Feb 242016
 

Now that I talked about some of the consequences that hardcore gamers like us have to endure, I can talk about something that a lot of people probably won’t understand unless you have experienced it yourself.

Til’ the End

Unless you play games online as hardcore as Slide Gamers, you might not believe it when we say that the friendships you develop and grow online are some of the greatest ones you will ever have. There is something about the online gaming community that just brings together faster than other groups of people. This is what I like to believe at least.

I remember growing up my mom would always get on my case about going outside with my friends more but this is just something that she could never understand. For gamers like us, getting on our computer or Xbox after school and putting on that headset was our way of hanging out and we were probably bonding more than we would be if we were hanging out with each other just watching TV or something stupid like that.

There is a mutual understanding and respect for one another when you are playing online together and it helps develop bonds that you can’t find anywhere else. We are all on the same page and all here for the same reason.

 Posted by at 7:19 pm
Feb 172016
 

Last time I talked about some problems guys have faced as a result of too much gaming and today I will continue this little topic.

So over the years I have spent A LOT of time on my computer, for both work and video games. As a result, I started developing some minor symptoms of carpal tunnel but I was fortunate enough to notice the signs really early and immediately made a doctor’s appointment to see what I could do to prevent it from getting worse. With various stretches and wrist braces I have been able to combat my symptoms and it really hasn’t gotten any worse over the last couple years.

If you ignore this for long enough, I heard the only real thing you can do to cure it is surgery. Unfortunately for my buddy, he might be heading down this road.

Real Life Consequences

So remember my cousin’s roofing friend who lost his job because of WoW? Well he has been experiencing the same kind of symptoms that I have had except they are much much worse because of his line of work in addition to the hours of gaming we do.

This might help gaming, but not roofing.

He works for that company I showed a week or so ago and sometimes for their off branch company here at Masters Roofing. So obviously most of his work is physical labor and as a roofer, he installs and replaces roofs for homes and buildings and this obviously takes a lot of work with your hands. He says that some days even picking up a hammer is too much for him and he has had to call into work on several occasions because of his wrist pains. Sometimes he just has to do a quick patch on a roof which isn’t has bad but still is too much sometimes.

He has his own little brace things that he has to wear every time he goes to work now but they really aren’t helping him. He refuses to go to the doctor and there is no way he will ever quit video games so I am pretty afraid for his future and what he is going to have to go through. I think he is too afraid to go because he just really doesn’t want to hear any bad news and would rather just ignore the problem and pretend it isn’t there instead of addressing the issues.

Can’t Bring a True Gamer Down

The fact that I had carpal tunnel creeping up on me does concern me a little for my future. I have heard some horror stories online with people who let it get too bad or couldn’t afford to treat it and it sounds horrific.

Nothing will stop Slide Gamers from gaming though. NOTHING!!

 Posted by at 9:37 pm
Feb 152016
 

This one might sound a little silly to any of you out there who aren’t as into gaming as we have made apparent with Slide Gamers. Now that I touched on my favorite games of all times and different aspects of them I can talk about the consequences that some of us face from our addictions.

Women

For the serious gamers, this is an absolute life style. I never have had it happen to me personally, but I have multiple friends who have ruined their relationships because of their gaming. This is especially true for those who play World of Warcraft.

I really don’t know what it is about that game, but for some reason it has a really bad rep with the ladies and in their minds any guy who invests any time in the game is a complete loser and weighs 450 pounds with acne all over his back.

I know guys who have played a wide variety of video games including some of my favorites like Call of Duty and Halo with little to no consequences from their girlfriends. But as soon as their girl walks in to their house and sees the back of her boyfriends head facing the computer their blood immediately starts boiling.

I think it has to do with how severe some WoW addictions have gotten. There have been kids who have committed suicide over this game and addiction counseling services are offered in certain parts of the world.

Physical

The one thing that I have been dealing with as a result of my gaming is some minor carpal tunnel syndrome. Click here for a little background info on it and tomorrow I will talk about that roofing buddy of mine who has similar issues.

