Wednesday, August 31, 2005

what i've been up to today

Got up. Fed the dog. Played Guild Wars. Had brunch with Patrick. Played fetch with Cocoa. Played Guild Wars. Went to WalMart. Brought a carload of stuff to the apartment. Played Guild Wars. Notice a recurring theme here?

Joined up with some reasonably high-level players earlier who confessed to be "semi-addicted to Guild Wars -- but I can quit anytime I want".

Note to prospective MMORPG participants (that's massively multiplayer online role-playing game for you noobz): Guild Wars is an intriguing intro, for which you pay a one-time fee of $50, the cost of the game. World of Warcraft is the lifestealing REAL DEAL. It'll also set you back $13 a month.

Said teammates mentioned they were "scared of WoW" (World of Warcraft), citing recent news about the death of a South Korean game who spent 50 hours playing Starcraft nonstop:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4137782.stm

I also found this link on the death of a child of gamer parents. http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200506/200506140037.html

South Korean is serious about gaming. This country hosted the World Cyber Games from 2001 to 2003 and almost a third of its population is registered for online gaming. In most online games, South Korea can often be seen competing with the US for top honors. Professional gamers can make up to $100k in sponsorship deals.

I want to rant more on what people seem to think the above news says about gamers and games in general. But I think I need to chew on this for a while.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i had an argument with my south korean friend (he's an int'l student) about this whole exchange rate thing. even with a 1100 won = $1 exchange rate, s. korea's economy is one of the top 10 economically important countries in the world. also, the purchasing power of a dollar in s.k. is the same as here in the u.s.

wow. and i thought that was all useless garble.

damn him for being right! blaaaahhh

h

faerah said...

i never even bothered to check. sht. Someone once told me the Philippine peso and South Korean Won were the same. I guess they just meant in terms of buying power at the time.

Current exchange rates:
$1 US = 1036 KRW = P 55.97

When I was in college, we would exchange Mommy's checks at P25 to the dollar. At this rate, the peso will be exchanging at the SK won's current rate in another 30 years.