This isn't really anything important or about myself personally. I was just talking to an old friend and it got me thinking about some other old friends that I lost contact with for this reason and I thought I would write down my thoughts on it.

So this has always confused and bothered me, and I've never quite understood it. I assume it has something to do with addiction, personality, and lifestyles, but why do people cling to mmo's so fiercely. Games like Everquest and Runescape, so dated only the original players can really appreciate them past nostalgia. I've never played these two examples, but I did play FFXI for a few years before college and the game was so weeaboo-tastic and anti casual/newcomer that it becomes draining to play. I gave it a good run though, I played to the level cap on two classes and completed two of the expansions before I threw in the towel. I know friends before this game that started with me still throwing days and days into the game repeating the same events over and over. Why? What possesses a person to continue this for so long?

I do still play World of Warcraft occasionally (I reactivated when I saw some chance of fun with the new expansion), but this game is still considered one of the, if not the, top MMO available right now. I know the day will come that this game will become one of the many other dinosaur MMO's of the past, but I know for sure I will not be around when that day comes.

So back to my original question, what is it about older MMO's that possess players to continue playing them like they just released this month? Is it the inability to let go of all the hours they spent to gain the items and create the behemoth characters they surely own after years of devotion? By doing this, and leaving an older MMO for good, are they simply admiting to themselves that the time spent was all for nothing? It was not for nothing, otherwise all games that are played would be for nothing. It's a game, time is supposed to be spent to play through it. What do you gain from playing console games? You experienced something really cool that someone else created for your entertainment. But once the graphics become dated, the economy becomes inflated, the number of "newbies" (or life blood of an MMO) start dropping off, the new content becomes bland, and the gameplay stops being exciting and starts becoming monotonus why do you continue? The friends you made are still available via IM, ventrilo, e-mail, facebook, forums, etc, and you are now available to play new awesome games that came out while you were lost in an aging game.

While I am only assuming or thinking out loud I guess, my only conclusion can be that these players enjoy being "top dog" in a dying MMO that is losing players every day, bringing these legacy players closer to being the best available. If they start a new MMO or even start playing a console online game, they are no longer the best. They are a newbie. And these players worked so long and hard at one game that they don't want to go back to the bottom of the food chain. Maybe it's just my personality, I love the exciting beginning of a new MMO game, idolizing the "awesome players" until I can one day achieve what they did before me, exploring the worlds, and doing stupid things that are truely a waste of time in the game that mark me as a new player from a mile away. (My example will be when I learned I could surprise attack other players in WoW, I sat in a bush outside a same-level town of the Alliance and jumped anyone running in or out. The fights were even, I wasn't ganking, but it brought hours of fun.)

I've lost friends to these flailing and failing MMO's and it stings still to think they waste away time going nowhere, it's almost like seeing people clinging to Windows XP* because they "hate Vista" knowing that Microsoft will stop supporting XP in the next year. These people don't hate Vista, they don't know Vista and they don't want to learn Vista. Sure Vista had issues at it's release, so do new MMO's. You need to learn the new interface and tricks, but in the end it truely is a breath of fresh air.

These will probably be the people in thirty years with who own the homes and apartments that you step into and fall back into the 1990/2000 era. Kind of like walking into my great Grandma's home. It's like walking back into the 1960's.

*I still use XP, but I own a machine that cannot support Vista until I either buy a new one or upgrade the RAM and install another harddrive into my 2nd harddrive slot on my laptop.

I envy myself of 6 years ago when I could sit around and play games all the time and it had no consequences and actually made me feel like my life was more exciting because of it. I think there is some growing up ratio of interesting real life vs interesting game and there can't be a REAL true balance. An engrossing game that keeps you sucked in for weeks/months/years can only be as exciting if your actual life is as equally unexciting. See, my thought here is that when you are growing up you have a lot of restrictions on what you can and can't do based on the law and the parents. Being away from my parents for two years and having no restrictions within reason (can go out anywhere at night after turning 21 and having no house rules except my own) has made my freetime more interesting than my games can ever make it. I'm only thinking about this because I worked all morning/day/ and into late this evening and was too tired to go out and no one was around to come over. So I bought a coffee, made some dinner, and sat around playing games. I miss it but I also felt guilty, almost like what I was doing was a waste of my freetime. What else should I be doing with freetime? I have no idea, but I wish I was 14 again and I didn't care about how many hours I killed in a playstation game.

The next completely empty day I get will be devoted to a game of my choice. Although the last time I said this (about 2 months ago was the last time it happened) I cleaned the house, ran errands, and went to a bar to hustle guys at pool for beers. My goal every year is to complete a certain # of games I own. Last year the number was 5 games and I finished 3. This year the number is 2 and I'm halfway through about 20...

At the store we generally have people standing outside waiting for us to open and today as soon as the doors opened an old man returned a Wii! Not defective, not even opened. He just said he didn't want it. Lucky day for some random customer walking up to the counter. (We sit them behind the counter on a bench facing customers instead of placing them on the sales floor.) I actually get a lot of joy out of telling people we don't have any Wii, Wii Fit, or Mario Kart Wii over the phone or in person. We had a line this week during our shipment of them which is really amazing to me... I can't understand the high demand for this crappy console two years after the release.