MMORPG; noun; pronounced: meh-meh-morp-e-ga

MMORPG's are traditionally said to be for people with little to no value in their daily lives. This is mostly true.

'But Viking Gamer, even successful people play WoW and Guildwars and those other retarded free MMO's that litter my favourite sites with their ads!'

And yes, that's completely true as well. However all this depends on how loosely we refer to word 'success' and what the person is doing in their lives.

For instance, if you're a computer programmer, rocket scientist, engineer, editor or anyone else with two brain cells to rub together (notice I didn't mention sales or sports professionals), you will always find what the imagination can offer you so much better than real life. If, after realising the truth in my words (and it is truth, there's a reason why I'M THE ONE IN THE HAT), you may envy those money eating sales people or those iq deficient ball-throwers and their simple acceptance of life (which basically consists of vibrant colours in the former and raping things in the latter), but all you have to do is remember for every pretty colour and large chested woman that distracts these people, you will always be more interesting.

Games are supposed to capture the imagination, much in the same way books are. If you are a worker in one of the afore mentioned jobs (or one of the numerous jobs that require you to be consciously working on a task for more than five minutes), there's a good chance you read. If you read, there's a good chance you fantasize. If you fantasize, there's a damn good chance you've fantasized about a lifestyle different and much better to your own. One example would be fantasizing that you're a mage setting villages on fire or a ten foot tall orc able to plough an axe through someones sternum in one blow (ie fantasizing you're a Viking).

So when you compare the acheivement of finally landing that Jefferson account (as a Viking I'm not familiar with what peasants actually do, so I just assume this Jefferson person is of great importance to you) to finding a sword that's the same size of your body before banding together with wizards and shamans to bring down a dragon the size of your average oil tanker, it's a no-brainer as to what is going to be preferable.

So when I hear that people are 'wasting their lives' with these games I only agree because most of these games consist of about ten thousand hours of 'Hey adventurer! Kill exactly ten of these creatures and bring me back one of their organ/orifices and I'll give you xp!'
If I found an MMORPG that managed to break this cycle I'd be all over it like a sales person on a cd gently spinning in the sun or a football player on something that can be raped.

But wasting their lives? Hell no. For those of you who don't earn enough to regularly travel (I'm required to travel for work purposes {there are very few peasants who choose to start crops in ice deserts}), seeing the four corners of CGI land may be just as good. Also there are dragons.

There are three reasons I don't like MMORPG's:

1. Collecting animal parts is not an adventure.
2. Hate playing with randoms (see this article or even this one)
3. Pointing and clicking doesn't show any actual god damn skill.

Having already dealt with the first two, the general gameplay for all MMORPG's is click the enemy until death, which for insinuates that instead of cutting the head of a fire demon with a Great Axe of Murder, im actually using my pointer to make annoy him to death by clicking a million times.

Demon's souls would have made a great MMORPG due to it's leveling, combat and weapon upgrading systems. If there was some way to mix these two things together the result would be so addictive that heroin would be used as a way to come down from the high.

MMORPG's are both a bane on the productivity of society as well as the ultimate escape from what is a world assaulted be mediocrity and dashed dreams, hopes and expectations.

I'm giving MMORPG's 2.5 out 5 because they are only half bad.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.