Five Online Gaming Blends

Many people play online games for various reasons. Some wish to make new friends online and explore new, boundless worlds that cannot be ordinarily traversed in our day-to-day lifestyle. Others play for fame, fortune, and glory. Domination of everything else, attainment of the ultimate goals of the game. There are even people who play just to escape the reality that they are in and with high hopes that in playing online, they would find solace and contentment to compensate for the harsh storms plaguing their real lives.

But what pulls them to playing games such as these? What drives these people - whose age ranges can be as low as toddlers of five to seven years old to married, working, career people that have already surpassed 40 or even 50 years? What is the driving factor - or factors, for that matter - that brings them all together on this world of online gaming?

Nay, even I cannot answer that completely, but for me, these are the five "blends" of online gaming that simply pulls me into it:

1. A Community - Living, Breathing, Lashing - I've detailed in my previous post the fine links binding the online fantasies to the reality that we are in, and that's one essential blend that makes an online game tasty enough for the senses of the typical gamer. No other thing could be more enjoyable than spending online time not just in engaging into fights with monsters or bosses, but also in interacting with other players, bonding with guildmates - doing screenshots of group gatherings online or even spending hours just in chit-chatting with one another.

2. A Storyline - Rich, Creative, Compelling - Games revolve around a story, save for those known casual games both online and offline. Whatever you play, no matter how boring, how difficult or whatnot, there's always a story element behind it and for me, that formulates the second blend. A storyline keeps players in line with the game's canon and theme. It keeps them motivated to learn what is behind the stuff that they are doing online - what the place actually serves to the game, what a particular boss does to the current world, how a certain quest can affect your overall achievement of the game. I've seen many online games with good stories within them and many gamers have even taken to the point of extending those stories beyond what the publishers had originally planned.

3. The Theme - Colorful, Cultural, Unique - coinciding with the storyline blend comes the theme, for which one cannot exist without the other, making them complimentary blends to a "delicious" online game. Themes can vary in any game - there can be those alluding to the cultural scenarios of civilizations past such as the Norse myths of Ragnarok Online and the Chinese myths of Perfect World Online. There are some attuned to High School gangwar themes such as Ran Online. Others have even taken to the futuristic themes such as RF Online. And the Renaissance-like theme of Granado Espada, who could possibly not admire those luscious themes of that era?

4. The Game Experience - Enjoyable, Exciting, Thrilling - game experience is a blend that many try to achieve with the most perfect ingredients as much as possible - a well-built character with perfect stats and max level, godlike equipments, well-built skill trees, stuff like those. It is nearly every hardcore gamer's goal to be the best when it comes to the blend of Game Experience - to have the most enjoyment out of the game that they are playing. Honestly, don't we all strive to be like that? Even casual gamers, slow as they are in their progress in leveling, still strive for those levels. Although there are some content with being with other people and enjoying the game interface and graphics as the fulfillment of their game experience.

5. Life's Lessons - Education, Experience, Useful - many believed that online games are not to be valued for they are just a waste of time. They're just consuming your time that could have been used for more fruitful things. I say otherwise, but not for extreme cases of being online and almost forgetting stuff such as studies or work.
Online Games teach people a lot of lessons in life that - although they fail to see it - actually come from their unfortunate ingame experiences. Charging against a boss head-on without analyzing its capabilities teaches players to be careful with what they are pushing into - perhaps it might lead to danger or failure. Refining equipments to dangerous levels teaches them to be risk-takers - to accept challenges and take the consequences as a man. Being scammed by others gives us the insight of never trusting strangers too much.
In my gameplay experience at Perfect World I have learned quite a lot of lessons as well, particularly that of organization. Being an organized character means that you are mapping out your quest itinerary (that is, the easiest travel path to accomplish all quests at the shortest possible time) and even organizing the guild's time to execute dungeon raids. These are little lessons of life that may seem worthless to the ordinary gamer or non-gamer, but for some they realize the insight that it brings.

Now I've laid the five essential blends that pulled me to the world of online gaming. Maybe next time you could share yours as well!

This is my second entry for GM-Tristan's Group Writing Project. Hope you enjoyed it! :D