One day a couple of months after World of Warcraft Burning Crusade came out I was woken up by my friends playing the game. I had left on either Teamspeak or Ventrilo the night before and about 3-4 friends jumped on the following morning. I signed on soon after that and played for hours.
I think that’s the last time I’ve been woken up by people whom I like and immediately began the day with a group activity that involved joy.
Top 3, no order (can’t pick):
Anytime a SoulsBorne game clicks, especially Sekiro
Winning a really tight match of Rocket League against people at a similar or higher skill level
Playing split screen Freedom Fighters with my buddy back in the day. It got so competitive we started taping cardboard on the screen to prevent screen-peeking
Wandering around in Morrowind before I really knew what I was doing, being happy just to find a few coins in a tree stump or a crappy dagger.
Other games have given more extreme emotions. But no other game has instilled such a joyous sense of wonder.
As a millennial, I’m probably not alone when I write Red Alert, Atlantis, Diablo and Fallout 2 on a computer without internet connection. Also endless demos from PC Gamer CDs.
The more unusual game I want to add is Warlords 3. Got it as a Christmas gift from my cousins boyfriend (he was maybe 20 years older than me). Probably because he wanted someone he could play shared screen PvP with. Spent a lot of time with that game. The same guy also gave me a pirate copy of Diablo. I should probably give him a call today and thank him.
Also playing Tibia on a 33k dial up connection was special. A very laggy and expensive experience. Always afraid that mom would just turn off the connection because she had to make a phone call. And the true horror I felt when I encountered another player or a new monster deep within an unexplored dungeon. I didn’t like WoW when it came out. Probably because of emotional bluntedness that free PvP in combination with gear + xp loss causes.
And I’m still chasing the dragon.
