the new relevence of .hack for me..

[mirabem]

I had a weird nerd-girl epiphany the other day and I wanted to share it. it's kind of convoluted thinking but I swear it'll make sense. maybe...

So unlike alot of people I never really played any of the .hack//sign series. I read all kinds of rave reviews and most of my friends were really into it, but for whatever reason I just never really picked up on it. The same applies to the anime. The first series is rather chatty and character driven, and I always would catch it midway through a re-run of the series on cartoon network. I'd watch it and scratch my head. The same goes for its 2nd incarnation .hack//twilight, which was just plain annoying. I couldn't even stomach it when it was the only thing on at 5am.
I just didn't get it, I guess.

I mean, who wants to watch a show ABOUT people playing an MMO? that was my rationale at the time. flash forward 2 few years.

I recently came over to FFXI from World of Warcraft, which I'd devoted the better part of the last 2 years of my gaming life to. Many people are of the opinion that WoW "sucks", having never played it themselves. To be frank, I think in terms of actual gameplay and game mechanics, WoW has FFXI beat hands down. I come from a game where a well geared 'endgame' warrior can exceed 8000 Hp and destroy 10 players singlehandedly with minimal effort. I come from a game where there are servers that are dedicated to PvP, where druids can shapeshift from bears to sealions, and where an undead player, upon killing you, can eat your corpse. How thrilling.

But the real appeal for me was I made so many great friends through that game, many of whom became some of my closest RL friends because of it. Like we all shared some kind of bond because we did all this crazy stuff together online.

Many of those friends spoke about having played FFXI and stopped for whatever reason, but when reminiscing about their expieriences online, they'd get a far off look in their eyes and a little smile at the corner of their mouths. That's what piqued my curiosity. And as we all know, curiosity killed the cat...

I came to Vana'diel on a whim. WoW had gotten increadibly tedious, and I needed a break. Alot of the glamour and fun i felt when i first started playing was gone, the game felt like a job gone sour, a job that I was looking for an excuse to quit. I came as a tourist, and ended up as a resident. When I logged in for the first time, I felt like a stranger in a foreign country where i barely spoke the language. Everything was new, but it felt very 'lived in' at the same time.

I'm still trying to get over the novelty of being a newbie again.

The other night I was perusing downloads on a site I subscribe to, and I saw '.hack//roots' listed on their menu. I had this vague reccolection in my head where I got an images and my mind said "boring! forget it". but for whatever reason I clicked the download link. And really, I don't know what it was, but watching it? It suddenly -spoke- to me. I don't know if it was the years spent playing WoW, or just starting up in FFXI, but I suddenly kind of 'Got' it.

I never played everquest or any of the other MMO's. I briefly dabbled with city of heroes, but mostly I was strictly RTS and console games. In fact I used to make fun of my friends who got hooked on EQ. And now here I am, some years down the line, doing roughly the same thing. If they saw me now would they be laughing, or welcoming me with open arms?

.hack//roots, or really, the .hack series, is the equivelent of an MMO player's soap opera. It's "days of our lives" for MMO players. It talks about thinks like PKing and the problem of RMT's, RL issues affecting gameplay, social issues, etc. It adresses that whole "you never know who's behind the keyboard" kind of thing alot too. 2 or 3 years ago I just didn't grasp this at all. it was so totally foreign to me. and now all of a sudden, I realize that 'yeahh, I'm the nerd that this is directed towards'.

I love it. I'm totally addicted to it. It's a show aimed at people like you and I, male or female, that have spent way too much time planted in front of a monitor, with a mouse or gamepad in there hands, exploring a virtual world that occasionally feels more like home than the real thing.

Part of me, the really cynical part, wants to say "sooo.. you've just realized how big of a nerd you really are?" while the other half of me is standing triumphantly and saying "Yes, I am that nerd, and I I love it!!".

-mira

[Okuza]

Watch the movie "Avalon" sometime. ^~

[mirabem]

Watch the movie "Avalon" sometime. ^~

Oh god yes, that movie is fantastic. I'm a huge Mamoru Oshi fan.

[Sugami]

.Hack//sign is good until the end then you're left thing "...WTF?!" It just suddenly ends and seems to miss out a big chunk of story and that's because it did. They assume you've played the games which apparently fill in the gap.

Luminosity(sp?) is if I remember correctly a 3 part OAV set in the real world as opposed to the game, group of people investigate what's happening to people when they play the game. This is so bad... I'm not sure but there might be more games about this one that maybe make it make me sense but it really does suck.

Twilight is the one with the childish/chibi characters right? It's more "upbeat" than the first two (obviously from the art-style) and pretty much follows the same pattern as the first one; things happen then whoops where's the ending? Pretty sure there's at least 2 games for this series too.

