When I was a lad of 12, sitting in my room with a PS2 and a Xbox... I roam around the cold dark empty multiplayer maps... dreaming... planning... waiting for the glorious day to come when we would get a better connection than Dial-Up and actually be able to play Halo 2 and the Star Wars Battlefront Dualogy and maybe even possibly my beloved Ratchet & Clank: Up You Arsenal ONLINE

You see kids, in a world where youtube is something that is only obtainable from a public library's computer bank every week or so, something like Online Gaming becomes a sort of Shang Gri La, a holy land whereth rainbows and unicorns frolic and dance. I had no intentions of having it but I could still dream.

I tell you this to give you the kind of perspective I have towards online gaming, I am grateful as hell to have it and I try to play the hell out of it at every single moment. And there is no fun to be had alone. Multiplayer gaming used to mean getting four friends gathered around to play Halo 1 co-op or something. You knew each person in real life

Today I know and am good friends with:

A 15 year old scottish guy with a better grasp of quick-scoping than me
A 16 year old from MI that can read C++ programing but types like a four year old and refuses to read my blogs because they are to long (and about five of his real-life friends that also frequent Xbox Live)
Three roommates from canada, I added them just from the fact that when I said I was from Kentucky they all acted out the Family Guy KFC scene verbatum
A Austrialian trophy whore who is like 10 levels above me... damn him

The amazing thing about the PSN and XBL is that if these people had met in real life they would probably not care or avoid each other, but with something like Halo or CoD4 as a icebreaker they formed bonds and grew to know each other. I'm not saying there are any Halo 3 weddings in the planning or anything but when everyone gets on at about the same time most days that is pretty fun

I am a writer, you could probably guess this from the fact that I WRITE BLOGS.. dur... but I actually want to be a writer in the real sense of the word, and as such I love having a good story to tell. Gaming is FULL of these, every random nade that pays off, every errant molotov in L4D, every quick-stab in TF2, is a story waiting to happen. Granted the world of storytelling in gaming is full of lies and exaggerations but the core story remains the same

Well today I got a new story.

It begins...

First off I gotta say, unless I am pissed off already I try not to be a ass or bully anyone online except under certain conditions, which change from game to game

In Halo 3, I will blow my top if:

There is a kid who is too young to play the game and he's cussing like its something special

You have a clan tag (especially MLG or KSI) In your gamertag and you act high-and-mighty


Most importantly of all:

YOU BOUGHT YOUR LEVEL 50 ACCOUNT

For those not into the Halo culture, some more experinced players create one-month accounts on their 360, play Team Doubles with a friend and get up to level 50 in two days, making that account a general. Then they sell the account for MS Points or XBL subscription cards, or maybe even real money

Me and a bunch of friends were playing some Social Skirmish (CTF and whatnot) in Halo today, and we were matched against a general. Instantly a friend of mine who we consider a old-timer for being there when Halo 2 went online (he turns 16 next week...) called out the magic words

"That 50 sucks more than usual" (He's predjudiced against higher ranks and says 99% of higher ranked people in halo suck, sad thing is most of the time he's right when he calls a easy win for our team)

I looked at his account and he had just barely enough exp to have ranked up and not that many games played to have played anything except one or two playlists. His bio was just a generic name and his gamertag included Yu Gi Oh

I'm not joking, except some random numbers and letters on each side, his gamertag was Yu Gi Oh...

One of my friends started laughing as the game loaded and told us that he had taken the time to type a message to the guy saying "I just stole all your cards, homo"

In unison everyone in the party sent him messages along those lines. I was the last to send one, mine said the following:

All your cards are belong to us, we have already sold them on ebay for 10 cents

Then, to top it off, we had almost won the match when someone said " Aww, look, Yu Gi Oh left the game"

There are times where some people have a switch turn in their heads and they say the exact right thing at the exact right time. Snipe4, a good friend of mine, put on a nerdy voice and said "Bet he went to go look for his cards..."

We were crying after that, it was seriously one of the funniest games of Halo 3 I have ever played


Oh... and.... we won 3 to 0 as well, all the sweeter

You may think our actions were harsh and uncalled for, especially about the name, but when you buy a account with a higher rank than you will most likely achieve by honest standards. You have no right to whine when people that ascend the ranks legit give you hell


So that's just one of my tales of online pwnage and good friends, maybe I'll tell some more down the road, but being a reviewer I actually need to write a REVIEW every now and then

Ninja Out