[shadowfyr]

Hmm. Well, I play EQ2 and like 80% of my levels and 90% of my achievement points came from exploring places and having a message pop up, "You have found a new location!". That and quests, a lot of which require killing stuff, but not all of them. The killing stuff part is actually monotonous and annoying in most games (been killing the same 4 stupid mobs for nearly a month now, since I am top level in the game, and its either kill those same mobs, or do equally monotonous tradeskill quests (also top level there) to gain guild levels. Its boring and stupid.

Something like Halo is a bit different, since your opponents don't just charge at you and keep attacking until they die. Instead they hide, run away, dive away from grenades (and occasionally stare dumbly at one you threw near by until it goes off...), but they don't act like standard mobs in most games. BTW, this is imho where muds fail. Its pretty damn hard to make "smart" mobs when your confining every damn thing you do to one room, there is no real way to have them run some place else without losing track of them very quickly (even the best text based method can't let you see *where* they ran to, just a vague direction), etc. It means that, for all intents and purposes, unless you have one that teleports away and waits for you to show up in the next room, or some dumb BS, mobs in muds are dirt stupid, and there is no real way to "fix" that. Splinter Cell is sort of fun too, and you spend most of the game "not being allowed" to just shoot every opponent in the way.

So, yeah, its the sense of achievement that gets you. Of having something to do, and appearing to accomplish something. Games that try to have you not fight and kill, when its some epic battle, and usually damned lame, have lots of puzzles to replace it (and I am not that great at solving "every" puzzle), and the premise is often silly, stupid and illogical, which unless you are ***really*** into puzzles, its just irritating. Some, go to nothing but, "kill or screw over everything and everyone in site.", and I do think that the people that play that stuff constantly are mentally unstable, or they wouldn't keep playing the game. Note, that is unstable to ***start with***.

Then you get some place like Second Life... Exploration without achievement, combat in some areas, probably without any achievement, besides being expensive to "buy", nothing to do, for the most part, unless you are "really" into RP and/or cybering on someone's lawn in an area you are not even supposed to have adult content, etc. If you can build, there may be some achievement involved, you may explore, but exploration is hampered by terrible disconnection between zones, a poor system to search for interesting places, and a lot of people that have found that the only thing *to* do in the world, if you don't RP, run a business, or cyber, is create chaos, to get a rise out of the people that want to be there. It could be a great place, if the client was more stable, and if people built to provide something worth doing in it. Otherwise, its the most boring place not on earth.

So, what is the point of mentioning it? Well, its damn close to what the anti-violence in games people would have us stuck with, and without the mature sections where someone might see naughty things as well... But heh, its only my first week in there and I haven't looked "everyplace" yet, so.. lol

Anyway. Violence in games is also a way to channel aggression, as some have said, and I would much rather pay $20 a month to ***be*** the aggressor, if I can't make any RL money from it, than pay $200 for some stupid ass ticket to go watch some other ass be aggressive, while he makes more money in one fracking game than I am likely to see in my entire life time. I just don't "get" sport fans... lol