♫ Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum ♫

Petergriff

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« on: August 28, 2009, 02:42:16 AM »

I think it would be appropriate to explain my history with online games, as it shows well my philosophy on such things. I began playing online games in middle school with a lovely 2.5D birds-eye view shooter called Infantry (I saw 2.5D because the Z-axis existed but was very seldom used). I ended up in a squad (equivalent to clans) that wasn't too worried about skill or competition, but rather was focused on playing together and having as much fun as possible. The people I met there became some of my best friends (I had a significant impact on one persons life, which I will explain later) and I'm still in touch with a few of them.

Infantry, unfortunately, went to shit due to admins and devs that were, well, retarded. Afterwords my friends and I moved to a different game called Puzzle Pirates. Yes, even by the sound of it I'm sure you're jumping to the proper conclusion that it;s a very kid-targetted game. Like any other game with a group-vs-group enviornment that demands actual game skill and clan-running skills, however, it was filled with lots of college kids and adults (although most of them still act as immature as dramatic high-schoolers). The higher up I got and the more responsibilities I took upon myself, the less fun it got. By the time I got burned out (it took me about...oh...3 years or so, although I still play it from time to time), all of my old friends from Infantry had gone, leaving me to make friends with new people. Again, I still talk to some of the people I met on Y!PP (Shortened version of Yarr! Puzzle Pirates).

A very good friend of mine from Y!PP had basically all but disappeared a year or so before I was ready to leave until one day when he popped online to say hello. Turns out he had quit Y!PP and gone to WoW. After convincing me to go play it with him, I slowly fell into the bottomless pit that is WoW addiction. Blah, blah, blah, grinding grinding grinding, level 80 Draenei Resto Shaman. Raids. Fun times. The guy that convinced me to play (let's call him Larry) and I were basically attatched to the hip. He was already an established player with a reputation and thus was able to carry me into whichever guild we decided to join. We ended up in a "casual" raiding guild (meaning they were sloppy, but still had lots of fun together), with lots of great people. I would have made long-term friends there had it not started to get stupid and lose its fun factor. Larry and I ended up leaving for a more serious raiding guild, and the 3.2 patch (WoW players will understand) turned my view on the end-game experience from "raid, figure out boss fights and have fuuun" to "Grind heroics every day", combined with the not-so-fun experience I had with said guild, made me lose any desire to ever log in to that game again.

I started playing WoW last summer (a year ago), and I bought the Orange Box this last Christmas after getting my EVGA 8800GTS 640/576 that finally made me able to play HL2 level games decently. I've been playing on the TD server almost since then (I can't quite remember how long it took me to find it). I have 4 servers on my favorites list, one is the old TD server, one the new, and two others I never play anymore. I had been playing TF2 on and off since I bought the OB as a way to mix it up along the long road of grinding. Since I quit WoW I've been playing TF2 almost exclusively, along with the occasional less-than-legal "digital copy" of PC games that magically appear on my PC. The TD server has been nothing less than entertaining and the people are...interesting.

Anyway, the moral of the story, is that in the um, well, anywhere from 6 to 8 years of online gaming (I'm 19, so I've been gaming a large portion of my memorable life), the one thing that really matters to me are the people I meet and the friendships I make along the way. The people are what make the experience enjoyable. Good, fun people are just so hard to find these days (espeically in shooters...the phrases "LAGGER", "HACKER" "AIMBOTTER" come to mind) and from what I've seen TD is just that - a group of good people trying to have as much fun as possible.

The person I mentioned earlier was a girl a few years younger than me that I had met through Infantry. She was, to put it lightly, a depressed girl. We started to talk outside of the game on the phone about anything from her personal life (angsty fucking teenager shit, of course) to her family life, and all the things she hated and was angry about and made her sad, etc. She ran away from home two or three times and luckily made it back safely. Any attempt by her family to make her feel better or to hellp her essentially just made her feel worse .I'm assuming there was something physically, clinically wrong with her that made her act the way she did. Anyway, all of these things she was going through (at least in her mind, she was), eventually drove her to attempt suicide. Our friendship had gotten to the point where she wanted me to be the last person she would ever talk to and even had me on the phone while she was popping her parents' pills. Luckily her body did what it;s designed to when faced with lethal levels of toxins and ended up throwing up in front of her family almost immediately afterword. They rushed her to the hospital and she survived. We have since lost touch and I have not heard from her in months, even years.

While reading the description Dom wrote for TD, particularly the part about each clan member having skills to contribute, I started to think about my own skills and what I've contributed in the past, and what I could potentially contribute to any group I join in the future. I decided that the most important thing I have found from my experiences in online games, and life in general, is that games come and go and the people are so much more significant. Even though I'm not a member of TD, I am always available to help. I don't give loans, I don't give advice. I won't tell your girlfriend she's got AIDS for you. I won;t tell your boyfriend you're pregnant for you. I will, however, do my best to listen, to comfort, and to care. My skill is one not particularly demanded all to often, as I'm sure you all have people you go to before you'd even think of good ol' Petergriff, but as long as technology allows us to communicate with basically anyone, anywhere, all of you should know that you never have to feel alone. If you need a listening ear, a crying shoulder (figuratively speaking, of course), or just someone to entertain you, I will do my best to do what I can to help if asked to. Everything is, of course, strictly confidential unless otherwise stated.

That being said...hello, I'm Petergriff. Yes, my name is based on the Family Guy character "Peter Griffin" but since I first started using it in Infantry, the name Petergriff has become independent of the show and is almost like a middle name to me (People from online games call me Peter even if I use another name in-game). I enjoy sniping, and when I'm playing horribly or when it's a shitty map for sniping I class-hop like a jack rabbit on a frying pan. I'm not particularly good at TF2 in general, but I definitely enjoy it. I'm 19, male (straight), and am about to start my second year in college at University of Wisconsin Whitewater, majoring in Economics. (I always like to mention that I started off with 30 credits from AP tests...I took 8 tests, got six 4's and two 5's). I spend my free time playing video games, currently TF2.

P.S. Thank you to anyone who reads this entire thing. Starting a post in the middle of the night is never a good idea for me. I tend to ramble. I also apologize for how blocky it is. I don't have the 1337 5ki115 to make it aesthetically pleasing.


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David!!

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Date Registerd:September 28, 2008, 01:20:09 PM

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	Author	Topic: ♫ Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum ♫ (Read 979 times)
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