(This post is extremely long-winded, but it's also an issue that's close to my heart, so read at your own risk!)

MMORPG. The acronym makes some people cower in fear. The word means poison to others, a genre of video game that they will never ever go near due to all the horror stories that they've read or heard of. However, for a lot of people, the MMORPG genre is a kind of video game to get fully immersed in, to meet new people and go adventuring in, an awesome gaming experience. For me, the genre is becoming a great analog for an old substance abuse problem some I've never had...I want to quit, I know I have to some day, but I can't just take the pain of following through with it, so I stay one more day.


A Brief History Of My Trip Down The Rabbit Hole:

Back in 1999, a game was floating around on the internet named Graal. The premise was simple, play a game that resembled The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past on your computer, just with about 200 other people on a server playing with you at the same time. The game had guilds, mass chaos and a rather simplistic design in retrospect but enjoyable PVP, and I was hooked almost instantly, pouring countless hours into the game just goofing around and having fun. This was before the days of Pay-to-play popularity, so the game was easy to get friends into and when it eventually did go pay-to-play, at the time you only had to pay once for your account and then never again.

Eventually though, they began to implement more and more pay-to-play features and the game died a slow, agonizing death. Then, in about 2003, I heard about Final Fantasy XI..and I was enthralled with the idea of playing Final Fantasy with my friends. However, I was only about 16 or 17 at the time, and really didn't have a way to pay for a monthly fee, so when the game came out on the computer one of my good friends went off to play the game and I desperately wanted to join him but couldn't. However, I was absolutely determined to get the game, and when March 2004 rolled around (The month of the PS2 release) I desperately begged for the game and the ability to play it, even offering to give up my computer and promising to never ask for another gaming system again as long as I could play Final Fantasy 11. Over 75 levels and 4 expansion packs later, I still think Final Fantasy 11 has one of the most superb story lines of all time.

My mom worked for a gaming company at the time and used all her connections to get me into a beta for a little game called World of Warcraft (She knew how much I enjoyed the series considering the only two PC games I ever owned for about 3 years were Warcraft 1 and 2). And thus begun my adventures in Azeroth, and once again, 4 level capped characters and 1 expansion later, I was enthralled by just how much there was to do!

Problems first arose when I was playing Final Fantasy XI. As any former or current FFXI player will happily tell you, the game is grueling until you get used to the pace, and at the time there was so many people playing that it was hard to do anything without stepping on other people's toes (Valkurm Dunes, I'm looking at you!). Eventually though, I persevered and made some absolutely invaluable friends and enjoyed the storyline and the party mechanics the whole way. I became very attached to someone who I'd play the game with all the time and eventually she quit due to school becoming too demanding (we were both in college at the time) and then when I sat there in game, level capped, pretty decently geared out..it hit me... I wasn't really having very much fun anymore.

Being so caught up in the experience of leveling and constantly doing things with friends or my linkshell never let me stop and really analyze if FFXI was really the game for me. And like anyone who hits level cap for the first time, the feeling of "Awesome! Now I'm really getting to the meat of the game!" set in. Then you find out that your time will be spent sitting in zones, mostly idle waiting on large monsters to pop that you have to compete with other players to claim just so you can get new items. Tolerable at first, especially with some awesome first kills under my belt, I felt that I could easily balance doing homework and school and a social life with these silly "Pay attention for 5 minutes every half hour for 3 hours" demands. However, as the game expanded, things like Dynamis and Sky became highly appealing to also do, adding more hours onto the already demanded 3 for those rare drops. As I'm sure you can imagine, eventually the scheduling became impossible to make everything..coupled with the fact that I'm a completionist by nature and my good friend who I spent a majority of my time with had quit and wasn't around to help me through my moments of boredom, I ended up eventually just quitting.

