My Gaming Life + Top 10

Counter-Strike:
Played for years, I don't think I need to tell you why, it's pretty self-explanatory

Total War:
Back in early 2005, I believe it was, I was over at a friends house, and he was eager to show off his newest game called "Rome: Total War". I tried it out with him, and I actually found it a lot better than I expected, and when I came home, I told my father about it and asked if he could... "aquire" it... >.>
He came through soon enough, and Rome ended up being one of those huge timesinks that never gets old. The huge world with unlimited perspectives and replayability was really something back then, and remained true to that honor for quite some time. Unfortunately, both its expansions kinda sucked :/
Then there is Spartan, Medieval, Empire, Napoleon, and Shogun, with all their respective sequels and expansions, however I've never really played any of others seriously. Medieval II and Empire I've played somewhat more at LAN's etc, but I've never owned them. Shogun II I was going to buy, but ended up not doing because it came out at the same time as something I found more important, namely Portal 2 a few weeks later. I've never doubted that I would have loved most of these games if I had continued playing them though, problem was that they sort of got... left in the dark compared to other games, and I said my goodbyes to the series.

Age of Empires:
I've never played the original, but AoE2 is one of the pinnacle games of my youth. I don't really think it needs a lot of explanation, I mean obviously it had some serious competition in Brood War and was therefore often left in the dark, but that doesn't make it any worse. The sheer amount of content from such an old game is remarkable in my opinion... however it's left out of the Top 10, partially due to serious competition, and partially because I absolutely hated AoE3 :/

World of Warcraft:
Never played it more than a year during the Lich King era, but it's undeniable how big of an impact it's had on the gaming community, and the short time I spent with it was some of the most enjoyable I can remember, even though I deep down knew that I shouldn't be playing this lol


FIFA Football:
I know it's looked on a bit harsh by the hardcore gaming community, and for good reasons I will admit... nowadays. When I was younger however, this was a huge timesink for me, and I loved it so much. Back then I was a football player myself, and I was as big of a follower of professional football as I am of StarCraft today. I bought the new version of FIFA for 4 years straight, and everytime it was the new hype. Eventually, I grew up, and now I find it a bit hard to understand why I loved it so much, but I know I did once... and that's what really matters, right? (For all you Americans, this is Soccer we're talking about -.-)

Rise of Nations:
Ever been tempted by world domination? I havn't... but I got to do it anyway in this game :D
In all seriousness though, this is another strategy gem that I think is pretty goddamn underrated. Being able to play as just about any major civilization possible, battling it out on the entire fucking Earth, slowly but surely fighting, strategizing, bribing, and allying, all to achieve the eventual goal of world domination. The multiplayer is pretty awesome as well, essentially putting the main "battle mode" of the Conquer the World Campaign into several players hands, and it works out pretty well I gotta say. The Thrones and Patriots expansion allowed for even more joy, with nations competing for glory, as well as adding 4 other smaller campaign modes, which in all honesty weren't as good as the standard mode, but still a pretty nice experience. Also, the expansion/sequel/whatever-you-wanna-call-it game Rise of Legends, is in my opinion one of the most underrated games I've played. Okay, the multiplayer is pretty bad, and the single player is way more repetetive than it was in the original, taking a much more linear style. However.. even though there is a lot less content, what is there outclasses the original so hard it's just... This game is fantasy based, featuring three races: The Vinci, a race based entirely of inventions by Leonardo Da Vinci, The Alin, a desert dwelling magically powered people, and the Coutl, a fanatical cult of the jungle, wielding mysterious technologies and powerful energies. The lengthy single player takes on every aspect you can find on the scripted as well as unscripted missions follow suit, in a similar Conquer the World mapstyle, except this time you actually have a start and an end to get to, but you choose your own path. I'm not gonna spoil the story, but I've never seen why people hate on it so much... okay, I do, but I don't agree with it. >.<

Call of Duty:
Okay, I know CoD gets hate like nothing else these days. You've all heard the good and bad things about it, and I might as well share my story on it, I'm very well informed in the subject. Honestly, the only CoD games I've owned myself are CoD 4, MW2 and Black Ops, however I've played every single one except CoD 3 for a limited time at least. I can say without a doubt that CoD 4 is the best in the series so far, however MW2 has always been the big timesink for me. I would not be surprised if am #1 on TeamLiquid as far as playtime goes in that game, because I have 1528.3 hrs on record in it... yeah, it's probably my most played game ever. Yet, I do not think CoD is really a good game series. Don't get me wrong, it has great potential, but everytime a new one is released, they sort of fix the issues with the latest one and add a bunch of new ones instead. Let me put it this way, not to brag, but I am amazing at MW2. Partially due to the fact that I've always been good at FPS-games, and partially due to insane playtime, but in the end, I sort of raped my way through everything towards the latter third or so of my MW2 career. However, even when you'd think everything is going right because of this, MW2 still makes you rage harder than anything else ever created. The way the CoD Killstreak system is built actually stimulates a brain response that triggers anger, it's our nature to be willing to accomplish certain tasks if it gives us something in return. If we do that work, but barely fails to reach the goal, we lose the reward, and the work we did was for nothing. This triggers a chemical reaction in the human head that causes frustration and anger. It's quite simply unavoidable. They've tried different systems of Killstreaks in every CoD game since CoD4, some better than others, yet everyone is bad really. The only way to fix this issue would be to remove Killstreaks altogether, and I doubt that will ever happen, not to mention that it wouldn't feel like CoD anymore. Another issue I had with raging really bad despites being very good, was that I knew just how good I was. I had insane expectations on myself. If I ever lost a FFA while I was quickscoping to some random guy noobtubing/UMP'ing or similar, I just saw red. If it was against another sniper, then I was respectfull, since I knew it was one of few people I met online that was on my skill level. In a Demolition game, if I didn't get over 100 kills I saw the game as a failure. I think you get the picture. Another thing that has always bothered me is the server system. In CoD4 you had Dedicated Servers. They were great, except for the fact that sometimes it was hard to join a server with a party of friends since some might not have room. In MW2 you joined a "party-lobby" first, and then queued for a game. This was easy and simple... yet it was a terrible idea. You could never have any preferences or rules, always the bad maps, always the hackers, always the tryharders etc. You need admins in this game. You need someone who can legally control the flow of the game, kicking/banning all who deserves it, listen to what the people in the lobby say and help them as best he can with maps etcetera, and who also can make specific server rules, like no tubing, no ump, sniper only, and all that good stuff people know and love. My question is: WHY can't you combine the two? Make a system where you have dedicated servers and join as a party if you want to? Is that really so hard to fix? Anyway, this is getting out of hand, this is not why I made this post, this was about my Top 10, not my thoughts on Call of Duty, but now I've spoken my mind, and I feel a little better, so I'll leave it at this...

