On-line Fighting is becoming a lost art form. Textual Combat, or Internet Chat Fighting (Forum Fighting) was once so popular, it branched out and became something different from its more simple roleplaying counterpart. Textual Combat is not a genre, but a generation which started as Play-By-Email in 1986 and is just now today facing a dark period in roleplaying history. It seems even text-based RPG's are becoming somewhat of a fleeting memory, if you compare today's on-line RPG universe to the same exact universe, ten years ago. Back in 1998, if you were a roleplayer or an on-line fighter (there wasn't much difference back then), you would have seen many RPG communities all over the world wide web. I remember frequenting back and forth between at least 10 to 20 different RPG communities in 1998, all of which were unique but similar in their own ways. Every single RPG community I visited, also had their own chats and forums, their own game masters (GM's) or administrators, moderators, roleplaying fans, and diehard on-line fighters who practiced their own set of rules. Some of those RPG communities even had 3 to 5 chats on one server, and many subforums connected to their main sites. Add that up, and in 1998 that would mean I frequented over one hundred RPG chats and forums. That's a lot when you think about it, compared to how many RPG chats and forums you see nowadays. Also, back in 1998 it was not uncommon for whole groups of people to be roleplaying in the RPG chats all at once. On a good day there would be over 50 roleplayers, or on-line fighters in one single chat. On a slow day, there were still at least 10 to 25 roleplayers per chat. Add that up, and in 1998 that would mean I met over 5,000 roleplayers and on-line fighters just in chat. 5,000 people is a lot of people to be roleplaying ten years ago. Imagine trying to remember all their names. But nowadays, you only see a fraction of that number. Internet Roleplay is becoming a thing of the past, and with it, Textual Combat is also starting to dwindle and dissappear. At least that has been my own personal experience, and the reason I see for this rapid change of events in the last ten years is because of our rapid change in technology. It's not that the interest in roleplaying has changed, it's just that gamers no longer have to work hard to roleplay. This newer, younger generation has RPG video games and controllers which allow them to perform several actions with just the push of a button. They no longer have to practice their writing abilities, or use their imaginations, because every little detail has been programmed and simplified for them. I attribute these new methods of gameplay to the death of classic text-based roleplaying fanclubs, and some of the older more popular websites which have closed down or been forgotten over the decades. It was not merely, individual turmoil, or internal conflict which caused many roleplayers to stop. Merely, it was an act of evolution, a change in the computer realms, which affected everything on the internet, including but not limited to text-based roleplaying and textual combat.
Does anyone agree with me? And if so, how do you suppose we fix this problem?
Now granted, I know there are some roleplayers and on-line gamers who do not see this as a problem at all. But for those diehard on-line fighters like myself, who have dedicated several years of our pathetic RL lives to the preservation and development of textual combat, this decrease in RPG activity is a huge problem. Today, those older more traditional on-line fighters are like the samurai during the WW2 era. Textual Combat is like a samurai sword, and on-line fighters are just some page in RPG history. It is the way of death, a dying art, which needs to be recognized by the RPG communities before its own culture and history is forgotten. I have compared today's on-line fighters to the stereotype of on-line fighting. There seems to be a lot of bigotry, showing off, laziness, weakness, perhaps even a total lack of writing abilities and clever imaginations when fighting. That is because we have gotten lazy and arrogant, we no longer practice the old ways. And we need to, we need to always strive for perfection, if nothing else, to set an example and keep our on-line fighting world from destroying itself through ignorance. That is all I can think of to say for now, if you have any comments or opinions, feel free to share them.
Does anyone agree with me? And if so, how do you suppose we fix this problem?
Now granted, I know there are some roleplayers and on-line gamers who do not see this as a problem at all. But for those diehard on-line fighters like myself, who have dedicated several years of our pathetic RL lives to the preservation and development of textual combat, this decrease in RPG activity is a huge problem. Today, those older more traditional on-line fighters are like the samurai during the WW2 era. Textual Combat is like a samurai sword, and on-line fighters are just some page in RPG history. It is the way of death, a dying art, which needs to be recognized by the RPG communities before its own culture and history is forgotten. I have compared today's on-line fighters to the stereotype of on-line fighting. There seems to be a lot of bigotry, showing off, laziness, weakness, perhaps even a total lack of writing abilities and clever imaginations when fighting. That is because we have gotten lazy and arrogant, we no longer practice the old ways. And we need to, we need to always strive for perfection, if nothing else, to set an example and keep our on-line fighting world from destroying itself through ignorance. That is all I can think of to say for now, if you have any comments or opinions, feel free to share them.
