On March 31st I'm going dark for a month. I'm going to shut off Google Plus, Twitter, guild forums and anything else associated with games. I'm going to live like it's 1999.
This is mainly an experiment. I want to see if what I think about The Elder Scrolls Online differs from the community I normally play games with or read about playing games, thinks. I want to see how much I crumble under peer pressure. The first 30 days in an MMO are very crucial because that is when we have to decide to pay or not to pay for another month. I believe I get too invested in what others' think of a game and it gets me down. This trend has been happening for the MMO releases since 2008. I buy an MMO. I play the MMO for a month. People get pissy about the MMO. I get pissy. I quit MMO and go back to WoW.
Over the past 2 months I happily played WoW. I think I was happy because nobody really gave a shit about WoW. It wasn't the new thing to play. There wasn't hype, first impression, or asshats comparing their games. Nobody cared about WoW's subscription model or their cash shop. It was nice just to play the game and not get into the politics that comes with new MMOs.
Sure enough, the WoW elitist will come out of the woodwork nitpicking ESO apart. Fans of Wildstar will get defensive and chest bump each other in the locker room. Then, there will be the annoying fanboys that will make ESO out to be the next best thing next to a giant pile of golden goose shit. For the first 30 days of ESO my Internet is going to be fucking annoying. Of course, that is my choice to follow, read, and listen to these people. That is why my choice is to turn you all off.
At the end of the 30 days I'll decide whether or not I want to subscribe. I will write a blog post detailing my time in the dark playing ESO. I think it will be fun to see if my thoughts about the game differ or are similar to the community I chose to listen to.
I'll keep writing during my time in the dark. I don't have comment notifications on so I won't see if people give a shit what I'm saying. I'll just write and ignore everybody. Sounds like heaven to me.
I fully understand I choose to be swayed by others' opinions and I'm OK with that. I love games and love the community, but I'm curious to see how much I change the way I think according to what you all think.
Until then, on March 10 thru the 14th I will be writing about developers I appreciate. I'm not going to do a Developer Appreciation Week or anything, because I feel it stresses me out to expect other bloggers to say something nice about developers. For 5 years I tried to get the community together to really make developers feel like most of us care, but I always feel like only a handful of us care. The rest are too busy or don't think it's worth their time. It just gets me down and makes me realize how shitty humanity really is.
Yesterday really hit home for me. It made me think of my time I wrote for MMORPG. com. I got a comment saying how worthless my writing was. This is the community I try to make laugh with stories. These are the people I spend my free time with. What a sorry piece of hell the gaming community is. Built on creativity and fun, but brought to life by hate, greed, and envy. How did something so beautiful get vandalized so fast?
There is 1% that makes it worth it all. I love those people. The other 99% I truly want to say, fuck you!
Sounds like an interesting experiment. Don't forget to turn off general chat!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah forgot about that ty!
DeleteScary,
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really interesting experiment, and I'm really looking forward to how allowing yourself time to form opinions before seeking others' will change how you view the game. I've noticed a lot how negative I get about many games that I see being negatively reviewed, so I think you may have a really interesting and valid outcome to your research.
That said, don't let jerks get you down. I know I do, too; I'm notorious for highs and lows due to how others around me are behaving, but still. Jerks will be jerks, and jerks that can't form a cogent argument will attack you instead of talk civilly about your differences. Don't let it bother you one bit. There's a LOT more people reading you than you think, and silence, while by nature not reassuring, usually means agreement.
Sincerely,
Stubborn of Sheep The Diamond
@Stubborn -- It's like when you're enjoying a game then you spend an afternoon browser the "official forums" and all the toxicity washes over you and you never log into that game again! Well, at least that's what happens to me!
DeleteYup I just read a post over at MMORPG and the shear stupidity people say baffles me. Makes me not want to play games. A guys said, "Duuuh PvP is just an excuse for Devs to be lazy making content duuuuh. I can get this same thing with f2p games duuuuh..." I'm sad there are parents that raised that kid.
DeleteI guess I say stupid shit but mine is on purpose and I understand it's stupid for a purpose of being stupid, but these people are morons maybe on purpose. Makes me rethink my purpose of making people smile through dumb humor. The toxicity of the Internet is mind blowing. Randomly pick a website with comments and it's scary. We wonder why aliens don't visit us
"Worf land there it looks beautiful"
"Yes captain checking for signed of life... Oh gawd captain... PULL UP PULL UP! "
So I think developer appreciate week is also a brilliant idea :) I love that concept.
ReplyDeleteI'll miss ya..sniffle
ReplyDelete