Joe Gamer

By now most people have heard of the infamous World of Warcraft or WoW for short. The latest expansion pack to the game is called Cataclysm. If your husband has shown interest in playing this game, this is a very bad thing. Here is why, the game is incredibly addictive for many people. Specially if the person has problems with anxiety or depression, the game can provide a false sense of achievement by leveling. The game requires very little gaming skill other than being able to click buttons with a mouse which is the reason it is very easy to learn and pick up. Instead, the game does little to reward skill but rewards time that you have played instead. Granted, some skill might make things a bit faster.

The more time the player keep playing the game, your avatar starts gaining levels which makes you stronger against foes. However, there is no shortage of enemies as they endlessly re spawn or throw more difficult enemies that will probably require several players to beat. This starts escalating up to a point where you need dozens or more people to beat enemies. These players then need to arrange a time when players with enough time sunk into the game can play. This is where things start getting ugly. In WoW, these groups are called guilds, several of them meet 4 or more times a week for 2 or more hours. This could add up to the time you would spend in a part time job. The game can not be paused unless agreed by everybody in the group. Somebody hooked on the game will probably not leave the chair in a while.

I tried to explain what the game is in a nutshell avoiding lingo used by people that play it. If suddenly all your partner can talk about is WoW and all the words coming out of his mouth are raid, guild, crits, aoe, dkp, or aggro. This is a bad sign. When they start saying my druid, my mage, my paladin without giggling. You got a problem.

If he starts making up excuses to not go out or work out, he is sick etc but he feels well enough to play on the computer. That is also bad. Eventually, it is going to get to a point where no excuses are made and the person is not ashamed anymore to the point where he will flat out tell you that he has an online appointment to play with his “friends”, referring to people he has never met in person and which only connection is to advance in the game.

Unless the person playing is standing up or in a treadmill with a desk on top, all the time spent playing the game will increase the sedentary lifestyle which will show on the scale. It happens slowly so that it will probably not be noticeable but when people you have not seen in months such as relatives start saying stuff, pay attention.

If you do not believe me, google and you will find hundreds of stories over the Web. Ranging from people taking laptops to play at cruises to wearing diapers so as to not waste any time going to the bathroom. Even little disregard for children safety when they are left unattended. Several parodies have been made by popular TV Shows including The Big Bang Theory “Sword Master”, South Park “Make love, Not Warcraft”, and the online mini series The Guild. Some are exaggerated but they can happen to you.

I need not to tell you that a combination of these factors will probably lead to a decrease sex drive which does not make for a happy wife and eventually a WoW widow. I am not saying everybody who plays WoW is a complete fat loser with no life living on his mother’s basement but one way or another with that much time spent on the game it is bound to take a toll on your relationship and life. Make no mistake, World of Warcraft is to be considered an addiction. Some people can control their drinking or gambling but a lot of people do not. You should do whatever you judge to be the right thing.You have been warned.

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© 2011, Christian Rios. All rights reserved.

So today is kind of a slow news day.  There’s just a few quick bullets I want to hit to keep my readership updated on the world of games:

1) Guitar Hero is no longer in production.  Activision is thinking about axing its team and franchise because… who cares really?  I mean, who bought Warriors of Rock?  I did, but that’s because I wanted Muse’s Uprising.

2) Marvel vs. Capcom 3 comes out next week.  The first game this year I’m really super stoked about.  Normally the beginning of the year is slow, but with Dead Space 2, Little Big Planet 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3, I think someone forgot to remind the gaming industry.  Not that I mind, though.

3) Pokemon Black and White are the best in class in the past 5 years.  I’m a Pokemon fan, I don’t try to hide it, so I’m super excited about this.  And yes, that means I’m kind of interested in the Pokemon card game.  Sue me.

4) Look up a game called Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together if you’re into strategy RPGs.  Seriously, it’s been getting awesome reviews.

That’s all I can think of right now.  Beth is well on her way to 85 on World of Warcraft and I’m right behind her.  I attempted to start playing Mass Effect 2… and I’m excited!  Yay for year old games I haven’t even played yet.  I’ve still got Sakura Wars, Persona 4 I’m 30 hours into, Tales of Vesperia… sigh.

© 2011, Jeff Hollingsworth. All rights reserved.

Do you like violence?  Not the artsy “Sun Tsu” type war, but Jason Statham, Rambo-esque killfests?  Then hop onto Xbox Live or the Playstation Network and download Bulletstorm right now.  No.  Like, right now.  Pause reading this, log on, and download it right now.

