Positive Online Experiences : Why MMORPGs rule.

Sometimes you meet nice people online.

In Goblin Caves B1 I was levelling up by training monsters onto me and then using Windstorm repeatedly : this only works because of my high dodge rate, any other character would die within seconds. Then this guy comes along and casts Windstorm on my mob, essentially leeching off me, not that I minded overmuch : levelling up is overrated anyway, item drops are much more important to me.

I invite him to a party and he accepts and we become friends. I can see he has problems gaining levels : low defense, inferior equipment, obviously a first character. I always make it a point that it's worthwhile to join my party whether in terms of exp or loot : since this guy will obviously be leeching exp off me I can feel less guilty when snagging the cool itemdrops from our kills.

During the next few days I realise his reaction time is a bit slower than what I would expect, and I have to deliberately leave items on the floor for a few seconds before he picks them up if I want him to. Also the way he refers to his brother (who plays also) and the slightly whimsical way he talks and does things, like inviting me to follow him to weird random places and do silly things, like attacking huge monsters neither of us are particularly suited to hunting... that I ask, are you a guy or a girl???

Turns out it's a girl from Spain. I've never quite done as much sightseeing in ROSE before : we went to the Arumic Valley in Luna to look at Crystal Stones, and hunted some ridiculously high level monsters there, then all the way down to the deepest depths of Goblin Caves B3, and the remotest parts of Gorge of Silent. It's amazing what a pair of attack muses can take on.

It's nice to make friends online. I'm quite touched really : yesterday we killed a monster which dropped an Earthstone : it's worth about 250,000 zulie, I didn't bother picking it up since I meant to leave it for her and she ran forward and snagged it : then turned around and said after a moment "do you want it" and I went, "no, if i take it i'll just sell it, it's worth quite a bit but otherwise useless for me" and then she went "no you take it" and then forcibly gave it to me. Kindness from random strangers is somehow appreciated a bit more I guess : when I party with my RL friends we just distribute the loot freely among whoever needs it most, and it's just a "normal" behaviour for us, not a particularly altruistic thing that any of us are grateful for.