In late 2004 when I was running my very first blog on the interwebz, which was not at all about games but all the “dear diary” type of trivial things happening in my life at the time (everyone had one of those even if people won’t admit it), I published the following entry:
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| This is going to rule so so much!!! |
A screenshot of beta Syl and me all hyped out about World of Warcraft, a game I highly anticipated for over a year. I had no idea if WoW was really going to be all that – but gawd, did it look friggin’ fabulous and now I even had an idea of how it played! Which led to me being even more hyped and making sure everyone on my message board knew, notorious killjoys included. Looking forward to WoW was almost as good as WoW. And everything that followed after its actual launch was well, more than worthy.
That’s not the point though. Sometimes games we really look forward to and get excited about will deliver, in very rare cases more than in our wildest dreams. More often they will not though and it doesn’t matter one bit. I’ve talked about the term “Vorfreude” before and I’ll repeat myself on what a great feeling it is. Sure, hypey people are annoyingly pink-glassed at times; they just want/need something to be great, so they choose to focus on (or talk about) the good aspects more than bad ones. Sounds pretty okay to me. Maybe they also have a gut feeling, the way I had 8 years ago about an upcoming MMO by Blizzard Entertainment.
Either way, anyone should be able to appreciate (or at least tolerate) a little hype by his fellow geek. Take it with a pinch of salt maybe. And if you can’t, well…..you’re a cynical grump that needs to remember how to feel excited and euphoric about something well in advance, no matter the risks – you know, it’s called hope. If things go pear-shaped, you’ll be disappointed either way and you know it. Let yourself catch some euphoria sometime – it’s healthy.
Where I’m going with this is that nobody should have to justify himself for hyping a game he is looking forward to, just like nobody needs to excuse himself for being too critical on his blog. God knows, we’ve been through a drought in the MMORPG corner – and if you’re waiting on GW2 there’s still some way to go. In the meantime, what else are people supposed to do and write about, if not about all the good (they hope for) or all the bad (they dread)? We might as well all close our blogs during times such as these (ignoring you happy SWTOR people), if we’re not allowed to theorize and occasionally nag, panic or hype about upcoming titles.
We don’t know how GW2 is going to turn out. Admittedly, things are looking damn fine at the moment, but still – we simply don’t know! So, our Vorfreude might be the best thing about GW2; we are safe and well here in the land of assumption where everything is still possible. Our Vorfreude might be all we get.
…And we might as well enjoy that.
P.S. “Hyping / hypey” is used synonymously to “being excited or euphoric about something” in this post for the term has no negative meaning to me personally.
P.S.2: Expect a lot more GW2 hyping (and a little griping too) on this blog here over the coming weeks – “there is one (more) hyper yet in the blogosphere who still draws breath!”
P.S.3: To all the apathetic and grumpy: */cookie*
P.S.4: Happy weekend – all ye past, present and future hypers!