![]() While it’s a relief to know I can play by myself, I’m nervous about what playing in a world populated by “real people” will be like. Apparently this is hotly debated, because while traditional MMO fans think this defeats the purpose of making it an online game, Elder Scrolls fans are stoked that the game is retaining the series’ trademark solo adventuring. I do not belong to a guild (I don’t think?), but Elder Scrolls Online is designed so that the main story can be played totally solo if one so chooses. Apparently the game features guilds, which are groups of friends (or strangers, sometimes? Often?) who play together online. In the 20 hours it takes for the game to download (a process that involved the frantic deletion of my Chrome cache and a mysterious 453% install), I decide to do some preparatory reading. In the interest of charting my progress, virtual and emotional, I decided to keep a diary of my time with the game. What if the only reason I got “good” at Skyrim was because I played it forever? I was also genuinely anxious about being compared to other players in real time. As we all know from IRL experience, humans are annoying and selfish, they like to harass you and say dumb things, and they’re always get in the way of inner peace. Having other people in the game complicates that - dare I say it? - spiritual connection I had to Skyrim. Very few people I knew were playing the game, and it was something that felt like mine - losing myself for hours in the game was a vacation from my real life, and it was incredibly peaceful. That game was a private experience for me, something that was a huge part of my life, but that I never talked about with my friends. So it was with a great deal of anxiety that I approached Elder Scrolls Online, the new game by the Skyrim people that is the first version of these games that you can play online with other users.įrankly, I was very nervous about the idea of playing Skyrim with others. In Tamriel, the world in which Skyrim takes place, I was my own master. I was a gaming novice, and I appreciated the fact that it took practice, rather than skill, to get “better.” It didn’t really matter that I had never played Fallout or Portal or the other Elder Scrolls games simply by putting in my time, I could be a level-60 grandmage/superthief/badass assassin/dragon-slayer just like everyone else. Why? Despite its daunting scale and complexity, it wasn't classically "hard". That game, until earlier this month the latest in the series of impossibly dorky Elder Scrolls role-playing games, turned me into a gamer. In 2012, every day, for months, I played Skyrim. There's really only been a single exception in my adult life. Truth be told, the one game I play on a regular basis involves smashing candy on my iPhone. I've played console games only here and there, and I've never installed a game on my computer. I'm not what most people would call a gamer.
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