Portal:
The date is December 24th 2007. I unwrap a Christmas present from my father. Inside lies The Orange Box, containing several games. We bought it with the intent of getting the next Half-Life chapter, which was awesome by the way, but we also recieved the sequel to good old Team Fortress, which was a pretty fun game, but maybe not worthy of this list. The outsider in this cartridge was a little unknown game called "Portal".

Today, "unknown" is not exactly how to describe it. Portal was one of the most creative, positive surprises in modern gaming history. There is nothing even remotly similar to Portal, the IQ levels of the young team who invented the idea must be skyhigh to even come up with the concept. With Valve at their backs, the game also featured some of the most iconic characters ever, and it didn't just become the greatest puzzle game of all time, but it was also one of the funniest games ever. It also features perhaps the most famous theme song of all time.

In 2011, Portal 2 was released. Featuring even more puzzle mechanics, a deeper storyline, and keeping everything that made the original awesome, it was easily a worthy successor to the original. Given that I originally got the first game by accident, I consider myself lucky, because this is now more than a game, it's part of the gaming culture. If you havn't played Portal... then you've got a serious hole in your education.

WarCraft:
I confess that I've actually only played WarCraft III, not counting WoW as part of the franchise, yet what the game plus its expansion has provided was so awesome for me back at the age of about 8-11. I remember how hard I thought the campaign was back then, at least some maps, but given how slow my progress was, it gave me time to sink in to the story, which took a little more time since it was in a foreign language and I was young, and I think I actually had a grander experience due to my troubles. I remember when I was eventually able to beat the final campaign and I was so proud of myself... and then just a few months later, The Frozen Throne came out as well. To be fair, I had less trouble with the main storylines this time, except for the very last stage. I never beat it... back then at least. In addition to this, the game also featured a "Bonus Campaign", taking place fully as an RPG, reminding me of a WarCraft parody of Diablo. Although it obviously couldn't match Diablo, I gotta say that it felt pretty damn for being a WarCraft scenario. This might sound a little silly, but I was just... gleeful of joy and excitement when I realised what lay ahead of me after I had started. I still think it's perhaps the most joyful of the WC3 campaigns, sheerly because you feel like you're living your own adventure, rather than the ones of the heroes you're playing with.

About 2 months ago, I reinstalled WC3, and had a marathon with all 8 Campaigns in 3 days. A little tiresome, but it really makes you realise how terrible you were at gaming when you where a kid LOL :D

As far as the multiplayer goes, I only ever really played with my dad and friends. I've never laddered in WC3.

Dawn of War:
January 13th, 2008. It's my father's birthday, and he recieves an unexpected gift from one of his longtime friends, whom were not attending at the party. Inside lies a copy of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, a game based on Warhammer 40000. Personally, I had never really been into 40K, but my cousin was, and he had several times showed off his huge collection and told me all about its universe and backstory. Most of the time I had just nodded and smiled, but I remembered more than I thought when I saw my father try the game out. I thought it looked cool, and with his permission I installed it as well. It was an RTS unlike any I had previously played, much more focused on the units and the battlefield itself, rather than the whole base building and expanding concept that I had experienced more in games like Age of Empires, StarCraft, Rise of Nations and Civilization. (I guess WarCraft is a bit more in that direction as well, but as I said, I never really played WarCraft in that way.) The game took place on the planet Kronus, where the races of Eldar, Necrons, Orks, Imperial Guard, Space Marines, Tau and Chaos all fought for planetary dominance. It was a similar the conquer the world perspective as in Rise of Nations, merely that this was partially scenario based, and a lot cooler as far as the races themselves went. (They were based on 40K after all ) About a year and a half later, Dawn of War: Soulstorm was released, now featuring the races of Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle, in addition to the earlier ones, now making it a grand total if 9 totally different races. The sheer versatility of the game was pretty enormous, and the fighting was now on an inter-planertary scale. The only real problem for me in the single player were the difficulty settings. There were three of them, and they were just way too far apart. Playing on Easy was a joke, on Normal was also no real challenge, whereas Difficult was just too fucking hard for me at the time. Coming back to it now as a mid Master player in SC2, I can beat Difficult fairly handily, but damn, back then it really was a struggle. Custom games and had like 8 difficulties though... never really understood that.

In early 2009, Dawn of War II was released. I personally would say that it was a bit of a letdown. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, it's just... I'll get to the bad part later. This time they cut down the races to just 4; Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Tyranids. The single player was only playable as Space Marines, but this time with a totally different general game idea. Instead of a planet or system where all races fought in turns. This time it was just you and your squad of "hero-units" in every territory, completing scripted scenarios. At first I thought it might be like a modern 40K version of the Bonus Campaign in The Frozen Throne, but that wasn't really the case. This way, the game really outshines the original storywise, there is no denying that. My problems with it are first that there is only one race playable in the campaign, and it's not as much replayability in it. Also, by this time I was 15, and I was intending to go online and actually playing this game seriously. This was the huge failure of Dawn of War II for me. First and foremost, for unknown reasons, Games for Windows live was the service of choice by Relic this time... for those of you who don't know... they fucking suck. The account system online was just as bad as I had feared, but I eventually got through. Once I got online though... it was just... bad. Seriously, the awesome large scale battle tactics of the original was just gone. It was as if they tried to increase the action by making the game even more focused on the units themselves, by esentially remove base building altogether... but with that gone, there was no way to make as large scale battles as of the original. The game became a micro war instead of having the versatility of the original, which was focused on both micro, macro and strategy.

I don't regret buying the game, I still like it, but it was clearly not as much as I had hoped for. In 2011, I bought the expansion Chaos Rising cheaply on a sale, and it continued the Space Marine storyline as well as added Chaos as a fifth race online... just more of the same really, not worth the money. Since then, Dawn of War II: Retribution has also been released, this time the Imperial Guard where added as the sixth race, and now all races except for them are playable in the single player. I havn't bought the game since I was beginning to lose faith in Dawn of War, but this clearly sounds like a step in the right direction in my opinion. Maybe the series is returning to its glory days of The Dark Crusade... one can only hope.

All-in-all, Dawn of War for me has always been the little brother of StarCraft. There is just so many similarities between the two, and despite there being some pretty heavy fanboy wars, I've always loved both.

Baldur's Gate:
We're now getting into the final 7, all these games are in my opinion at least one level above anything else I've ever played

Many people might say that if you've played this game, it is a must in your top 5. I would probably agree if I had been born a few years earlier. I have never played the original you see, and I know that that enhances the experience of the sequel severely, partially via the story, and partially via BioWare's trademark character-import option in-between games. Even so, my dad first got Baldur's Gate 2 in either 2000 or 2001, I don't remember, but I remember testing it at age 7 or so... and I didn't understand shit, so I put it away again.

During the summer vacation of 2010, I was looking through my father's box of old games. There, for the first time in nearly a decade, I layed my eyes on Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Baal. Suddenly I knew what I was going to spend my summer doing.

