I have been playing role-playing games online for a long time. I actually grew up with more traditional types of role-playing. When I was a kid, I loved Dungeons & Dragons. It was more than a decade before sophisticated online RPG games came around, and even the computer PC programs out there weren’t very good. None of them could really compare with the thrill of face-to-face role-playing. Your Dungeon Master ? or whatever the game keeper was called in the particular game you were playing ? could construct an interesting, dynamic, and realistic scenario for all the people there. It wasn’t all about hack and slash. It also required strategy and a good deal of luck. Best of all, it gave you an opportunity to pretend to be someone else. This is a great thing for an active imagination like mine.
As I got older, however, I got more interested in online RPG games. The original ones were not much like the ones today. Most of them were text-based adventures not much different from traditional role-playing. They had certain trade-offs. On the one hand, the world was much larger and there were many more people interact with. On the other hand, there was no Dungeon Master to construct a plot for you. The plots that existed were pretty static and involved a lot of hack and slash.
Since then, however, online RPG games have become extremely sophisticated. Nowadays, they involve dynamic plots, intelligent nonplayer characters, sophisticated puzzles, and fully developed combat systems. If you’ve played a game like World of Warcraft or Eve Online, you know what it is all about. There are practically limitless numbers of people spending hours and hours a day constructing a virtual life in a beautiful virtual world. It is the most addictive thing I have ever experienced.
It can take a little bit of time to get into. The biggest problem that people face when they are unfamiliar with online RPG games and just starting off is not knowing which game to get involved in. Don’t take the advice of your friends. Figure out what you like. If you enjoy medieval fantasy, you might like something like World of Warcraft or Warhammer online. If you enjoy space fantasy, you should try something involved with that. Whatever you enjoy, the option is there to play it. Just do a little bit of research and you’ll find something that is appealing to you.
Tags: online rpg games