Star Wars Galaxies and other alternatives to life
 

Yes, crack has a new name...Star Wars Galaxies.

Anyone else addicted to this strange, yet enticing phenomenon?

I have been playing for a couple of months now, and can't seem to pry myself from the computer at 3 am most mornings.

Never tried it. I'm more interested non-directional kinds of things where you can more or less hang out and do whatever the hell you want, as opposed to having an actual goal. But maybe I like the idea better than the reality (so to speak). I recently tried out activeworlds.com and thought it was lame. We'll see if there.com is any better, I signed up for that too.

A friend of mine is completely addicted to Second Life.

And Tony is about to become completely addicted to Rainbow Six 3.

Perth is waiting for Worlds of Warcraft.

perth's waiting for freaking Halo too. Jesus Christ I need to get to the Post Office tonight.

Ooh, that reminds me...we got Ssx3 this weekend...very, very nice! We got the XBox, and the graphics are really good. You can buy gear!

SSX has always been good fun. I have Tricky, and let me tell you, having them play "It's Tricky" whenever you get the uber-meter up high enough is about the best incentive to do so that I can imagine. SSX3 looks equally awesome. I'll undoubtedly purchase it eventually.

SSX Ticky oozes style. SSX3 is technically a better game, but it somehow just doesn't match Tricky's style. I heartily recommend SSX3 though. Lots of fun.

I've been playing SWG as well, enjoying it more now that I'm actually grouping with people. But when World of Warcraft comes out, I really doubt I'll be able to find time to play SWG. Only time will tell.

a buddy of mine had over three and a half months of real time on one of his everquest characters. a cooperative effort between his wife and his law school grades forced him to close his account. i myself *cough* never touch the stuff.

*tries to hide the track marks in his arm and mask his anticipation for everquest 2*

Only three and a half months? Boo..

Thats nothing.

My now abandoned Rogue has probably half a year and my warrior at least 4 monhts.

Yes. I'm talking about "Time Played" as in time I was activley playing the game.

What can I say? I was in one of the best guilds in the game (Not best of server, we had Afterlife (best guild in the world) on our server.

We played 5pm EST to Midnight. What this usualy meant was scouting started at 3pm. I got home from work at 6pm and showed up just in time for the first kill, we'd 'officialy' finish at midnight and hit unofficial targets till 2am.
Friday night was 5pm till 3am. One weekend day was always "RL time" as in you don't have to be on. But most were anyway. Mandatory weekend day was 3pm - midnight (except Saturdays which was often 3am)

Yet I can honestly say that I was never 'addicted'. Yeah I 'lived' in Everquest but only because I chose to not because I had to. I could always get up and walk away, in the end I did. I just didn't have time anymore and I was not interested in a lower style gameplay. As in a lower tier guild...so I quit. My char is rotting in the virtual GY of EQ chars.

I never miss EQ but I do miss some of the people that I used to play with. We had about 150 people in guild and I knew 30 like brothers. We always had a seperate channel for our little "inner circle" going. Damn I miss the people....

I figure if I ever fuck up RL I'll go back to EQ. I know some of my friends will still be there as they have made it clear that they never plan to leave the world of EQ as they just like it there better than in RL. I know some people will say "But it's not real! It's fake! It's imaginary! How can you dedicate so much time to something thats not real?"
The thing is...if it makes you happy, who cares if it's real or not? If there is a group of people who are always happy to see you and miss you when you're gone can they not be your family even if they aren't really 'there'?

you can do that...in fact, its a lot like active worlds but with guns and critters. case, i'm hooked too...ask jinx. im on the bloodfin server "thornrim"

way cool game...indefinately deep.....do you have a mount yet? i hear vehicles are coming soon!

i went to bed at 2:45 last night.....don't tell jinx

i have a problem

hello, my name is lumberjim, and i'm a swg-holic

SWG never did anything for me.

I need raids. SWG doesnt' have raids. No epic encounters, no cool drops. No daggers the posession of which grants you instant respect in the Rogue circles...

I never tried EQ. SWG has been my first foray into the world of MMORPGS.

It boggles my mind how some people actually let it BECOME their life. I mean, I can't let myself become that absorbed, but I can see why and how they could. I actually get sick of it before it ever gets to that point.

...At 4 in the morning. :)

Its actually more fun to me that I get to play with Case, because we can just talk to each other about what we're doing, rather than having to type it all out and whatnot. If she wasn't playing though, I think I would have lost interest in the game when I got the Xbox.

And honey, "David Bowie doing Andy Warhol" just doesn't sound right.

I'll have you know, perth, that the transition from "playing SWG, the game" to "Living SWG, the life" happens somewhere around 5:18 am, when Naboo is just getting dark again. So, really, by the time I do tire of the game, I am still 1 hour and 18 minutes away from complete assimilation. :D

See, THIS is why I don't pick up SWG. I would be sitting in my dorm room day in, day out, abandoning any pretense of good hygeine as I took in my nourishment intravenously. Grades would crash, eventually the RAs would come and try to haul me out of the room, and I would be forced to protect my life inside the PC with any and all available force.