Holy shit, was I in for a wild ride?
To this day, this is the most complicated, most RP-ish, most focus-demanding game I have ever played. It makes sense given that the universe is based on Dungeons and Dragons, which my parents had played for like 15 years during the time before I was born, so they could actually help me to understand some things, even my mother helped me at an RPG game... bet few of you can say that that has ever happened to you. Anyway, I don't even know what to say about this game. If you've never played it, I can't help you understand by merely typing it, it would take 10000 words at least, and you need to learn it yourself anyway... also, the story is amazing, and I don't want to spoil one second of it.

The sheer scale of the game given that it's over a decade old is beyond my understanding. Seriously BioWare, how the fuck did you do this, it just blows my mind. The amount of RP-content on all fronts outclass even todays games so much, I don't even know what to say, I...

You know what, fuck reviewing this game, if you've played, I'm sure you understand why, if you havn't... well then you better go fucking play this game and make yourselves understand, because this game is seriously one of the most essential pillarstones in gaming history.

Civilization:
The oldest game I've ever played that's worthy of mention in this list is Civilization II. Released way back in 1996, I was only 2 years old at the time. I remember seeing my dad playing this huge turn based game when I was a little toddler, but I didn't play it myself until like 1999. When I did, I didn't really know what to do. I mean, he helped me a lot, and I eventually understood the general idea of what to do... but not how to do it. I played on the easiest, or second to easiest setting, and I loved building wonders, and I hated building new cities. That's about what I remember of the game. Something I remember playing a lot was a scenario where there was an Alien Invasion on Earth, and three different human factions were trying to eradicate the intruders, and the Aliens were attempting the opposite. The fun thing was that you could play as the Alien yourself, and you had super powerful cool units in order to counter the fact that you were outnumbered. I loved blowing humans up with lasers

In 2001 came Civilization III. To be fair, there was something about this game that I never really liked, but I've never been able to put my finger on it. Quite simply put, the game is superior to Civ 2 in just about every way, but it sort of just... faded away for me sooner than it should have... ow well...

About a year after its release, in 2006, I found myself in possession of Civilization IV, along with Warlords, the first expansion, straight away. Whereas the earlier two games had been good, and decent, this one was one of the greatest gaming experiences in my life. It was on a shockingly different level, and I can't really express myself clearly how much of a positive surprise I found it. It was simply superior on all fronts. Me and a friend who used to come over to my place very often sat and played that game together day in and day out for seriously nearly two years. It is the only game capable of matching, and maybe beating MW2 in playtime for me, but I can't check what it is so...

Civ IV was superior in absolutely everything. The replayability was infinite, it never got boring, it really did have the power to last an era. I think the main difference was that it for the first time actually accomplished the task of making you feel like a ruler of a nation, leading and guiding its every move. It was by far the most realistic game I had ever played, and I felt like I could play this game for a year after I had tried it out. That statement was not only true, it was outclassed, because after pretty much exactly one year had passed, another expansion was released, called Beyond the Sword.

Holy fuck, what the hell?
I had been so impressed with Civ IV at its release, I didn't think it could get much better... and then one year later, an expansion comes along that kicks the game up, not just to better than I had thought possible, but it did so by a long shot. Beyond the Sword alone made me play the game for a full year more, incorporating new factions, units, tech paths, more specific leader/faction based abilities, corporations were now included, etcetera. It was like the content and replayability had just exponentially increased to a whole new level. There was also a scenario I remember called Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, where you essentially experienced the real history of humanity from one specific factions perspective, and you could pick almost anyone of the ones available in the normal mode. Every faction got 3 unique goals. If that faction was able to complete those goals, they won the game. The goals were very different... like really goddamn different depending on the nation, and also very different in difficulty, depending on the overall success of the nation at the peak of it's history. Another interesting aspect was the fact that when the game starts at 4000 BC, only the nations who existed back then spawns, namely Egypt, Babylon, China and India. Then, throughout history, once the specific year has been reached, a new nation will spawn at its historical capital, along with tech, money, and army enough to ensure that they will in fact establish their foothold in that region. Also, some nations where scripted to rebel and become other nations over time, like the Holy Roman Empire, one of the few factions not possible to play, spawns at a certain point and all the cities in the historical Holy Roman Empire will change leader and together form this new, rebel state. I could go on about this, but we need to jump to the next part of the series now...

At the end of 2010, Civilization V was released. I was a little sceptical at first, saying that there was no way it would be better than Civ IV. Then again, that's what I said about Beyond the Sword, so I tried it out anyway... and I'm going to say this, Civ IV and Civ V makes the first 3 look embarrasing. They are quite simply miles ahead. Civ V introduced a ton of new factions, as well as a lot of new interesting game mechanics, like city states, disable unit stacking for a revamped combat system that was pretty cool. In the end, despite it's success... I still think Civ IV - Beyond the Sword was the peak of the series though. I've never been as addicted to one game, and one game alone as I was after Beyond the Sword's release. Civ V makes a valiant effort to live up to its name, and I think it does a great job at it, the problem is just that the expectations are unreasonable to live up to... that and the fact that Civ V crashed like every 30 minutes for me which was pretty annoying, but I left that out of the equation in this comparison.

(I think that I can split this list into 3 subgroups. Numbers 1-5 are the ones that means the most to me personally, numbers 6-7 are the "grand" games which I simply adore for their... well, grandure, and numbers 8-10 are... well, the best ones I could think out of the ones I had not already mentioned )

Anyway, moving on!

Half-Life:
"Half-life, abbreviated t½, is the period of time it takes for the amount of a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. The name was originally used to describe a characteristic of unstable atoms (radioactive decay), but it may apply to any quantity which follows a set-rate decay."

1998 was perhaps the best year in gaming history. Among countless big names we found Half-Life, a story-based linear FPS game by the relatively unknown company called "Valve". What the game critics did not expect was that this was going to become one of the most beloved classics in video game history. Gordon Freeman, a researcher at the Black Mesa Resourse Facility, is involved in an experiment where an Anti-Mass Spectrometer combined with an energy beam triggers a super advanced reaction called The Resonance Cascade Scenario, where a portal is opened between Earth and a paralell dimension called Xen. After that, Gordon starts an adventure like nobody else has even been on, fighting unknown Aliens, the U.S. Military, as well as secret Black Ops Agents and countless environmental hazards. The game goes into just about every environment you can imagine, and the gameplay didn't really have an equal at the time. Sure, there were other classics, like Doom and Quake, but this was a bit more NextGen than those.

