I am still where I always was. I live in northern New Jersey. Same home, same office, same employer, new car, new computers.

WoW came out when I was in graduate school and by that time I had matured...enough to control the habit. I'm thankful it didn't come out when I was in college, that could've been disastrous.

You know, it was actually GSF that got me into WoW. I won the Forum Carol contest with my "We Three Mods" song and used the proceeds to buy WoW. I even gamed with Bob the Bullet for a little while in there. I still think my parody of a leaving thread called "God Rest Ye Weary Gentlemen" is one of the best things I ever wrote in my life. I still have that on one of my computers somewhere.

In Reply To #62

My brother fell victim to it early on, though I think he had just finished uni by that stage. It was before he'd moved out, so I would notice him still being up at 5am. Yep, raiding...

It was seeing that which made me vow never to play the game. I've managed to keep that ever since. That game looks freakin dangerous.

WoW just never interested me. I got addicted to Planetside and Minecraft, but never WoW.

In Reply To #64

Yeah I remember you really loving Planetside and we kept giving you shit about it. Actually wish I tried it but back then the idea of paying a sub fee for a game felt stupid...then it felt alright...now it feels stupid again with the massive rise in quality of f2p games.

Planetside 2 is Free To Play. I can't wait to get a new computer that can play it.

Wasn't that interested in it until I saw the videos from TotalBiscuit on it...now I'm not sure I want to play it or MechWarrior Online more.

Then: Forgot. Probably 56K thing at home.
Now: 30MB Cable

Well, indeed, this all a blast from the past. I'm rather disappointed to say that not that much has changed that much over the past years. I am still doing the same IT project management job (that's "management" in actual responsibility rather than title or payment) that I was then and now find myself approaching 15-years in the company. I think I get an exciting spice rack or something for that. During that time, however, I did spend 6-years overseas (Belgium - it was sun-tastic), got married and am now back in the UK (Kenilworth - we have a genuine castle, or at least what's left of it). Since my GSF days I have thoroughly fallen out with PC gaming but do come back occasionally for things like Diablo 3. These days I'm rocking a Mac after I had a major falling out with Win XP so options are a bit limited. Having consigned the Wii to a place in the garage when we moved and can't be bothered to get it out, and refusing to have anything to do with the 360 and PS3, I'm left with games on the iPad or iPhone, which actually suites me fine. Unfortunately my wife has developed a minor Zuma addiction on the iPad and that means I don't see that particular item much.

Right now we're preparing to renovate the house we bought at the end of last year so most of the available free time is spend looking at stuff like windows and kitchens. I had been getting back into Games Workshop stuff (mostly 40K with a Raven Guard army) but recently came to the conclusion that I don't actually enjoy playing the game that much, plus GW are just too much in love with my wallet. I do need to finish painting my army, if only so that I can officially put that to bed.

That happened to me while I was still working for them.

It actually made concentrating on my actual job a bit easier (but now and then I had to pretend to give a shit about new releases "no, really, you do need to buy it. It's got a bigger gun, or something - look, just talk to one of my staff, they still care")

In Reply To #69

I still very much love the GW gaming universes. It's something that, to a large degree, I grew up with, starting with the old Blood Bowl with the polystyrene pitch, through 40K Rogue Trader, Space Marine and then the normal stuff these days. I'm still amazed by pretty much anything that Jes Goodwin creates. But I do get the feeling that I'm too old for it now (not true but it feels like it) and the pricing for stuff is just bonkers. Having come back to the hobby when I was earning a decent wage I figured that it would be affordable now. HAHAHAHAHA! Silly me.

It wasn't even affordable when I was buying things by weight (£30/kilo) and accidentally breaking things I needed for my army so they had to be removed from sale.

Allegedly.

In Reply To #71

I used to like the Buy 2, Get 1 Free offers on blister packs when they opened new stores. I remember buying a decent sized Eldar army with one of those for about £100. These days that would only buy a couple of units.

My foray into the universe was a short one.

A few friends at school (this would have been 1999) gave me some plastic Dark Eldar infantry they didn't have a use for, and some paints to go with them. They'd done a craptacular job themselves so I spent some of my time on holidays giving them a half-decent purple, black and silver paint job.

I thought things were going well until I walked into a Games Workshop during that same holiday and saw just how expensive it would have been take my squads and make them in to something formidable.

I promptly gave the figurines back when school restarted, and that was that.

In Reply To #73

Ah, I remember painting my first Space Marine force. I'd gone for the Space Wolves chapter that, to me, looked as though they were silver coloured in the old Rogue Trader rule book. So I painted then silver. Then I tried to highlight them using the drybrushing technique, which I clearly didn't understand, either in the concept that very little paint should be on the brush, and that white is not a lighter version of silver. I ended up with what were effectionately referred to as the Birdshit Marines.

In Reply To #74

There was a guy who used to come into one of my stores who had a *massive* Imperial Guard army, which he painted yellow.

Not 'desert' yellow. Not mustard yellow. Just yellow.

And, because Imperial Guard are big armies, and require a lot of painting, he spraypainted them.

With a mid range car body yellow spray. The sort of spray that melts GW plastic and obscures all the detail even when it doesn't. Sometimes he blobbed a bit of metal onto the guns.

This wasn't a kid, it was a bloke in his mid 30s. He had fucking Baneblades (plural) painted like this.