Virtual Worlds

[Anthor]

It's late and as I'm laying here in bed thinking, I figured I'd write a few words.

I consider Shartak to be a virtual world. What do I mean by a virtual world? I could go into definitions and quote from various sources, but it's late and it's not easy to copy and paste chunks of text when you're typing on your iPod touch. So for now I'll make up my own definition and say that it's a fantasy world where some of us live, albeit only for a few minutes a day. Another dimension, an innerspace where we can forget our real life problems for a few minutes. An escape from reality.

I would like to hear your views on what Shartak is for you? I will follow this up with another post later on other virtual worlds but, let's start here. Is it an escape for you? Do you enjoy roleplay in Shartak? Or do you just run around and kill things only playing for a high score?

For those that do roleplay, what do you get out of it?

Personally, I've met and lost a number of friends. I've roleplayed cold bloods killers, mad Kings, lovers and fighters. I've lived hundreds of lives here. I love playing Shartak. And I love playing with you lot. Tell me what you think? Tell me what you get from the game?

[Sods]

I get the chance to see the ones I chat with under different circumstances and explore new possibilities within the game. In other words, seeing what there is to see. Another big focus, personally, is the odd decision to RP and hoarding different things on alts to test how easy it is. Won't say names, but XP, weapons, gold, and hunting are fun to add to given the chance. A number of people complain about RPing in a game where profile editing comes standard. If you're having fun and not just trying to make others not have fun, it's your decision how. Going to stop talking now.

[Noah-san]

Shartak to me is a fun escape from real life. I do role play a bit and I get a lot of enjoyment playing whatever I decide to play. In theory I guess I never do RP cause all my people have been just a bit on the whole that makes me.

In a sense, just the Internet is a virtual word so anything on it is also part of it and its own little world as well. I have meet many wonderful people on Shartak and I am glad I play

[error]

Personally I find it much more entertaining to play as a character that I'm not. If I were playing a character that acted like I do in real life... they'd be the guy that sits in the back of the room hoping that there is a person they know so they have someone they can talk to. Although playing as a character that likes being the center of attention such as Little Bunny Foo Foo who does flips or whatever when they enter a room, or Last Laugh is based of deranged super heroes... so he generally likes making a scene.

Erich Zann is the closest to myself and even he likes to visit various towns and play his music.

But than again I have been on stage a few times myself. So perhaps the performer in me is venting out here and in other parts of the internet. And I don't freak out and start playing random chords because I start to get so anxious I forget what I'm supposed to be playing... still, it was kind of fun.

But now I'm leaving Shartak territory and entering the realm of hilarious misunderstandings at the poetry slam.

[Mortis]

I find Shartak to be entertainment after I've finished my work. Well, the fact that while I'm on Shartak I'm also on Facebook, Myspace, myYearbook, and a not so well known site called MYFC (only cuz my girlfriend uses it, and with us both being in college, it's rather difficult to find the time to see each other. So I atleast want to talk to her while we're both working. <3) and at the same time playing WWF No Mercy on Project 64, heh. Yes I realize doing all of that almost simultaneously seems difficult, but I find it too easy, lol.

I like the RPing very much, and I do put some sort of connection to myself with both characters. Mortis is a reflection of my great interest in the more morbid things, like necromancy, death, head shrinking, mummification and many others, but he is also a reflection of my sinister side, which quite frankly I enjoy RPing.

Uther is a reflection of my interest in guns, mainly cuz he refuses to use any other weapon except his rifle, and the fact that I'm an excellent marksman. Also his role as The Peninsula Federation's Minister of Justice fits in perfectly, being that I worry, frankly too much, about security. Some might say I'm paranoid on that matter, and some actually have. Of course, I just really wanna shoot something. Always do, and hunting animals is just too boring for me.
(Just between you and me, I would love to hunt an actual person. I assume it would be the greatest challenge a hunter could possibly have.)
If I had the chance to simulate that with an entire forest to myself, and a paintball gun, I'd do it in a heartbeat!

[snico]

I was a commuting college student who often was stuck on campus waiting for class for several free hours.  I would get bored, and found Urban Dead.  That led me to Shartak, and this place ended up a better fit.  I created Princess Nico because my fiance and I are big fans, but I found it difficult at the shipwreck, and then created snico.  She is, to this day, the most fun character I play.  I like playing snico because she is sort of a villainess.  She goes around killing and eating people.  I've always had a soft spot for the bad girl, and so I enjoy playing one.  Princess Nico is more like me, but in an extreme way.  She's a lot stronger of a person then I usually am, not quite the blond valley girl I am.  but anyway, I love this game and my involvement in the community, and plan to keep playing for a while!

[andrewbuff]

i like to think my characters are bound to my spirit, each possessing part of me. like at the end of the first men in black movie, where our universe turns out to be a marble for an even larger creature to play with. like how in the marvel universe if you shrank down small enough youd find the mircoverse. i am a deity that controls the lives of some island dwellers who dont even know it. since most characters i have made have been real or at least previously created by someone else, i like to think its a representation of who i am as a person. woody has no idea why hes on an island, doesnt know why or how he knows songs that were written decades after he died. he doesnt know a lot except that hes currently on an island and seems to get attacked a lot. maybe, i know its a long shot, but maybe somewhere in the internet, shartak IS real. and they consider me and the other real life players as their conscious or something. maybe our actions dictate their actions, and in that corny crush a butterfly in the past concept, our daily lives influence the 'lives' of our characters.

oh yeah, and no mercy is like the best wrestling game ever made!!!!!

