Biography

This blog is about gaming, mainly PC gaming. I am Joshua “Jaz” Thompson, I currently live in Michigan. I am a sophomore at Ferris State University – as a CJ Law Enforcement Major. I am an active member of the Lambda Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, and am currently the publishing and promotions head. As much as I love computers, from building them, to programming and coding, to graphic design, there are few jobs in this industry currently, or else I would be studying something related to computers. I am nineteen years old, and I work at Edward Rose during the summer months, and attend school in the fall and spring semesters.

This blog is essentially about my views on different games, gaming companies, upcoming games, and the future of MMORPG’s and FPS’s. I first began computer gaming back in 1998 when I was visiting family on Long Island, NY and my uncle had Age of Empires, I spent a lot of time playing while I should have been visiting with everyone. This was really my first try at any computer game, before that it was just the consoles, N-64 and Sega Genesis, Gameboy, and PS1. So from that moment on I continued to play RTS based games on the PC. In 2003 my parents got me a Dell Dimension 4600 for Xmas, it was a great gift and at this time we got rid of dial up and got DSL, when I really got introduced to the online word.

In 2004 my friend (the same friend I am rooming with in college) had an exchange student from Germany; it was our freshmen year in high school. He brought over with him from Germany counter-strike 1.6, when I played this for the first time it was amazing, the thought of playing with other people online in a fast paced online FPS was astounding and I had never been exposed to such a thing before, I quickly purchased a copy of CS 1.6, along with Half-Life and began playing with lots of lag, which is when I realized there are these things called GFX cards in your computer, and my Dell at the time did not have a good one, so I picked up a GFX Card, it was an NVIDIA card, I don’t remember the exact model, but I know a few years later I updated that one to a Radeon x700 series card which is what is still in the old Dell PC today.

I continued to play CS 1.6, and in the fall of 2004 began playing CS: Source and later DOD: Source. I went through many many clans, teams, groups, squads, etc. And even played a couple seasons in CAL Open, and some other smaller leagues like OGL and TWL. In 2006 I took a risk that would change the next couple of years in my life completely. I began looking for something different, I had been playing FPS’s for years now, it was becoming boring, after all the failed clans and unsuccessful CAL seasons crippled by a hacking majority of players. So, one day in February of 2006 I wandered into Best Buy, straight to the PC Gaming section as usual where I saw something, in the far corner in the back of the shelf was two grubby copies of what I now know to be World of Warcraft, at the time it was $49.95, I looked at it, i didn’t know what this was all about, what was this MMORPG I had never heard of before, it looked like a game for little kids, with childish graphics, I was used to the hardcore FPS slaughter fest and I thought that was how things were supposed to be, what was this game I had in my hands, is this something new? I purchased the game that day, February 16th 2006 I believe, give or take a day, and I became immersed into a new world, something I again, had never experienced before. I didn’t know this whole MMORPG concept, I didn’t know what to expect, i took a risk.

I found myself wondering around the human start zone, my first ever character was named “clarity”, a human warrior, who I later deleted at level 14 and replaced by a gnome mage named “glix”. I explored, and eventually found myself out of the start zone and into goldshire, I began to realize this wasn’t just a game it was a whole world, the longer I played the more addicted I became, I got my friend who got me into CS 1.6 to pick up the other copy at best buy and we played together. I deleted my gnome mage “glix” at level 24 and eventually settled with a human rogue named “omnirage” which eventually became level 60. It was February when I started playing, the end of my sophomore year, and that summer after my sophomore year in high school I played WoW 24/7, it is very sad, that I cannot remember one thing from that summer because I literally spent all of the time locked into a game, I found a nice group of people who I talked to on vent all day and night, but mostly night, as we would stay up all night playing, sleep until noon, and repeat. They became my friends as sad as that sounds, I neglected my real friends and family, I lost a lot of weight, I was unhealthy, I didn’t go out or do anything, my birthday is July 27th and I cant even remember what I did on my birthday because I was probably playing WoW. My family held a family reunion that year, and I look back at the pictures now and I’m the only one not there, because I didn’t want to be away from WoW.

