Hero? Anti-Hero? Nope, Name's Chris.
By: Arthearius
As I chopped wood today my mind began to wander. I probably shouldn't have because I sharpen my axe regularly and that thing could put me one stylish eye patch away from pulling off the ultimate Pirate costume, compete with wooden leg. However with a heavy helping of irresponsibility I began to think about the "Come be a HERO in our game" slogan I have heard so many modern MMOs flaunt.
Now before we go forward lets go back. Not necessarily because I think it's totally necessary but rather I feel like reminiscing and the readership of this blog is completely voluntary. Except for my inner Pirate, he has to read it.
I started MMO gaming with a simple question from a guy I had just met at work. Literally within the first 10 minutes of knowing of his existence I had agreed to play EverQuest with him. This is the bro-mance equivalent of meeting a new girl and instantly dropping to one knee and losing $2,000...I mean handing her a ring and asking her to marry me. And yet with wild abandon we drove over to mall and picked up EverQuest (I purchased at a GameStop in the mall, so you can accurately assume I had a righteous bleached, spikey hair cut.)
After loading it up I called him and asked what race he had chosen and what his name was so we could chat in the game. Now for those that don't know the geography of Norrath try to stay with me...this will come to pass. For whatever reason he decided he had to be a Barbarian and for reasons still not known to me nor Cristobal (inner Pirate) I started a Half-elf. It took 3 days of trial and error to get our characters together because we were just two paupers with rusty iron weapons, a loincloth and the will to make it.
Thus began a multi-year campaign of social suicide and the birth of my love for MMOs. Ok back to the present. MMO developers somewhere along the line decided that the type of awe inspiring fun we had in the early years of EQ or DAoC (or even AC, you rebel you) came from some "I am the hero" mentality. So for that past few developement cycles they have struggled to force onto us the "hero" title by giving us main storylines and making all the wee-people NPCs worship us.
I feel this is so so wrong. And in fact is so backwards that I want to express my frustration with this through a 52 minute ballad in acapella. Luckily for you my mic is broken still. So instead let me throw down some wisdom.
I was a scared little girl in EQ.
Seriously, I don't know that I ever attempted to travel at night via Kithicor Forest. Way too dangerous. I was no hero. I was a half-elf (again...why?) trying to overcome the odds and dominate my little corner of KC. The mobs were ultra powerful and it took team work and focus to take them down. That's where my fun came. Not by throwing 30 mobs at me so I can Whirlwind them to death and laugh as I moved onto the next room without even taking the time to survey the challenges ahead of me. It was because there was challenge and death around each corner, it was due to the fact that I was just me, Arthearius the Paladin. Carrying out the will of Mithaniel Marr one pull at a time.
So to the devs that are no doubt ultra-concerned with this blog: Don't try to make all of us heroes. Just make a challenging world for to explore and have fun in. Make sure the player base has the freedom to do things on their own and continue to push the envelope on content and game mechanics.