I read Penny Arcade pseudo-religiously. It is on their lovely site that I learned of a game called Minecraft.
Rewind. A while back, years ago, Shawn got me into WoW, I think we started pretty close to the release date, maybe a month or two after it had been out. At the time I had no idea what an MMO was and how much time I was about to invest into this crack-like game. Perhaps it will surprise you, heh, but I am an awful WoW player.
Do you remember a post on 4th Edition from a few weeks (months?) ago? I went on about how if you want to craft stuff, set up shop in town and don't play a player class and stay the fuck away from all the orcs with the sharp objects in their mitts. There is a reason all the wizards and fighters go into dungeons and the artisans, commoners, and aristocrats don't. It is because they die.
I was that one foolhardy artisan that adventurers lured into wandering down into the dungeon. Heh.
Other people would get in on raids and group quest, or they'd farm for loot to buy ever phatter lewts from the auction house. They would go far and wide to accrue xps and purples and such. Meanwhile, I wandered the Barrens farming hides or herbs so that I could continue passing armor kits to Smitty and potions to Shawn. I didn't care about cash or gear, all I wanted to do was watch Akulna make skinning motions as I created leather armor that was further and further above my level. I even toyed with the idea of playing EverQuest 2 for a time because of the robust crafting system. Later on, after quitting and restarting a new toon on WoW, Tony and I formed a guild called The Explorers of Azeroth. We swam literally from The Swamp of Sorrows north to Dun Modr, because we were Dogdamn explorers. Of Azeroth. It was difficult and involved traversing some unfinished areas that we should not have tread in, true story.
Back to Penny Arcade, at the time of this writing, the comic is only a few weeks old, it is called Mine All Mine Part 1 and 2. It is about Minecraft and the comic is 100% accurate. I bought the game for like eleven dollars. I dug a hole, punched a tree, and began building wooden axes, swords, and picks. I burrowed into the earth like a fearful grub and I waited in the night as zombies groaned around me and skeletons clattered about plinking my fragile hut with arrows. In the night, I heard a giant spider devour a pig.
At daybreak I destroyed my hut of sand and dirt and built a stone fortress with a door and a glass window. I burrowed into the earth like a mighty umber hulk and took coal and iron from their place in the earthen womb I was making. I lit my hovel with torches and built a furnace to smelt the iron. Then I built a shaft that hit the bottom of the map, I mined what I could and journeyed to the surface by building ladders and shoveling my way up out of the mountain I had taken refuge in. Then I built a bonfire atop it and built another stone fort for another mine. When I had mined too deep and too greedily, I fled the lava and creepers beneath the earth and built another tower. I then linked my two towers with a stone bridge studded with torches to bring light to the darkness. Then I opened a new world to start it all over again because I died and couldn't find the fort I had been working on when I respawned.
Your map is randomly generated as you explore is, it is populated with pigs and ducks and about five types of enemies to encounter. The countryside of your island can be quite striking at times. I like this game a lot and I've probably put far more time than is healthy into it at the moment. My architectural endeavor is building a tower of glass that currently rises into the sky above the clouds of my map. I'm still working on it.
All you do is gather resources and craft stuff, from boats and books to tnt and traps. Minecraft gives me everything I loved about WoW (moderately robust crafting and a persistent world) without giving me all the crap I hated (asshats, constant hunger for phat lewts, monthly fees, etc). You can also play the game in multiplayer, you do need a server to host it though. I like to think that if Tony and I set up a map together we will build a walled kingdom studded with penis-shaped towers to guard against the zombies and skeletons that come for us in the night.
Edit After The Fact: Tower is done, ran out of sky. Now I've got an underwater tunnel and am planning on building a moat around my glass tower.
Further Editing: The lake was dug and filled with water, then I decided to build a mansion from my Pathfinder game. Built the whole first floor of the mansion, then it accidentally lit on fire. Minecraft has real good fire physics, had to start over from scratch but now I almost have it done.
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