because nathanedwards.com was taken.

Comments disabled for the time being; for some reason the spambots decided to hammer me today. In my grief I accidentally deleted all the old (legit) comments too. Blargh.

To the extent that I consider myself a genre gamer, I’ve always identified as an RPG guy. I love the idea of taking a nobody from a small town and, through hard work and a lot of dues-paying, becoming the big hero everyone loves – even if they’re just NPCs occuping nondefinite space somewhere on a hard drive. Wish-fulfillment much?

[Pause for exposition]

I’m the oldest of seven siblings, raised in a loving (though conservative and evangelical) household. I was never allowed to play violent video games as a child, for fear of exposing my little siblings to same, so I missed out on DOOM, Counter-Strike, pretty much everything. We didn’t have the Internet until I was in high school, despite the fact that my dad’s a software engineer, and we never had a Nintendo or a gaming computer.

What we did have was a collection of Game Boys. I grew up on Mario, Zelda and Pokémon – the classics, I suppose. But what I mostly did was read – especially sci-fi and fantasy. My shelves at my parents’ house are even now filled with Asimov, Lewis, Tolkien, Pratchett, Poul Anderson, Andre Norton, Gaiman, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, and legions of pulp paperbacks. With those influences, is it any wonder that I love RPGs?

Aside from trips to friends’ houses, old Sierra adventure games (King’s Quest, Quest for Glory) and hours upon hours of Castlevania, Golden Sun, etc. on the Game Boy, I didn’t have the freedom, time, or resources for gaming until college. 16-player Halo 1 matches twice a week in the basement of my freshman year dorm introduced me to FPSs while eventually giving me the skills to actually play them, and ready access to consoles brought me to appreciate Ninja Gaiden, Guitar Hero, Oblivion, and more – a treasure trove.

I even played WoW for five months my junior year with some of my old dorm mates/Halo buddies. And that’s where all the trouble started.

My favorite thing about WoW was the exploration. Back when you could still climb steep terrain if you did it just right, I would wander wherever my stubby Dwarf legs would take me – the mountains above Ironforge, the Goblin airstrip, Old Ironforge – around every corner was a new delight. And sure, combat was fun, running around with my real-life friends while miles away and mostly-friendless in New York was absolutely needed – but eventually around level 47 I got sick of it. Or, more accurately, I turned 21 and started seeing a lady, and suddenly found myself with less and less patience for trying to get a PUG together to raid ZF.”

Since then, I’ve mostly played single-player games, or at least not MMOs. I spent a lot of time with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Halo 3, Ninja Gaiden, the God of War series, and recently Mass Effect and GTA IV.

Which isn’t to say I haven’t dabbled my feet in the bottomless pool of MMOs. I’ve played a few betas and tooled around on plenty of other lands – Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Sword of the New World, Hellgate: London (okay, not really an MMO), niche MMOs like Wyrm Online, etc. – even tried to get into MUDs – Achaea, Lusternia. But nothing really captured the polished combat, interesting world, and joy of exploration I felt in WoW. I didn’t even mind getting constantly ganked in Stranglethorn Vale.

Which leads me to my problem. I can’t seem to get past level twenty in an MMO without thinking, “I could be having so much more fun in WoW.” This bothers me. I never even played Warcraft.

Lord of the Rings Online (which I’d been waiting for since 1996, when it was called Middle-Earth Online and under development by Yosemite), did the unthinkable: it made Middle-Earth boring. As a LOTR fan since fifth grade, I was devastated. Hellgate got repetitive way too quickly. Mythos was fun but it wasn’t compelling. SOTNW was a grind-fest. Burning Sea was too slow.

I had my hopes pinned on Age of Conan. And for the first few levels, everything was wonderful. I was killing Picts with friends during the daytime, and fulfilling my destiny at night. Tortage was fun. The environments were varied, combat was entertaining, the world was great – and then I got to the mainland.

Sure, the vistas were still stunning. The enemies were nicely challenging. But the loot tables sucked, too many quests were bugged, travel was painfully slow, and after my fortieth quest in the same alpine valley, I was getting bored. Today I logged in for just long enough to sneak through a cave, kill a monster, then die and respawn near the quest turn-in point.

Don’t get me wrong, combat as a Ranger is fun. But it didn’t take long before I started thinking, “Gah, I really wish I was playing as my old Dwarf Hunter right now. I’d lay such-and-such a trap, sic my pet on them, and go to town.” Such was Warcraft’s appeal that even two years after I last logged on, I really want to start playing again. And I didn’t, until I played Conan.

I don’t know what it is about WoW. Certainly Conan is the best MMO I’ve played since, well, WoW, and the universe has a lot of potential. I’m sure Guild PvP is awesome, and I’m positive nostalgia’s soothing sepiatones are washing over a lot of WoW’s glaring faults. But damn. I was doing so well.

Maybe my taste in games has shifted – hell, I spent five years playing a MUD-like open-ended society simulator. But my incentive to log onto AoC is rapidly dwindling. I still haven’t finished Mass Effect, the Witcher, or GTA. I need to practice TF2 so I don’t suck at everything but Medic – my clan could use me. Hell, my old Halo crew still plays Halo 3 twice a week. I could do that.

I like MMOs. I want to like them more. But more and more I get the weird feeling – if it’s not World of Warcraft, it’s not worth playing. And I hate that feeling. But WoW did something right. I never remember that I miss it until I play another MMO. But then it comes back to me. It’s like the old girlfriend you never really got over. Um. Except that it’s harder to drunk-dial.

TL;DR version: I really wanted to like Age of Conan, but the more I play it, the more I miss WoW. I need to either stay away from MMOs permanently – it’s not like I have a dearth of other games I can/should play – or just suck it up and resubscribe.

I hope I’m the Nathan Edwards you’re looking for. I realize there are a lot of us – artists, scientists, musicians, soccer players, people who owe a substantial amount of late fees to the Seattle Public Library – but to the best of my knowledge I’m the only one who tries to make a living in the tech journalism world.

So yes. I’m Nathan A. Edwards (the A is for Adventure). I am a tech journalist working in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m currently a freelance/contract worker, and most of my time is spent wearing either the Web Concierge hat for maximumpc.com or the Community Manager chapeau for Mod Shop. Other hats worn as necessary.

I’ve realized that my hitherto-near-perfect screen of anonymity is useful for being a dick on the internet (sup goons), but somewhat less handy when I’m trying to make a name for myself in the business. So here I shall plant my flag* and here I shall mumble about things that catch my fancy.

I really really hate self-indulgent “HEY GUYS I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY SO I WILL SAY IT IN AS CONVOLUTED A MANNER AS POSSIBLE” this-is-a-blog posts. Yet that’s exactly what I see here.

*Abraham Lincoln punching out a Tyrannosaurus, on a field of green, with the legend You Don’t Even Know.