"You have killed 100 orcs"

12am-6:15am

"I've got the itch."

"Define itch."

"I want to continue because it gets better as you go, they show you that early on. And, considering that my enjoyment increased significantly over just those 6 levels... i mean it was amazing once we turned the tide in pvp, going to town on people. I went 33 and 0...I've gotta say that public quests were pretty funny, that giant f*cking cannon that you use to blow up the level 40 general? That's hilarious. I laughed."

So I conscripted a friend from high school to play with me tonight, my team has other things to do. He played ironbreaker, I played runepriest and we blazed through the Dwarf starting area. He and I go way back with MMO's, and having explored Runescape, Acheron's Call 2, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Neverwinter Nights 2, Vanguard, Age of Conan and Everquest 2, we know how to orient ourselves in a game world.

In fact, it's often the most enjoyable part.

"What's renown?... oh aight"
"Do the cannon's hurt people? I'll go pull orcs, let's see."

Ventrilo, some caffeine and a new character (third one)... I was in my happy place. A lot of people I encounter say they avoid Videogames because they "don't have time to learn." Learning is the best part! Exploring alongside a real person prevents over-immersion, comparing notes makes the disorientation less intimidating. But people should be more open to places unfamiliar, the more you adapt the better you become at adapting. Becoming accustomed to new potentialities and rulesets through videogames might teach us something about the perspectives we hold in real life. Personal growth through digital orienteering!

Or is the game just so easy to navigate, the controls so programmed and static that instead of furthering our understanding, these interfaces streamline and encapsulate thought, draining their users of energies that should be projected into the real world. Video hallucination destroying IRL spiritual health?

Whatever. The dwarf zone is beautiful and compelling with impressive architectures, entertaining npc dwarf personalities and swarms of violent npc orcs there to meet you from the start. As we made our way through the first few stages I found myself reacting to the virtual war; I really wanted to kill "Greenskins". Not hard to believe, the game had placed my friends and I in situations of self-defense and our fellow dwarfs seemed perfectly content blasting them away with cannons. I had spent hours doing nothing but killing orcs.


So what? The game is playing off of a basic, primal adictive emotion. Something Hobbesian, something barbaric. War is fun(?), and in Warhammer it is made meaningless, commercial, hallucinatory. War becomes a game but doesn't fully shed its emotional and moral baggage. There are still grudges, casualties, orphans!

I don't really know what this all means but I'm going to think about it. Staying my hammer during peace protests may grow more difficult, however, as Warhammer's biased narrative and compulsive combat carefully cultivate my thirst for revenge.

: )