Torchlight

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/diablo-for-loners-the-story-behind-indie-hit-torchlight.ars

and there's like this new game thats like diablo, did you ever play diablo? you said your brother set you up with it or something. its a computer game. so you know what it is. exactly so you said that you played it. anyway, there's this new game that came out that's like diablo. and it's like basically a fighting game. and it's supposed to be pretty good. like really good, there's alot of buzz on it. they're even trying to turn it into an MMO which's pretty unique. usually they dont turn a game into an MMO a week after they made it. but basically it was designed to be an MMO, they just made it first person. It looks pretty cool. like the graphics look pretty cool. But I think it'll probably be a boring game. Because when I played Diablo it wasn't even all that good. Like it was famous and it sold really well, but I mean it's just like not that fun of a game. All you do is click on shit continually. And it just gets kinda boring. Diablo is like a medieval game. It's like fantasy and you find a cave, and it leads to hell. Like deeper and deeper and deeper into the ground there are demons and other monsters. And it's actually pretty cool. Really bloody of course. And then they made a sequel. Where basically you had to go through different lands and stuff. It was actually a pretty fun game. Like people would get really into it. One of the main reasons was definately the way they made the graphics look. Because like... it was just really well done. Like if you just hear the story of the game it sounds really kinda stupid. But once you play it it's like not really about the story. It's more about fighting through different bad guys getting better armor and stuff. And you kill bigger and bigger bosses that're all really difficult. And then they use ancient names for the devil and his helpers and stuff. Like I guess you could say it's really biblically influenced. Which's kinda like being influenced on folklore and stuff. So of course there's always like a blacksmith. 'Cause in fantasy games there's always a blacksmith in your medieval town. They'd fix your gear. And then of course there was a merchant who you could sell stuff too. All pretty basic stuff. All stuff that'd been done before and has been repeated. But the reason why it was so cool was for alot of us, it was the first time we'd seen it. Like... it was, i guess you could say, a window into dungeons and dragons. Like that game has influenced so much of my life without ever playing it. Like with Everquest that game is based on Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings and Beowulf. And what's really cool is fantasy literature is really a young genre. Like when Tolkien when he put out The Hobbit started it. And then in the 70's, about 30 years later, they started Dungeons and Dragons. And then of course in the 80s they started making computer games. 'Cause thats when the computers were first powerful enough for them. And basically like, there was just this explosion of game making. They explored like every type of subject and game. And eventually the computer became complex enough for them to do dungeons and dragons stuff on the computer. And then thats when games like neverwinter nights and stuff like that started coming out. Nintendo of course had Zelda. And in 1999, right on the edge of the 2000s, Everquest came out. Basically in the years before that, the past 10 to 20 years, there was this genre of game called MUDs that was popular. And basically what they did was take the MUDs style, and give it graphics, because it was text based. And the thing is, they borrowed from two major things. The MUD. But also the Dungeons and Dragons setup for how you play games.

But anyway, we've got Dungeons and Dragons, which's like the 1970s. And then we've got MUDs in the 1980s. And finally, we get MMOs in the 90s. And this is the LATE 90s. Everquest. 1999. And when it first came out it changed the entire industry by creating an entirely new kind of game. See they weren't the first to do it and they weren't the last to do it. But they did it the best. And that's why even today Everquest is still popular even though the graphics are from 1999. Now World of Warcraft used the same model that Everquest invented. In fact there are so many things from Everquest that you really feel like you're playing an updated version of Everquest. But World of Warcraft did was, they took that early success from Diablo, and their Warcraft games. Those were at first single player and then multiplayer but only through the internet to about ten people. And so those were really popular games and actually another game from that company Starcraft is still popular today. Over in like Korea and stuff. So anyway they've got this massive group of fans from this old genre of game. And Everquest meanwhile is pioneering MMOs noone else is really doing it. And so, what Blizzard does, they're the company that owns Warcraft, is they decide to take their game and put it in this new genre that Everquest is doing really well in. It's like the equivolent of like, Lord of the Rings on film. You know how that was just rediculously popular. People already liked the story from the books. So film was invented and its a cool thing to do. And they took something that was popular before, and they put it into this. And they made a shitload of money. That's exactly what Blizzard did with Warcraft. While Everquest is good, the story behind it is weak. But Blizzard had a good story for Warcraft. Basically when put into the same arena as Everquest, Warcraft won. But here's the thing. There was about five years where Everquest dominated MMOs. They had the most subscribers, they made the most money every month. And that was because up until that point, they destroyed their competition. And there was this game called Age of Conan, which was way better graphics than everquest, and it completely failed. It was popular for a few months and then it died. And its interesting because MMOs only work if you have thousands of people playing it. The less people that play, the shittier the game becomes for everyone that plays it. So in that sense you could make the sweetest MMO ever, but if you can't hold your players, you're done. Your game will suck if not enough people play. So the question is how do you make sure you always have thousands of people on your game. Well as a general rule these games try to give you shitloads of things to do. Alot of people will talk about how playing an MMO is cheaper than going to a bar. And that's very true. Because all you're paying is 10 to 20 dollars a month. That's basically like one day at a bar. Or, if you play an MMO, you get 30 days, nonstop, of a game, where you actually come across more people, than if you were at that bar. So thats one of the reasons why that game was really popular. But there's alot of aspects to this whole thing. If people play games too much they can damage their eyes with the screens. If they play games too much they can destroy their work or social life. And more than one person has killed themself because their life was so shitty because of an MMO. So this is like one of the controversies of the genre today. It's really kindof a weird thing because people get married through these games. Some of these people move in with people they play games with. Some of these people only have friends through their game. In alot of ways, regular Dungeons and Dragons with pen and paper is alot healthier. Because you're not like straining the fuck out of your eyes. And you're not like talking to a computer instead of a person. So that keeps people in reality. But its very true that these games can definately suck people in. After all thats what the game makers want. If they dont have a couple thousand people always in the game, the whole thing becomes boring to everybody.

