I never thought I’d be able to say I’d been to a LAN party. I thought those things were for ultimate geeks who lived in their basements all day and emerged once in a blue moon, justifying a LAN party as their primary form of social interaction. Fortunately, I thought wrong.

Last night I went to a DotA LAN party. (DotA stands for Defense of the Ancients, a Warcraft III mod.) We had about 20-30 people, each playing on a separate desktop in a computer lab. I was the only girl and I was grateful to be treated like everyone else. I played for nearly seven hours, and I actually had a good time.

There was a quite a mix of DotA veterans and new players. It was a challenge to form equal teams, but after a few games we were better able to sort ourselves out. It was my first time playing a full game (five versus five) and it was an absolute blast. It’s so much fun when there are other players around every corner and you have to do more than just hack and slash your way to the end before your enemy does the same. When human minds are involved, the strategy becomes really important.

Once again, the social aspect was one of my favorite parts of the game. It was great to have someone to blame for killing you or hearing them cry out when you surprised them with a powerful attack. I loved how people would hunt each other for personal grudges (i.e. “You’ve killed me five times and you’re going down!”) and stick together for coordinated attacks.

It’s great to watch what happens when members of a team realize that they are losing badly. You begin to see what type of person they are – whether they abandon all hope or fight valiantly no matter what. Fortunately, I played with a group of optimists in most games that always fought until the bitter end.

I have never been able to play a game for so long and have it hold my interest. Perhaps it was because the games themselves rarely lasted more than an hour – providing a natural break and a change of teams. People would get up and switch computers based on their new teams, keeping the blood flowing. Also, with each new group, a new dynamic emerged. Someone who so coldly hunted you down again and again the last game could become a great asset to your team.

Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of such continuous play was tracking my own improvement. I played more games last night than my combined experience in the past. I watched my number of deaths decline slowly but surely. I played with some great strategists, who inspired me and showed me a variety of techniques I had never known. I was nowhere near a pro, but playing with a full team is a great experience.

By 2 a.m., I was worn out but happy. No matter how many times I lost, I was satisfied having learned so much about DotA and playing with such fun people. I hope I have the opportunity to play again with such a fun group of people.  

I’m used to playing games with friends, but recently I had the opportunity to play video games instead of board games. I got together with some friends of a friend today, and we all played two very different games: Wii Sports and Defense of the Ancients (the Warcraft III mod).

Today was my first experience playing the Wii. While we only had one controller, it was a lot of fun to take turns and comment on each other’s playing. One of the guys was trying to coach my Wii tennis technique (i.e. “Watch your wrist”). During Wii boxing, cell phone movies were taken of the person playing (but not of the game). It was great fun watching ourselves and the ridiculous amount of effort we put into our Wii-mote punches. It’s easy to lose sight of your body when focusing on a game that requires motion control. Just like people in my class moving the PS3 controller, I wiggled and ducked around like there was an invisible bee trying to sting me.

I started to really fall in love with the Wii and its happy music. I love the fact that the sensor responds to the Wii-mote like a mouse on many of the menu screens. The design is sleek yet practical. I am going to get a Wii soon and now I’m way more excited than before. It’s hard to describe how fun it is – you have to play it for yourself.

After playing the Wii for a while, we started playing Defense of the Ancients (DotA). My friend is in love with that game, and we all needed to practice for a DotA LAN party taking place this Friday. We had three labtops and a desktop, so the player with the desktop was at a disadvantage (as you could see where his player was at a quick glance). We promised not to look, but our own characters kept us busy enough that it was hardly necessary.

Playing DotA with more people was definitely fun. Early on, I could see that one of the guys was Bartle’s killer player type because he loved to stalk characters and sneak up on people when they least expected it. Another guy had a great knowledge of items; he always knew what to get for each character at every stage of the game. As a new player to DotA, I had primarily been focused on fighting and found their player preferences to be inspiring. I never realized there was so much strategy involved in what had seemed like a fairly straightforward game.

While I didn’t win, I still enjoyed playing because it was an incredibly social experience. I loved having your friends and enemies in the same room and being able to trash-talk or strategize. There is nothing quite like hearing your enemy scream out of shock when you kill them. I hope I can experience that someday as I become a better DotA player.  

Due to a much-needed break in my workload this weekend, I was able to play a lot of games. After DotA, I played another Warcraft III mod, Tower Defense. I also spent six or eight hours playing Okami.

Tower Defense is a game where you build towers to shoot down wave after wave of monsters. These monsters progress in strength, grow in numbers, and therefore become increasingly more difficult to defeat. When you begin the game, you are given virtually no help – no tutorial, no time to read the descriptions, and little warning before the first wave arrives. You can only let 100 monsters through the gate at the end, which only seems like a good number until one monster from the second or third wave counts for more than one monster. As the game gets harder, you can let fewer monsters through.

