Weekly Update 53
Hey guys! Welcome back to my website. It has been a pretty standard week, and I am happy to see you! Well, not see you. That would be impossible… or is it?! Yeah, it is, I’m just joking.
So, of course, no agent. Still trying though! I have been querying agents once, sometimes twice a week now. Sure, when I started it was five a day, but things have changed now. One submission a week is way better than the long dry spell I went through.
I have started to do something crazy lately… I started a book. Please be aware that I usually never tell people this. The fact that I told my friends and family and you is a big deal. I am a little worried that now that I told you it won’t “happen,” as in I won’t finish it. That is the fear that kept me from telling anyone when I started my first book. But since I have successfully survived seven drafts of writing novels and have suffered the sting of rejection upwards of 85 times… the fear has waned slightly.
The book is about a wizard. It is an idea I have had for a long time, almost as long as the idea that became The Void Full of Starlight. I won’t give any more details right now, but you will hear about it again. Even if I get too shaken to work on it now, this is an idea that I won’t give up on.
Aside from writing, I have gotten back into a nasty habit: MMORPGs. NO, I didn’t just have a stroke. That horrible acronym stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games.” You might not think you know any, but I guarantee you have heard of some: World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars the Old Republic, and many more. These games are known for having impressively large environments to explore and quests to undertake, along with an astounding number of players (we’re talking 5.6 million active players in World of Warcraft). I have a modest amount of experience with MMOs. I spent many hours in Star Wars the Old Republic (also known as SWTOR), dabbled for a handful of hours in World of Warcraft (also known as WoW), and if you consider Destiny 2 an MMO then I am a certified pro. I called it a “nasty habit” because MMOs have a reputation for being, as the Onion coined, “time vampires:” they take a great amount of time from a player.
If you play something like a first-person shooter, you do a mission or two in the main game or play some online matches with friends. In MMOs, you are expected to undertake quests that require killing a certain number of enemies or going to a certain place (that in most cases is literally miles away). Not only do activities take a while, but most MMOs have a level-based progression system which means the player is also expected to grow in levels through doing quests and killing bad guys, which takes a long time (to get to any max level in an MMO it might take a casual player weeks or months).
For some of you, this might sound miserable. But for others (around 5.6 million) it is fun! You get stronger in very obvious ways, you get to see some awe-inspiring locations, and the biggest draw: you get to make friends.
When 5.6 million people play a game at once, they are bound to run into each other. Massively Multiplayer games are known for getting people who normally wouldn’t talk to others to talk about the game and play it together. Because of this, MMOs have stood the test of time. WoW has been around since 2004 and will probably be around until humans have to cannibalize their computer parts to survive the apocalypse.
Why am I talking about MMOs? Because I love them… and hate them. I don’t usually play with strangers (it’s a holdover from many talks with my dad about internet safety) so a lot of MMOs are only at “half strength” for me. I mean, I only get to explore and level up alone. This isn’t bad, just a toothless experience compared to the rest of the 5.6 million. This is how my current experience is going in another game; Final Fantasy XIV. FFXIV is an MMO with a storied past, one I have a past with. I used to not like it, but after the current climate around WoW (the internet tells me it is “bad” and “not fun”), I have decided to try my hand at FFXIV. I didn’t think I would like it, but I have been having a blast!
The game is very pretty (especially for an MMO, games that usually put graphics on the backburner to handle 5.6 million players) and the world feels large and lived in. I decided to get into FFXIV mostly because everyone agrees that the story is way better than any other MMO, and I love story. So far, the story is “meh,” but I just started. And like the famous South Park episode on WoW has solidified in nerd culture: MMOs take a while to get good.
A screenshot from season 10 episode 8 of South Park: “Make Love, Not Warcraft” -2006
All of that was just to say I am playing a new game. I guess I really wanted to talk about MMOs… awesome. Maybe my words will get some more fans for the genre! Or maybe I pushed you further away from the nerdy computer games that take thousands of hours to play. Let me know!
That’s it, time to go and query more agents then jump back into Eorzea and ride some chocobos! I love being a nerd. See you all next week!
P.S. If you want to learn more about MMORPGs here is a link to an article from The Gamer on the best MMOs for beginners!
