my life is pretty busy these days. a beautiful wife, 2 kids, a full-time job, and trying to find a new job which corresponds with my IT degree take a lot of time. and when i'm not spending my time husbanding, parenting, working, and sending out resumes, i game (which can take a lot of time by itself, but fortunately i need very little sleep). so some might say i game a lot.
::shrug::
it takes my mind off of the rejection letters i keep getting.
i currently have 3 games i've been going between, all of which are single-player RPGs, so we're talking a lot of content in each. i'll probably complete most, if not all, of the content in all of them eventually, but i've come to the realization that my personality houses a bit of a paradox. i like to complete things, but i get bored when i do the same thing repeatedly.
this is exactly why i've grown stale on MMOs. it's impossible to complete an MMO, and you inevitably end up doing the exact same thing ad infinitum. it never starts that way, mind you. you get a shiny new universe with a shiny new avatar and a shiny new set of powers, with (more importantly) a shiny new set of abilities and/or gear to work towards. that last one is the hook, what the game developers hope will keep you coming back (and paying next month's subscription fee). so you begin happily enough, and they throw enough new stuff at you early on so that you've got new things to do and new spells/powers/skills to use while doing those new things to keep you very pleasantly occupied. after a while, though, the acquisition of your character's new upgrades decreases, and you become more aware of the repetition of the tasks you're doing in-game. the more MMOs you play, the quicker you hit this particular speed bump. i can't begin to count how many times i've killed x number of y to acquire z number of whatever to turn into some NPC.
seriously... no idea. hundreds? probably. i bet i've slaughtered generations of virtual rats, skeletons, zombies, and numerous other woodland creatures and denizens of evil. we're talking millions. that's a lot of virtual blood on my hands.
fortunately, i've got lots of virtual soap. and no virtual conscience whatsoever.
but what's it all for? some people are quite satisfied by the boundless extermination of mobs in search for some piece of leet gear or the xp required for that next level. but repetition like that only produces one result in yours truly:
boredom.
so, in the past, i'd burn out on a game and then find myself thinking, "hey! time for a new game."
that works a few times well enough, but i've played a lot of MMOs by now, and it's always the same.
"yay! new game! yay! new level! yay! new power!... yay... next level... yay... new gear... yay... next level... yawn..."
i find i really enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. intrinsic to this sense of accomplishment is the idea that i'm closer to my goal than i was before i began. my goal, of course, is to finish. to get to that point when you know you've done everything there is to be done and say, "aha! i've done it all!" MMOs, however, are not to be completed. even if you take every possible character class in the game to the level cap and stock them with all the best possible gear and work up every possible skill and craft and hobby and whatever else is available, there's an imminent update, adding more classes, skills, etc. somewhere along the journey of attempting such a feat, you may notice that you're physically spending your time doing this:
1, 2, 4, 5, 3, 6, 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, oh! low health! 7! 7!... 1, 2, 4, 5, 3, 6...
yeah... monotony for the lose.
there will never be an online game created that actually offers players the opportunity to achieve a point of absolute completion. it would directly oppose the idea that a game should continue to make money. i understand this, but for a long time i deluded myself into thinking this wasn't the case. i thought, "maybe this game is the one i've been looking for, the one which will provide my kind of fun." my kind of fun, it turns out, isn't MMO-friendly.
some aspects of MMOs i really miss, though. the social possibilities, however limited they might seem to an outsider, is one of those aspects. sure, most of the people you meet in-game might not be that great, but occasionally you'll run across someone who's actually pretty cool (see? just like real life). but paying $15 a month to maybe meet someone cool in a universe where you're strumming out the same numerical string on your keyboard over and over (and over and over and...) is pretty silly.
i still like games. i probably always will. i'm also willing to admit that they're almost completely a waste of time. sure, you gain a bit of spacial recognition, and shave a few seconds off your reflex time, and the endorphin rush has been found to help prevent Alzheimer's. but if i had spent half the time i've gamed on something less ethereal, like playing guitar or sculpting? yeah, i'd probably be a world famous artist or musician or something by now. and i like real world hobbies as well, but that doesn't detract from my appreciation of a good game. late at night, when the kids are asleep and the wife's watching TV on the couch next to you, it's not a good idea to try practicing the flute; logging onto a game, however, is a lot less likely to get you punched by your beloved.
i'll still try to get into beta testing for some of the upcoming MMOs which look like they might not suck after the first hour of play. what's better than free server time on a game that isn't yet available to the general public for a specifically allotted time? nothing, i tell you. NOTHING is better than that!
but i can't kid myself any longer. there simply isn't any reason for me to purchase and invest my time in an MMO any more. as fun as they are for a short while, i'm just not the kind of person who will commit for the long haul, and it's the long haul where the "fun" is in an MMO.
just not my kind of fun, i guess.
