Monday, August 18, 2008

Sports Stars and Computer Games

So I figured I'd expand a little bit on my previous blog post and talk about the dilemma of not having wireless internet at my current place of residence. This is day six or so of me going to the Classic Corner truck stop in Madison because it is open 24 hours and it has wireless internet. I've never spent more than maybe three hours a day here because I usually do the things I need to get done and that is about it. My roommate has contacted our cable provider a bunch of times but they keep telling him that they'll get a guy over to our place as soon as they find an opening. It's been about a week or so of that so I'm starting to wonder if they're simply ignoring us or if everyone in the Sioux Falls region is just now setting up their cable/internet. On the plus side, it's about 50 dollars for basic cable and internet which is a killer price.

I mentioned about working up courage to load up World of Warcraft at the Classic Corner, but to tell you the truth it really did not take that much. I'm pretty open about the fact that I play WOW because I'm a pretty well-rounded person. WOW can be a little daunting at times, but I know I'll never be the kind of person that makes time for 25 man raids and six hour instances. I am a little worried that I have been picking up on the lingo so eventually I'll be able to toss around sweet acronyms and talk about feign and pull and all those awesome strategies. Actually I have no idea what feign and pull means, I just heard some guys talking about it on a podcast. To tell you the truth though, I actually heard about that from Curt Schilling. Yes, the famous Curt Schilling who pitches for the Boston Red Sox but also sports three level 70s which includes a shaman.

The Instance is probably one of my favorite podcasts. Of the twenty or so that I subscribe to, The Instance is easily top three. Another one is called How I WoW, a sister podcast of the instance. It is hosted by a French man named Patrick and Scott Johnson and their premise of the podcast is to interview different people who play WoW, how they got into it and how they play the game. Episode seven saw Curt Schilling as a guest and it was a really fascinating listen.

When most people think of professional sports players, the last thing that would come to mind is that they are not hardcore computer game players. Curt Schilling is an exception to that. He stated that he was always one of the most technology minded baseball players in the league, carrying around laptops back when they weighed 10 lbs. and using them to play Ultima Online. He said that he has always been into MMORPGs starting with Ultima Online, an MMO from Sony. He mentioned that his gaming habits became public when he and Doug Glanville were interviewed after a game in which Doug hit two homeruns off him when they were no longer team mates (Doug played for the Phillies while Schilling played for the Diamondbacks). Reporters were interviewing Doug after the game because he was the kind of player who never hit home runs. When asked about how he was able to do it, Glanville replied that Schilling had been responsible for many of Glanville's deaths. After hearing this the media was dumb-struck and he quickly added that it was in an online game called Ultima Online. The media then ran to Curt to ask him about him causing Glanville's deaths to which he replied "Let's get a couple things straight. Doug died because Doug sucked."

Sony loved the exposure and designed an NPC that when other players killed it, Sony donated money to Schilling's ALS foundation which works to find a cure for Lou Gherig's disease.

Another point that Schilling made is that even though he has always been a jock, he's never been in the "jock circle." World of Warcraft is simply a hobby for him and many others and in today's world, there's no real stigma to being a gamer. Games have risen to meteoric popularity and the terms Nerd and Geek have become virtually meaningless. So with that I'll be getting back to my Level 36 Human Mage. You can find me on Zuluhed.

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