And nother there's Roots, I didn't bother downloading this as the last 3 really weren't all that good on the whole.

As for the issues in the anime, I don't remember any RMT things and the PKing was a result of the bug/virus/f**k up or something... I forget, like I said the series were ruined by lack of ending

[Kintrra]

There was PK'ing. Sora the annoying Twinblade PK'ed multiple people on several occasions.

[Sadira]

.Hack//sign is good until the end then you're left thing "...WTF?!" It just suddenly ends and seems to miss out a big chunk of story and that's because it did. They assume you've played the games which apparently fill in the gap.

...

As for the issues in the anime, I don't remember any RMT things and the PKing was a result of the bug/virus/f**k up or something... I forget, like I said the series were ruined by lack of ending

hack//Sign came first and finishes the way it does because the major points of the story continue on in the first 4 games Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine and the Liminality OAV was 4 parts with one part coming with each game. Their stories coincided. The Twilight manga/anime came after the games+OAV and seves mainly as an extra side story ending but keeps the main story open. AI Buster was the 2 book novel that takes place before and during .hack//Sign and really fills in a lot of holes that Sign had.

I haven't been following the G.U. games, but I think they're supposed to start releasing in NA in October. Roots is a prequel to G.U and takes place after Twilight. And there's other parts of .hack, like .hack//Zero, another novel, follows what happened to Sora after the games (the twin blade player killer in Sign) but its incomplete. .hack//Another Birth is a novel of the first 4 games told from BlackRose's point of view.

There's also .hack//fragment, an MMO in Japan, but Bandai was saying they don't plan to release in NA at all.

.hack was conceived from the beginning as a multimedia franchize. It was completely intended to go from anime, games, manga, novels, and combine the story as a whole to get the big picutre. You can't just do part of .hack and expect completeness.

[Sugami]

Making you buy games for the anime to make sense is stupid, not everyone has crappy PS2s nor is the game released everywhere

[Alya Mizar (Tsybil)]

Making you buy games for the anime to make sense is stupid, not everyone has crappy PS2s nor is the game released everywhere

It isn't stupid, its marketing.

[Gabryel]

Making you buy games for the anime to make sense is stupid, not everyone has crappy PS2s nor is the game released everywhere

It isn't stupid, its marketing.

{Points at Nintendo} - They pretty much pioneered multiverse marketing. Anyone remember the huge GameBoy series line? haha And don't even get me started with Pokemon! {gags}

[Kailea]

Making you buy games for the anime to make sense is stupid, not everyone has crappy PS2s nor is the game released everywhere

It isn't stupid, its marketing.

{Points at Nintendo} - They pretty much pioneered multiverse marketing. Anyone remember the huge GameBoy series line? haha And don't even get me started with Pokemon! {gags}

if you look past all the kid stuff, Pokemon....at least the gameboy ones are really good RPGs and eevn though I am 23, I will buy the DS one when it comes out and the one on Wii as well :p

[Sugami]

It's stupid marketing, good marketing would be to make it multiplatform

Pokémon games are really quite fun and addictive and don't need the GBA one to play Coliseum (my pokémon would whoop my friend's )

[mirabem]

It's stupid marketing, good marketing would be to make it multiplatform

Pokémon games are really quite fun and addictive and don't need the GBA one to play Coliseum (my pokémon would whoop my friend's )

actually my rambling, poorly thought out wall of text was mostly in reference to .hack//roots.

as the new story goes, CC corp, the guys who built 'the world', had a catastrophic fire in their computer division, resulting in a loss of almost all the data/servers that kept the world online. The managed to salvage portions of the world, and rebuilt it by splicing together bits from a new game they'd had in developement, thus making the world V2.0. But the world is basically overun with all kinds of stuff that used to be kind of rare, like massive amounts of PKing/griefing new players, RMT's moving around unchecked, etc. It's supposed to take place a year before the new .hack game that's coming out, and explains alot of backstory leading up to the game.

On the subject of anime/game thing, take into account that the .hack series was primarily a japanese pheonomena prior to coming to the US, and that japanese game nerds > american game nerds. more than likely they have all the games, watched all the shows, cosplayed at comiket, and have a series of inyl figures collecting dust in top of their tv. we're lucky we even got to see the first anime in the US. Over here,, you might play one or of the games, all 4 if you're really into it, and that'd be about it. big difference in merchandising strategies/cultural views, etc.

rabble rabble

on a side note, my friend kelly and her fiance both play pokemon together. They're both in their late 20's. Who says it's for kids

[Bitneko]

Hmm... I'd didn't know there was more than 2 kinds of .hack... I only knew of dusk and sign.

[Tinacat]

.Hack//Gift FOR THE WIN!!!!!!!

[xaresity]

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[xaresity]

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