...when reality hits below the belt.

[Tengotengo]

So I'm on a run in the sewers with a guy I friended a while ago. We're peeling down the central hall and I'm comboing the black-garbed bears and birds into piles of charred ash. We're cutting a fair pace with the rest of the adds when he bursts out that his girlfriend cheated on him.

Well, the group and I start reacting with condolences. We're trucking on down to Goldfever, AKA Fat Rocky Horror, when I start doing what I do best in my circle of IRL friends; start a dialogue about healing processes and problem/issue solving. "Women will do that sometimes; it's a part of the human condition. Women want protection and men want procreation...by the way, how old is she?"

This is when I found out that she's a little younger than my friend, who happens to be 14.

I'm 36.

This conversation LITERALLY took on the imagery of a passenger jet getting an anti-aircraft missile through the wing in the little movie theater in my head. All of the wannabe helpful thoughts and feelings in my there were now beating each other for the oxygen masks, stealing all the tiny bottles of liquor they can and recklessly copulating with each other in hopes of reaching Nirvana in pleasure, not pain.

We charged in on Rocky Horror. He beat on that buttery beast as an effigy to his relationship done wrong, and all I could do was spam my spells as I was laughing too hard to see the screen of my Droid.

Here's the thing. This never happened to me on Everquest. We were all in a similar bracket of ages, I guess. 20s and early 30s at the most usually. The weird thing was always the distance. One of my best friend's guildmates lived in Australia, another in Germany. One of his hated enemies was a Frenchman.

It's the age thing. I just didn't fathom playing shoulder-to-shoulder with a player that could be one of my wife's history students.

Oh well. Got a yellow cap out of it.

[Physiologic]

Hmm...You can't really compare the age brackets of Everquest (extremely complex MMO) to PL (very simple and easy MMO to figure out). First off, Everquest if I remember correctly requires a constant monthly fee to play; this already knocks out tons of minors without constant access to credit cards. PL's Platinum is relatively cheap compared to a standard monthly fee as well, and you don't need a whole lot of Platinum anyway to unlock all the campaigns to play for months and months.

Anyway, I've figured the age bracket for this game is anywhere from 13-18. Then there's us outliers

[Aerospacegod]

You mean everyone doesn't play from the old folks home in rocking chairs?

Those whipper snappers are always stealing my jello when they visit!

[Major]

Lol awesome story, yes there is a younger majority here but this is still a great game! Remember don't hate the player, hate the game lol....and seeing as you have high level chars then you probably don't mind it lol

[Physiologic]

You mean everyone doesn't play from the old folks home in rocking chairs?

Those whipper snappers are always stealing my jello when they visit!

That there's a knee-slapper!

[Tengotengo]

heheh no hate involved whatsoever, just surprise at the width of the generation gap that instantly opened up.

EQ was a much more hardcore game, though functionally it wasn't TOO much harder than PL. The monthly fee precluded non-wage earners for the most part for sure.

[Inching]

Dude, this story is hilarious……. I love the part of “……thoughts and feelings in my there were now beating each other for the oxygen masks, stealing all the tiny bottles of liquor they can and recklessly copulating with each other in hopes of reaching Nirvana in pleasure, not pain.”…. u win~!