Then another good friend of mine started discussing WoW with me. He was going on vacation for a week and he said I could use his account the entire week (a maxed, level 60 warrior) to just do anything I wanted to with, as long as I got him at least 100 Honorable Kills. Believing it could never hurt to try, I bittorrented the game in advanced, installed it and patched it and then started playing. At first I was absolutely surprised by how much the game had changed since I had played it in beta, and eventually I became absolutely addicted to Alterac Valley, racking up 2000 kills in that week he was gone. Having a lot of free time on my hands at that time, I decided to give it a shot. My first characters, my lovely Night Elf Druid and Troll Hunter, hit the level caps and once again I found myself at that point where I said to myself "Awesome! Real stuff now!". Having adventured in Dynamis in FFXI, I found raiding in WoW to be absolutely stellar, I'll forever remember my first Ragnaros and Nefarian kills, as well as the host of other baddies that in my eyes, needed to die. My horde guild eventually broke up due to drama, but my alliance guild is still an incredible group of people, even if many have moved on and their days of 40 man raiding are long over. As the guild I was in was progressing through Naxx, my old FFXI friend returned to that game and asked that I join her, and being an immense sucker for past relationships that I am, I of course went back.


The Beginning of the End

And so began a massive amount of ping-ponging between Final Fantasy 11 and World of Warcraft (which also included a brief stop in Guild Wars). It wasn't that I didn't enjoy either game, as a matter of fact I enjoyed them both for completely different reasons, and If I could have at the time played both at once, I would have. However, both games had things that I, as a human being, was highly disturbed to see. Not being one to tell people how to live their lives, I was mostly a silent observer as I watched some people truly devolve into questionable at best behaviour. Watching people ignore their children or significant other to kill a boss was minorly disturbing. However, after seeing incidents of people selling their body for loot, viewing people cheating on poor, unsuspecting partners, hearing parents ignore their child's cry for food for over an hour to raid.. I began to slightly get more unsettled. But like I said, people will live their lives however they want to, but I kept in my mind the kind of human being I never wanted to be like. Granted these people weren't a large amount of the population, as in almost every MMO I've played the general playerbase has been insightful and helpful (Barrens chat aside).

I'll be the first to admit that probably some of my personal relationships have suffered because of my gaming, but none suffered more than when I was playing a MMO. I've fortunately realized what was going on 90% of the time and have successfully saved and refocused on when my attention was needed, but this leads me to my current position.

The Inherent Nature of Self-Destruction

Just recently I've been toying around with Warhemmer, playing with some of those friends I made on both FFXI and WoW when I came to a realization. I wasn't enjoying the experience anymore. I don't mean Warhammer specifically, because honestly I think it's a stellar, fun title, but the "MMO experience". The thought of grinding levels to participate in end game activities that go on for months if not years into the future as my account is sapped money every month just isn't very appealing anymore. Games like WAR, WoW and FFXI are each fantastic in their own way, but mentally I don't have the energy to deal with another game that's very nature is to get me to play as much as it can.

Which leads me to what I think is the biggest problem with most MMORPGs: They are designed to be addictive! A company would not charge monthly or put out a game that they knew players would have their fill of quickly (which is something I think the Guild Wars developers did fantastically, even if the game leaves something to be desired). The pacing of MMO's tend to be very slow and methodical yet rewarding, which is actually counter to how a lot of other comparable games are. I look at WoW and Warhammer's PVP, and while it's a fun system, it's far too slow and mathematical for me these days to sit back and truly enjoy, I'd rather pop in Call of Duty 4 and kill people or go score some goals in NHL 09. The RPG aspects of the game are also skewered in my mind, having recently beaten Persona 3 and being the habitual Final Fantasy conqueror that I am, MMO's have too many build-up-to-moments to get that fully complete storyline for me to enjoy. In Persona 3, the final boss was the final boss, and while they did add on another chapter to explain more story, both those chapters are pretty complete, with sufficient build-up and a climactic battle.

MMO's, in comparison, are designed to never end and so have these big important story battles throughout large parts of the end game, but never really in a way where it can be built up to throughout the entire game, there's usually too much other stuff going on. So you end up killing a boss that eventually becomes meaningless in the grand story as a new boss is patched in (a fate that has befallen Illidan, and will eventually befall Arthas as well in the WoW universe). This type of game design, coupled with recent additions to them like achievements, more accessible powerful items and a greater focus on appealing to the casual market of gamers leaves a game that is designed to suck the player in and never spit them out.

Have I outgrown MMIORPGs? Possible. Is it a game genre I don't enjoy? No, quite the opposite, I think most of the MMO's I've played are fantastic, but they simply demand too much time and/or too rigid of a schedule for me to play among a myriad of other problems they pose. Am I sad that many of the friends I've made and experiences I've enjoyed in these games is over? Yes, but I've finally conquered my greatest addiction... The MMO genre.And I couldn't be happier.