I don’t enjoy MMOs.
Well, that’s not true. The idea of most MMOs is actually quite enjoyable - adventuring with friends in an expansive setting and crafting your personal legend. But what I don’t enjoy about them in practice is having to rely on other people in order to progress in any meaningful way. Raid bosses are the bane of my existence. I’m a bit of a lone wolf, in that regard. I don’t want to have to wait around for other people to get ready, I don’t like the idea of people waiting on me, and I really don’t want people to rely on me to heal them in a timely manner, because what is more likely to happen is that I won’t. Whether it’s a relative lack of skill or a spotty internet connection is irrelevant.
I also don’t enjoy getting the snot kicked out of me by some kid who has nothing better to do with his life than lurking around in a bush next to my corpse and then ganking a woman twice his age when she decides to resurrect herself.
All in all, I steer well clear of MMOs as a general rule.
But then I came across Project.hack//. I first encountered the breadth of .hack// via Cartoon Network in 2002, when the original anime was released in the States. The end of my high school era was heralded with some excellent anime, and .hack//Sign shot right to the top of my list.
Even though English dubs are usually horribly done, .hack//Sign made up for the dubious voice acting by incorporating captivating music, complicated character development, and videogame culture. In America, we had to wait another year or so until the .hack// videogame series made its debut with Infection all the way back in February 2003 on PlayStation 2. So, of course, when one of my favorite anime of all time became a game, I just had to go for it.
What is so intriguing about the .hack// series as a whole is the idea that the entire thing takes place within the context of a MMO. In a fourth-wall breaking meta-mindfuck, you play as a character roleplaying a character in a videogame. Watching the anime and then playing the series through, I could begin to see parallels that I really enjoyed: Bear and Orca, Mimiru and BlackRose, Tsukasa and Kite. They were the same player classes with similar designs, but they were different characters - and, therefore, different people on the other end of the computer playing those characters, heightening the feeling that you were playing an MMO without actually having to play one.
While the anime focuses on the Wavemaster Tsukasa and his inability to log out of The World, the games focus on the Twin Blade Kite, whose friend Orca was attacked 
and killed in-game by a strange monster and left his real-life counterpart in a coma. The plot that drives both stories is different and yet takes place in the same locations - albeit at different points on the timeline. Also, both Tsukasa’s and Kite’s fate are intertwined with Aura, an enigmatic entity also bound up in the game and unable to break free. There are similarities and there are differences, and both are equally intriguing.
Like I said: as high concepts go, it’s a bit of a mindfuck.
Game-wise, .hack//Infection and its subsequent sequels, Mutation, Outbreak, and Quarantine, follow Kite and his journey to unravel the mystery of his friend Orca’s coma, and the strange girl that gave him the Twilight Bracelet, allowing him to hack his way through the game’s interface. The World, the name of the fictional MMO, became a game that I wished were real. I desperately wanted to play The World as it existed within the game. I even wanted the fictional OS, Altimit to be real - simply because I enjoyed going through the in-game process of logging in, checking my mail, and opening The World.
One of the most interesting things about The World is that players interface with the game with a goggle-style headset, a kind of fictional precursor to the real world’s Oculus Rift. At the time, VR was hardly a talking point among the general populace, but as with classics like Star Trek, science fiction and fantasy can often help drive the development of science fact and technology. Tricorder to cell phone, anyone?
I knew where .hack//Infection‘s story might be going because I had seen the anime, but there were enough differences that it kept the gameplay experience fresh and left me wondering more than a few times what would be next. Playing a single-player game designed to play like an MMO was exactly what I wanted it to be. I didn’t actually have to deal with other people, but if I wanted to form a party I would send out a quick message to the in-game AI, who would then be available (or not) to come with me on a few dungeon runs. Sure, that may be the attitude of a recluse, but in the grand scheme of things I don’t have the time or the patience to rely on someone else. If I can do it on my own, I probably will.
Playing .hack// also allowed me to avoid the ever-annoying threat of Player-versus-Player combat (though later sequels wove that element into a central, driving story device).
.hack// also allowed me to become more involved in not only The World itself, but playing within The World. Essentially, I was playing two games at the same time. Within The World, the player can create dungeons using keywords at a Chaos Gate, and different combinations of keywords create dungeon properties that vary widely. I got to be in control of the dungeon that I would be experiencing, and I spent just as much time trying different combinations of keywords in order to get the precise type of dungeon I was looking for. Normally something like that can be tedious, but I found it engaging, and the process of leveling grinding (highly common in the MMO realm) was much more interesting because I was in control of the place I would be grinding in.
Both the anime and the PS2 games have been criticized for their slow pacing and their lack of action. Instead, a lot of the focus is on character development, and that usually comes through talking rather than action-packed fight sequences. Maybe I’m in the minority here, but that’s what I like so much about it. You’re connected with Kite, just like you’re connected to Tsukasa, and you’re pulled along through their stories in a way that is both engaging and intriguing. The three levels in which the experience of this series operates - our world, the game’s version of the real world, and The World within the game-inside-a-game - give the story a depth which I don’t think I’ve seen an equivalent to. At least, not yet. The use of the MMO realm to create a single-player experience is still something that I find terribly clever.
I’m still waiting for someone to create a real MMO version of The World. Part of me knows that it would probably fall well below my expectations, and that my interactions with players would not be the scripted NPC experience that .hack//Infection provided, but I would, at least, give it a shot. But part of me also thinks that it could finally be the game which causes me to shake off my dislike of the genre and teach me to love what so many other people already love.
But until then, I’ll continue to enjoy the MMO experience without actually having to play an MMO.
That’s the best part about it, really.
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