The following year, the first expansion, named "Opposing Force" was released. Played out simultaneously as the original, this time not through the eyes of Dr. Gordon Freeman, but rather as a member of the U.S. Military trying to hunt him down and kill him. The soldier's name is Adrian Shephard, and throughout the game, you will recognize many scenes from the original, constantly giving you a sense of timeline compared to Gordon's travels. There are a lot more weapons and a lot more Alien species this time around. In fact, you can even use 3 different Aliens as weapons themselves. One is a Barnacle: a creature ordinarily living on the ceiling, snagging victims with its long tongue. When told to, the Barnacle extends it tongue to insane lengths, and if grabbing on to any biological/organic material, it will try to pull it into its mouth and devour it. If used on smaller creatures, that is exactly what happens, however if the target is heavier than Shephard is, then you will instead be drawn towards it. This is a very bad idea as far as large Aliens go, however this can be used to circumnavigate terrains, since there are a lot of organic Alien substances growing on the walls, ceiling, and the floor. This makes the Barnacle Valve's puzzle solver, you can think of it as the LastGen Portal-Gun if you wish. In general, I think Opposing Force is way too underrated. I think it's just as good as Half-Life, a little behind in story, but ahead in gameplay.

In 2001, another expansion called Blue Shift was released. This time, you play through the eyes of security guard Barney Calhoun. Once again, same time period, different perspective. This game featured essentially the same weapons arsenal as the original Half-Life, minus some of the later ones. Also, Blue Shift was not even half the length of its predecessors, and overall giving it a somewhat lackluster experience. At least compared to the others. It's not a bad game. Not at all. Just... slightly worse than its predecessors, and had way less content. It did give the graphics a little kick though, both compared to the earlier games, as well as actually buffing those in the original Half-Life upon install.

After a few years of downtime, in late 2004, Half-Life 2 was released, and with it, the Source Engine, now one of the biggest names ever used in games overall. The new engine had amazing graphics compared to what it had looked like in Valve's last game just three years earlier, and was considered as one of the best visual games ever created at the time. This is one of my absolute favourite individual titles ever, and there are a total of 4 reasons for that. There's the graphics, like I already mentioned. There's also, obviously, the followup to the original storyline, and it was better than ever. Thirdly, the characters, all of them looked so realistic and felt so... real in behaviour at the time, Alyx Vance was obviously the most important figure besides Freeman himself. Finally, the biggest reason of all, I must say this: There's something with Valve and creating insanely creative weapons. There's the Barnicle in Opposing Force, and the Portal Gun in Portal... but not even those two could have a chance of matching the greatest weapon in video game history: The Gravity Gun. Seriously, this gun fucking made the game 10x better. ANYTHING could be a weapon while you had it in your hands, AND it was the main puzzle solver in the game. You could practically play with only the Gravity Gun throughout the entire game from the moment you recieve, it's just that good.

After this, Valve was going to start on Half-Life 3, but they realised it would take maybe 10-12 years if they followed their current rate, and that was just too much. Instead they decided to split the game up into 3 episodes, all as expansions to HL2, named Half-Life 2: Episode One/Two/Three respectively. Gameplaywise, there was a lot of new things in store, and the story got a sense of urgency like never before. When Episode 2 ended, it was with a cliffhanger, leaving little behind to know what would happen next.

That was over 4 years ago. Episode 3 is still not out, nor is there much information about it to be found. Latest word says that when it eventually comes out, Valve will release "Half-Life 3" as well on the same day, whereas HL3 would essentially be the same thing as episodes 1-3 put together, but perhaps with a graphic boost. It's unclear what the future holds, but given what the past has shown, it's still shining bright... I just wish it wasn't shining so far away T.T

Mass Effect:
I remember back when I was watching all the Game of the Year awards on different websites and magazines, summing up the entirety of 2007. I remember reading my dad's latest installment of Game Reactor, where the top 3 games of some category were Crysis, Bioshock, and Mass Effect. My dad said: "Crysis seems to have unbelievable graphics, I'm thinking of buying it." I agreed on that, but I looked more closely at the others. Bioshock looked cool, but I didn't know much about it and I was still a bit sceptical. Mass Effect I had heard about, but hadn't thought of as much since it was an exclusive for Xbox 360... but when I looked at, I thought to myself: "Damn, this looks so awesome, why, oh why does this have to be a console exclusive? Please make this a PC game somehow!"

I just said that, but I knew that wouldn't happen so I sadly walked away and made myself forget about the game. Spring, 2009, I saw on GameTrailers by chance a funny Mass Effect video, showing a lesbian sex scene between the main character and some blue-skinned Alien humanoid. I thought it was weird, yet hot somehow lol, and I began to think about Mass Effect again. I looked it up some more, and found to my shock that my wishes had come true almost a year ago without my knowledge of it; Mass Effect had been released on the PC! I was extatic, and bought the game almost immediately. My dad saw me play it and looked really impressed by it, and tried it out as well. And then we sat at each of our computers playing Mass Effect for weeks on end.

Let's face it, nobody can make an RPG feel as alive as BioWare does. At least not in the way of making you connect with the people closest to you, and enabling you to live your own adventure despite the game being mostly linear. They had proved this time and time again in Baldur's Gate, and this time it was taken to the next level. The replayability is shockingly big for a linear single player game, given that all your choices affect eachother one way or another. Something they had done between Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II also kicked into effect this time: The ability to import your character info from one game to another. This meant that the Commander Shephard you had created in one game, with all the stats and choices you had made in your playthrough would be remembered by the game when you transferred that data to Mass Effect 2. Speaking of which...

January 29th, 2010. This time I didn't have to wait for some stupid delay between the console and PC release. It was pre-order and Day 1, nothing else. Mass Effect 2 fixed the somewhat awkward fighting system of the original, and instead cut down on some of the RP elements, going for a "quality over quantity" approach, by giving each squadmember only 4 powers, 1 of which was passive, compared to the original 9. Similarly, Shephard now had 7 instead of the original 12. However all the skills now could be used in greater synergy with eachother, and they also had some adaptability with player-chooseable specializations when you reached the final tier of a skill. Other than that, it was mostly more of the same awesomeness, with hundreds and hundreds of variations in triggers depending on your past choices in Mass Effect 1. In addition to all the content in ME2 upon release, BioWare's "Cerberus Network" allowed you to download, and sometimes buy DLC to the game at a quite frequent rate. One of these DLCs, named "Lair of the Shadow Broker", was absolutely fantastic, giving the game perhaps its best content yet, as well reforging some old bonds of friendship with a certain lovely shade of blue... and perhaps even go one step further than that

In two months time from writing this, the third and final part of the trilogy will be released. I've got 3 different playthroughs of Mass Effect 1&2 that I've decided to keep for importation to the finale. I can think of over a dozen occations throughout the original and the sequel where one specific might end up having god-knows-how huge impact on the game... I guess it's only a matter of time until we find out, won't we? I expect great things from the final part, but I'm quite sure my expectations will be reached and surpassed. After all, BioWare has never made a single bad game yet, have they?

StarCraft:
Oh boy, here we go. Well, I'm not sure exactly what I can say about StarCraft in general that not everyone in here doesn't already know. This is TeamLiquid after all. I guess I'll start by apologizing for not thinking that our beloved SC is the #1 best game ever made, but hopefully you'll be merciful.

