How to explain from their prespectiveFollow

I’m a 35+yr old male who has been playing for 3+yrs. Explaining EQ to non-players is difficult for several reasons. Explaining it to them involves helping them to get around their pre-conceived notions and unsubstantial lies

EQ goes directly against all of these and this makes it difficult for people to comprehend.

The difficult reasons are:

1) People are impatient

Most video game players (or peeps who wish there were) are into First Person Shooter games. These people (and those games) make up the vast majority of the gaming world. Playing these simple games involve turning off your brain, memorizing a shooting pattern and blasting everything in site. I’m not dumping on those games; it is just not my forte. I’ve done it and I find they get boring very quickly. The manufactures hope you do too, as you then go out and spend another $50 for the next FPS.

2) People are leery of commitment

Players want to play a game, turn it off and come back later and do it all over again. Some games allow for saving at a certain level/location so that you can continue on. They don’t want mistakes to haunt them and they certainly don’t want to remember things that they did in the past. Of course signing up for a monthly subscription commitment is uncomfortable to people too.

3) People only want to depend on them self

Most players only play against the computer. The thought of interacting with the other people, both good and bad, is just a ‘hassle’ they don’t want.

4) People think video games are stupid

There are legions of people, mostly women (I’m not taking a cheap shot, I’m stating a fact), who believe that all video games are stupid. This involves their need to spend time with you instead of you spending time in your video game. There is WAY too much psychology/physiology in this for me to cover. I think that if a dating/married couple has a problem they might want to actually COMMUNICATE this with each other, instead of assuming he can read your mind. Ask for what you want nicely and it might actually happen. BTW, asking him to stop playing entirely is not a good idea. Neither is demanding. Any threat you make to him is minimal, Sony is killing the desire to player much faster than you ever could.

5) People think gamers are always heading down a road to obsession

While it is true that some video gamers take their hobby into an unhealthy obsession, nearly all do not. EQ probably has a higher addiction level because it is so rich in content. There is a real world out there and I’m happy to be in it. EQ is a time-filler only. I only ever play after my kids are in bed.

6) People think video games are violent
Where or where to start here…….I’m just going to say that most people use video games as a stress relief and a hobby. It takes a huge leap of insanity to attempt to mimic what is done in a video game with something in real life. If you only have 42 cards in you deck, you have bigger problems than getting addicted to EQ. If this is you, I suggest you apply for a job at Sony’s Game Content department; it sure would explain a lot recently in the direction EQ has gone.

7) People think EQ is electronic Dungeons and Dragons

I heard this one last year and I nearly crapped my pants I was laughing so hard. The ‘intelligent individual’ who made this comment could not even tell me what characters or play style was in D&D, other than the fact that there were dragons in it and some people got killed playing it. This is ignorance, pure and simple.


All you really can do is stick to the facts. Tell them EQ is:
• Cheap - $50 startup and only $15/mth on average
• Does not require another computer
• Requires a high speed internet connection
• Can be played for 15mins to 6+hrs per session
• Can be played in combat with no direct contact (PG rated Combat)
• Can be played non-combat, like Cleric (this is not a cheap shot to Clerics)
• You can play REALLY exciting characters, like a Ranger
• Can involve at least 6 different trade skills
• Can learn languages
• Can be any Races, species and even male of female
• Can travel to 100s of different lands
• Can do 1000s of different quests
• Can be the video game that never ends.
• You can play the same characters for years. There is no finish line.


Once you have showed them this, invite them over for a demonstration. Pre-warn them if your entire room is devoted to EQ and you’ve covered every wall and every square inch of floor space with quests, trade skill recipes and zone maps.

They have a choice to be a casual player or something much more devoted. They can even flip back and forth. It gives you something to talk about at lunch breaks at work. Get your whole office involved. I was listening to work buddies for 3mths before I asked for a demonstration. It is fun. Don’t fear it.

Tell them what you did last night. Tell them about the Raid where the Monk puller who’s FD failed (and instead of dieing with the 4-mob train) proceeded to run directly to the Clerics for a CH. This resulted in their deaths and of course when the Clerics died, a complete wipe was shortly behind, followed by a 90min CR deep in the heart of the PoH. Tell them about getting Mezzed by MOBs and then you end up killing your entire group. Tell them about the time you were summoned to a MOB and then were quaded for 325s as he also put on 3 DoTs for good measure. Tell him about the time you spent 30mins in PoK getting uber buffed only to fight the first MOB in the raid who stripped off your best 4 (Virtue, ext KEI, Haste, and Fo7). Tell him about the 6 zone CR run you did completely naked, when no one was on to help you.

Just don’t tell them about the Congressional level of politics that exist in your guild officers because they think their important or uber or cool or infallible.

Hope this helps. If you are on Luclin (Veeshan), look me up.