Wednesday, November 25, 2009

You, AFKs and MMOs: O HAY DIS B IMPORTANTZ EVENTZ-- OH SHI-

Picture related.

Picture related.

One thing I’ve been thinking while in the shower before returning to play with .

It amazes me how most people I knew playing MMOs and are having me in party can keep themselves seated in front of their computers without having to respond to a certain call of duty (no, not that Call Of Duty) – in which this means, you’re at home and you’re now on the PC playing a certain online game (be it anything you’re thinking while reading this post) and you’re in your group whacking away at monsters in a dangerous dungeon. Or, you are with your guild going for the frontlines, already at the base where you’ll need to fend it off from would-be invaders and at the same time said invaders are charging inside all out at your guildsmen for a last resort strike. Or, you might be battling a monster everyone wants to kill for the reward it gives.

Basically, anything that needs you to stay on full alert in-game and not even a second of neglect. But wait!

Let’s say your name is Johnny. All of a sudden voices rang into your ear, offscreen, sounding something like this:

“Johnny! Please wash the plates!” Or, it can be something like “Johnny! You need to follow dad out and buy some groceries etc!” Or maybe something mundane like “Johnny! Please hand mom over the spoon!”

And all these while you’re doing any of the stuff I mentioned before in that long fucking paragraph up there.

Not to mention being seconds late to do what you’ve been asked for would grant you an annoying barrage of lectures.

How would you deal with the tension that comes after that, ladies and gentlemen? One thing for sure is that I’m going to listen to those who say they just ignore it or ask somebody else to do it. Oh, in order to make sure of that I’ll add one more situation: Given that situation, you’re now not in any position to just ignore or ask someone else to do it in your stead.

I, for one, am not free from these “obstacles” (name it something else if you wish) and always have to make a quick sprint to whatever I need to do after getting away from the keyboard, and depending on the number of tasks I’m assigned, will take me quite some time to get back to the screen and see what’s happening.

Of course, if I were a support character going AFK (that’s Away From Keyboard for you twerps, if you still don’t know) all of a sudden and my party members all died (including me) while I was at it, I would get the blame for sure. Luckily enough most of the people I’ve met are pretty understanding people because they know this fact for sure that you can’t blame people who suddenly went AWOL (Absent WithOut Leave if you still don’t know, somewhat a ‘formal’ term for “missing,”) online because he was called for some stuff off-screen.

But it’s still annoying to be suddenly called off in the face of an important moment while playing MMOs, don’t you think?

Somehow I think something else is needed apart from everyone’s AWSUM GODHAXness or ZOMG UBERMULTITASKERZ stuff…

[Via http://daishirokisame.wordpress.com]

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