…Or wouldn’t reinstall after I’ve formated my pc.

There are probably more games that I would reinstall after a full cleaning job, but these games are special. You’ll think I’m nuts for picking these games. And I know there’s a ton of you out there that wouldn’t pick these games if you could only pick two to have, always.

Ok. Are you ready? First game:

Diablo II: Lord of destruction

It’s one of the best action RPGs of the century. I love that game. I’ve played it so much that my grades went down. I met several great people via Diablo (also some not so great people, but yeah). This is pure nostalgia. I won’t play this all the time, just once in a half year or something.

It was the first game that I played online. I believe I was twelve years old and I was a girl on the internet. You know what happened. The same things that happen now, only then I didn’t knew how to handle it. Hell, I didn’t even know how to handle boys in general. I joined a Dutch clan, Voices of Chaos. They helped me get to max level, kill all the bosses and provided me with some awesome gear.

I found a Buriza (Buriza-do Kyanon) in a chest in Act 3 on Normal. Of course it wasn’t the greatest of Burizas, but it was good enough for my first bowazon. I’ve played my burizon so much. I really wish I still had her. I used her often to boost other people. Baal-runs were one of the things that I often did on my own. Just like Meph-runs (didn’t give me good loot often), or Diablo-runs (I just liked to kill the dog). I could keep going all night.

It was the first game that introduced me to lan parties. I found a bunch of nerds at my school who also played and we played together. We didn’t use voice chat, since I didn’t want to use a mic when my parents were reading the paper behind me. It was still a lot of fun. Playing together. Talking over chat. I really enjoyed playing together with friends.

What I didn’t like was people (often newbies) that didn’t listen to my advice. When I say, stay behind me, in a Baal-run I expect you to stay behind me. Don’t run in like an idiot, get killed, and then blame me for not saving your ass. That’s what pushed me away from playing with people I didn’t know.

Back then I still had to share the pc with my brother. The pc was in the kitchen and we both had to negotiate time. That also made the time you had more valuable. I ran like a crazy person to get what I wanted. It was often that as soon as I had my time on the pc that I only hunted for loot. No, this wasn’t good. The policy my parents gave me was. I learned to negotiate, I learned how to share, I learned to value something of limited resource. My sister, six years younger, didn’t have to share the pc with anyone besides my parents. My brother and I already pcs in our rooms when she was old enough to care enough about the pc. She didn’t learn these things.

Diablo II will always be my number one nostalgia game. My comfort game. The game I know by heart.

Game number two. This one will raise some hairs, I’m sure. Don’t judge until you’ve read my arguments about why I wouldn’t want to delete this game. I’m sure you’ll find you have the same reasons for not wanting to uninstall a game you like. Think about that. Not the game I picked. Read it. See my side of the story. Not just what the internet tells you.

League of Legends

Yes. There it is. It’s no secret that I play this game. It’s also not a secret that I don’t play it often. I won’t hide the fact that I, definitely, aren’t very good at this game. So why is it a game that I wouldn’t delete?

I started playing League of Legends a few years after it came it out. I think Irelia was one of the newest champions. Yes, that long ago. Sivir was the first champion I bought. She fitted with my playstyle in every way. I played mostly ranged classes in other games and my internet connection was fairly unreliable so, ranged was good. Melee champions would get me killed if I was standing in a team fight and lagged out. It didn’t help me, it didn’t help my team, it annoyed the hell out of me.

I leveled my way up to thirty by playing against AI. Most people immediately jumped into normal games as soon as possible. I was still suffering from the annoyance that people didn’t cooperated with me. Vs AI was easy enough to win, even when there was no team play at all. As Sivir I was the AD Carry and was supposed to do the most damage. Sivir is a great pusher. Back then the meta was that the AD carry was alone on top. She could far easily and if you had enough range and/or skill, it was easy to win of the bot. These bots only laned, no roaming. You were sure there wasn’t going to be a gank, ever.

