Alright, I'll admit it. Last year, when I heard the Purcell guys whining about how they couldn't hook up their Xboxes to the Internet and how they couldn't play any online games, I was more than a little disdainful. Surely they had better things to do than play video games all night. Like, for instance, studying. Online gaming, I thought to myself, is not the most important thing in your life. You'll live without it.
Of course, I didn't know what would happen over the summer.
Almost as soon as school let out, my brother got me to play one of his games, Team Fortress 2. If you've never played it before, the short story is that it's a first-person shooter where you basically play Capture the Flag while trying to destroy as many of your opponents as possible. It's a lot of fun and a bit addicting, to be honest.
Over the summer, my brother convinced me to start playing this game with him, and we actually got to be fairly good at it. I mean, if you consider not dying as soon as you run out of the base 'good,' that is. One step at a time.
When I left to come back to school, I told him we'd play TF2 when I had some free time between classes, work, and homework. I was also looking forward to playing online with a few of my friends who are also fans of the game, especially since someone had told me that Piedmont's internet was fast and didn't kick you off game servers every thirty seconds, like the internet at home liked to do sometimes.
Well, whoever told me about Piedmont's internet was right about it not kicking you off servers. Mostly because it won't let you on servers at all.
It's not just a dorm internet problem, either: I have tried to connect to a server in my room and in the student center, but it's a no go. This seems a bit odd to me, because I distinctly remember watching people play League of Legends in the student center last spring.
The internet situation last fall was much, much worse. If you don't recall it, I'll sum it up for you: Ethernet cables. Ethernet cables everywhere. Last fall, wireless internet was basically a myth, and the Ethernet cables didn't make it much better. When IT finally updated the campus-wide internet, everyone rejoiced. There was one random weekend when there was no internet at all except in the student center, but I'm pretty sure that was a fluke. Supposedly, there's more than enough bandwidth to support online gaming now, but the ports haven't been opened yet.
Why haven't the ports been opened? We just don't know. Does IT even want to open the ports? We don't know that either.
I've heard two sides to this argument. One says that IT should definitely open the ports, and they should open them now. After all, we're all (mostly) responsible adults here; why can't we play a little Xbox now and then? Come on, Piedmont, it's not a big deal.
On the other hand, some people say that if IT allows online gaming, nobody would do any more work ever, or, like me, they'd procrastinate until the last possible minute and turn in third-rate assignment. Online gaming, they say, ruins grades and ruins lives. (Of course, there are some people who say online gamers have no lives to begin with, but I beg to differ. We have several.)
A year ago, I would've sided with those who say NO to opening the ports for online gaming. I would've said it was a waste of time and that, as college students, we have more important things to focus on, like, for instance, grades.
But now, I just want to keep my Pyro in shape so I can kick my brother's Medic into next week.
What do you think? Should online gaming be allowed on Piedmont's campus, or would it be too distracting and keep us from doing our best work?
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