What has MMORPG's done for any of us anyway?
Many years ago there was a kid who didn't have many friends, he would wake up in the morning with a depressed feeling as he thought of another school day of isolation. This kid would have his usual cereal with a side of toast, watch whatever cartoon would be playing that morning and put his school uniform on. He would walk for 10 minutes, observing the streets that he grew up in and paying close attention to the different noises in the environment to keep his busy mind occupied, once he arrived at his destination, he would avoid the other kids that didn't seen to like him for whatever reason and walk straight to the school assembly. He did have one friend, her name was Azra, a tall girl with glasses and a pair of green outdated shoes, which caused the other kids to dislike her as she was "different". The boy and Azra had bonded over the differences they had with the other kids, such as her big circle purple glasses or his awkwardly patchy mustache growing under his nose.
One day on his way home, he saw his cousin pull up, who was three years older then him and someone he looked up to. His cousin had a big smile on his face as he looked towards him, "Hey come help me unload this guy from the back seat" he said. The boy had no idea what his cousin was talking about but approached the car to help him anyways. Little did he know that the thing he was looking at was going to change his life forever, and for the good. It was his cousins old computer, a computer running Windows 98, with a CRT monitor, tower and a bunch of cables. They moved his computer to his room and set it all up, first thing his cousin had shown him was Winamp and all the music he could play off of it with the command of a mouse click. Once his cousin had left, he thought to explore the possibilities of this computer which he now owned. He would open up paint and scribble for hours, open windows explorer and not understand why it was on the computer in the first place as it did not work, he would play the intro to Winamp and laugh whenever it said "It Really Whips the Llama's Ass" and learn what different icons on the control panel did. The next few weeks he had found out that dial up internet was required if he wanted to "surf the web" like he had seen on an ad at the bus stop and asked his parents if they could get it wired up, at first they thought it was a waste of money, but they eventually caved in. Having dial up internet on your computer was like upgrading from a bicycle to a jet pack. He now had endless possibilities, well whenever his father didn't need to use the phone that is (which was quite frequently), he open internet explorer (which he now understood why it was invented)and searched whatever came to his head on Yahoo (the popular search engine at the time).
One day one of his family friends had come over and saw the computer set up, his family friend had mentioned that he had his own computer set up with dial up at his house and that he plays an online video game. The kid had played video games before and loved them to bits (hehe), but he had never heard of an "online video game" or an "MMORPG". The next day his family friend brought over a CD that had contained the MMORPG "Ragnarok Online" and installed it on his computer, once installed he opened the game only to be stopped by a client that seem to be installed all over again (patching), this followed by having to create an account. Once it was all done, he had logged in, for the first time, he saw three empty squares that he assumed was where his character would show once created, he was not wrong. He spent hours on thinking of the perfect name for his Ragnarok Online character and hairstyle, he had settled on >>DarkKnight<<, an extremely unoriginal and corny name that he absolutely loved. He then procceeded to press "Start" in which took him to a full screen artwork and a loading percentage bar in the middle, which seemed to be a lifetime to get to 100%. Once he was in, there was no tutorial, just a bunch of characters that looked like him but different hairstyles/names. First thing he typed was, "Hello", in which someone next to him replied "hi". He couldn't believe someone had actually responded to him, he was freaking out, he was standing up, then sitting down, he was jumping up and around! He was ecstatic to see that you could play a video game with other people, in another world, be whoever you want, say whatever you please...
Days and days went past as he would go to school, tell Azra all about this game "Ragnarok Online", its universe and all the new friends he had online. She loved hearing about it and would come over to watch him interact with all these other plays on this massive scale video game. At school he had one friend, Azra, online he had many, many, friends that he didn't only speak to but also lead as he was the leader of his own guild. People online looked up to him, they thought he was cool, skilled with a good nature that would help anyone that needed help out. Azra eventually got to use her brothers computer to play among his side and became the second in charge for his guide that had over 50 people.
Years and years of memories were made playing this fantastic video game, that changed their lives from a boring, depressing day at school with no friends to a magical, mystic world filled with countless people and adventures. This kid was me, i'm now 27 and had stopped playing Ragnarok Online 10 years ago, i have many friends in real life and enjoy every moment of it, i'm also still friends with Azra who had just joined Blizzard as a senior video game developer. I don't think i would be this socially accepted if it wasn't for all the interaction/ financial/leadership knowledge i had the pleasure of experiencing on "Ragnarok Online" or Azra finding her love for video games and going on to become a developer. Thank you RO/MMO's for you have changed the course of our lives forever.
Regards,
goodgames