So it's kindof an interesting thing all of this. I played one of the MMOs for 8 years. So i know all about MMOs and all that stuff. To me its like a sub-culture. It's not even a regular gamer anymore. It's its own class of gamer because you're completely different. And it's probably pretty addicting to alot of people. It's probably like a drug. It's kindof like alcohol. It's not good for you but people like to drink it. Drink too much and it can destroy your liver. And with gaming, game too much and you destroy your eyes. Not to mention the effects on the rest of your body. Because you're not movnig when you're playing a game. So not only are your eyes being strained, but you're like losing muscle mass. You might be building clots in your arteries. There's lots of things that can happen to a body that isn't used in the ways its supposed to. That's where like, things like LARPing come in. Live action RPG. Or Renaissance festivals. There are people who make their money completely from renaissance festivals. Either juggling or sword fighting, horse riding. Some people make swords. Or armor. Some people make clothes, and jewelry. All of the medieval crafts are things that people can do to make money at a Renaissance fair. And there are people who actually buy these things on a regular basis too. All of this is part of the fantasy fan-base. There's entire jobs and communities of people who live with fantasy. And so for someone thats maybe played computer games that're fantasy based, maybe they weren't necessarily cut out for computer gaming, but they love the content of fantasy. That's how you get into stuff like folklore. The band Sigur Ros wouldn't have written a single song if they weren't into fantasy. The band Led Zeppelin wouldn't have written their best record if it wasn't for fantasy. And Peter Jackson would never have made that film trilogy if it wasn't for Tolkien. And of course after the movie came out then an MMO came out too. In a way computer games give people who have day jobs the chance to lead a double life. But they're not the best way to experience fantasy. Deviant Art is full of people who make pictures and things based on fantasy. Elfwood, is a website like Deviant Art that is dedicated entirely to fantasy. And these have thousands of new things every day, every day of the year. The communities are huge. Fantasy has even brought about new religions. The Neo-Pagans, definately have become more popular because of things like Lord of the Rings. And Neo-Pagans are just a broad category, of people of various different faiths, who are trying to ressurect dead religions. there's the Bardic religion, which in everquest they have a class called a bard and that's based on that religion. The religion came first and the class was made after. Also, druids, in Everquest, there are Neo-druids today, the people who used to live in England, before Christianity came. Nature-loving religions. Religions that have to do with many gods. That have to do with respecting the earth. These people lived in harmony with the planet for many thousands of years. It's only this Industrial Revolution which's been endorsed by Christianity which's destroyed so much. And it's interesting because Tolkien wrote about the industrial revolution. His whole point was: Industry can be bad as well as good. All of the modern conveniences we have today come from factories. Factories are ugly looking things that spit out polution. He didn't like that. And his views, that were put into his book, have had massive effect on the world today. It took a World War for him to realize how bad technology can be. It's just really cool that we have that whole movement of people today. You should check out this documentary called Darkon. It's all about the LARPing thing I was telling you about. It was pretty cool too.