As I said before, 1998 was a great year for games in general, perhaps even the best. This was perhaps the biggest contributor to that fact. When I was 4 years old, this was the first "real" game I ever played. And I played it for many years, and it was probably the happiest years of my life as far as my gaming career goes. This will possibly be my longest section in this blog, since it is the game I've devoted the largest portion of my life to, and have the most content to share. I'll spare you the obvious parts since you all know StarCraft, but I still think this will take a while.

When I first played the single player, I wasn't exactly great at English. But StarCraft actually helped me. A lot. After 2 or 3 months, I was able to understand enough to actually understand the general story of the game, even though it was 100% in a foreign language and I was 4 years old. My apm back then... wasn't great, I'll tell you that, but I do remember having so much more fun with it that way, seeing it as a game, not an e-sport. I remember beating the Terran campaign without cheating at that age, I was quite proud of it the time. I was never able to beat the final Zerg mission though, the second phase of the invasion of Aiur. Thank god I knew how to click: *enter*, *show me the money*, *enter*, *enter* *operation cwal*, *enter*, *enter*, *black sheep wall*, *enter*, *enter*, *power overwhelming*, *enter*, and then just go fucking kill him... Day[9] would be proud. Anyway, then came the protoss campaign, and again, this one I was actually able to also slowly and surely make my way through in order to beat it without cheating.

Only 5 months after the original StarCraft came out, there was Brood War. Single player-wise, I managed to clear my way through the Protoss and Terran campaigns, with some difficulty. As you all probably know though, the Zerg campaign in Episode VI is a different story, it's much more brutal as far as huge scale battles went. This was cool and all, and appropriate for the grand finale... but not for me I'm afraid. I was still too young to play the game that seriously and staying calm... so I mostly cheated my way through 2 or 3 of the missions on the latter half. I was really surprised when I found the secret level after The Reckoning, and it was a breath of fresh air to play a game that was the total opposite in gameplay to the missions just before that one... and then once it was beaten, it was time for the final mission, and it was yet another bloodbath... *enter*, *power overwhelming*, *enter*, go!

Then, of course, there was the multiplayer. Happiest days of life. Sitting with my father on weekends, playing 2v2 versus AIs, him as Terran, me as Protoss, opponents as double Zerg. (At this point I would like to point out that we were playing by LAN, back in 1998, way to go Blizz' >.<) We would sit and play overly defensive on two bases until we could move out and kill them with 12 carriers/bc's each... yeah, I thought carriers were cool, too bad they're about to be decommissioned permanently
We probably were not even Bronze Leaguers back then, but we had fun. Remember how that felt while laddering? All the names we made up for the units, based on what they looked like still brings a smile to my face. (Especially love calling Reavers "Ostbågar", or "Cheese Doodles" in English lol :D)

So basically, that's part of my childhood. From time to time throughout the years, I would reinstall StarCraft and have some fun with it... but it was never quite the same as it once was. Then came the news of "StarCraft: Ghost", a new game out soon. The hype was back on! Then came the news
of "StarCraft: Ghost", a new game out now. Litterally out, as in will never come back. I was disappointed... but not for long. Not long after, a replacement game was announced. Shining brighter than the sun, on the horizon it awaited: "StarCraft II". Holy fucking shit, I spent so much spare time spamming "F5" on their homepage after the announcement lol. Eventually I dealt with the fact that the rate of information being released was awfully slow. So I allowed myself to cool down a bit, and do other stuff instead.

After a while, I began to hear more and more about this whole "progaming" thing. People that were so good at video games that they litterally worked by playing it for a living. I found it exaggurated, and ignored it mostly. But the theory was etched in my mind like an itch I couldn't quite scratch. I had to know... I didn't know why, but I had to know. So I started searching YouTube and Google for videos of progaming among games I found myself connected to... like StarCraft. It took me a while, but eventually, via Google, I found a link to a game on a website called "GOMTV.net", a game between two players named two players called "Flash" and "sAviOr". (Link here if you're wondering) I wasn't quite sure what I expected to find, but there was a caster called "Tasteless" doing the casting and it taught me a lot. I ended up watching every game of the entire tournament, slowly but surely becoming a fan of this "Flash", he seemed like a really good player. Through Tasteless, I was guided here, to TeamLiquid, where I slowly but surely became more and more and home, and I lurked here about 8 months before I eventually became a member. I followed SC progaming extensively for almost 2 years, and I don't regret a thing, it really is something else. Also, the first game I ever watched was, like mentioned, Flash vs sAviOr. At the time I didn't know who they were, but I had to cheer for someone, and since Zerg was always the enemies when I played with dad as a kid, I was cheering for the Terran: Flash. Thus, the first game I ever watched, Flash was my favourite player. Throughout the tournament, Flash was still my favourite player. Today, almost 3 years after I first started watching Brood War progaming, Flash is still my favourite player... and he has been for every single game I've ever watched, from day 1 and onwards... true story

Now onto the more resent stuff, a little something called StarCraft II, ever heard of it? Let's start with the single player as I always do then. I think the SC2 campaign does a great job gameplaywise, and I love the branching out between the missions as well as the armory etcetera. As far as the overall story goes, I think it's really good... it's just... not as good as the original. Again, I can't really blame it for that, it's a hell of a thing to live up to, but it's not quite there. I guess the branching out makes some missions feel unimportant. Part of me loves side quests, I approve of them greatly... it's just not perfectly fitting for my nostalgia feeling of the original I guess. Then, on the other hand, we've only done the first third of the SC2 storyline, so I guess it's too early to judge appropriately. In the end, when I heard there would be about 33% fewer missions in Heart of the Swarm, I took it badly, and I still am. I guess that proves to myself that in the end, the fact that I want more missions means that I deep inside approve of the "unimportant side quests" of Wings of Liberty. So I guess I'll withdraw my objection. There is a second one I most mention though, one that I will not withdraw: The interactivity between missions. Sure, there is some here and there, but mostly, you do a mission, get on board, check for new upgrades throughout the different locations you can improve your odds, and then you start the next mission. There is no downtime to relax and reflect on what you've learned. I think Blizzard should take a page out of BioWare's book on this one, they should learn from how intermission is handled onboard the Normandy, it's what makes you feel alive, and doing something important... maybe that will also solve the feeling of some missions being unimportant then, and I might not just withdraw my objection, I might even praise them for the same reasons.

