Nerd [nurd]- noun Slang.

A person who finds the logical world of computers and games easier to understand than the emotional and often illogical world IRL.

This is my definition of a nerd. What’s yours?

I’ve come to realize something very interesting about playing MMORPG’s for so long: many of the lessons learned in the online world, will in fact carry over to RL. The first step to playing an MMO, before you can even step foot into the world, is you have to create your character. You customize his/her appearance, race, class, hair color, nostril size, etc. I’ve decided to do this for RL too.

What I mean by this is before we dash headlong into this world of near infinite possibility, I want to set some goals so I don’t become too overwhelmed by the plethora of options before me.

Areas of RL I want to work on (and how I relate them to MMOs):

Business/Finance In Game: In World of Warcraft there is the Auction House and Trade channel, in EverQuest there was the Bazaar and /ooc, in Dark Age of Camelot there was a housing system and traders and all of these games have guilds. Running a guild and making money in game were very similar to the real world concepts of running a business and creating income. In MMOs I was pro at seeing value. I didn’t make money off trade skills and I couldn’t bear to sit and grind for money so I mainly bought low and sold high or found interesting investment opportunities.

Business/Finance IRL: I want to run a successful business like a successful guild. To create exciting transactions of value that are mutually beneficial to all parties involved. To learn how to find solid investment opportunities in RL and allow my money to work for me as opposed to putting me in debt. And to create positions of value and income for other people. Business will be like my class, with a specialization in Software and a sub-spec in investments.

Health/Body In Game: My character’s in WoW and EverQuest we’re in peak physical condition. They RAN not walked around entire universes with 6-12 backpacks on, carrying dwarf heads and 1000’s of gold and platinum coins. They fought giant beasts for hours at a time without asking for a rest!  They also ate foods that made them stronger and faster, not fat and lethargic.

Health/Body IRL: I feel like sitting on my ass for hours at a time, eating junk food and pouring sugar down my throat really caused my body some harm. I started to get a fat and insecure about my body and my teeth suffered from the sugary drinks. I was honest with myself and noted I was fatter than I’d like to be and decided to make a change. My character’s body looks like Brad Pitt’s (AKA Tyler Durden) in fight club.

Friend’s List In Game: An MMORPG is ALL about social networks, just like life. If you really step back from your character and see these games as just another thriving, prosperous city you see the intrinsic value available for anyone willing to look. MMO’s are so popular because people can connect. It literally is it’s own microcosm. Like an ant farm we can see how the society functions (or doesn’t). I’ve really noticed that who you hang around, determines quite a large portion of what you do. And not even from a “peer pressure” standpoint either. It’s just what is readily available to you in your social networks.

Imagine you are in a 40 man raid guild. You would imagine you would do more 40 man raids than Joe Schmoe in a pre-made PvP guild. Conversely, Joe over there is probably doing more pre-made PvP matches. With that fact solidly in mind, I give you:

Friend’s List IRL: I want to create a positive social network for myself. What this means is I want to do more in my life than just play video games and work a crappy job to keep playing video games. I want to develop social networks of people interested/involved in the things I want to do/be involved in. It makes more sense as those activities would be more readily available. I don’t want to develop a network around people that do/involved in things I don’t.

Family In Game: While I have met and played with a few people who I would consider family; and while some of my actual family members did play with me, nothing beats actually spending time with my family being a family IRL… most of the time! =p

Family IRL: Nothing in the world, on or offline, means more to me than my family. I was blessed with an awesome family, that supports and cares about me,  that will always get my 6 (Kay). This one makes me the saddest to think about because on occasion I neglected some of my family because of video games. But dwelling on the past is no way to live all we can do is move forward! I want to be able to spend more time with family.

All in all I’d say being consumed by the escapism of MMO’s and dedicating my time to developing my in game character has really caused my IRL persona to suffer. I could be further ahead in academics, business, friends and definitely spent my time with my family more wisely. The good news is NOW is the best time to make a change!

Taking all these things into consideration I have a pretty good idea of what I want for my character IRL and that is a great start.

