Back to Basics

I’m coming for you, Werdna!

I don’t think it is any great secret that my gaming enthusiasm has been sorely lacking lately.  Maybe it is general burnout, but I honestly think it goes a little deeper than that.

No matter how casual the atmosphere in an MMO, there is always the drive to be better… to achieve that much more.  There is pressure, whether self-imposed or driven by your fellow gamers, to always be improving… always striving for that next plateau.

As my guild has gotten closer and closer to entering VP, my desire to play has become less and less.  There has been a lot of pressure to never miss a flagging raid because who knows when we’ll do it again.  There has been a lot of pressure to fine-tune your playing ability because you don’t want to be the one reason why a raid failed.  Be it a nightly shard group or a raid, parses are flying and being critically analyzed.  Log on an alt and the questions fly about what you are doing and why.

I have found myself looking for excuses lately to not log on for raid nights.  Some of the excuses I have found have been whoppers too.  And it isn’t just the scheduled guild raid nights.  I find out they are planning on putting together an X2 raid for an evening and it is suddenly more important to me that I reorganize my DVD collection or alphabetize the dust bunnies behind my entertainment center than it is that I log on.

I popped on last night fairly anxious to play.  I knew it wasn’t a raid night and Thursday is not a night that the odd impromptu raid gets called.  I felt safe.

Right as I was appearing, guild chat was going on about an impromptu raid that was going to be held this evening (Friday).  It was to be a quick run through MMIS capping off with Paw.  The mere mention of a raid being called for the following night was enough to kill my desire to play and I prompty logged back off once again.

These are not good signs.

I’ve been a gamer for as long as I can remember.  I grew up during the great arcade boom of the late 70’s and early 80’s.  I remember peddling my bike as fast as I could after school to try to be among the first to arrive at one of the neighborhood arcades so that I could get the Joust machine or the Tron machine.

Yes, I will admit it… I even had the single of Pac Man Fever on 45… and I knew all the words.

I remember well how any kid who got an Atari immediately became one of the most popular kids in school and we could congregate as a massive mob of screaming addiction at that kid’s house after the trip to the arcade had run our pockets dry.

Still, as much as I loved my arcades and as much as I loved Atari, I never found any one thing that sucked me in and consumed my attention.

Until the day my father brought an Apple III home from the bank and introduced me to a game called Wizardry.

Once Wizardry entered my home, my fate was sealed.  I spent more hours than I could possibly count playing Wizardry.  I played and beat the game countless times and probably never would have moved on if the unexpected hadn’t happened… a sequel was released.

From about the time I was in sixth grade until I was in high school, my afternoons, evenings, weekends, and summers were spent in the mazes of the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, the Knight of Diamonds, and the Legacy of Llylgamyn.

Some years back, I was surfing around the internet and just happened to do a search for classic Wizardry games.  Much to my surprise and pleasure, I found a company that had redone all of the original Wizardry games and formatted them to work within a DOS based interface.  I quickly ordered the first game pack, which consisted of the first three games.

When they arrived, I was a child again.  Sure, the graphics were pretty much non-existent and cheesy, but that didn’t matter.  It never had mattered.  Those early games never were about the graphics.  They were about your imagination.

As I had done as a child, I ended up playing the hell out of those games and enjoying every minute of it.

Last night, after logging off, I got to digging around in my desk.  Burried way in the back of one of the drawers rested those old forgotten disks… and a decision was made.

Tonight, I return to where it all began.  It is time I reach out to my old friend Trebor and aid him once more in his never ending battle against the evil wizard Werdna.