Playing is rule-painting yourself willingly into a corner. The tighter and more complex tricky challengeing dangerous risky the more fun getting out.
Hard-sticking rules help me avoid that dull bored cheating myself at solitaire headache. I can’t cheat on Runescape.
I am the god of my Runescape character.
She is fun. She has purple hair. Now I don’t need purple wings cuz she just got some. It’s halloween year round playing dressup with the virtual paper doll I do quests with and level up.
I wanted a halo. I just get one for her. Twenty or so hours playing Caste Wars one of the sub games where the main game rules don’t apply will get us a halo. They don’t. But an even tighter more demanding timed set do. The stakes are higher. The rewards are unique. I’m not that good at it. But if I really wanted a halo I could get good or better. I want other things.
Some things I want bad. Realky bad. It hurts to miss out on temporary takes too.
I still regret missing getting squirrel ears cuz the Easter Holiday event ended right while I was finishing the quest to get them. I’d put it off till the last day and miscalculated the time.
I felt like my friend Matthew felt when the Seahawks didn’t win the super bowl. Only more so. I felt like I’d missed the easter egg hunt when I was seven.
As a matter of fact in general playing makes me feel seven on an easter egg hunt. Or ten leading a spy troop of cockhorse riders to take back our tree fort.
When your character dies in the game it’s like we died in those battles. You lose your stuff , play dead. Then you get up and join the game again. In Runescape you respawn.
Unless you are in the wild west wilderness part of the game where you kill players and take their stuff, you get a gravestone. Your stuff is under it. If you make it back in time you can recover your hard earned valuable gear and supplies.
It’s been this way for years.
Before the whole game was this way. It was so nerve wracking. It was impossible to relax becouse you could be hijacked anyware at any time. That frazzked pkayers nerves. So it got updated.
The player killing was banished to the Wilderness. That worked for a while. Kids kept rage quiting when they lost months of hard earned armour and weapons in one fight.
The gamemakers removed the wild from the game. They may as well have removed half the subscribers. Everybody quit.
Then came back a year later when they could kill eachother again.
Mostly all the “manual labor” and boring training you put your character through is to prepare you for a fight.
Two weeks ago hardcore mode was inteoduced.
For a fee you can create a character who when she dies, is really dead. It’s all over the server news too.
You pay a fee. To really be dead.
It’s the rage. If not to participate, some of us are inept gamers, to watch to follow, to wonder.
Now all we need when those kids beat this is a game just like this but you are in the virtual reality and yeah what better than to raise the stakes and forget who you are altogether, like hide and seek. Be the game. Gods at play.
I must have paid a fee.