:O

[Lezaro]

its quiet.... its too bad we are all slowly seperating

[Darkmatter]

well... i've just been sending private messages lol.

Sorry lezzy.

Going to get GTA4?

[Lezaro]

no i got taxed up the butt and cant afford anything lol

[Mobus]

Don't you hate that Lez? Bah!! I read somewhere that the US has one of the highest tax rates in the world, along with one of the longest average work days and least amount of average vacation time among its workers. And I mean high up on the list, top 5.

Depressing.

Now to lighten the mood...

Bewbs!

[Lezaro]

lol i love that mario tag on your sig now

[Neek]

I pretty much tossed by WoW CD's out the window and deleted the game. I never want to get addicted to an online game ever again.

I'm spending most of my time riding my motorcycle, and I also bought Rainbow Six - Vegas 2 for the rainy days. I love that game, they mixed the perfect amount of strategy, action, and leveling! Yes! You can now level your character and unlock weapons and maps. You gain general XP for killing people, and specific XP (Close quarters, marksman or assault) for different types of action. Killing with grenades gives assault points, shooting at a distance will give marksman points etc...

What I find awesome is that they made XP and rewards the same, regardless if you're alone playing the story, having a little co-op lan party, or playing online. Same xp, same toon, same rewards so you're not forced to play online if you want a specific gun or something. I think they did a great job and to me, it's the perfect shooter

[Neek]

I still miss the good old days of SWG of course. In the end, I think that the fact that it's online and that you make new 'friends' is both great and very bad at the same time. It's great because it's interaction and even online, doing stuff with other people is good. It's also very bad at the same time because that's where the addiction comes from and this is where things turned bad for me.

I couldn't stand being online and nothing happening, or things happening without me. I would get pissed at people for taking breaks, and I would get pissed when too many people were online and I had to sit out. The thing that made it sweet also made it very bitter, to me anyways.

It was fun though, I did get a chance to meet a lot of great people. In the end, everything I grinded for, everything I crafted, everything I farmed became nothing but I think it was worth it, for the entertainment part of it

[Bruno]

Good post, Neek. A lot of good points. It's pretty aggrevating that everything you worked for became nothing when someone "broke" the game. But at the same time, what could be expected? It's a game. An on-line (virtual) game, at that. I've never heard of anyone getting rich off of SWG -- unless of coruse someone pawned their toon. The only value that could be expected from the game was entertainment. You worked hard and spent hours grinding, but in the end, it was all just for fun. Granted, the entertainment was replaced with aggrevation (at least for me) when SOE stuck their foot in it.... but it was fun while it lasted.

[Neek]

I don't know what it is that makes those games so captivating. I think for me it was when 'Neek', my online self, became more interesting than 'Nicolas', my real life self. Of course, it snowballs even worse over time because you become more of a hermit in real life, and your online char becomes better.

I think the sommum for me is when Phoenix opened the buff-o-matic. I was making buffs full throttle, I was finished with my Jedi template and basically enjoying what I worked to build. I gotta say, SWG's crafting system was awesome

[Lezaro]

well i started MMO's when i was in 7th grade so that was 5 years ago (wow), and i had tons of friends then and i played sports and all that jazz.. but the thing that made me give up a lot of that stuff was just the fact that i would set goals and not give up on them.. i said i wanted to be a jedi, and i didnt give up until i was jedi.. i wanted to be the best, i didnt stop until i was the best (oh hell yes i was in mid 2006 on SWG, 1900+ pvp rating) lol

the only goals i had in real life were to pass my classes and that did not require much time outside of the game.

of course i held onto my friends at school but thats the only place we would hang, and fortunately they are still around for me to chill with today. so at this moment, i do not play very much WoW, less than an hour a day, i have a girlfriend, i have many friends i hang with, and i go snowboarding all the time, along with trampoline skateboarding (its teh shit), and parties.

[Mobus]

Apr 22, 2008 9:05:29 GMT -5 Lezaro said:

lol i love that mario tag on your sig now

Thank you verily much!


About MMO addiction, I always had a problem with that too. However, I really feel that MMO addiction is just a manifestation of other, more serious problems. Like how a bully picks on other people because he's really insecure himself. At first glance it looks like his problem is that he bullies people, but really it is his insecurity. You don't try to "cure" the bullying, you try to cure the insecurity and then the bullying will stop. That may be a weaksauce example, (after all, not all assholes are insecure) but it illustrates my point a bit.

I feel that most cases of MMO addiction are rooted in something else. And what is a MMO? It is probably one of the most innocent and easy escapes from reality that is currently available. It's easier, cheaper, and more accessible than buying drugs! The social aspect and never-ending adventure is a perfect alternate life for someone needing to escape from real problems. It's like you said Neek, the virtual person is perceived as better and more interesting than the real one. The game offers an escape, it is another life that is free of the problems a real one has. It is temporary relief that goes away as soon as you stop playing - which is why people end up playing so much. The addiction comes because of the relief, the distraction, the game provides from other problems.

Now there are many reasons that MMO's are addictive, and there is such a high amount of MMO addiction instead of, I dunno, FPS addiction - and they are all within the games themselves (like the examples you listed Neek). MMO's offer an escape and another life that other games do not.

However, the thing that causes MMO addiction is outside of the game in the lives of the people that play them. It is the problems that they have. And those problems can range so widely, from abuse to social anxiety to age-old marriage problems. Working on those problems is probably the surest way to break MMO addiction. Even if someone forces themselves to stop playing MMO's outright, like you have done Neek and I have tried to do, the core problems that caused the addiction in the first place will still be there. That said, I'm sure it is much easier to focus and fix one's real problems without MMO addiction than it is with it. That way we can't say "There's nothing really wrong with me, I'm just addicted to MMO's!" and completely miss and/or ignore the real issues. Then we'd never get better.

That's how I have come to feel about it, anyway! I'm not saying I'm right and every other opinion is wrong, but this is my two cents at the moment. It is what makes the most sense to me. And that is what matters most, for myself at least. None of the other answers, like MMO's being so social, having timesinks, endless goals, etc., were ever satisfying. Those are just reasons why we become addicted to MMO's instead of something else or instead of developing some other kind of coping mechanism. If it wasn't MMO's and MMO addiction, it would have been something else - another kind of coping mechanism.

I like my theory better than feeling like I gave up my life and friends for a game and for a game alone. lol

[Neek]

Apr 22, 2008 20:08:20 GMT -5 Mobus said:

It is probably one of the most innocent and easy escapes from reality that is currently available. It's easier, cheaper, and more accessible than buying drugs! The social aspect and never-ending adventure is a perfect alternate life for someone needing to escape from real problems.

I like my theory better than feeling like I gave up my life and friends for a game and for a game alone. lol

That sums it all up pretty well. Escaping real life to a point where it actually felt intelligent to neglect it in order to better our online toons.

[Lezaro]

lol it sounds so lame but its really true.

[Neek]

Apr 23, 2008 9:27:44 GMT -5 Lezaro said:

lol it sounds so lame but its really true.

It's lame when you're 'out', but it's your entire life when you're 'in'