Wednesday, September 26, 2007

A life both real and imaginary

Life as I know it currently consists on two totally different plains of existance. Very similar to what Neo's life in the movie "The Matrix". Past this one simple statement the comparison ends.

Real life is rather mundane, at least in my mind. My work is rather bland, with very few shining moments. Spending eight or more hours in front of a computer my mind tends to wander through my cluttered thoughts. After work I head home and eat dinner with my family. We go over each others day and when asked how my day was I often answer "ok". After that it doesn't take long before I find myself yet again at a computer screen, often sitting for another four or more hours. Weekends are often a blur of activity, with movies, a few outdoor activities and yes more time in front of the computer. My days for the most part run from one to the other. A few days do stand out, but those are often lost in my memories.

My imaginary life consists in the online world of Everquest 2. It consists mainly of a group of friends that I adventure with. This group of friends are in a guild or clan called Explorers of Legend. Guilds are a great way to organize friends and to socialize. During a typical gaming session, I join a group of up to 24 people and go out on raids. Raids are where a large group of people go into an area of the game that is set to be a challenge for so many people. Other nights I can be found running around with a few others doing quests or hunting creatures in the game. This sounds like fun, doesn't it? My imaginary life is not always a smooth one. I have taken on a leadership role within our guild. I like to refer to this as the work portion of my imaginary world, or at least I will from now on. Often this work can be very stressful and sometimes outright upsetting. But I will leave that for another time.

After reading what I have written, I thought that anyone reading this may get the wrong impression and take it as a rant against my real life. This is not the purpose of this. What's the purpose? To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what it is. Perhaps it's an attempt by me to catalog my life in general, in an attempt to better it. Both of these lives have their low and high moments. Either way, both are part of my life.

8 comments:

Lars said...

Have you taken the Bartle test? What aspect of MMOs draws you to them?

Corwin.EoL said...

No I hadn't.

AKSE players like to be the best-of-the-best at everything the game has to offer. They like to be high on the ladders of whatever metrics the game uses, including PVP. They like the best gear, the most power, and they love being the 'first' at something. Their prowess in PVP is generally supported by a large degree of understanding and posession of the best equipment and skills.

Breakdown: Achiever 60.00%, Explorer 40.00%, Killer 53.33%, Socializer 46.67%

It's rather close.

Unknown said...

I don't envy any guild's leaders. No matter how great friends the group is as a whole, there's always drama. Sooner or later.

It's evil.

- Madrigarn

Lars said...

Everyone plays these games for different reasons. Some people want to progress in the game (in terms of levels/loot), and you end up with drama when they progress far enough that they feel held back when its others peoples turn to help along. EoL has suffered a few splits over that (raiding issues).

EoL also suffered a split early on because some people wanted a smaller, more intimate guild and at that time we had the largest guild on the server.

The drama is annoying but pretty much unavoidable.

Cor, you might want to enable anonymous comments so people don't need to create a Blogger account to post.

Corwin.EoL said...

Thanks Lars. I think I have it set so that anyone can comment.

Lars said...

No prob. BTW, tag, you are now it.

Corwin.EoL said...

BTW I'd love to play tag, just not enough time.

Anonymous said...

You write very well.