I guess I can't delay it any longer: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - Multi Player... what do we have to say about this then? Even though I had watched BW progaming for about 17 months at the time, I had never played it on a serious level. All the experience I took with me from BW to SC2 came through theory. That theory got me to Gold League in my initial placement matches, and Platinum League about 10 games later. About a week later, 60 or so games in, to my own surprise, I found myself in Diamond League, the highest of all leagues! In my schoolclass, I had started to convince many people to start playing as well... and I was their mentor. For the longest time I was alone at the top, but for me, playing StarCraft seriously, I just kept remembering how much more fun it was to play BW as a kid, when there was no pressure. It kept me from laddering a lot, and my tempo slowed down severely. I almost stopped playing 1v1 completely, and just looked at it as an esport. Eventually, Master League came out, and I knew I wouldn't make it in. I knew I could do it if I just kept playing seriously for a week or two, but I... just didn't want to. I just didn't. Eventually, during the Sports Vacation 2011, I had been skiing up in the Northern Swedish Mountains for the entire week, whereas a classmate, who was in Diamond as well by now, spent all vacation in a little shack, essentially not doing anything else than play SC2. He played hundreds of games that week, and when I came back, he was in Master League. I knew that it would happen sooner or later, but I still felt a bit weird not being on top anymore... so I sort of quitted playing 1v1 at all. I knew that doing so would abandon any chance of me reclaiming my position, but I tried not to care, and really, I didn't, because I knew that I could be just as good as him, probably better, if I had had the same playtime, but you know how friends are, good luck trying to prove that statement lol. Eventually, about 3 or 4 months ago, I just said fuck it, let's get Master. So, I sort of played about 60 games or so, and whaddyaknow, it popped up. Now obviously, by this time, my classmate was a hell of a lot better than me with his 3000+ games compared to mine like 300, but at least I was in the same league, and if you counted the games it took us to get there, I knew I did in like 1/5th of the time, so it was ok.

As far as SC2 as an e-sport goes, it's hard to compare it to BW. The original has existed as an e-sport for 10x longer, so it's not really a fair judgement. But several BW pros have already swapped game generation, and if you've read the latest rumors, it seems a lot more are coming this way. As far as my SC-idol Flash goes... I don't know what I want really. If he switches to SC2 it would be the biggest bomb yet to go off for the community, and I might switch to Terran for Heart of the Swarm, who knows, but regardless of what his choice is, I will respect it. He is the one and only after all.

Honestly, I don't think you'll need more than that, you are the community after all. So I'm cutting it short here... "short" my ass... I'll be back for Heart of the Swarm, I promise, just taking the long route via Mass Effect 3, and god willing something greater still on the way...

The Elder Scrolls:
"I have a feeling you and I are about to become very close."
So says the Bosmers of Vvardenfell, and so say I to the series in general. I will maintain my statement that BioWare brings the RP to RPGs. Let me now finish that quote by saying that Bethesda puts the G to RPGs.

May 2nd, 2002. Despite really good reviews of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, my father never bought it. This time he decided to try the cherished RPG series out with its latest release: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Holy hot damn, this is good stuff.

I'm glad my English was a lot better than average at the age of 8, because there's a lot of reading to be done here. I admit that I screwed up my own quests a ton of times because I didn't quite understand what was a bad idea to do, who was a bad idea to kill, etcetera. Despite all this, I just kept going... and going... and going... the going never stops, does it? The world of Morrowind was unmatchable in its size at the time, and I scouted the entire world, every nook, every cranny, everywhere. I was an explorer. I wanted freedom. It wasn't until I was a few years older, maybe 10 that I really understood how the game was meant to be played. By then, the two expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon were both out. My previous role as an explorer hadn't proven very successfull as far as the two new locations Mournhold and Solstheim went. This time however, they did.

To start from scratch, I think the freedom an choose-your-own-adventure feeling that Morrowind provides didn't really exist anywhere else back then. BioWare were on a similar, but slightly different path. Starting out with the original questlines, I did everything right this time. It was like I didn't understand how I could have been so stupid two years earlier. My first goal was to clear Morrowind of all major questlines and artifacts. The former took time and effort, but I eventually managed to do it. The latter... well, if I wanted all of them, geez, you got to know where to look. My father had a guidebook where pretty much all the artifacts existed, but the only famous one I never found on my own was the Lord's Mail I think, it was hidden in a super-locked hidden dwemer ruin in the middle of the ocean far southwest of the entire world... like who the hell would randomly get there lol? As far as the other more hard-to-find ones were, I actually managed on my own, like the Daedric Long Bow, and the Daedric Crescent.

Once I eventually felt sort of done with Vvardenfell, my journey continued inland, to the capital city of Mournhold. There came the events of Tribunal, and a higher level of items to find, and huge new dungeons to explore. Overall, it was fairly linear though, until I came to a point in the Main Quest where nothing happened. I didn't understand what to do, so I checked the guide, and I was supposed to just wait a week and then go to the grand fountain... you'd think they'd leave a clue or something? Whatever, after that it was quite straightforward again, and eventually came the battle of the legendary swords with the duel between Nerevarine with Trueflame versus Almalexia with Hopesfire.

After that was done, I set my eyes far to the north, to the remote island of Solstheim. This had a much cooler landscape before, similar to Skyrim except LastGen of course. I remember the bandits with 100 hand-to-hand and 100% chance of knockdown on impact that left you with a 0% chance of survival if you were ever hit... it just took 5 minutes of free hits to kill you LOL. More seriously, the endgame of the Main Quest was fucking scary hard compared to anyhing else in the game. The endless Werewolf Gauntlet, trying to micro as best I could with Sunder to stay out of range, and being unable to rest to get full health etcetera... so scary. Then came the final showdown with Hircine, which had 3 different forms for you to choose... that where not even close to eachother in difficulty. Ironically, the clearly easiest version gave the best reward, so it was a no-brainer.

And that's Morrowind for you, one of the most memorable games of all time for anyone who has played from this generation I would reckon.

Let's jump ahead to 2006, and the release of the next big thing... The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
Advertised as the best graphical game of all time, it certainly was worthy of that title. The general game idea was the same as Morrowind, but it was immensely updated. An even larger world, a much more epic Main Quest, and a lot more user friendly. At the same time, the expectations were way higher for Oblivion than they had been for Morrowind, so in the end it probably was not as revolutionary. The greatest thing about Oblivion is its modding community. It's fucking ginormous, seriously. Me and my father were pretty damn involved in the modding community, and we had like 50-60 mods at the end. The most memorable one of all for was called Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, or "OOO" for short. It simply remade everything: the graphics, the flora, the fauna, the AI, the questlines, the leveling system, everything was so much better. It also added 5 new quests, each one about as long as an entire fucking storyline, no exagguration. I only ever finished 2 of them. Why? Because this was the direct opposite to a linear questline. It was just one super long quest, and you could do all the parts in unspecified order, and it was more like a riddle, a detective's work, gathering clues up to the finale. So hard, but so incredibly rewarding.

As far as the expansions go, "Knights of the Nine" was a bit of letdown. It was not a new region, just a new Main Quest back in Cyrodiil. Quite simply, you first went on a pilgrimage across the continent, scoured the world for all the parts of the Armor of the Crusader, used it to kill the bad guy, and then you were done. It wasn't a bad storyline, but it sort of didn't live up to expectations. Also, doing this at the same time as the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood was a disaster: all their quests were criminal in nature, so finishing a quest for them was considered "an unholy act", and you were forced to do another criminal to continue the storyline in Knights of the Nine.

