Wednesday 14 January 2004

Pic of the day: Male and female he created them ... (Edited screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot.)

Split in two

I consider myself a reasonably well integrated soul. I am pretty much the same person wherever you meet me. Well, a bit different when I am alone, I guess, but that's human nature. But you won't find me to be a completely different person at work from at home, or on vacation. Many people change when they go abroad ... well, many Norwegians do at least. Generally they act more barbarous when they're away from home. Perhaps this can explain the bad reputation of the Vikings...

Be that as it may, I am kinda surprised to see the development as I play two paladins at the same time in Dark Age of Camelot. I have heard that identical twins already as infants often develop complementary personalities: One assertive and one meek, for instance. I have never thought about this before, but how about the strange fact that sometimes one identical twin is gay and the other is straight? That kinda shoots down the idea that people are "born to be gay", I guess. But anyway: From being identical, they diversify. In fact, I have read that studies of identical twins raised apart show them to be more similar than twins raised together! As if the presence of another of you makes you instinctively strive to be different.

Now my two paladins are not identical twins (although I toyed with the idea). One is strong, slow, a bit clumsy, and male. The other is weak, fast, agile and female. So already from the outset I made them complementary. (Meaning not that they give compliments, but that they make one another more complete.)

Originally I meant for the nimble one to be simply a "bot", a non player character that trail along and assist the main character. (For a paladin, that would mean guarding and running a heal chant.) But early in their career, characters are not very efficient as bots. So I ended up using both to fight, and have both guarding each other. And so, day by day, they develop their unique personalities. In theory, I think lies and deceit are bad. But in practice, I find myself passing myself off as two people at the same time. Indeed, from the way I play, people assume this without asking, even though one character has "bot" in her name.

You know it has come far when you are duoing with yourself alone, and yourself levels up, and you say "gratz!" To my excuse, the gratz reflex is pretty ingrained in MMORPG players. But even so, I guess it does look a bit psychiatric...

In all fairness, the bot does sometimes claim to be a bot. But I guess people must be excused to not take it literally, since she is only slightly less active than the main character. Commenting on his statements probably doesn't help either.

I wonder what would happen if I got a faster machine and a third account ...