[Hungkung]

and exactly what does raiding the deepest, uberest dungeon get you? a few pixles on the screen?

There is a school of thought about the journey. The diplo game is very much like checkers, very easy to learn but hard or impossible to ever truely master. Though with diplo right now, you can pretty much predict game #1324 based upon game #3 with the same race which might change with time.

I treat diplo like a time-kill between groups, which is still much cooler than lounging around the mailbox/brokerage house/thotbot site/ where all there is to do is get into a verbal garbage match with the next idiot who speaks on channel. With any of the big long lasting games, you ride into any city during prime time and you'd see dozens of people doing nothing, some would flirt, some would fight, some would just sit in sullen silence while they awaited thier group to come online.

there was a post a few days ago on another board about WoW players complaining about the learning curve in Vanguard, and the very slow pacing of leveling. The poster pointed out the game was about playing the game, not about showing your coolest neatest gear off to an audience. It is the difference between being a rock climber and a football player. If you are in it for the glory, you won't ever see the top of the mountain --though you may make interesting gull-feed at the bottom of the mountain.

and in the end, like christian tv, or heavy metal video's, nobody is making anybody watch them, if you don't like something, the tv/computer comes with both an on AND off button, and in vanguard there is always something else to go do if you don't like diplomacy.