The second expansion, "Shivering Isles", was, on the other hand, a fucking miraculous piece of art. It was quite simply so good. Taking place in the Daedric Realm of Sheogorath: Daedric Prince of Madness, the entire country is filled with crazy. There were two sides of the island nation: Mania and Dementia. One was bright and happy, one was dark and loathesome. I'll leave it up to you to guess which is which. Anyway, Sheogorath tells you of the upcoming Greymarch that is coming to ruin the Isles, as it has done throughout the cycles several times before. You are going to help him prevent it this time around. The Main Quest in which you do so is fabolous, it oozes with creativity. (Wait, what did I just say? LOL) I like the part where you need to take a drug to enter a cave, and you instantly become addicted to it constantly need to take more and more and more, and if you don't eat it you die... and your supply is limited. Unless you can get to the bottom to find a permanent cure, you're gonna drug yourself to death... damn Felldew abstinence
Another memorable thing on the Isles was the "Museum of Oddities": here, you could sell "oddities" to the museum. There were a finite and fixed number of items in the game that you could drop off here, some found on Cyrodiil even, not the Isles. Most of them are so stupid that I don't know what to say, for example: there was a plant called "Watcher's Eye" which you could find all over the island... as in thousands of them. Throughout the entire Realm, three of these were apparantly "Blind Watcher's Eye", and since that was weird, the Museum wanted it... I mean c'mon, the plant doesn't even have an eye lol, it's just a name! Or how about a Swamp Tentacle that looks just like any other but is apparantly "Deformed", or a "Screaming Maw" plant which turns out to be "Mute" or a piece of Amber you find that according to the game looks like Sheogorath's head and the coup de grâce: a tomato which can capture souls... yeah, I just said that.
Another quest, quite possibly the stupidest in all of Elder Scrolls, you were supposed to help a man build a boat... out of... calipers and tongs, at least 50 of each kind. Okay, first of all, those things are everywhere, yet they cannot be used for anyhting at all and have no value either, you just throw them away, and now, towards the very end of the last expansion you want me to gather 100 of them? To build a fucking boat with? That doesn't even makes sense what the hell. Oh and guess what, if you actually do this for him, guess what the reward is? 500 gold. Yeah, something that you really needed and felt was worth the effort, right? Jesus Christ... (I'm not mad, but I was when I got the quest xD)

November 10th: 2011. I play my last game of MW2. I promise myself never to open it again. (Still held ) I also log out of SC2, telling myself I will be back either when Heart of the Swarm is out, or when I feel myself called again.

November 11th: 2011. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is found in my message box a Friday morning. I install it in the morning to get ahead of all the inevitable Steam overload that will occur later today with all likeliness. (It did, I was the only one in my class who could play it day 1 LOL) In the afternoon, I run from the bus stop to my door, hurry up to my room, shut the door and let myself sink into something I've been waiting years for.

I'm going over to the chopping block, turn my head to the left, ready to accept my fate. But then, a dragon appears for the first time in generations. Coincidence? I don't think so? Dovahkiin has returned.

For me it is a very close call as far as saying which is the best Elder Scrolls. Very close... but I think that Bethesda hit the nail with this one... so, I'm just going to say here and now that Skyrim is the best Elder Scrolls thus far, given that it's still in relative Vanilla stages and still is pretty much even with the others. Storywise, it was a bit back and forth for Skyrim. The Main Quest was great, so was the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood. Civil War was pretty... okay, really bad though, but then again I didn't really care about that in the first place. College was decent, a little short. Companions was a huge letdown though, it had potential, and then they ruin it by ending before it's begun. Way too short. Side Quests in general were very well done though.

Unlike previous Elder Scrolls, Skyrim's strengths aren't found in the story or the exploration, or even the modding (yet, but we're getting there), but rather in Dovahkiin himself/herself. You really feel like the one you are supposed to represent. The shouts are admittedely very varied in usefulness, but they still serve their purpose to the absolute fullest. The new both-hand-usage is fantastic though. Now you can dual wield almost anyhing, from spells, to any onehanded weapons to shields, staves, and any fucking combination you want of anything. It gives you a room for experimentation and creativity. The options are increased exponentially. Another the thing they really got right this time around were the skills. In Morrowind you sort of just leveled up, and that increased effectiveness, and that was it. In Oblivios it was the same, although you got some new bonus ability every 25 points in the skill. In Skyrim, every skill has its own skill tree, all shaped differently based on the combination of stars in the sky that is formed by the symbol of the skill tree itself. This leads to a whole new level of variation, creativity, freedom, and even optimization. While it is true that some skill combinations are overpowered, like the Alchemy/Enchanting/Smithing Crafting Cycle, you don't have to use them. It's a single player game after all, it doesn't matter what's best, all that matters is what you want, right?

Did I mention you can get married as well? If you marry a girl she can even cook you food!

As far as the modding goes, it's obviously hard to judge since the game is still only 2 months young. However, I've started seeing some really awesome one coming out, perhaps most notably the Deadly Dragons mod to real give you something to bite into and show that you really do require a Dovahkiin to take down an older dragon.

Diablo:
Oh, yeah, you saw this one coming
I grew up with many games that I've mentioned on this list... but in the end I can't disregard the fact that Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is the best game released in my lifetime. There, I said it.

Let's take it from the top then shall we?
I said that Civ II was the oldest game on this list with its origins from 1996. Whether or not that is actually the case, I'm not sure, because the original Diablo is also from 1996, but I'm not sure about the dates. Anyway, I didn't play Diablo until maybe 1999. I had never really played any game similar to it, but I really liked the idea. It was more of a hack-and-slash type of RPG, more focused on the killing than anything else. I thought got really difficult after a while, but I pressed on, and did what I could to proceed. Eventually, after a long and stressful journey, Diablo, The Lord of Terror laid dead at my feet. My overall impression of the game today was that it had a crucial role, but rather more serving as a milestone, an archetype for next gen games to follow. I liked Diablo, but it's never really had that emotionally acclimation for me like StarCraft or Half-Life had for example.

2000, the year of the once-in-a-lifetime experience of a shift in millenia. Perhaps this sign of a new era of humanity was also being taken noticed of by the game developers. Whatever the backstory is, one thing I know for sure is that Diablo II is my reason for picking this as my #1. I was 6 years old. I started the sequel to that "cool but a bit scary killing game I played last year". To my joy, I see that the game looks way better and there are 5 classes to choose from instead of just 3. After a little consideration, I pick the Barbarian and name him "StorErik" or "BigEric" in English. (Yeah Erik is my real life name, and yes, you can stop laughing at how silly it was please, thank you >.<) Immediately upon starting the game, the difference is clear. It was like lying in the air that this game seems pretty damn awesome.