 Posted by at 11:24 pm
Feb 052016
 

I promised I would touch on what exactly PvP is and why I love it so much yesterday so here you go.

PvE

So this stands for player vs. environment and this consists of players fighting against AI (artificial intelligence). This would be like the 40 man raids I talked about earlier with a group of other players called a guild. Any given dungeon in a game like WoW would take up to 40 real live players all communicating with each other with headsets over the course of up to a week. I mean literally a week straight sometimes, spending anywhere from 3-8 hours every night to clear out a whole raid.

^This is Nefarian, Slide Gamer’s favorite old school boss fight in WoW^

I know this sounds crazy to a lot of people but only those who have done them can understand how satisfying it can be when you finish the last boss of a crazy dungeon for the first time. All 40 players would immediately start screaming in excitement and the loot you got from the bosses made the countless hours you spend all worth it.

PvP

This one stands for player vs. player and instead of primarily fighting AI, you competed and fought against other actual players who were part of a different faction than your own. I usually always prefer PvP over PvE and the feeling you get from outplaying someone in a duel or an arena is just something that I can’t explain.

God I miss that game…

 Posted by at 2:50 pm
Feb 042016
 
Remember My Cousin’s Friend?

So a few days ago I mentioned that I was at my cousin’s house playing video games like we always do and his cousin lost his job at this place because of playing too much World of Warcraft:

Well I happened to be hanging out with him and my cousin today and of course we didn’t really talk about much aside from video games and to my surprise, he claims to have quit WoW. Admitting you have a problem is always the first step right?

Not so Fast

You would think that would be the end of his video gaming right?

Nope.

He continues to explain that yes he did indeed quit WoW because he lost his job, but started playing Diablo 3 instead because it isn’t as “addicting.”

Whatever you need to tell yourself buddy…

So I already talked about how WoW has pretty much ruined any other RPG game for me because they just simple cannot compare. I will say though that if I had to choose one, it would definitely be the Diablo series.

It was kind of the same style but it was more based on working together with friends or yourself, as opposed to primarily player vs. player. There is definitely an element of addiction that comes with the game but there really kind of is an end to the game at a point, whereas you could literally play WoW forever and never beat it and never get bored.

I didn’t really talk about the PvP aspect that I love so much. I’ll touch on that tomorrow.

 Posted by at 10:37 am
Feb 032016
 

I am very proud to say that I never lost a job or flunked out of school as a result of playing too much World of Warcraft but there is one thing that it has ruined for me, probably for the rest of my life.

Nothing Compares

This is kind of a super huge compliment to Blizzard for their creation of WoW but it is most certainly a negative impact on my life. Ever since World of Warcraft came out and completely changed my life and whole view of the online gaming world, I have not been able to play ANY other role play game for longer than a week or two.

Why you ask?

Well, every single RPG game that has come out since has just been a VERY dumbed down version of WoW and is trying to replicate and improve on something that simply cannot be.

Anyone else play Rift for a about 3 days and quit?

The game above is called Rift and take a look at how it is designed. Where the action bars are, where the party frames are, where the raid frames are. Take note.

Now look at this picture:

This is Wow and came out YEARS before Rift.

Yes, they look extremely similar and for anyone who doesn’t play video games as much as Slide Gamers might think I am being dramatic here but you simply can’t understand the masterpiece that is World of Warcraft unless you have played it and lived it.

 Posted by at 6:52 pm
Feb 022016
 

I bet a lot of people out there who don’t play video games as much as us here at Slide Gamers don’t believe me when I mentioned the game World of Warcraft taking up as much time as a full time job for any real player yesterday, but it is true.

Who doesn’t remember this guy? If only Trey and Matt understood how spot on they got it…

The only reason I could play as often as I did is because I was still in high school when it came out and I didn’t have a care in the world or a responsibility at all outside of actually going to school and it was glorious. Well interestingly enough, I was at my cousin’s house earlier today and he had a few friends over and we were all playing Halo together when the topic of WoW came up.