I played all through that summer and into my junior year of school, where the real problems began, I started failing Physics, Chemistry, Alg. 2, Honors English, those were some of my classes that year, and I was literally just getting by. The thing i feared most was getting grounded and not being able to play WoW, I was so hooked, how could something like this happen to me? My friend who I began playing with from the beginning was named “azlin” a level 60 night elf druid. We raided, PvP’d, and did everything together, our server was Rexxar, which is a PvE realm, so mostly PvE. I was never really into the raiding much though, I loved PvP. So I made a level 19 gnome rogue twink named “Lemmywinks” which became a rather famous twink in the Pre-BC days of WoW, back before CX-Realm battlegrounds, so more and more I played my twink and left my 60 rogue to gain resting exp. My twink, for some reason was nearly unbeatable at the time, with all of the best gear and dual cruel barbs with lifestealing it was nearly unstoppable, I was in the best twink guild on Rexxar known as the “Legion of Lord Kromdor” which still exists till today on Rexxar.

But now I was 16, I had my car, a red 1999 Pontiac grand am, and I had just met a girl who I fell in love with, who I am still with today, its been almost two years since we met. Her name is Tasha, we met at a park, I was with my friend Matt (who later became addicted to WoW and dropped out this last semester of our senior year), and she was with her friend Shaina. We met on October 26th, 2006; her and her friend went to the school in the next town over from where Matt and I went. After that we continued to hang out for a week and then started dating. She didn’t really like WoW, but she loved me so she accepted it. As I look back now I should have spent more time with her instead of playing WoW. Half way through my junior year I made a decision to switch schools, the first half of my junior year was a mess, I was skipping school constantly now that I had a car, I would come in late, leave early, anything to play some more WoW. My grades became horrible, so the only thing I could think of was to switch schools, and I did. Michigan does not have school of choice, so I had to get it approved, however it helps when the superintendent of your school is also your neighbor. So I went to Tasha’s school, and got a fresh start from the horrible beginning of my junior year in high school. I began doing well, very well, I became the top of most of my classes and really liked the new school, I even quit WoW for about 4 months.

However, it all came back when the Burning Crusade expansion came out, it splurred a new popularity in WoW, what was once a small thing me and my friend obsessed about, was now becoming a common thing you heard around school, back when there was only two copies of WoW on the shelf, now there was a whole shelf just for WoW, adorned with WoW hats, shirts, game card, dungeon guides and more, the price had also dropped to a low of $19.99, however the monthly subscription fee to play remained $14.99. I was eager to get back into it all, and to the disappointment of my family and my girlfriend, I began playing again. I decided it was time to drop the PvE realm though, and I moved onto The Forgotten Coast realm, which is a PvP realm; I began playing on the server the day it opened up, by accident. I was going through the servers looking for one where the name “pierre” was available, and on The Forgotten Coast, it was. I was vexed by the large mass of people at the Orc/Troll start zone; I was playing a Troll Priest of course named “pierre”. I went to the WoW forums and realized this realm had just opened up today!

I now had much more experience with WoW, leveling, twinking, where to go, what to do, etc, just the general knowledge picked up with excessive playing over a long time, and I was tired of getting owned by shadow priests in battlegrounds on my rogues. I had played on a test realm when they were open for about a week and got to test out a shadow priest with all tier 3 gear, it was amazing for PvP. So now it was my turn, Pierre was my best character, and I twinked it at the top of every bracket excluding the 39 and 59 brackets because I wanted my mount. I found that the most enjoyable one was the 49 bracket, which I stayed in for several months. This was just before they did away with the ranking system; Pierre was stuck at the rank of Senior Sergeant I believe. My past characters Omnirage were stuck at Sergeant Major, and Lemmywinks since he was only level 19 could only obtain the rank of Sergeant, however I left Lemmywinks with 10K+ honor kills.