Good.  You back now?  While it’s downloading let me tell you why: This game is nuts.  If any game claims to have all out, eye popping explosive action and they are NOT Bulletstorm… they are lying.  While games like Call of Duty are visceral and semi realistic and Halo is cool with an awesome setting and background, Bulletstorm gives you a band of swearing, violent space pirates, crashes lands them on some weird planet, and says… have at it.

The game is literally based on killing your enemies in the most creative way possible.  Sure you have guns, and you’ll be using them primarily, but you’ve got extra tools to kill fools in more ways than “simply” shooting them to death.  For example, press either the O or B button (PS3 and Xbox respectively) and you’ll put your boot in the face of your enemy, shooting them into the air for a moment.  Hit L2 or the left trigger and you’ll shoot a laser like Lash at them and pull them toward you.  I had fun booting a guy and lashing him back to me over and over again, just to be mean.  What makes it (more) interesting is your character has some temporal array thingamajig that freezes the enemy so after you boot them sky high you can pick them off easier.

The game actually ranks how creatively you kill!  You get points for every ‘unique’ way you kill.  Headshots, multiple kills and that thing, but also using the environment.  In the demo stage there are areas of the building with a lot of rebar exposed.  You can use the Lash to pull an enemy into it, gaining a big bonus.  You can even boot a guy up in the air and shoot him with a gun called the “Screamer” that fires him off into the air for the “Fireworks” bonus.  It’s really fun trying to figure up new ways to kill.

I was plenty impressed.  I told Elizabeth I was instantly in love.  It was just so… raw.  It’s very much made of testosterone and bullet casings.  Anyhow, if you’re into this sort of thing, go ahead and download it.  Heck, if you followed my lead, it may be done downloading already!  Maybe…

© 2011, Jeff Hollingsworth. All rights reserved.

So when trying to figure out what I wanted to talk about today, my mind started wandering to all the different games I play.  I could talk about the goings-on in World of Warcraft, the new Skaven models for Warhammer, or try to find some interesting bit of gaming news I could share.  However, I started thinking about it, wouldn’t it be cool to talk about some more table top games?  I think I want to post up a synopsis of our Dark Sun game, but I got kinda sad faced… some of you know, but not all, that I have a ton of RPG rule books and not nearly enough time to try them out.

So, as the rusty cogs of my brain were turning, I thought “wouldn’t it be cool to get together and just.. try some new games out?”  I mean, we could get out of our comfort zone and try Anima or Legend of the Five Rings or (forgive me for saying) New World of Darkness.  I’d love to host something like this.  I have Gamma World and Castle Ravenloft we haven’t tried either.

So what say you guys?  Anyone local be interested in, one Friday, Saturday or even Sunday getting together early in the afternoon and spending some time trying out some games we haven’t played yet?  Like I say, I’d be the one to host this.

Let me know personally or in the comments here and we can work out a date.

© 2011, Jeff Hollingsworth. All rights reserved.

There’s some new events rising on the horizon (see what I did there?) on the D&D front.  I’ve taken a break from buying books for the past couple of months because Wizards was doing a series of books call Essentials.  Essentials is just what it sounds like, a series of books “essential” to newbie D&D players.  Because they felt the actual essential books like the PHB or DMG were too complicated for newbie players, the went and created new and easier builds for many of the 4e races and classes.  I didn’t feel I needed them for our group so I sort of put them aside, only considering getting the rules compendium for my sake and some of the generic dungeon tiles.  The new class options look cool but they are entirely different than the normal class/level structure, so I didn’t want to confuse myself.  Not saying they are bad products, just not necessarily for me.

So I say all that to say there’s some new things I’m looking in to that I’m somewhat interested in.  First off are the new “Fate Cards.”  If someone wants to add them to the game, they buy a pack (with 8 cards in each pack).  At the beginning of each encounter, the cards get shuffled.  You draw one at the beginning of the encounter and can play only one during a round.  You only draw a new one after you use the one in your hand.  I’m curious about them; I’ll really have to see what they do, but otherwise they are there.

Second is the new Virtual Table.  They are having a conference going on in a few days, with a seminar about the Virtual Table.  Back when 4e was first announced, they also announced a suite of online tools to better play D&D.  One of them was the Virtual Table so people could play together easily online.  Four years later, the program is in its beta testing phase.  I’m pretty excited personally as I’m sure it’ll make online DMing easier than ever.  I love playing online but have had trouble DMing as I hate making maps, especially online.  Either way, as soon as more information is out, I’ll try to let it be known.

Tired of D&D?  Love my current campaign?  Want me to draw from my fate deck?  Put it in the comments!

© 2011, Jeff Hollingsworth. All rights reserved.