A Blog About Roses?

I began playing massively multi-player role playing games (MMORPG) back in 2005 when I was convinced to give a game called World of Warcraft a try.  I played for eight or nine months, reaching the level cap in old Vanilla WoW and then quit, vowing to stop playing this type of time wasting game.  That vow lasted all of one month as I got the urge to play another game, EverQuest 2, back in June of 2006 and I have played MMOs ever since.

Recently I decided to try to put the RP back into MMORPG in the way I play this genre of games.  I think my current game, Eve Online, lends itself quite well to role playing and I started to explore the RP possibilities.  One of the changes to my play style is to look at my characters as more than a collection of pixels whose abilities and gear I need to min/max.  I need to give my characters a biography that I can look back on to decide how to play them within the game.  In other words, I need something akin to the old character sheets from the paper and pencil Dungeon & Dragons game I played so many years ago.  Something that not only records my characters vital statistics but their significant actions as well.

Lives of Roses: An MMO Journey is my tool to help bring my characters alive.  In addition to chronicling their actions and motivations in the game, I'll also post information information my characters find useful.  In Eve, the effective use of technology is part of a capsuleer's life in New Eden, so having a site that stores information shouldn't even really break my immersion in the game.

So now to answer the question, "Why call the blog 'Lives of Roses'?"  Because for the last four years the names of the main characters I play all have the name "Rose" in them.  So the blog will follow the paths of two pod pilots, Rosewalker and Wandering Rose, through the single-shard sandbox world that CCP provides their players.  And if I ever decide that SOE has turned around the mess Brenlo presided over in EverQuest 2, this blog will also follow the wood-elf ranger Rosemarie through the world of Norrath.  But that is an awfully big if.  And, who knows.  With the Cataclysm approaching, I might even return to WoW for old times sake.  With a character whose name contains the word rose, of course.

I should add one last item to this introduction, if only to serve as a reminder to myself about how I am approaching this blog.  In format, Lives of Roses is a personal blog.  The only difference is that instead of focusing on my real life, I am writing about my MMORPG life.  As such, the posting schedule on the blog will be erratic as my real life continues its rather hectic pace.  Erratic posting schedules don't lead to high traffic counts.  But the purpose of this blog isn't to make myself popular or to display big numbers.  No.  This time I'm writing to make myself a better role player and hopefully a more well-rounded player as well.