[Mortis]

oh yeah, and no mercy is like the best wrestling game ever made!!!!!

All ways has been and always will be!

(I like recreating former wrestlers/managers and whatnot.)

Kind of a downer that they put just "The American badass" version of Undertaker in it though, so I made a much darker, more feared version of him.

Also recreated DDP, Dude Love, Thrasher, Gangrel, Big Sal, Billy Kidman, Buff Bagwell, even Sting. There's a hell of a lot more than that, but still, it's fun.

(Made Paul Bearer awesome!)

[andrewbuff]

yep, those thq 64 games were perfect. from wcw vs the world through wcw/nwo revenge to wrestlemania 2000 to no mercy. all great. yep me too with the old stars. its create-a-player mode is the best. the only comparable wrestling game is the arcade classic 'wrestlefest' where you had a joy stick and two buttons and to get up you had to mash said buttons.

[Anthor]

It's good to hear some of your views, and take on Shartak and how you enjoy it.

I know my character, Anthor, is a big part of my personality. I get to roleplay things in Shartak that I can't in real life (or wouldn't want to even if I had the opportunity - I certainly would not want to be killed every day or so, it's a pretty painful process I'd imagine). But a good part of Anthor are aspects of my personality. Just that I wouldn't dare throw them out in RL or I'd end up arrested, in the loony bin, getting slapped all the time, etc. etc.   Also, I've never had the want to hunt humans for real, ala Mortis... but I can see the challenge, and it'd be interesting with paintball guns... just not real guns!

Shartak's my main get away from reality, and has been now for almost 4 years. I have and do play other games, including Second Life (although I wouldn't classify that as a game exactly). More about other worlds later.

I enjoy playing with all of you. You are what make it fun. Thank you!

[Neil Tathers]

To be honest, I've roleplayed an entire nation's worth of characters, juggling different characteristics, ideals, relantionships, all over the place.  Most of my character's names come from this place.  So juggling three or four characters isn't that tough for me, considering how different each one is.

So this is kinda a quick break once I day.  I enjoy interacting with people who have more of a viewpoint than "OH MY GOD, YOU ARE A NATIVE I AM AN OUTSIDER I KILL YOU NOW!"  Which frankly, is a boring way to play.

Booya.

[CyAdora]

Virtual Worlds... a playground for the mind and sometimes heart.

[Mortis]

yep, those thq 64 games were perfect. from wcw vs the world through wcw/nwo revenge to wrestlemania 2000 to no mercy. all great. yep me too with the old stars. its create-a-player mode is the best. the only comparable wrestling game is the arcade classic 'wrestlefest' where you had a joy stick and two buttons and to get up you had to mash said buttons.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Actually there's alotta people you can recreate in No Mercy, aside from wrestlers; i.e. Eminem, even some NFL stars! Funny actually.

[Anthor]

Kind of a lead in to another post about virtual worlds that I haven't written yet... I wrote this first:

Snow Crash
Downward, spiraling into the dark,
Underbelly of another world.
I walk the streets, paved with snow.
I am lost, forlorn, moments of happiness,
Intertwined with empty sadness,
My lack all the more evident,
When silent music plays through,
Audio units laid carelessly across,
Piles of strangely denoted paper scrawl.

Who are these people I meet? 
The reach for human comfort,
Laughable, when all the world's
A stage, yet, I choose the left,
Door and again, fall into places,
That I imagine must exist,
But only in my nightmares. 
I am myself, but seen through,
Differently colored eyes, their
Shapes unrecognizable to me,
Though strangely attractive.

God created this place? 
I did. You did? Why?
In the image of Sodom and,
Gomorrah. Sights unseen,
Since ancient times. Caligula
Would be at home here.
Walking further down the
Pixelated road, into the darkest
Regions of my psyche. Everything
Is here. And I mean everything!

My eyes wide open, for to look
Away is to miss Nirvana, bursting
Out through the two dimensional
Representation of a three dimensional
Space. I understand more now,
Than ever before. With knowledge,
Comes power but the power here
Is magnified. Minds using virtual
Bodies to what ends? I see myself
Mirrored in the looking glass.

Is this who I really am? A 
Series of on off impulses of
Light, emitting from a screen
In a darkened silent room.
When they come for me,
I will be prepared. I have
Walked a hundred thousand
Miles. Until eternity ends, 
Sputtering on into the void.
Sleep now. For tomorrow
I will walk again.

[Iceman]

For me, Shartak started out as a place to dick around with the other guys from PWOT. I'd never played a MMORPG before, and it differed considerably from my expectations. I originally stuck around out of pure contrary spite, but after a while came to appreciate the game for its own sake, rather than merely for allowing me to piss off several people who shall remain nameless - although for the sake of example, we shall call them Serious S and B Fred.

Now, I see it as a literary springboard. I've always harboured a desire to be a writer, and won a few writing competitions when I was young. But a general lack of focus and application, along with the sneaking suspicion that I didn't actually have the necessary talent, meant I never explored the possibility. I've come to accept the fact that I'll never write a novel, but on Shartak I can write a mini-story every day - even if it's just a few sentences long. It can be from an idea I've had, or inspired by someone else's actions. It can move from start to middle to end in a few actions, or grow and develop over the course of hundreds. That's why I love Shartak. My characters might be terrible, hackneyed cliches, but they're my terrible, hackneyed cliches.