We Are Legion

One of the big announcements from EVE Fanfest was that DUST514 was being ported and rebuilt and rebranded as Project Legion of the PC.

So time for a bit of history with Bill and because this is my blog, you have to read it. Or, I suppose you could leave, but your loss if you do.

Back when I was in university, Doom and Doom 2 were the big hits around the dorm. I played that game obsessively, even having nightmares about it, I was that enthralled. However, as much as I enjoyed the game, I was not a brilliant player. I inched my way through using tricks, caution, and lots of reloads from save files.

Hand eye coordination was never my thing.

We eventually lugged our PCs into one person's room and connected them with serial cables (it was like the Dark Ages, people!) and managed to get multiple players in a deathmatch, I found myself struggling. The next year when Quake came out and multiplayer was THE way to play, I found myself acting as cannon fodder for the other players. Embarrassed I told them and myself the lie that "twitch" games were not my thing and I only liked to play slow turned based games, and proceeded for the next 15 years to pretend that there was no such thing as a first person shooter genre.

The lies we tell ourselves can be reinforced over time, or chipped away. The myth I built around myself that I was clumsy and uncoordinated was reinforced at first but I as grew older and matured I started to break it down and discovered through sports like tennis and Jiujitsu that while I may not have an inclination for physical abilities, with practice I could overcome my innate inability and actually become proficient at these types of things.

EVE, of all things, was the penultimate blow that nearly broke that lie I had built up from that initial failure in Doom many years ago. By playing EVE and deciding on a PvP lifestyle, I found that despite near crippling panic and eye to mouse coordination I could be a passable PvP player in EVE.

About two years ago my friends at work started playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare during lunch breaks. I was encouraged to join in but I declined at first, old denials about being terrible at First Person Shooters coming to the fore out of reflex. But I had grown a lot in the decade and a bit prior and the peer pressure was significant... so I joined in. And yeah, I was bad. VERY BAD. I decided on a screen name of TerriBill I was so bad.

But as bad as I was, I loved it. I loved it so much I started playing online with strangers, another huge hurdle for different reasons we won't go into today. And there against players who lived and breathed first person shooters I was even worse! Hilariously worse! But I was able to laugh at myself and keep at it and slowly but surely I got better.

Last year at work the group upgraded to CoD: MW2 and then MW3. I played online with MW3 and continued to improve to the point where in most matches I'm solidly in the middle of the pack in terms of kills and in a few matches even near the top. And at work, I an no longer TerriBill as I have one of the best Kill/Death ratios when playing with those noobs. ;-)

All of this was to say that I was very disappointed when I found out DUST 514 was Playstation 3 only back when it was coming out. I wanted to give it a try but lacked the funds to drop on a PS3 with no other compelling reasons to do so. When I heard about Project Legion that was bringing DUST to PC I was ecstatic. I'm so looking forward to being bad at a new FPS game and slowly getting better.

Tomorrow I'll talk about the "One Universe" approach that CCP is copying from Wargaming.net.