So when my friends invited me to play normals with them, I felt weak. I knew my champion and I knew the items. But people play very differently from bots. One of my friends said that people are more predictable than bots. Mostly because they follow a meta, they follow the play of someone else. Anticipation is one of the skills that you need for League of Legends, and that was something I severely lacked.

I didn’t like normals as AD Carry. There was too much responsibility on my shoulders and I thought I was one of the weakest people on the team. So I switched roles to support, with Sona as main. She was perfect. Face roll Sona. She did damage, she healed, she had utility. What’s not to like about her. I was still mic-less, while the others were on TeamSpeak. I was the silent one. Just like Sona.

Sona was a reflection of me, while Sivir was the image of who I wanted to be. Bad ass, confident, deadly and beautiful. These two are still the characters that I can relate to the best. In most rpgs you get to pick your own character. You can customize them and your choices will affect their development. League of Legends isn’t an RPG, but its characters were more relatable for me than most of the characters I created in RPGs.

When I started to play Sona for my team, I became known as a deadly Sona. I wasn’t the one who let the low HP enemy escape. I was the Sona who sought out the kills. I built ability power next to the normal utility items for support. Once I played AD Sona and kicked more ass than the AD Carry. We had fun. That’s the kind of thing you can do in Normals, not in ranked.

I refused to play ranked. I don’t have a competitive bone in my body. I’m the one that avoids conflict rather than look for it. I didn’t care much if we won or lost. I still don’t. I was playing for fun. What’s the most fun game mode in LoL? ARAM. All random, all mid. You have no idea what you’re going to play. You just have to make the best of it. To this date, it’s still the only game mode that I play, especially when I’m playing solo. It’s quick, it’s fun, it’s unpredictable. It’s still capable of raising my adrenaline level.

Over the years the game has changed a lot. Not only does it have a lot more champions, items changed, the map changed, the meta changed. There was something else that changed as well. Something that you don’t see in-game. Not immediately at least. The universe of the game changed. Riot Games has spend a lot of time, money and manpower in creating a believable universe. This includes lore stories, short animation videos, subdomains for certain events, music videos, mobile games, merchandise.

The foundation for this universe is getting stronger every month with new releases of non-game content. I applaud Riot Games for this. Thank you so much for making League of Legends so much more than a battle arena. I’m writing this blog while listening to the songs they have created. The Warsongs, Pentakill’s album and the first volume of League of Legends music. I’ve watched the documentary Frequency a few times and I often sing along with them.

Once I dreamed about a game. It had five points, all over the map, with one in the middle. There was a windmill, and I was chasing my enemies with Tristana through the bushes. Now, this wasn’t not the map of Summoner’s Rift. I had to kill the enemy team and try to capture the points. Purple auras lit up around the giant circles in the ground. Jarvan then jumped me and killed me. This was something I dreamed before the game mode of Dominion was announced, which was the next day. Is it a sign? Probably not. But it’s awesome. I was so invested with League of Legends that I regularly dreamed about it.

The reasons why I can’t delete the game is this. I can relate to the character in deeper way than I can with other characters. Why? I can’t really say. It’s a gut feeling. I have a connection with this game that I can’t explain. It’s in my mind and I can’t forget it. It’s a game that I love and which doesn’t betray me. I know what I can expect when I play LoL. I love the universe of League of Legends. I love how Riot Games is expanding it. I want to support them. I’m loyal to them. They may not know me and that’s ok. I know my support will reach them (monetary or otherwise).

Ok, so hate me now. I won’t burn down a game based on its community. Of course there are moments when I curse my teammates for playing a sucky game. Then again, I don’t always play the best games myself. Especially when I haven’t been playing for awhile. There will always be people on the internet who aren’t nice, who are mean, who are angry, who blame others for their mistakes, who blame you for the mistakes you make, even when you make up for it later. Those people will always be there. Even in real life. I just choose not to let them get to me. They don’t define the game which I’m playing. I choose to see the positive side.