Due to the difficult nature of the Tower Defense from the speed, strength, and sheer number of monsters, I had little patience for it. The sounds effects, such as a sing-song “Job’s Done” in the voice of a pea-brained construction worker, get increasingly annoying due to the frenzied pace at which you have to execute such commands. You are also given very few resources in the beginning and receive more mostly by surviving waves, so it becomes very hard to get catch up if you ever fall behind.

I simply hate feeling rushed and played this game only a handful of times before giving up. I found the tasks repetitive and frenzied, making for a game that quickly became frustrating and only seemed like something you’d play for hours just to say you had beaten a really hard game. I am not that type of player, which may explain why I happily moved on to Okami later that day.

I have already raved about the first hour of Okami and how engaging it was for me. I purchased the strategy guide so I wouldn’t miss out on important points or get lost. Without the stress of wasting time running on a wild goose chase for an item or task, I was able to relax into the game. The music is often very relaxing, and the natural environments provide a serene isolation. Even if you are accompanied by your tiny friend Issun, he provides no annoying commentary, just a helping hand to push the story and you, as the player, in the right direction. I never found myself feeling alone. I just felt peaceful, even in the fights. I often choose to fight with paintbrush strokes, which is a nice break from the button-mashing common in most games. Instead, you become the artist, unleashing the most powerful attacks through artistry. I have always found art to be relaxing, and maybe that is another reason why I find Okami to be a nice break from my life.

As much as I enjoy Okami, I never played for more than two or three hours at a time. I wondered if it was just me or the nature of the game. While I knew that Tower Defense would not entertain me for even one session of Okami, I grew tired of Okami for one of the biggest reasons why I tired of Tower Defense: repetition. Tower Defense seemed to provide little in the way of variation for gameplay throughout all the waves, but even Okami can feel trivial after a few hours. Running around to get something as trivial as a fishing pole for someone can take a while, and, even if you can accomplish some greater goal in the process, it can be tiring. I recently fell off a cliff and had to take the long way back up, drawing vines over and over. I also tend to get tired of drawing lily pads in the water so the wolf doesn’t drown (why she can’t breathe while doggie paddling is beyond me). Even so, I am sad to leave the world of Okami and find it addictive again after a short break. Perhaps I just find it easier to break up the monotony of gameplay with the monotony of my real life. I feel a little more grounded, and, if anything, it keeps the console from overheating.  

One of my good friends has been pestering me to learn how to play the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients for a long time now. As a fellow RPG fan, he doesn’t care much for the regular Warcraft III RTS game – now he only play the mods. This weekend, I had some free time so I could finally sit down and learn Defense of the Ancients.

I own a Mac and only recently acquired a wireless mouse with a right-click button. I had previously been avoiding playing Warcraft III because of this physical barrier. However, there was also a mental barrier in that I have never really been attracted to war games or anything involving commanding units (unless you count Battleship). I had barely played the tutorial for Warcraft III when I finally decided to play the mods, hoping that they would have a greater appeal for me.

Defense of the Ancients (aka DotA) turned out to be more fun than I expected. In the beginning, you get to command one hero who can help turn the tides of an otherwise equal battlefield. While each of the games lasted around half an hour, I found that I could gain some sort of attachment to this hero, who essentially became my main focus. I played different heroes each time, and each had their own set of abilities and vocal responses. Some characters were more annoying than others, such as a perky dryad with a voice reminiscent of a ditzy ninth-grader. My friend played a group of goblins that I dubbed the “Band of Muppets” after their silly voices and weak attacks.

There is little customization in the characters, but I found myself going for only female characters. Like an avatar, I wanted to create a character that represented an idealized version of myself. I really enjoyed playing the beautiful, powerful women. I tried to go against my typical hack-and-slash combat mode to play the pretty, agile mages. These characters required some adjustments to my battle tactics, so I tried to learn how to attack from a distance and retreat at the first sign of a weakening defense. After struggling with this new technique for a couple games, I tried to switch to a powerful, combat-based Dragon Warrior. Unfortunately, I died faster than before.

I quickly discovered that I have a long way to go before I can really contribute to a team effort in DotA. I played DotA only against my friend or the computer. I played against my friend once (only after getting the hang of it by playing a few games cooperatively on easy mode against the computer). However, he happened to be very good at killing me – he killed me about seven times for the one kill I managed to get on him, and only by a happy accident. I am a sore loser from my past when I often lost board games to my older, wiser sister. I didn’t want to ruin my fragile self-esteem at the beginner stage so I insisted that he help me win by mentoring me instead of defeating me and leaving me out of the game. I wanted to be able to enjoy the game in the future.

My friend mentioned how DotA is basically an RTS modified to be more like an RPG. As he and I are both big RPG fans, it would make a lot of sense that I feel more attachment to a single hero that I control in this mod as opposed to a band of warriors in the normal game. With a name and a story, these characters jump out. Their vocal responses and special abilities are customized to where you would want to put different types of heroes on opposing teams. It could be a lot of fun to play in a group, where many different people choose characters that fit their player types and personalities. I hope to be able to play with a real team in the future, so maybe their personalities can shine through the heroes they command.