games

January 20, 2020 memory · 6 years later

Meeting Mary

How I met my best friend on the internet in January 2020, right before the world shut down. A zombie in a Halloween house, a show recommendation, a pandemic we got through together, and a friendship that has not skipped a day since.

#friends #life #games

September 2, 2014 memory · 12 years later

The Sims 4, and why I always come back

I skipped The Sims 3 entirely, and then The Sims 4 hooked me all over again in 2014: a new engine, color customization, the build-and-budget loop I never get tired of, and a running grudge about the basements they took away.

October 22, 2011 memory · 15 years later

Darboux the tank, and walking away from Warcraft

My third and last main, a paladin tank named Darboux, the one job I had left to try. And then, after six years and a dead Lich King, why I put World of Warcraft down and did not pick it back up.

February 15, 2011 memory · 15 years later

The last thing I went back for was a rusted dragon

Before I quit World of Warcraft for good, I drove back to a raid we had half-finished in 2009 and beat the two bosses that had beaten us, for a mount I had wanted for two years.

August 15, 2010 memory · 16 years later

I beat Burning Crusade's hardest boss and don't remember it

My account says I cleared Sunwell Plateau and killed Kil'jaeden, the final villain of the whole first expansion. I believe it. I just can't remember doing it, because by the time I did, the game had made it easy.

August 1, 2009 memory · 17 years later

Trihedron, the priest I loved

The dwarf priest I gave my whole heart to. Becoming a healer, topping the meters, leading a guild, killing the Lich King, and the friends from Wisconsin I still have, one of whom became a real-life friend named Craig.

January 15, 2009 memory · 17 years later

Craig, also known as TartarSauce

A tribute to one of my best friends, who I met healing raids in World of Warcraft. Two solo guys who texted every day, a decade of co-op games, the time a TSA agent waved me to the front of the line for my class, and a friendship I have never stopped valuing.

#friends #games #life

December 2, 2008 memory · 18 years later

For the Alliance: the night I killed the Horde's leaders

I was Alliance down to the bone. So when Wrath of the Lich King launched and the game let me fight into the enemy's cities and put their leaders on the floor, including Sylvanas herself, I went.

October 18, 2008 memory · 18 years later

How I became a Jenkins

The one World of Warcraft title I earned by recreating gaming's most famous disaster on purpose: fifty dragon whelps, fifteen seconds, and a man named Leeroy.

July 5, 2007 memory · 19 years later

For Sara

Sara Stump, who I knew as Glitzymakeupgirly and as Sarasim. We met in The Sims Online, got married in the game, and talked for years on Yahoo Messenger, about music, life, and everything else. She passed in the summer of 2007.

#friends #games

September 15, 2006 memory · 20 years later

Knight, and a reputation ground into the negatives

The grindy little badges from vanilla World of Warcraft that prove I was there in the vanilla days: the old honor-rank ladder up to Knight, and deliberately tanking a faction's standing all the way down to Hated.

June 1, 2006 memory · 20 years later

Maurizio the warlock, and the forty-man nights

Why I rolled a warlock (free mounts), the vanilla raids we cleared and the one we never did, being the Warlock Class Lead, and the friend at the bakery I talked WoW with for hours and then lost.

October 27, 2005 memory · 21 years later

How I started World of Warcraft: by drowning

My friend Diana told me to buy the game and promised to show me the ropes, then never logged on. So I made a warlock named Maurizio, walked into Stormwind, fell in a pond, and could not figure out how to swim.

September 14, 2004 memory · 22 years later

The Sims 2, and the family lines I tried to keep alive

The Sims came back in 2004 with a brand new engine, real aging, and genetics, and it caught me right in the middle of high school. Generations, basements, aliens, and aspirations I could never stop chasing.

June 29, 2003 memory · 23 years later

Extended Break

In 2003 I downloaded a free game called Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and fell in with a clan called Extended Break. I stayed for years, ended up a general, helped run the place, and captained the team while we climbed the ladder. Here is who we were.

#games #friends #web #nostalgia

December 17, 2002 memory · 24 years later

The Sims Online, and how I ended up helping rebuild it

My first real online world. Making pizzas by typing, locking skills at 20.99, a clothing store named after a restaurant I never ate at, and a strange full circle twenty years later when I got to write code for the open-source revival.

#games #friends #computers #nostalgia

November 18, 2000 memory · 26 years later

Age of Empires II, and my first LAN party

Two computers, an ethernet hub, and my friend Mike. Long all-night campaigns, giant walled cities, and the first time I ever wired two machines together to play a game. It happened to be the best strategy game ever made.

February 4, 2000 memory · 26 years later

The Sims, and the little lives I kept building

I was a simulation kid before The Sims ever showed up, but the original in 2000 swallowed me whole. A pack-by-pack trip through the game that carried me from sixth grade into high school, and that I have never really put down since.

October 20, 1999 memory · 27 years later

MSN Gaming Zone, and how I became Trihedralguy

My first taste of playing games with strangers over the internet, back in the dial-up days. It is also where a random username generator handed me the name I would carry for years: Trihedralguy.

September 15, 1999 memory · 27 years later

The Game of Life, the free game from a cereal box

We did not have money for games, so a free one mattered. The Hasbro Game of Life came on a real CD inside a cereal box, I still have it, and I loved its art enough that I eventually took the whole thing apart to see how it worked.

July 1, 1999 memory · 27 years later

The summer someone my age finally moved in

When we moved to the neighborhood I had nobody my age. Then, the summer before sixth grade, a kid named Tyler moved in from Michigan, and I made a friend I still have more than twenty-five years later.

#friends #games

May 16, 1997 memory · 29 years later

Sara, and the games she taught me

A third-grade field-day sack race with my friend Sara, who introduced me to Brain Bash and Bop It, and, in a hazy basement memory, maybe to computers.

#life #friends #games