Chas is a bit more of a hardcore geek than me – he’s a pen and paper fanatic but I came to all that stuff very late, and it’s still a bit alien to me.

And thanks for your topic – I’m giving it some thought and I’ll have something after Boxing Day.

But still, computer games can do some things better than RPGs. Combat will feel more immediate and probably more exciting. You get to see the gameworld for yourself through your own eyes (big bonus if your GM wasn’t all that good at descriptions). It’s not the same and maybe it never can be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy them for what they are.

I was never into arcades but it sounded like a great little community. I’ve heard other people remember it fondly also.

My video gaming exerience is primarily console which has yet to make any significant strides into MMO, so that I am used to a wide choice of character customization, and no consideratio of “The Group”.

WoW was my first exposure to the “Holy Trinity” of player types, and to be honest, if chafes me to no end. The forced roles and the rigidity of them is self reinforcing, which then get re-reinforced with every patch and expansion from Blizzard.

Granted, a switch to any other game mechanic would never be acceptable for WoW, and that’s fine, but it does bother me, especially those rare occaions when I play my pen & paper games. Granted the all human “players vs DM” interaction and “on the fly creativity” aren’t possible in a programmed game, but I still miss the freedom provided by TSR.

The Internet has allowed us to find a critical mass of like-minded people to talk about our interests, and I have quite enjoyed finding this blog as well as some others. But I accept the fact that our ability to talk about videogames can only happen on the Internet.

My complaint with the WoW=rpg model is that it cements the Holy Trinity into the minds of gamers who don’t know that it can be different. Coming from a paper and pencil gaming experience, it was not unusual for our group to be composed only of rogues. Such a group would be sub-optimal at best in WoW, but completely viable in an environment where stories can be crafted for the group(40 priests v. Onyxia not withstanding).

I do not disagree with your analysis about the pre-eminence of the Holy Trinity, I am just sad about it.

*Note: The Internet (and cable tv) allows us to talk about our niche hobbies, but it also takes us away from a more common culture. In a department of 13 people, I don’t know if there are more than 4 or 5 people who watch one common tv show. It is very different from the pre-Internet days.

There are two people in the group with whom I can discuss videogames, but they are both console players.

MMOs and the internet to me are much more diffused. That’s really the only difference to me. A MMO party is just a longer, always on version of going to an arcade and playing teenage mutant ninja turtles with 3 other players. They don’t really infect me because I was already infected by social gaming a long time ago.