predicament as seek fellowship in our favorite divrsions from reality....
Cost of Gaming - once the MMO hit the serious numbers that WOW, EQ2 and others achieved the market exploded as everyone wanted a piece of the big money market that Blizzard had invaded and overtook to the level never before seen, and hever again matched. Players actually not only paying for their games to the tune of $50, but willing and painlessly shelling out the $20 a month to maintain that account online. Can't afford it, stop for awhile, then when you can, come back! But the cost doesn't end there, there is the time investment as well. You can use me as an example. I have logged 4441 hours in World of Warcraft....only during the time I got into Xfire and had it on during that time, I dont' always play with it on. That's 2 full working years! The cost, is huge any more
Vast Variety - variety is a good thing except when it diffuses the meeting ground by which we all game together. You like this RTS, he likes this FPS, she likes this MMO and soon the large collective of good gaming buddies morphs itself into this remotely tethered on fishing line mutual gaming acquaintance you used to game with, and sometimes talk to. Cliques develop within the groups since those that play the same game, spend time together still, while not so much time with those that don't play THE game. We have experiemented with numerous games that came and went and while here with us, we all got a good ride with it...for awhile. Too many choices have thinned out the game pools in all genres so that there aren't the one or two that float to the top and meet most of our collective needs.
Industry instability - the PC gaming industry is always under attack as being dead and going away. This isn't true but the companies that make us games certainly address it with less of a a long term relationship that it used to. Some of the games i chose to play for entertainment are 12 years old and still are fun to play. Yet at the same time I have dozens of $50 coffe dvd coasters of stink bombs that I paid full price for. Sometimes when I am hold a stack of 10 or 20 CD/DVDs I have bought and the games were crap...I understand why piracy still exists. These usless crappy DVDs represent $1000 of my hard earned money and most of the companies are either non-existent or non-supportive.
Nature of gamers in an MMO environment - in an industry dominated by behomoths of MMO games, the gamers themselves have changed. I think of the Diablo days and how we might pick up pug runs back then, it was always much more worth it to run with your friends. People you could trust. But that content never really changed much so we all would go together hoping the best for each other. Broodwars 4 player teams always had each other's back as players, etc.. and while tie MMOs do that to some extent, their comes a time where you have to give up the intamcy of smaller groups of close friends for large groups, containing lots of people you don't know. Not everyone can play at the same time, not everyone can afford MMOs, there arent' any other games around any more that we can get more than 4 people playing at one time....the mechanics are much against what we have strived for here. The big FPS parties of the Battlefield series...great times.....replaced by ghosts and a few whipers of CS here or there. The few, the proud, the gone...
These are just some opinions, but having been here since day 1, I have meet and seen a lot of great people and I've seen more disappear than most here have met during the tenure of the clan. This year, was the first year I actually gave pause and thought about renewing this very website. I never have before. With the departure of some long time friends from the game I play the most, some bad luck with surgeries and massive pain, I really felt like maybe it was time to just pull the plug here and let it disappear into the void.
But then I thought about all the times before people had tried to take us down, smear our names into the bad, and talk about us behind our backs and plot against us. I thought about how the Eriks and Chucks that pop out of no where years later happy to see this site still alive and that they can find....friends they knew still here.
I paid the bill this year for another full year with a personal resolve to make a great effort into testing, beta testing and researching some games we can all join in.
Because in the end, that's what friends do.