Oh, it was. The feeling of running through the acts the first time is unbeatable. I keep up with the story as best I can, but I'm so curious as to what lies around the next corner that the search keeps in going. After many days of adventuring, I go through a hole in the wall, caused by a magical orifice. Suddenly, I'm trapped in a pit, and some huge scary god-knows-what rushes towards me. I try to go back up in desperation, only to find out that it's impossible. I remembered swallowing hard, then staring angrily at the screen and going all out berserk on it, and barely coming out on top. Dead lies Duriel, and he drops some sword with it's text in gold colour. Curiously I pick it up and I identify it. IT'S A GOLDEN THING, I scream in Swedish and my dad rushes in to see. He tells me that he read that they're called uniques, and it only exists one of them. My eyes widen, and I swear to never drop it no matter what.

Well, I did, but I kept it way longer than I should have lol, dropped it sometime late Nightmare or so I believe. By then, I had passed countless more memorable moments, like getting lost in the forests of Kurast, sitting with my friend and my father beside me as I one step at a time step inside Chaos Sanctuary, and countless other priceless moments.

After killing Diablo, and seeing that the game will replay twice more on higher difficulties, I told myself to try out the other classes before I came back to finish the job.I ended up with having one character of each class that had completed Nightmare, although 2 barbs and 2 sorcs. I had two favourite characters, the first of which was my main Paladin, whos name god-knows-why I remember. You see, when I made him, I didn't know what to call him, so I just spammed something random on the keyboard, all in caps... and he ended up being my best Pala lol. His name was "IQWRSQDNESA", and the reason I loved him was that I had pretty much only went for Zeal and Fanatiscism, and I thought it was really cool to see him hit monsters endlessly about 6 times per second My other favourite was my main Sorc, named Erica. (Yeah, I was a creative fuck back then lol) Main reason: I thought Lightning Magic was so fucking cool. End of story... oh, and I liked being able to Teleport as well, saved time.

By the time all those characters had gotten that far, as I'm sure you've figured out, the expansion Lord of Destruction was out. Adding two more classes, a fifth act for every difficulty, all the high level sets and uniques, skill synergies, and countless other practicalities, it turned an already amazing game into a pretty much perfect game for its era. It wasn't until about now I realised that the way to go if you want to have awesome characters was to go online on battle.net and play with randoms. I was sceptical to the thought of playing with strangers, but I didn't see the harm in trying. If anything, I could always just disconnect and leave. So I logged onto battle.net, hosted a game called "New game", and some people joined. They were a bit better leveled than I was, but I essentially just followed the highest leveled one and followed his lead. It was a little boring to not be in charge anymore, but whatever. I started joining lobbies myself and found guys that were super high level. I was a bit jealous, but they give me free xp, so I didn't complain. I thought it was weird that they were skipping so many quests and waypoints, I always made sure to get all that kind of stuff, but again, I was shy, I just smiled, nodded, followed and obeyed. After a while I found myself at Baal on Hell, completely incapable of fighting myself, preying that the others could handle it, but they did. I realised that even if they kill the boss, I can still steal the drops. I didn't think it was fair, but I might as well try it and see what happens. To my surprise, nobody at all complained when I stole just about everything from Baal. Confused by this, I tried it again in another lobby. Then again, and again. Suddenly I was not only xp boosted like crazy by the others, but I had decent items as well. I started a lobby of my own to finish all the skipped quests, partially as a matter of principal, partially to get quest rewards.

I asked myself the question: "Why?" Is this how people play it? Am I cheating the system? I asked some friends in my football team who also played D2, and they pretty much said yeah, it's all about the items, you gotta get the best.

I found it a bit weird, but I knew they were right. Difference was, that this time my competetive spirit was involved, and I suddenly wanted to keep playing. In the end, I had that character, which was a Sorceress by the way, pretty much fully Lightning specced at level 95, with the best items I had been able to aquire on my own. That was nowhere near the best items though, because back then I was oblivious to the online communities and their trading systems with forum gold etcetera. Also, I did not know just how valuable Runes were, I mean I knew the better ones were ridiculously rare, I just didn't know the Rune Words the final runes could form were so unimaginably powerful.

At about that point leveling any further was so slow I don't know any words for it. My competetive spirit had all but run out. I remembered the feeling of playing Brood War with the sole intention of having fun. So my dad and I resumed playing LAN as well as me and another friend on other chars. We started from scratch, and it was as if I was back at the start of it all. Diablo II simply echoes in eternity. It doesn't age.

In early 2011, when the Diablo III hype was really high with my friends, I got an idea. Me and one of my classmates reinstalled good old D2, and played together on battle.net through the entire game, just the two of us. Every single quest, every single waypoint, all the way from normal act 1 to the end. It was just like the good old days of playing Blizzard games for fun, all over again... after all, unless you're gaming for a living, what point is there to playing if your primary goal isn't to have a good time playing it? You're trying to have fun after all.

Now the question is, what could, in my eyes, possibly top Diablo II in the future? Well, how about...

...Diablo III? Oh, for gods sake, just release already.

^ Yeah, this is what I meant. I remember a leaked release date shown at BlizzCon indicating January 17th 2012... I guess we can throw that theory out the window, was it really necessary to give me false hopes and expectations? T.T
Anyway, I'm sure you've read about the release delays. They're having troubles with their Real Money Auction House to be allowed in certain countries, which is causing the release to be delayed, since Blizzard wants a Global release, even though the game is pretty much ready for shipping to most parts of the world... kinda sad really :/ Oh well, no point in crying over it, see it from the bright side, like for example, whenever it does arrive, think of all the joy it will bring. The longer we wait the greater the feeling of: "Oh, finally!" will be... god dammit, now I started to feel more longing than ever

Anyway, I think the game looks amazing. The graphics, the characters, the skills, the gameplay, the fucking CGI in the cinematics, holy shit this will be life-changing! I've made a pre-emptive chart as far as naming all my initial characters goes, and no I won't be sharing them here... (Okay fine, I can say that they're all based on different stones and minerals that I found appropriate for each class, I've got a big excel document with everything stored. My first char will probably be a Female Wizard named Topaz, but we'll see.) Also, with the fourth difficulty, a reachable max level, and then obviously the Auction House, I feel like Blizzard has finally fixed one of the greatest issues with D2, namely the endgame essentially being non-existent. Also, PvP will be included! Another aspect where D2... well, it did have PvP... sort of, but it was really gimmicky, and very inofficial, whereas this time it will be a real arena/battleground with multiple gamemodes and ranked teams.

If you're wondering, no, I'm afraid I don't have a beta key, as much as I'd like to, so I'm only basing my thoughts out of what I've seen and read. (I have intentionally avoided beta streams though, I don't wanna be spoiled of what little there is, as well as being more tempted and jealous of the people with beta keys lol )

Oh well, as always with Blizzard, announced release dates are non-existent. At least they're still stating it as "Q1 2012". If that is true, then it will be in less than three months at least... I bet it's going to on the same day as Mass Effect 3 just to screw me over lol. Meh, no point in speculating over the completely unknowable, not to mention that I'm starting to feel a little sleepy right now, so I'm going to call it a day.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, if you disagree with me, fine; do so, I don't mind, but don't say that my opinions are wrong unless you've got a damn good reason to