When a game takes away your life

[TteFAboB]

I've played Anarchy Online and Dark Ages of Camelot.

Currently I have WWIIOL installed, it's a MMORPG First Person Shooter/Tanker/Flyer/Skipper, so no "leveling"/time-sink crap. Just on the beginning as you need to "rank up" to be able to "spawn in" all the good stuff but that doesn't take long at all. The average playing session is from 1 hour to 4 hours. Flying takes more time than fighting on the ground since you have to travel in Real-Time and WW2 planes don't do Mach 2.

Anyway, Dark Age of Camelot did it for me. Anarchy Online, I dedicated plenty of time to it, I remember trying to eat while playing a few times but moved on into DAoC. Pure non-sense, it's all a waste of life unless you are retired and have nothing to do all day long. But I don't plan to ever retire, so...

One day, I got fed-up with Dark Age of Camelot, and that's not a difficult game to reach the "best levels" at for the fanatical standards. But I wasn't fanatical enough. It seems WoW is far more insane than it. When I got tired of the grind, I decided to buy myself the top level. I paid ~70$ on eBay to a leveling "company" and they took me to the max level in a few days plus left me with millions of virtual money looted in the process. With the money, I purchased good equipment plus financed my Alchemy craft, spent all the points on my character and proceeded to the Realm vs Realm arenas to enjoy my moment of glory.

It took all the addiction away. When you have a level 50 character handed over to you, and when you spend all the skill points and stuff in one go, the real essence of the game turns out to you: empty virtual accomplishment. The experience of leveling isn't worth anything. What do you learn? Not self-restraint, not self-control, you learn to be anxious, you learn names of monsters, you learn caves and dungeons. The opportunity of meeting interesting people is the only worth reason to play these things. But guess what, you don't need an online game to meet new interesting friends.

You see my point? Spending months playing 12 hours a day is as rewarding as figuring a way to get 70$ back in real-life to buy the whole 12 daily hours package, it's equal! If you spend 12 hours a day at a good-paying job or use it to get money however else, you can simply skip the 12 hours a day for so many months and get the good stuff.

My advice is this. Go do something to do with money in real-life for 12 hours a day and then buy yourself your character. Addiction solved.

Obviously, I'm out of this crazyness as I have far better things to spend money on and especially save. But if it means so much to you, if you truly want that skill so much, the sound investment is in real-life where you can get money to skip days of playing and get that level quicker. Come to think of it, just don't sell your house or your wife's kidneys for it, okay?

By the way, you might be thinking that the 70$ wasn't worth it since I no longer play DAOC and as I've said don't have any enlightening experience learned from it to share. Well, that's true, but in the end it turned out to be no waste at all: I sold the character on eBay for 150$.