Avian Gamers Network

We all play computer games , and some of us have been playing since PONG was first released (followed closely by the Atari 2600 and Outlaw).

I consider myself a fairly social creature (less nowdays than I used to be), but I always enjoyed games. But, what types of games do you enjoy and why do you keep coming back?

Since starting to play online games, it has been increasing harder to sit down and play out some single player games for me (especially with an always on connection). But the online community has its drawbacks with mixed maturity levels (not saying age here folks), but I can usually shrug off most of those people. The biggest difference is sometime competing. My online time doesn't allow me to compete against people with significantly higher amounts of free time, so I tend to set my own marks for enjoyment/success (instead of comparing myself to others).

My Dings:

• Multiplayer cooperative games (can still compete against others, but it would be group vs group rather than individual)
• A game with a system that is complicated so I can pick it apart (many strategy or economic games so this).
• I like to have a game sitting around where I can spend 30 minutes and do something fun or productive. (Diablo 2 was a good example whereas SWG doesn't allow me to do this much except for some crafting)

Games keep getting better and I hope I will be able to play these things with my kids while they are growing up (and even after they leave the house). If I had to give up game playing or TV, then it would have to be goodbye television

Feel free to add a commenct about gaming

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Hehe I can still remember loading the Temple of Apshai series of games onto my Atari 600 or 800 using a tape recorder.

Especially since I have started online gaming SWG is my first MMORPG I find it next to impossible to play anything else. Mainly because my internet is always on and I really enjoy the community that we have formed here.

I have already pretty much given up on TV.

My dings:


Having fun if I'm not having fun forget it.

I like to help people also. I believe we have a great group here and I think we all try to help each other out when we can.

I do enjoy the strategy games I actually did play Civ 3 a couple of weeks ago.

LOL, I remember doing that (tape recorder and all) but loaded on my TRASK-80 with 32K RAM (bought that computer with my own money $939.12 back in 1981-2?)

Ding more = fun (more or less) unless it leads to OCD (Obsessivy Compulsive Disorder) or Internet Addiction.

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Hmm, yes, we all have our roots don't we....

The first system i owned was actually the Atari 5200, my uncle had the 2600, so I got to play them both...my friend had ColecoVision..hah.

The first computer I "owned" was a Tandy...pre-hard drive...so I got to sneak in while it was still in the "DOS" age. I was 6, so lay off...haha.

What brings me to gaming...I guess for one, it's just always been around, but really like games with continuity...where you gather stuff and get "stronger". I enjoy other types...fighting, racing...but I get bored...quick...they are mainly for when I just want to waste a little time, and not a LOT.

I guess the obsession with RPG type games stems back to D&D (I started with the "box sets" - Basic,Expert,Champion,Master,Immortal...) haha. I have played some other MMO's ( MUD's, DarkAges (Nexon not DAoC)), but this is by far the best....it's not great....but it's STAR WARS!

so...is that my Ding? what the hell is a Ding anyhow...

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The Cord
Occasional Caretaker of the Horde Maelstrom Guild
Ex-Section 3 Director

Started playing games when I was 7, back in 1983 on ZX Spectrum. A good friend had that computer, I got my Comodore 64 2-3 years later. Of course, tape drives were the thing to do back then. In my country at the time there were no copyright laws, so the official black market was thriving and we would buy tapes of 20-30 games for $2-5...

My faves back then were Decathlon (and all similar games like Winter olympics, Supertest and such), Pirates! - that is probably still my favorite, ahh, Sid Meier - and North & South, It Came From THe Desert, Defender of the Crown, Joan of Arc etc. etc.

Later I really liked Prince of Persia, Civilization, Dune2, Doom2, Warcraft, Age of Empires and such.

In essence, I like games wher you need to use strategy and brains and/or where you can test your skills against/with other players. Beating the program is not very satisfactory and most of the times the AI cheats anyway. Of course, with the advent of cheaters online, the game world has been soured these days just as well.

