Ever since I was little, I've always loved RPGs. Even before I knew what gaming was, my mom would play Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time occasionally but was unfortunately very over-protective of it and would never let me play (looking back I don't blame her, I was a destroyer of all the things). Once I was older and (slightly) more responsible, I managed to dig through all of our boxes of old, forgotten crap and locate this glorious treasure. Immediately when I turned on the game, I was sent back to the days of my childhood when I would eagerly watch my mom play OoT for hours doing stuff that made no sense to me whatsoever, but it was flashy and that elf kid had a hella boss sword, I couldn't not watch. The sword movements, the vast landscape, the gorgeous songs.. all of it would later inspire me to desperately pursue any RPG that fulfilled my desire for adventure and battle.
Luckily in this day and age, RPGs with plenty of "adventure and battle" are running rampant. Now, I will admit here and now I was one of the poor preteen souls that played RuneScape for a good amount of time. This is only because it was browser-based and I was too young for my parents to allow me to download things from the internet, such as games. Thankfully that all changed years later (after building up a pretty awesome RuneScape account which I later entrusted to my much-deserving "RuneScape apprentice" cousin) when I moved in with my great grandparents and was given free range on their new computer (They were in their seventies, they honestly didn't give a darn as long as my grandmother could check her InvisiMax email every couple of weeks and I showed them how to look up weather updates, because an at-home DTN and the most premium of 24-hour weather channels wasn't enough). I also helped with tedious Excel documents holding information about thousands of farm- and shop-related transactions.
Anyway, when I was allowed this godly ability of "downloading," I took full advantage of it. By some form of miracle I managed to make a semi-social living on GaiaOnline (a forum-based site with the sweet bonus of pimping out your avatar) while balancing a solid addiction to the MMO MapleStory. Ah, Gaia. I remember those days. I was the Head Vixen at the "Naughty Hotties" tavern (in the Chatterbox forum of course, because the thread was basically just a 'walk in and flirt with 40 year old men pretending to be 15 year old girls' bar setting themed RP). Head Vixen was a dangerous job, too, considering I was basically the thread's role-play prostitute and received wonderful payments (such as Momo the Monkey and many lovely dresses from Gambino Outfitters as thank-yous from "satisfied" customers) but was in direct violation of the anti-cybering section of the TOS. I'm very lucky I didn't get banned, but now I don't even go on the sight aside from checking every few days to make sure I haven't been hacked, and I abandoned the account ages ago.
When I wasn't spamming and whoring the forums of Gaia, I was on MapleStory entertaining myself with mindless 2D chibi-style battles against creatures like crabby red snails and adorable hopping clocks that make the cutest Kirby-like noises when you kill them. I've spent the last six years of my life being on-and-off addicted to this evil thing, but I regret none of it. I am, sadly, quitting Maple out of spite (for a while at least) because the way the game has evolved and developed in the past few years has made it unbearably easy to level. Back when I first started, leveling to seventy for your third job advancement was near-godly; Tiger and FangBlade were worshipped as the first two level 200s on the game. Now it takes a matter of weeks to reach level 200 with the right friends and funding... it's pathetic. I miss my old, fulfilling Maple where all your time was spent grinding and talking with your guildies, and until the amazing boost to the Bowman class in the Jump! update coming later this year or early next year, I'm not touching it.
For now I'm on Cabal Online (Mercury server, IGN AvaQui [FA] and KatinkaNimka [Blader], actively looking for buddies and a guild even though I'm a pathetic nooblet at the moment). I'm very content with my "new" game (I played about two years ago for a few months until I graduated high school). In fact, if it weren't in the middle of a server maintenance, I'd probably be playing it right now. Even though it's midnight. And, being a human, I need sleep. ... I should go to bed. ... Or not. ... On to Memebase!
No comments:
Post a Comment