Get Vibrant

As with all our Hall of Heroes inductees we asked Kara to answer a few questions for us.

Q. What is your main gamer tag?

A. Over the years I have used one of these two names for my online identities, Amy (Amy’doll originally) and Kara (Iskara originally). Lately I mostly used Kara as my name.

Q. What’s your country and hometown?

A. Bucharest, Romania (happily married since 2008).

I was born in Suceava, but moved to Bucharest as a student in 1993. I wanted to mention that, as Suceava in the main city of the Bukovina region, where my roots really are.

And for those that don’t know, Bukovina is a region that is full of stories and legends, very similar with the better known Irish ones, hence my fondness of old celtic setups and stories.

Q. How and when did you become involved with the Guild Alliance or one of its Guilds/Organizations?

A. I think it was in the summer of 2010 (August), when I was playing Star Trek Online for a few months and I was looking for a more social/casual oriented fleet. Londi was the one that recruited me. Until that moment I was playing in a guild that was led by 2 U.S. Airforce pilots and that guild was a bit too “formal” for me.

I still remember with pleasure and amusement those first days with –I.D.I.C-, including the funny episode with a guy named “Darth” (or something).

Q. When did you start gaming and what got you playing games?

A. Well, that was about 25 years ago, in the Wolfenstein era. I was in highschool and in the one, and only, computer lab (which back then used to have like 3 IBM XT 8086 and 2 Packard Bells 286 without coprocessor plus a few old Commodore 64 base computers). On the Packard Bell’s it was possible to run Wolfenstein and I was among the few privileged ones that managed to play on those.

After that, in 1995, I got my first PC on which I used to play Retaliation (an avionics simulation game that used to fill a 750Kb diskette) and a few years later Warcraft 1 and Starcraft.

About in the same period (1997, I guess) I got in touch with the first online medium ICQ, which amazed me. Then, there came the year 2000 when I got in contact with mIrc. I used to co-run a Romanian channel named “#underground_ro” formed of it underground people from Romania (and you know what underground means ;) )

In the period between 2001 and 2008 I have played various standalone games, mostly for recreation purposes. From those I want to mention:

• Heroes of Might and Magic (since version 2)
• Cossacks
• Age of Empires
• Risk II
• Star Trek: Bridge Commander
• Homeworld Cataclysm

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I mostly prefered RPG’s, that also had a story behind them. That was when I started to replace watching movies with playing games as recreational activity.

Since december 2008 I discovered something new and magnificent: Second Life; that seamed to me like a new kind of mIrc, but with an entire virtual world in which you could develop your own character as you wanted. Even as a programmer I was passionate about the idea of virtual reality, Second Life being the first playing environment that let me experiment in that area. I’m still playing SL.

In the summer of 2009, in an evening, I was reminded of the old Warcraft game and I tried to find it on internet, as I wanted to play it a bit “for the old time sakes”. In the process I found WoW. I downloaded it, subscribed and played it for 3 months. At the start it caught my interest as it was something new, but the lack of story and the “odd” character’s looks pushed me away from it. After experimenting in SL, where the way your character looks is one of the core components of all people does there, having a barely defined character wasn’t enough for me.

In the summer of 2010, in an evening after I finished watching for the “nth” time one of the Star Trek: The Next Generation I felt the compulsion to search the internet for a game that might be based on Star Trek lore. I found Star Trek Online, which made me very happy. Also, the “Foundry” idea where players could develop their own scenarios attracted me very much. It was truly like Second Life, but with a better defined story line and action. I played it for 2 years.

In the mean time, in 2011, I discovered Star Wars, The Old Republic, as a project from my STO -I.D.I.C- fleet and I started to like it even more. The rich storyline, the better character definition and better graphics definitely attracted me and kept me in for 3 years. And the way new stories keep being added, I think I’ll still be playing it for a few more years still.

What is to be mentioned here is that in 2012, when I’ve started to play SWTOR more, as I began to understand its ways more, I took a break from playing STO and SL. I came back to SL 6 months ago, but only intermittently, so I can safely saying that SWTOR is now my main game.

Also, I stopped even turning on my TV about 3 years ago.

Q. What was the first game(s) you ever remember playing?

A. Oh, well, I still remember the Mortal Kombat game that I used to play back in 1991 on a Commodore 64 based computer (it was a Romanian build computer, named HC-85, based on the Z-80 processor).

Q. I know that people play games for a variety of reasons, why do you play video games?

A. Why am I playing? For many reasons: first, for entertainment purposes, then, as I get more involved into a game, the game that I play becomes a sort of “make-belive” game. A place where I can evolve as a person, but in a totally different environment. It allows my fantasy to evolve. When I’m deeply into a game, I practically feel that I do live the life of my character there and that is what I value most. They are reality bending games that I play and I love that!

Q. Among those that you’ve stated, which is your favorite and why?

A. That was probably Homeworld. It was the first game I played with a solid storyline. Plus that the full 3D strategy was amazing.

Q. Any suggestions on how to improve Homeworld’s game-play?

A. Go online, multiplayer? lol

Q. If you were to create your own MMORPG or RPG, what elements would you put in?

A. It would be a combination of Second Life with elements from Star Trek, Star Wars, The Old Republic plus some story take from Dune ;).

Q. How familiar are you with RPG’s and gamer culture in general?

A. I guess I’m a newbie in that area, I was never interested in the “next best game that is scheduled to appear”. I always was looking for a game that I could play for a long time, so that it would allow me to develop my own story inside it.

Q. What has been your best experience role-playing?

A. Definitely that from Second Life, where between 2009 and 2012 I used to play with a group of other vampires running a clan of about 100 people. In that period I used to own my own club (a burlesque themed club) and we also used to have many weekly events. It was, from my online life point of view, my golden era.

Q. What is one thing every game needs to be good?

A. Story