I had an excellent weekend. Saturday, we ran errands, leaving us free on the rainy Sunday to laze around. I like our normal Saturday pattern - get up early, drive to Hingham, sometimes get breakfast or lunch at Panera, shop at Fresh Market and The Fruit Center, and sometimes go to the bookstore or the chocolate shop or the beach or some other fun thing. Getting groceries at Fresh Market is fun - there are so many interesting things, so much ripe exotic fruit, so many good cuts of meat, so many cool bakery items. It makes shopping for our week's food exciting. When we went this week, I got a cactus pear. I've never had one, so we'll see what happens. Hopefully it will turn out better than my last week's experiment with sea bass (no likey).
This week we also had to go to the mall to get dress shirts for Ben, finally! All his shirts were way too short in the sleeves, so I insisted we go to Milton's and get him measured to find the correct size. His shirts fit now! Huzzah! I also had to go to the bookstore. A woman at work lent me The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last week and it was so absolutely awesome that I had to buy the next one immediately. I almost got the third one, too, but it's only in hardcover now and I abhor hardcover books. If I ever get published, I wonder if I can insist on no hardcover version?
Anyway, when not running errands all around the south shore, we basically spent the remaining waking hours playing Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 (SC2) was a video game released at the end of July. It follows in the wake of Starcraft and Starcraft: Brood War which were released in the mid-90s. They were hugely popular games, so you can imagine the excitement and tension surrounding a sequel being released 15 years later. Blizzard Entertainment has an amazing reputation for producing high quality, high fun games (Starcraft series, Warcraft series, World of Warcraft, Diablo series) and SC2 definitely did not disappoint. Suffice to say, it's so good that I definitely don't want to stop playing anytime soon.
It's a Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game along the lines of Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, Homeworld, etc., and therefore it has single-player (storyline, human versus computer) modes and multi-player (human versus human) modes. I'm a multi-player person. I played through the storyline because it was there, because I wanted to know what happened, and because people will look at you funny if you haven't. For me, the fun comes with playing, in teams, against other people. I like working together with people online - I've been doing it for years now, first with Everquest and more recently with World of Warcraft (WoW). And because Blizzard Entertainment makes both World of Warcraft and the Starcraft series, many of the people I've been playing WoW with for years now are also playing SC2.
I've mentioned my World of Warcraft friends before; I've written about working together with them, about how hard it was for me to say goodbye to all of them when I disbanded my guild, and in various other scenarios where I try to describe our relationship. It's a hard thing to describe, mostly because of its newness - the idea of an "online" friend has only existed for, what? 15 years? Not even?
I think many people have a negative opinion of "online" friendships, or at least a speculative opinion. I've had many an annoying conversation with people about playing World of Warcraft - "But you don't know these people, right? They aren't your friends, right? Why don't you go out to parties/spend time with your family/do things in real life?" The people I come across who scoff at video games (especially multi-player ones) seem to have a very low opinion of only knowing people online, or perhaps a low opinion in general of the kind of people who play video games online. For some reason, these people don't consider online video gaming a valid use of time, even though it's not much different than watching TV or reading a book. Okay, so I would argue that reading a book is better for you, and watching TV is way worse, but still. It's a pastime like any other, although not in the league of training for a triathlon, or building a start-up company.
Specifically, though, people seem to bash video games because they take the place of "real" activities and ruin "real" relationships and friendships. Well, of course there are crazy and unstable people out there who get addicted to gaming (like anything else, really) and neglect other important parts of life, but honestly most people aren't like that. Of all the World of Warcraft players I know, I can only think of one who plays what I would consider "too much". And even he, I know, has a job. Everyone I know, either in real life or only online, has a job, a family, a relationship, a hobby - or some combination of those. I've met some people whom I would never think would play WoW - a banker, a classicist, a med student. I've met people I'm absolutely sure I would be friends with, if only we didn't live 3000 miles away.
Outside of the 5 or 6 people I know in real life who play World of Warcraft with me, I have about another half a dozen friends in the game that I do truly consider friends. In fact, I "see" them and talk to them way more than many of the real life friends I have. I know their names, where they live, what they do. I'm friends with them on Facebook, and have the phone numbers of those I'm closest to. I laugh with them, talk with them, miss them when I don't see them for a while, know what they like and don't like, have watched many of them as they've developed over the last two or three years - had babies, gotten into new relationships, moved to different cities. We have bonds like other friendships do. I cried when a fellow officer of my guild and the guild leader quite the game. (They are both back now - no surprise, really.) It doesn't matter to me one ounce that I've never seen these people face to face. If they ever quit the game forever (or if I ever do), I would make every attempt I could to stay in contact and, should that not happen, remember them fondly for the rest of my life.
Anyway, I mention all this because Ben and I had tons of fun all weekend playing SC2 with a couple of our "online" friends, and it was honestly the most fun I've had in ages. It was interesting, too, because I'm so used to playing World of Warcraft with these people that it's exciting to play a different game and see how everyone's style and skill level changes. Unsurprisingly, everyone's personality and whimsy are still present, regardless of the game.
Okay, I think that's enough rambling for now. Hope your weekend was as awesome as mine!
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