Grai Dings 40

Ahhh a joyful day will be spent around the home of Grai's Gang today, as I leave the 30's behind forever. I'm hoping to discover some heretofore unknown ability that may get unlocked, but if i do I'm sure the training cost will be high. Shrinn gave me my card before she went to bed and it was a look at the year i was born 1968 (save all the math). The top songs, cost of items, pres and vice pres all that kind of stuff and i got me wondering about video games in general and wow in particular. WARNING MEMORIES OF AN OLD MAN COMING.

The first video game i ever wanted was combat; not the atari game but one that had a 2 handed joystick for each player, that you tried to squeeze two people on play. Time frame was about the same as pong which my friend had. Mattel hand held games football and baseball i remember old led lights programmed to light up if u did the right sequence. These where huge when Simon was still new, but if u had more than 2 people over it was done.

So about the time i read the lord of the rings series the first time summer of 7th going into 8th grade a buddy ask if I wanted to come over and play D&D at his house. I said i would and "gaming" changed for me that day. All of a sudden the novels i was getting into reading i could play or something like them. So they explain how the character process goes and the dice oh we had dice and tell me to choose what i wanted to be. I choose a knight; yes cliche yes, because of King Arthur. So our dungeon master explains the adventure to us (quest for you new folks)
and off our group went 6 of us adventures and our dm for 7 total. Matt,Chris T. ,Rodney, Chris B. ,Chuck, Dave K.,and yours truly. Almost 30 years ago and i still remember that group of guys we spent the rest of that day doing our dungeon and i was hooked. That was our group till high school sports, girls , and jobs broke us up.

My High School at the time had apple II and apple IIe personal computers 64k ram and no such thing as a hard disk. But there was this terrific almost mind blowing game that we could play for hours Ultima where u could control 4 "good guys" against an array of bad guys. The graphic quality was somewhere south of atari football but it was incredible to us, heck we still liked text adventures.

Ok so now you ask "What the heck does this have to do with WOW?"

WOW to me is all these games wrapped together. I'm still searching for that perfect sequence to light up the game. The group of guys and gals has grown from a mere 7 gangly and geeky kids to I have know idea how many. But the best part is still coming together getting or adventure(pardon me had to do it) and heading off to be heroes. I still play a knight but i rather be Sir Sparhawk (thank you very much David and Leigh Eddings) than one from Arthurs round table. Apple's are still around although gasp I play on a pc. The graphics well 25 odd years ago animation wasn't this good (Although Boskin's Lord of the Rings will always be a personal favorite) and rumor has it the xpac is crisper than these. The best part now as way back then is simple I have been very lucky to meet some wonderful people in this game so I wanna say hello to 6 of em seems right somehow. Muralimohan(this is how i meet you), Unseenfiend, Big Bear Butt, Wulfa, Eros, and Letva. When I log in and see some of you, all of you I know i will generally get a laugh and best of all a good group of people to run around with.

So ill wrap this up for me "happy 40th Grai"