My Hx with RPGs (part 2)

Okay, here is part 2 of my history of RPGs, enjoy the history lesson.

One game that we really liked was Eye of the Beholder. We thought the graphics were to die for (pretty silly of us now that I think back on that). You got to have gear, you gained experience, you have got to go in dungeons to fight mobs, find secret levers, etc, etc. Of course you could only move one block at a time. And as with other games that I played, I never beat it. I wasn't the kid who had to beat the video game, I just somehow lost interest, or got stuck/frustrated or something. But I remember this game being pretty exciting at the time.

We had an old Commodore 64 computer which had Ultima 4 (or 5, I don't remember). Wow, I loved that game. Why was I playing that at about the same time as Eye of the Beholder? Because we happen to have a that cool commodore. (later taken by bill collecters, another post right there). You could go anywhere, you had to level up, you could talk to NPCs, go through moon portals, get attacked by these scary wraith like things, etc. Good times there. That was a great game. I loved the Ultima series. I never did try Ultima online or anything, but that was before I was willing to pay a fee every month to play a game. I'm apparently way past that now.

Thus we entered the time of blizzard. No one heard of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, but Warcraft 2 was a huge hit. It wasn't technically an RPG, but instead it was a real-time strategy game. I think most of you know how that game was played. You build up your base either being human or orc (the horde) and you build up an army to destroy the other base. One of the coolest things about this game was that you could play it against your friends. Oh the days prior to the internet when you had to connect your modem direct with your friends (with all the technical problems included). We also would have LAN parties where we connected all of our computers on a network so we could play together (or was that later on), I'm not sure. I was in high school at the time all of this was going on.

Yes, I have to admit, we were also big into the Heroes of Might and Magic games (/facepalm from the embarrassment). Looking back on it now, it seemed pretty corny. And the turn taking style to your fights was pretty silly as well. But I think the element of growing your army, improving the type of troops that you had to the point where you could own someone, that was fun. You could play this with other people but we played it hotseat style, where you take turns (yes the whole thing was turn based). There were many a times when several of us were playing this game while doing other stuff, just taking turns on the computer.

I took a two year vacation from video games altogether. When I came back there were some pretty cool games out. I remember briefly playing Diablo, but I’m not sure when. I really liked Dungeon Siege a lot (but the camera angle could never look up towards the sky, that really bothered me). One thing about Dungeon Siege was that you could specialize in a certain talent (magic, range, or melee), but you didn't have a class, it just depended on what you did. If you attacked things with your sword a lot you got better at that, the same with the magic. Sometimes I wish in WoW that we had more specializations like that. Anyway, these games were a lot of fun.

Oh, and one more game that I played before World of Warcraft, Fable. What a fun game, I don't know how long I was being called "chicken chaser" as my title. I liked the fact that as you did good or evil things it reflected how you looked and how people treated you in the world. I haven't tried Fable 2, but I've been told that it’s very addictive.

So, now I play WoW and I'm still not on a RP server (well, I have toons on there, but I'm not there in spirit). The RP aspect of the game has intrigued me. I didn't even consider it until I got into twitter, where some of my friends got the idea in my head. At any rate, now I get my fix through World of Warcraft which totally kicks the other games out of the water. I'm here to stay. Well, until something better comes along (/looks towards blizzard with raised eyebrow).

What games influenced you?