Just goes to show how powerful Everquest really is.
I blew my mind this weekend, in a million different ways - and the foremost thought in my mind (after work and *(*^@%^#$ netscape plugins) is "four bubbles to lvl 20 then I can help Dazahan out with his stuf cuz I get my gate spells and..."
I've even picked a last name already - you get one at level 20, where everything changes.
I am four bubbles away from proverbial online puberty - soon I will be stronger, faster, more powerful - at level 20 everything changes, my skill caps are lifted, I become more coordinated, I "fizzle" less...
Honestly, if my big bad black daddy dude had pimples, they'd start disappearing sometime this week.
But climbing levels isn't what's got me - never was. Neither are the gifts from Damdil and Dazahan and Ibudan - neither is the utter carnage I am now capable of pouring from my fingertips.
It's the social scene.
Here I am, in a slowly overpopulating world (sound familiar?), filled with thousands of people, good and evil and in-between, with goals and dreams and obstacles and quests and tasks and social groups - even politicking and a far-too-evolved economic system.
But the one thing that flattens me everytime I log on - is the subtle difference in quality of denizens.
Even the bad guys - the truly evil - are more admirable than the guy over in the printer room here who was tossing out everyone's printouts cuz they weren't the ones he was waiting for.
?!?!??!
In Everquest, things make sense. You can depend on the good guys, learn how to deal with the bad guys - and your success is a direct outcome of your effort.
In Everquest, I can shoot dazzling blue lights at yon goblin warlord, and watch him erupt in delicate tongues of cerulean flame - but it's my gang's reaction when I have to go away for a minute that has my smile stretching all the way round the back of my head.
"Is he back yet?"
"Don't think so"
"Then we'd better wait... We'll be flattenned without him..."
It's not the feeling needed, though, it's the constant involvement, appreciation, instant feedback - and right now...
I've run off track. Really, my point was to exemplify a solution for the RL population problem - if they ain't a geek - drop something in their water supply.
Because Everquest is an experimental utopia that works.
(kinda like the internet before corporate america managed to sink it's festering fangs into it)
Why?
Because everyone playing has read "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon", everyone playing has been stepped on and pissed on for being a geek, and everyone playing has eventually realized how important honour and integrity and trust and a good ear are to maintaining a brilliant society.
In Everquest, a lot of resources are becoming scarce. A lot of people are slowly losing their sources of income as the items they've been selling depreciate.
But no one tries to fuck anybody else over cuz they're doing bad - because they know that they have someone to turn to who'll help.
Anyone, really.
Cuz there's honour among geeks...
(and talking about it with Marc over yet another far-too-long dinner last night, brain swimming with philosophies, I kept thinking... thinking... I wonder what he tastes like. But right now, I'm still too thrilled for paltry pedantic explanations that there is *someone* that I can spend a four-hour dinner with and never, ever, be bored with a solitary sultry second.)