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Retired Weaponsmith

My first computer was an old Radio Shack / Tandy Box that I plugged into an old black and white TV, ran on some modified DOS coding, very interesting...

Had the old Pong system first, that thing makes me laugh thinking about it, then got an Atari 5200, the 2600 adapter plug in for it. That was alot of fun.

Then I got an Apple IIe, that thing was the best. Had great games on it.

Then I got the old Nintendo, we had an old PC that I could play a few games on, not much though, then I got a Sega in High School.

In college I got a Playstation, and my roomates had computers, and my gaming experience grew up. Upon graduating from college, I bought a PC (450 Mhz HP) and started gaming on it, picked up a PS2 when it came out, then a Gamecube, then my baby, my new Comp at home.

I like action games, strategy games, and MMO's. I don't really care for PvP as much as cooperative play versus AI.

I am a socializer in those types of games.

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SW:TOR - Mantison Gunslinger, Ironmant Trooper, Manni Jedi Knight
WoW - Dalaran - Manni 85 Mage, Ironmant 83 Warrior, Mantison 80 Hunter
SWG - Chilastra Retired Mantison, Commando / TKA Master aka Trogdor !!!!

I started computer gaming back when I was like 12 or so, when I got an Atari 2600 (I still remember my first gaming trance... it was with Pitfall )

After that I got a C64 where I enjoyed titles like the Bard's Tale, Wasteland (best RPG on that box), and the old Infocom Adventures like Zork, Suspended or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ah, those were the times.

Immersion is key. Sure some shooting games, like River Raid on the 2600, but later on it mostly strategy gaming or RPGs. I like testing my mind against these things, working out what works and what doesn't.

Multiplayer games are nice, but it is not required. I can sit down for some hours of good old fashioned turnbased gaming fun without interacting with anyone.

SWG I play only for the company.

Edward

Well i use to have an old machine back in the early 90's which was my first box (I was born in 86) had Hoyle (card games) Duck Tales, and some Cal Games which included waverunner, skateboarding, hang gliding and a few others...

Then i got the demos of full throttle and Dark Forces...loads of fun with those..had a few other games also but really don't remember them.

I like good shoot 'em up games that are realistic to semi realistic (Tom Clancy series usually)

Good RTS games...although i have yet to buy Med. Total War which i think looks great just havn't gotten it yet...this kind of game is what like in RTS..Build conquer...build conquer enemy territories..repel invanders etc..with a decently smart computer.

Online Team based strategy biggest names in this are Tribes, and Tribes 2..T2 was released in 2000..still being played today (just installed my copy 3 weeks ago) Tribes org might still be played was released in late 90's

MMORPG's - the people thats about it..good community is key

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Ryric Krael
Former Vice President AGN
Former Director, Section 6
Former Head of Department of the Treasury
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Ask not what your PA can do for you, but what you can do for your PA
"Gone Section Five"

Wow...old times...

My first machine was a Tandy 1000 HX, which was a temporary replacement for the out-of-stock EX (I may have those switched...I'm getting to be an old man ). Through the next few years I pretty much stuck with Tandy, next stepping up to a Tandy 1000 TL/2 (still no HD but I added one later). I very clearly remember the day I received my 'memory expansion' that would bring me up to a whopping 640k! What would I ever do with so much memory? Why play Double Dragon, of course!

A lot of my early games were text-based and I even wrote a cowboy-themed text based game in BASICA. I remember taking for ever to beat Cutthroat Island. Took the longest time to figure out how to patch a hole in my diving suit... That was back then when I didn't have nearly as many games to choose from and actually finished games, regardless of how bad they were (by today's standards) since that was about all I had to play.

