Posts Tagged ‘video games’
Time for a nerd milestone! Back in November 2005 my friend Keenan and I sat outside the local Best Buy all night long so that we could each get a then-brand new Xbox 360 on launch day. With a little time share help from my parents, we made it through the night and eventually stumbled home the next morning with our shiny new game systems. I can’t remember which games Keenan picked up, but my first batch was Perfect Dark Zero, Amped 3, and Condemned: Criminal Origins.
The end of each year is a bonanza time for video gamers. The biggest and best games of the year tend to release in the final quarter, just in time to hit stores for Christmas, and older games released prior to that quarter usually see some pretty steep price cuts as holiday promotions. These price cuts usually happen on Black Friday, again on Cyber Monday, and then once more during the final week of the year, but in 2011 the bargain gaming deals ran all the way from Black Friday through the first day of 2012.
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It’s been a pretty harrowing few days. You can read my original account of what started the craziness in full detail in my previous post, but I’ll recap it here for those just joining us. Someone stole my Xbox Live account on Saturday and charged up a bunch of Microsoft Points on my credit card, which they then used to buy downloadable content for their FIFA 12 soccer game. When I reported the theft to Microsoft, I was told that it would take them 25-30 days to investigate the matter, meaning that I’d be without access to my Xbox and without my stolen $125 during that time. This is the busiest video game release season of the year, so being out of gaming for most of November and December was most definitely not a cool prospect.
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Friday was Celeste’s birthday, and we had a great weekend with my parents, who took us out to dinner that night and with Celeste’s parents, who took us out to dinner last night and stayed at our house until today. After all the celebrating was done and everyone had gone home, I decided to hop on the Xbox for a little while. I fired it up and tried to log into my account, only to have it tell me that my account was invalid and needed to be recovered to my console. This has happened once before, due to what I had assumed was a technical glitch. I selected to recover the account and entered my username and password… and they came back as invalid. Confused, I went to the computer and tried to log into Xbox.com. Same thing… invalid password for my account.
This story has been all over gaming websites the past day or two, and it still blows my mind. Anybody who has played World of Warcraft or pretty much any other massively multiplayer game knows the routine for these games. You make a character and then kill a bunch of stuff to gain experience points. Those experience points eventually raise your character up to new levels, at which point you learn new and more awesome abilities to enhance your smitingness. Lather, rinse, repeat until you reach the maximum attainable level and, presumably, are a virtual badass in fantasyland. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but one player turned it all on its head this week when she hit the level cap without ever killing a single critter, monster, or bandit.
