Models, RPG's and Emulators

So the other day I was talking to my online friend who does modeling in Britain and we got onto the subject of Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft. Neither of us knew the other was an aficionado of the pen and paper RPG realm and the ensuing dorky discussion led to her showing me a picture of her giving a high five to a statue of an Orc riding a Wargen (from Lord of the Rings) and that led to me making a playful jab about her being an Orc lover.

Turns out she actually mostly plays male Orc and Blood Elf characters on World of Warcraft. My initial thought was because of wanting to avoid lecherous perverts but it turns out she simply prefers the aesthetics of the male character models.

My mind was blown and I came to a conclusion:

"Not everyone that plays a game does so from the perspective of one who actually plays a role."

Whoa.

As my friend Nichole says "We're roleplayers, most everyone else are gamers." and this is true. When I play a character I strive to be as true to the character as possible. As a test I've been trying to play through one of the dozen or so remakes of Final Fantasy I and I am hating the game because for the most part there is NO story in the game. The most one can say of the story is that it is an exercise in Chaos Theory in how a dozen or so unrelated events could theoretically lead to the destruction of the world.

To be absolutely frank I am shocked the game series has lasted almost fourteen main incarnations and a dozen or so spin off games just going off of the first game. I'm about halfway through the masochistic exercise of trying to finish that game and plan on finishing it but only by having the emmulator speed set a 10X so I can get the pain over sooner.