2017

Where Do You Call Home?

stargrace October 17, 2017 0Comment

It’s 2017 and we’ve seen a lot of changes in video games over the years – one of the biggest video game annoyances I have always had is the idea of servers. The traditional idea, where you’re locked to it, playing happily with all your friends until a year passes and suddenly no one is playing with you and the grass is greener on the other side. You know the servers I’m talking about.

What have games done to combat the idea that people tend to play everywhere and they want to play with their friends (along with a large population)? Well, there have been server transfers, allowing players to pay a fee (or sometimes no cost) to swap to a server of their choice. There have been server merges, where two (typically) underpopulated servers would get merged together to create one large server, there have been megaservers, where ALL smaller servers were combined into one gigantic server (a-la WildStar), there have been shards, where people can join up across servers to play in instances with their friends and even raid. There have been server teams, where you’re on a team with a bunch of other servers and you share some of the same zones but you’re not technically on the same server together.

Like I said, many different ways of attempting to solve the technical issue of having a ‘server’ and the players desires to be where all the action is – with their friends. Or with that new raid guild they’ve been eyeballing. Or whatever XYZ reason a player has to want to play some place new with their old character.

Then there are the games that don’t have servers. EVE Online is a great one that comes to mind. Because each area is its own zone there’s no real need to have people playing on different servers. Of course it could also be due to a population thing, while there are usually anywhere from 17-28,000 people online when I am, it’s not hundreds of thousands or even millions of people all gathered together.

The reason this comes up is because I have a lot of different World of Warcraft servers that I consider “home” – and that list has only grown and changed over the past 10 years as friends have come and gone and new friends have joined up. There’s Argent Dawn which is where I have both a horde and an alliance guild that I run. My husband and I have our established characters there. Then he stopped playing. It’s not much fun playing alone.

So I moved to Area 52 with a few characters. Set up a guild there. Had a few friends who played. The server population is enormous. Then those friends stopped playing, and I was playing alone again.

I moved a hunter over to Dalaran with a few members from Combat Wombat where we had an ultra casual guild that completely fell apart.

So I moved to Lightbringer with Stargrace, my priest where I joined Crimson Cross, and I have a tiny little warrior that I just started. An established guild that isn’t going anywhere, and while I may only “know” one or two members, at least it’s a place I can call ‘home’ and they haven’t kicked me out yet no matter how inactive I become.

All of these servers are still “home” for one reason or another. They all have characters that I’ve played, that I enjoy playing, and that I would love to play again – and I wish it were easier to move them around, or at least a little less expensive. I wish I could keep all of my characters together, but WoW is not a game that lets you do this very easily. At least not without shelling out a fair bit of cash. I wish I had all of my crafters on the same server. I miss them. Playing with friends or at least having them around in chat is a nice aspect to my gaming, and while we CAN group up and even raid cross server, I find it’s just not enough.

What are your thoughts? Let me know in comments and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

The Couple That Games Together

stargrace October 12, 2017 2Comments

My husband and I used to game together, but over the years he decided that he didn’t want to play MMOs because they used up an enormous amount of his free time, and he focused on his steam library (over 500 games) while I continued to play. We’ve played most MMOs together in one form or another, briefly. It made me sad when our duo was suddenly a solo but of course I supported his decision.

I started talking about WoW a few days ago with him, trying to decide what I wanted to do in game, what character I wanted to play, and he said out of no where that he missed playing MMOs with me and that when he gets back from depot in 3 months he would like it if we played WoW together.

I was stunned! He was incredibly excited about it and started talking about his old character and how he’d like to faction transfer from Alliance back to Horde. It was such a great discussion, one I have really missed. Even though actually playing together is some time off, we’re both looking forward to a few hours here and there in Azeroth together.

For most people this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but gaming is how we met each other. We don’t always share the same tastes, but thanks to him I’ve tried branching out and playing games I wouldn’t normally find interesting, and vice versa. I love that I have a partner who games, and I think it would be very difficult to be in a relationship with someone who didn’t share that passion of mine. Some things I know we don’t need to share, my husband is no knitter and doesn’t share my love of fiber, just like I am not a huge fan of some of his passions – but we support each other and we inspire and motivate each other. Having him express that he missed us gaming together and that he wanted to pick it up again when he comes home was like a big warm hug wrapping itself around me.

I’m so excited!