Then the fateful day came when my brother-in-law brought me a copy of King's Quest (on 5.25" disks). Parser-based interaction and cursor key-based characer control! W00t! I think that was the real start of my gaming fever. The challenge presented in trying to figure out not only what item you needed to get past a certain obstacle but how you needed to use it. The whole gamut of Sierra games crossed my desk, King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Hero's Quest and seeing ads for Leisure Suit Larry. Some people I'd talk to would tell me how a friend of a friend owned or had played LSL and that it was hilarious albeit a little dirty. Being 13 or so that was all I needed to hear. Pretty soon I was able to add the LSL series to that growing list. By that time there were many games on the market and I was playing F-15 Strike Eagle (is that my target? yeah, that block that's spitting at me... ) and eventually Doom. My interest in stepping away from the computer all went downhill from there!

Anyway, to the point of the post, and considering my interests in games over the years, immersion is definitely a big ding! for me. Little details such as in Police Quest, where you had to complete a walkaround inspection of your car or the wheels would fall off when you drove away from the station, were simple, maybe silly little things but they served well to make the game seem real to me and suck me in. Can you imagine the collective 40w7 that go up from the kiddies today if you had to do something like that??

Anyway, once connecting to other players became more common, the hook was set even deeper. Knowing that this other guy running around in the Doom world was not a computer-controlled animatron was incredibly fascinating to me.

Then there's the reward factor. Some little title or a virtual badge or trophy of some sort...that would really keep me interested in the next level...ok just one level more...well, maybe just one more...

I kinda have to say that everything that's really drawn me into any one particular game from that point on has been a slight advancement of the three things I've mentioned above. Diablo...serious reward addiction there. Morrowind...incredible immersion. SWG...immersion. EQ...reward addiction. CS...interaction.

I don't ever see myself giving up gaming completely. A friend of mine is in his mid-50s, semi-retired and plays games like crazy. He's mah heeeero! I've told my wife once I get old and she needs to put me in a nursing home, no problem. Just make sure I have a cable modem, a hot computer and the latest games. She doesn't even have to feel guilty about putting me there.


**EDIT** Jeeze! Didn't realize how long winded I was! Congrats if you actually read all that drivel...

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

For my part I start gaming at 1 on my parents' C64 ! They are still telling me I've learned my alphabet on the C64 keyboard . I had really a lot of games on this good old C64, Shamus DK and also one involving brushing teeth !

After that I swtiched to a brand new Toshiba laptop with 25 Mo on the HDD and Windows 2.0 ! I played Lemmings, Test Drive (or Driver, can't remember) and some others games on it, then I went to the console world with a NES and a Gameboy.

But it didn't succeed in getting me away from the computers and so my parents bought me a 66MHz 16 Mo RAM, 540 Mo HDD for xmas '94. Played Doom, Heretic, Warcraft and Warcraft II on it and got addicted so from this date I got a new comp every 3 years (200 MHz in 97, 700 MHz in 2000 and this 2.4 on 2003) and played really a lot of games on these.

And that's it for my young gaming experience !

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

An old apple computer...I forgot what it was called. My first pentium though was a Pentium 90

though I did get to play Pong back in the hayday, it was off my cousins machine, not mine. My first machine of any type was the commodore 64 with tape deck and drawing tablet, woohoo! Frogger, Pacman, Pole Position, Joust to name a few memories for me.

As far as todays ding's for me, (someone asked what a ding was, in games like everquest, etc when you made a new level you got a little "ding" sound. So you woud go "Ding" to announce you just leveled and everyone else would usually shout congrats or grats. It has passed on into other games even if there isnt a ding anymore), varies greatly then it used to. I too suffer from sort of the same problem in that a lot of single player games don't do it for me. the ones that do usually have to have a lot of story to them, not just run through maze, kill everything in path.

What I do miss though are adventure games. I'm a giant fan of them from anything in the monkey island series (i still own them all and occasionally will run through them for fun), grim fandango (same here, ill play it through once in a while, great artwork in this one. had a wonderful theme), sam n max, myst series to a degree, just about anything back in the day. I was very dissapointed that the second full throttle and sam n max games were canceled. I may have to give that dark fall a chance...

Anywho, these days the dings i tend to get though i despise it to a degree is getting cool loot. Its just feels like an accomplishemt to be able to put something into a house that shows i did it. Instead of just another number or level attached to my name.