EQ is much easier to get absorbed in because there are so many "clear" goals and communities that get respect for being 'uber'.

I know I was crazed about getting the gear in EQ and being in a respectable guild. In fact I sent an email to the guild leader when I was level 20 asking the guild leader to let me in if I get to 55 in 30 days. I did. I got in the guild - with a LOT of friction from the other lvl 60 'uber' members who saw me as a half naked lvl 55 newbie. The guld master took a lot of flak to get me in, he even lied about me having had an uber char on a different server...all because he saw how insane I was.

So yeah that was the end of RL for about a year and a half for my Rogue. Posts like this make me miss my guild. Eventhough it's not the same anymore, some of my best EQ friends quit when I did. As far as I know 7 people left EQ partialy because I did. I'm rambling. I'll shut up.

By the way, the best way to play MMORPGs is with Roger Wilco, it allows you to just speak and have others hear it. We ran raids like that and it was awesome. Just made it easier to give and recieve orders. (Thing about a raid is that it's split up into atleast 5 groups, healers, tanks, casters, melee dmg(monks, rogues), pullers. Each group should have a leader who issues orders and each leader should recieve orders from the raid leader. EQ has more strategy to it than any other game I ever played.)

By the way...I never neglected my hygene, just my haircut and shaving...

File: It sounds like EQ was a huge part of your life for a while. What was your motivation for joining the guild? In EQ, what purposes do guilds serve?

EQ is heavily level based. There are many different play styles in EQ but for me 1-55 is just "learning levels". As in just a time sink to teach you to play the game.

There are virtualy no benifits of a guild during low levels of the game.

Yet at 55 you will suddenly find that the gear you want/need to progress comes from powerful monsters which you cannot kill alone or even with a full group (unless it's an uber group).

In other words, in EQ you can't become strong all by yourself. You need friends, lots of them. Thats where guilds come in. Guilds are there to help you get the most out of the game.

Without a guild you cannot advance past the 'raid level' encounters. I'd say that a good 1/3 of the game is designed just for guilds.

The purpose behind 'most' guild in EQ is to advance as a guild, which means equip the members, help them with advancment quests and conquer new encounters. There are also some 'newbie' guilds and 'roleplaying' guilds, those tend to be refred to as 'teaparty' guilds as they spend more time chatting/fooling around than actualy fighting. To each his own...

Quite frankly my only goal in EQ was to get to level 65, have over 4000 hitpoints (as a rogue) and overall be uber. I knew that I needed a guild to do this...so thats why I wanted to join.

Later I managed to get 3 of my friends into the guild after I joined and after awhile found myself feeling very much a part of the 'family'. I was close to the guild leadership, I had a ton of influence in the guild despite how new I was and I was having fun.

The thing about EQ guilds is that we're always involved in some huge fight where you depend on every single member to know what they're doing and to do it well. The game is very challanging and there is a certain sense of achievment and respect for your fellow guild members when you manage to survive a raid and get some items for the guild. (A raid kill generaly drops 5-6 items which and 'bought' by the members for points. You get points for attending raids etc)

The catch with EQ is that you need at least 4 hours to get anything done. Want to just xp? Well it'll take you 1 hour to get a group and set up, and xping for anything less than 3 hours is worthless. Want to raid? 20 minutes travel. 20 minutes prebuff. 20 minutes plan 30 minute execution 20 minutes looting. Thats for an 'avg' raid. Many raids traveling to the location takes hours as there are many fights along the way and some encounters require you to fight wave after wave after wave before the boss appears. (Nothing is as tough as this, your buffs expire, your clerics run out of mana, people just get tired...)

Furthermore, in order for a guild to advance, all members must advance. It does a guild no good when half of it is equiped for teir 3 encounters while half is barley ready for teir 1. In order to keep the guild in check usualy as much as 80% of all raids is mandatory missing an advancment encounter 3 times in a row often gets people kicked out of guilds, failing to level up sufficiently or aquire single persone quest items will also get people booted.

I quit EQ because I needed more time for work, college and my gf so I knew that I'd not be able to put in the typical 6-8 hours a day and the 18 hour weekend play schedule that I used to have.

It's also true that as you reach your desired level of 'uberness' you will spend a lot less time in EQ as you will only need to raid, all need to xp will be gone. (Most 3+ month Afterlife members spend 1/3rd the time in EQ that they spent previously)

(BTW the funniest thing in EQ that I ever saw was a 64 year old man who had several 'uber' chars and played EQ about 16 hours on any given day. He said it was the best thing that happened to him as he was making enough money selling EQ gear in Player Auctions to pay for all his RL needs and save up enough to send his 3 grand kids through college)