MMO Gamers

I’m writing this at work and in our office today there are eight people.  Of those eight, only three of us play MMOs.  The other two gamers both play WoW and only WoW and if you’ve read my blog before you know that I’ve churned through a handful of MMOs these past 12 months.

Now this isn’t a statistic of a cross-section of society or anything like that, I’m just pointing out that five people that work with me have little or no knowledge whatsoever of what an MMOG is.

My wife doesn’t play MMOs and complains that I spend too much time on them.  There has been many a time that she’s called me to help her with something or told me to hurry up and get ready because we were going out.  A conversation might go something like this.

Wife:  “Just save it, we have to go”
Me:   “I can’t save it, it’s an MMO“
Wife:  “Well, just quit then”
Me:  “I can’t quit, I’m in a group”
Wife:  “So, it’s just a game”
Me:  “Yeah, but I’m playing with real people.  If I quit now they won’t have a healer and they won’t be able to go on” (very noble and self sacrificing of me don’t you think?)

At this stage I usually get one of those looks, I’m sure you know the one, and I know I’m going to have to work extra hard later.  Your relationship skills decrease -1268/5000.

A friend of mine, Joe, whom I met only a year or so ago, plays Call of Duty 4 and other PC titles.  He knows nothing about MMOs and it’s only through meeting me that he’s learnt anything.  We were playing poker at a friend’s place when he asked me about the MMO I’m playing.

Joe:  “So, what do you do?”
Me:  “You know, you go around and kill stuff”
Joe:  “And then what happens?”
Me:  “Well, you grab quests, you know, to kill wolves and stuff, then you go and kill the wolves and then the dude gives you a pair of boots or something.  You get XP and you level up.”
Joe:  “And I can go wherever I want?”
Me:  ‘Well, you can, but you might get killed by stuff a higher level than you.”
Joe:  “So let’s say I’m level 3, I hang around this area” indicating a small area on the table “and I kill level 3 wolves.  Then I get to level 4 and I can go over here” indicating a place further away on the table “and kill level 4 wolves?”
Me:  “Yeah, something like that.”

Now I know I didn’t explain it very well but he’s keen to try an MMO all the same, which will give me a total of four converts if he does.  If this topic has a point, which it actually doesn’t, it’s that while 10 million people might be playing World of Warcraft, and 10 million or more people might be playing other MMOs, there’s still an awful lot of people that aren’t.