Even I Have Limits

I will be the first to admit that I play more video games than I probably should, but I know how to at least keep the effect they have on my life to an absolute minimum. Not so much the case with my cousin’s friend. He looked like your typical dude and not like the video gaming animal that he turned out to be. He worked for a roofing company in his town here:

Totally respectable, right?

Well apparently he lost his job this month and can you guess why?

Yup. World of Warcraft.

This is honest to God a true story and just touches the surface of the magnitude of this great video game.

 Posted by at 5:38 am
Feb 012016
 

Now that you got a little introduction into the world of a hardcore gaming nerd who is into World of Warcraft, I can go into more detail about what I love about this game.

Like a Job

Luckily for me, I was still in high school when WoW came out and had no real responsibilities. I have always loved video games and they were pretty much all I did throughout high school and I do not regret it for a moment. Out of all the video games I have played, there is no question that I have spent the most actual time playing WoW BY FAR.

For anyone in a real guild (group of players who regularly play together; like a clan) and who actually took the game serious, you had to put in some real hours every single week night into this game.

It was not out of the ordinary for me to immediately get on my computer and put on my headset so I could talk to all my friends the moment I get home at around 4:30 and play until 2 or 3 in the morning. As a raiding and successful guild on our server, we had to go into dungeons with 40 people all on mic and coordinating with each other to defeat the bosses in each dungeon. Every dungeon generally had 5-15 bosses and some could take months beat.

I really don’t know how people who were older than me had the time to play this game. There is no way in hell I could do it now at my age but God do I miss it and wish I could…

I’ll get into more detail next time.

 Posted by at 5:24 am
Jan 312016
 

Now that you know my top 3 first person shooters, I figured this would be a good time to switch lanes here and go into my other favorite online gaming category. I think this one is going to be an obvious one for any real gamers out there but it is impossible to mention MMO’s without talking about the one changed the entire online gaming world.

MMORPG

For anyone who isn’t a total nerd like us here at Slide Gamers, an MMORPG is a massive multi-player online role playing game and almost always consists of you starting a character and having to level him up, increasing your skills, traits, and strength along the way.

Almost everyone has at least heard of World of Warcraft these days and for those who have not, I envy you.

Like Nothing Else

Without question, WoW has taken up the most time of my life BY FAR compared to any other game. I truly look at it as a life style choice, not a game. Anyone who has fallen victim to this incredible and life changing game will agree with me and the level of addiction that can come of this game is scary.

There have literally been stories of kids around the world committing suicide for various reasons as a result of this game. Words simply cannot describe the absolute perfection that is World of Warcraft.

I could write (and there certainly has been) an entire book on this game and the experiences I have had on it so I am going to have to break this up into a few separate posts so stay tuned.

 Posted by at 10:42 pm
Jan 302016
 

There haven’t been many first person shooters that I have played where there wasn’t an online multi player implemented in it. Out of the couple that I have played all the way through though, BioShock takes the cake for us here at Slide Gamers.

Mix of RPG

What I really like about BioShock and what sets it apart from other first person shooters is that it was kind of a combination of a first person shooter and an RPG which are coincidentally my 2 favorite gaming genres.

There was more to the game than running around and blowing shit up, although that was definitely a huge part of it. There were a number of different skills and abilities you learned along the way and leveling them up was a huge part of the game.

Normally first person shooters are pretty cookie cutter in the sense that everyone has equal guns and apart from different maps and levels there really wasn’t much different about your character as your progress through the game.

BioShock changed that and made you level up a character as you got further through the game and definitely made you feel more connected to the game and felt much more satisfying as you would plow through maps leveling up your skills along the way.

But….

Online and multi-player games is still where my heart rests so this will probably be the only game that I talk about that doesn’t have it.

 Posted by at 8:15 am