I’m staring at the login screen of RL (Real Life for you non-gamers out there), my login info is typed out, all I have to do is press the start button. My mind is racing with so many possibilities. This is an MMORPG where you don’t respawn, where leveling up is self defined, with a huge number of classes and a seemingly infinite number of possibilities.

I feel a little fearful as scenarios play out in my mind: What will my family think about this? My Guild? My E-Friends? What happens if I get rejected and my sense of ego gets deflated and I return to just play video games… Why not just keep playing? Atleast here my character is already level 80 and decently geared.

Let me take you back a few steps here. I am a nerd… I have been since I can remember. I was a military brat and I changed schools every school year. I was never very good at making and keeping friends because I knew I would be moving soon and I didn’t want to get attatched; but that was ok, I had found video games at an early age.

Early Days

If you take a timeline of my life you can trace back every major period of my life and parallel it with my current video game. My genre of choice? MMORPGs. Been playin’ since dem early dayz. I found EverQuest in 6th grade, installed it on my celeron processer peice of crap computer, established a dial up connect, closed out napster, and logged in for the first time and found my home. The virtual world that would be there no matter where I was… Suddenly moving didn’t seem so bad because I’d have the certainty and familiarity of this digital world. My friend list would be saved no matter how long I was logged out and all this took? $10 bucks a month! I was hooked.

Fast forward to my junior year of high school. Here I am, king of the computer classroom. I was the guild leader for 50 something would-be-World of Warcraft players from my school. These were the days of Beta when only a handful of us actually even had accounts. We met up every day in the computer classroom for lunch and discussed strategy, thought out duels, and sometimes just watched silly dance videos. You remember when they were at their height of popularity, right?

Finally I had found an identity in the real world. I had hyped up this game so much to all the other nerds and geeks that they were hooked before the game had even come out. All they saw was the enthusiasm of a few beta members and some awesome videos (Think”The Adventure of Setz and Plexx Part Duex?”) and none of us could get enough.

On release day half of us skipped school to pick up our copies of the game. My parents were out of town for a week so I invited everyone to my house so they could lan up and we could get a head start on everyone. The next four days were a total blur of Mountain Dews, kids coming in and out of my house like a revolving door (I happened to live a block away from the school), intermittant naps, and LOTS of World of Warcraft. Our guild was quickly becoming a dominant force on our server and we had a very powerful alliance with another dominant guild. Things were looking amazing for me. I had this awesome persona built around my character, my guild and my friends. I was finally feeling a (false) sense of accomplishment in life.

Rebellion Against The King Of Nerds

Eventually a few months after the game had come the guild started having some hiccups. The thing was some of the people were “Goths” irl, some were “nerds”, and others were even “preps”. This started to wear on people and caused a division in the guild. Long story short, we eventually disbanded, I quit playing and went into a depression, and my attendance and grades suffered because of it. I had my first ego crash. I had built up my ego on all these external and volatile variables that it was inevitable. Of course then I didn’t see that.

I did have a girlfriend at the time and I was getting laid on a regular basis, I had some online friends and some rl ones, so I was comfortable. Comfort is in opposition to change. If you are comfortable, why would you change? Things are ok the way they are. Then she moved to the other side of the country with her family, my best friend rl and in game stole my Sulfuron Ingots and sold them to a competing guild, effectively screwing up my chance of having the world’s first Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros and down I went again. A few more years of this off and on and I decided to make a change. I am no longer using a video game to satiate my needs as a human. I want to truly experience RL and I want to own at it.

That should just about catch us up here. I take a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. Start.

Pressing The Start Button

The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences with other people, gamers and non-gamers, to hold myself accountable by publicly setting goals, and maybe even help others break free of the false sense of accomplishments held in video games. I want to be honest as possible with people about my experiences and I want to make some money too. Apparently RL costs more than $15 per month. I want to connect with other people and develop a sense of self that isn’t built around external sources that aren’t related to me and I have no real control over.

The start button has been pressed and I’m now logged in to RL for the first time in years.