Introduction

Welcome to Virtual Journeys, a blog of my experiences (good, bad and faintly irritating) as a member of the online gaming community. I hope to share some useful information, some raw opinions and a little (probably very little) humor about some of the massively multiplayer online games out there.

Allow me to introduce myself. I go by the name Burtimus, and in this guise I've wandered around the various worlds I'll be discussing. The name Burtimus derives from an ancient high-school nickname, and is pronounced "BERT-ih-mus", not Burt Imus. I don't wear a cowboy hat, and I don't have a face that looks like badly aged shoe leather. Oh, and I don't have a couple million dollars.

I started gaming back in high school with the advent of Dungeons & Dragons, and I've played many (many, many) other role-playing games of that kind since. I've mostly acted in the role of Game Master over the years, probably due to a strong streak of masochism. The good news is that due to this early life experience, I have become a better father and teacher... mostly because I know no one listens to me. It's a thing.

When Arpanet became the Interweb-thing, I started text games of various sorts. MUDs, MOOs, MUSHes and all that kind of thing. Very absorbing, very enthralling. Here was a forum in which I could roleplay in my underwear, which was a huge thing for me. And I could do it at 3 AM. How cool was this? But wait, it gets better.

There was this thing about something called an MMO, which (back in the day) meant Ultima Online. I'll be honest with you, I never played it. Nor EverQuest, when it was released and became a gaming phenomenon. Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you.

See, early on I read reviews by some of the earliest entrants in the MMO field. One of the items that interested me (in a negative way) was something called "griefing", where a new player would be jumped, killed, and (in some cases) robbed by a more experienced player. Who would hang around and do it again, and again, and again. Maybe one or two more times to make a point. Perhaps three.

See, I kinda saw myself more on the receiving end of this treatment, rather than the predatory end. That thought did not comfort me much. So I figured that the world of MUDs looked mighty inviting, and I could choose not to participate in those that condoned that kind of behavior.

As you may discover, I'm not much of a fan of PvP (player versus player) play. I have no objection to team play, but the free-for-all style leaves me cold. And usually dead.

So it was that I discovered a little company called Nexon, who hosted a little game called Dark Ages. It's still out there somewhere, a 2D pint-sized MMO with a lot of innovative features and a very dedicated community. It was my first taste of the so-called "graphical MUD", and one which sucked me in. There was a lot of good roleplaying there, and an awful lot of barely literate 12-year-olds begging for cash. It was to be a pattern we'd see more of as time went by.

Well, this is my first installment, and it's been fun to write. If you've made it this far, you have my condolences. I meant thanks. I'll give you a little more backstory in my next installment (but I'll try to keep it a bit more concise next time, I promise). Following that I'll do my best to offer some reviews, observations and community information about some of the big MMOs out there.

In the meantime, you watch your tail, cowboy.