WAR needs to get here already!
I've allowed myself to become completely and utterly obsessed with Warhammer Online. The past month has sort of been like that last hour of work on Friday before the weekend starts; the fabric of time slows down and forces you to endure the most excruciating hour ever, but at the same time there's this feeling of relief in knowing that there are only a few minutes between you and 48 hours of doing whatever the fuck you want. Waiting for a release date of a game is a lot like that, with each day that passes getting you closer to the time you can finally log in and play. But that only does the trick until you realize you'd rather log in right now.
Getting hyped about Warhammer Online has been a great way to pass the (ample) downtime I have at work, but it's a fine line for someone like me to walk. Addiction runs in my family and there's no denying that I'm a product of that gene pool. However, going against the grain, I was never as much into substances as I was concepts. I become addicted to games, events, information. It's been like that since I was little, and if anything, has only strengthened as I got older. MMOs in particular have proven to be a bad match for me.
The first MMO I played was Dark Age of Camelot back in 2002, and back then there couldn't have been a worse time for someone line me to pick up a game like that. I was young (19) and unemployed, so it was all too easy for me to stop going outside or avoid seeing my "real life" friends in favor of spending more time playing the game. Who needed all of that stuff when I had ingame friends in an ingame world, where I could do anything I wanted without the limitations I had IRL? Add in the fact that my boyfriend at the time played the game as well and I was pretty much set. I thought it was a pretty cool setup at the time, but it caused me to lose contact with most of my High School friends and encouraged a lot of my social phobias.
But, I'm older now and I'd like to think that I know better than to fall into that trap again. I may have played World of Warcraft for 4 years, but I did myself proud by keeping myself from getting too "into" the mechanics of the actual game. I'll admit I fell head first into the nightmare that is guild management, making myself sick under the pressure of commitment and responsibility, but it was yet again an opportunity to learn how not to do something. I think I'm ready to dance the line of involvement again without sacrificing myself or my life. My name is Chrisy, and I am a recovered gameaholic.
That being said god damnit Mythic, get your Collector's Edition closed beta servers up so I can log in and get my fix!
Leapfrogging MMOs
Yesterday Matt and I went to go see Shrek 3. Even though it certainly wasn't a great movie - the plot turned from conflict to resolution way too quickly and awkwardly - I still enjoyed it because it involved actually leaving the apartment. I've been begging for us to go see a movie for weeks now, partly because we've been sitting on roughly $50 in free movie vouchers, but also because we finally have the time to do these things. I almost don't know what to do with myself with all this time on my hands.
Before it was all about rushing home to be here at 5PM, logging in, clocking in 4 or 5 hours to our other "job" and be done just in time to go to bed... so that we could wake up at 4 or 5 AM and repeat the process all over again. Though I still feel a tremendous amount of guilt for doing it, quitting WoW feels like it was the best thing I've done in a while. It had it's rewarding moments, but in the recent months they were scarce. Blizzard's decision to change the game in a way that ruined what I had spent a year + helping create is what ultimately drove away this Beta 1 tester, this person who once wrote a 2 page long bug report describing how the footprints in the snow weren't lining up correctly. This person who was on the Blizzard's Friend list was driven away when the one MMO company I thought could be trusted slapped me in the face. And with each passing day I can't believe how good of a decision it was to leave has turned out to be.
Considering the type of relationships I have, it's ironic that quitting an MMO actually saved my relationship rather than ruined it.
Though we have quit WoW for the time being, we haven't been completely MMO free - Matt had gotten into the beta for Lord of the Rings Online some time ago (August 06 I think?) and I got into the same beta in October 06. We played it off and on, nothing extreme, since we were still trying to juggle WoW at the same time - but when the game was released last April, we knew enough about LOTRO to be confident that it'd be worth at least a few weeks of fun to buy it in retail. It also came with the perk that if we bought the collector's edition of the game it'd only be $9.99/month. That equates to almost 2 accounts for the price of one, and though money isn't our problem, it's still nice that no matter how much the monthly fees for MMOs are increased (and they will increase - I think they were only $11.99 when I first started MMOs in 2002) the $9.99 will never change. So far the game has been alright - just choosing between a DPS class or a healer has been the hardest part for me. Having been a healer for the past 2 years, I really wanted a change... but every time I hear the group say "damnit, we need a healer" I get a pang of guilt.
Proof that I am a nerd: I am extremely excited for housing in LOTRO, which is supposed to be released this fall. Having my own hobbit home in a mound of dirt? FTW I think.