As I continued to play on The Forgotten Coast I eventually left my friends on Rexxar behind, occasionally making an appearance on Lemmywinks in Stormwind where I would be flooded with tells and whispers and /waves. Pierre was doing so well, that even at the bottom of brackets in PvP I could dominate; it was very fun and sadly addicting. I tried to respec to holy a couple times for PvE but I couldn’t stand it, it was all shadow for me. I ran my own guild the entire time I spent on The Forgotten Coast called “Canadian Maple Syrup Eh” which was of course a PvP orientated guild. However, near end of my junior year in May of 2007 I got in a rather large argument with my parents and it ended up with me being quite angry, to the point where I took them to my room and deleted all of my characters for them to see. Later that month I got a job at KFC, and then got another job at Edward Rose doing structural repair, so that whole summer after my junior year I spent working 60 hours a week doing structural repair full time and KFC part time, it felt great, and the money was great, I bought mainly new clothes and took my girlfriend Tasha out a lot.

After I quit I had a lot of withdrawals to play the game, it was what I dreamed about, thought about, and I had many urges to continue playing but I am proud to say that I denied them all, even though there were some very close calls. When my senior year started I continued to work part time at KFC, and I got accepted to the college of my choice, Ferris State. I remained WoW-Free. My friend Matt, who I mentioned earlier, had left our old school at the same time I did and came to this new school with me, he was now a full time WoW addict, and many others were now to, I began hearing more and more about WoW at school and I knew how bad it was. Matt used to criticize me back in our sophomore year at our old school about how much I played WoW, how I would bustle home after school to play. And now he was doing the same thing, and it got so bad that half way through our senior year he dropped out and moved out of his home. I have talked to him here and there since then; I think he is doing better now, however, still playing World of Warcraft.

So, I got over WoW and learned a lot. After quitting like I said, there are withdrawals; I thought it would never leave me alone it was like a curse that kept bothering me. But eventually it faded, and now less and less I feel apart of the WoW community and less and less I think about it, until now where I really don’t think about it at all, and really have no desire to actually play, I am so busy these days that I actually could not physically play it, I am astounded at how much time I spent playing WoW back in my late sophomore year and early junior year. With work, school, friends, I could not and would not do it. I am still with Tasha till this day, she put up with me through the good and the bad, and I love her very much. I would also like to thank my mother and the rest of my family who put up with me while I played WoW and how they helped me get through it, without my mom pressuring me about playing it so much, I may still have been playing it today. Wowdetox.com also provided a lot of support in my early days of quitting WoW when i thought about it the most; it gave me confidence and allowed me to see lots of other people who have quit.

I got back into some of the old FPS’s again in the last few months in my free time, especially Day of Defeat: Source. It had been awhile since I played FPS’s, and it seemed that Valve and Steam had improved their VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat System), and now hacking and cheating came to a minimal, which made playing much more enjoyable. However I have had a lot of issues with the Steam and Valve companies, so I am now trying to stay away from their monopolizing game industry, as fun as many of their games may be. And now I am waiting to see what is next, what game with overtake the overwhelming popularity of WoW? Will it ever happen, some say it will, some say it wont, some say WoW was just a fluke, the right game at the right time to the right people and it became huge. I am not sure myself, but we will eventually find out. So I currently remain open to any games in my free time, I am not dedicated to any one game or genre, and I have played a large variety of games from the RTS, to the FPS, and onto the MMORPG. So I am just waiting for something new, in my post-WoW periods I have played such MMORPG games such as EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes and City of Villains, Archlord, Guild Wars, Star Wars Galaxies. And I also went back and beat the original Half-Life from 1998, it is still a classic.

So hopefully we will see a change in the MMORPG genre, perhaps a console MMORPG? Who knows? So this has been a little bit about my PC Gaming past and what I have been through in the gaming world, I will try to add news as often as I can and update you on what I am doing in the gaming world, and what is going on! Thanks,

-Joshua “Jaz” Thompson