Gamer Philosophy pt. 1

Been playing Diablo II Classic again lately, since World of Warcraft has been somewhat depressing to play lately. With a friend’s account getting hacked, other friends hiding from other overbearing friends on the alliance side, other people going MIA or moving to other servers, others having loyalties to other friends, it sometimes just gets to be too much and I decided to take a break from it every once in a while by decimating hordes of demons in Chaos Sanctuary with a sword barbarian. I started a few days ago and now I’m level 54 (thanks to an awesome dual leech sword that found me at just the right time) and made it to the insanely difficult “hell” mode. After a few minutes there I remembered how ridiculously hard they made it, and have been running “nightmare” mode Chaos Sanctuary in hopes the required uber sword and armor I need to survive in hell. I would play expansion due to the awesome gear and more universal form in currency in the form of runes, but I don’t really feel like making the run through levels and artwork that look like they were designed by a five year old kid seriously lacking in talent.

After going back to Diablo II, I kind of realized what possibly makes Blizzard so appealing, and it’s the fact that the games they make are so similar to real life. Not that I’m literally slaying dragons and demons, but there are some parallels that I can’t help but notice.

Anything seen through my gamer eyes can been seen as metaphor, but where Diablo II is most similar to life is in dying.

Now, in Diablo II, starting in nightmare mode it gets very annoying to die. Not only do you lose a bunch of gold, but you lose experience too. If you can get back to the spot where you died and click on your corpse, you can get back most of the experience you lost, but if it’s in a particularly difficult spot, you’ll end up dying again and again, losing more and more experience and gold impeding your progress, and will have you saying “I HATE YOU BLIZZARD WHY DO YOU MAKING THIS GAME SO DAMN ANNOYING WHERE AM I GONNA GET AN UBER EXECUTIONER SWORD WHY DO YOU MAKE IT SO HARD TO PLAY WOW WITH MY FRIENDS???” I try to get back to my body when I can so I can at least minimize the damage to my in-game life, but my corpse is usually surround by a LEGION ready to kill me again in my naked weakness. Other classes can fight their way back, but a sword-barb is useless without a sword. So, I usually just give up and accept it as a loss, since I have no one to help me out when I die. All the gold I quickly collected from my rapid success is just as suddenly gone, and I end up a bit poorer, with less XP, and back to square one with me once again hitting the “create game” button. Ending up frustrated by the rules of the game and the lack of anyone to help me, I end up bowing out in defeat and start over. And it only starts with a small mistake. A tiny, miniscule, infinitesemal, Lilliputian mistake. Oh how is this different from my life, it is my life.

But, I realized that if I had someone to help me, it wouldn’t be AS bad. So as romantic (think Byron or Keats, not St. Valentine) as the life of a solo gamer can be, the way the gameworld works, it helps to have someone to help you get back on your feet. But moving on…

As much as I like to say I hate Blizzard for some of the ANNOYING things they do, I can honestly say that without these frustrations my (gaming) life would be pretty boring.

For instance, in Chaos Sanctuary, the only real danger I face is Iron Maiden. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s a curse put on you that hurts you when you deal any damage. So if you hit hard, it hits you back harder. If you’re a whirlwind barb, it means if you attack anyone, you’re DEAD. Because if you’re in the middle of a whirlwind, you can’t stop. You’ll just keep attacking and spinning until it’s done and you’re dead.

Basically right now in nightmare mode I’m godlike, spinning and cutting through a huge mass of demons leaving a trail of pixelated beauty (those glorious death animations from Diablo II Classic of bone, blood and fire). Nothing can stop can stop me when I’m strong, well geared and spec’ed right–the only thing that can hurt me, that can cause me to fail is MYSELF.

So, after failing constantly, I got into a curious state of mind. Instead of losing it in frustration I knew I had to get back on my feet. In my mind is “it’s only a damn AI I can’t let it beat me AI’s are NOT human I don’t care how sophisticated they get…or are they? n/m just get up get up I’m not done yet it’s not over my enemy can be defeated it’s possible it’s in the rules of the game.”

Then………………………………………………I got up.

The End.