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.

I just got done talking to the cops, now I'm pretty much not expecting to sleep tonight because I'm too wired from the adrenaline...

Anyway, I was sleeping it was 3am and I have work early in the morning followed by an hour break in the afternoon and work till night at my second job. I hear people outside my apartment being loud and stumbling around, typical because I live in a college apartment complex. My apartment is unique in that it's set up like a miniature house almost, it's got a deck blocked by about 3 feet of wall next to the front door with a high railing. Anyway my door is getting banged on and people are yelling so my roommate and I get up and check it out I open the door to have a guys head fall into the place and hes naked passed out on my doormat. Next thing I know the sliding door from the deck flies open (We have a weak latch and one of us forgot to put the bar up as a 2ndary lock) and this other guy falls in yelling at us. My roommate is a dude and works in a bar so he is used to drunken morons, but NO ONE has ever done this before. The guy is arguing with us then realized he was in the wrong apartment and apologizes but won't leave, so the roommate shoves him out with the naked guy and we lock the door. Oh, and this dude was missing a shoe somehow. Then they start screaming at each other and fighting and you can hear them shoving each other into the door, so we sneak out onto the deck to listen and watch and I called the cops because I was angry and I wanted to see what would happen if popo got involved. Naked guy finds clothes, starts puking all over in front of my door and down in front of my neighbors door. Shoeless guy disappeared and newly clothed guy starts beating my door down again. Roommate yells at him to go away, and he goes and sits by the stairs, cops come and grab him and start looking for shoeless guy, but somehow the other one escapes! Shoeless guy gets found, we found the shoe on the deck I wanted to turn it into an ashtray, but roommate was feeling nicer than me and threw it at the dude because the cops told us to aim for his head. He then tried to climb a streetlight and was yelling that he wanted the cops names to give them a medal for rescuing me from him.

Cops let him and the other one go with a drunk and disorderly conduct warning. :( I wanted to see handcuffs, but yea. INTENSE!

The end.

I'm officially getting hyped about LittleBigPlanet, I don't know what it is about the game but it just looks so awesome. I wasn't sold on the idea for so long, but I finally watched the gameplay and read a little about it and yea, I want it.

Here is how I've spent my time at my new job so far:

I love it. :) I also heard back from Circuit City and I got a job working with their Firedog pc support team, yay! (Think Geek Squad)

That is all, I finished my last final for the semester, it was calculus so hopefully I passed. I'm dying my hair (again) I may post pictures. I put some up of my 2nd most recent hair coloring adventure on the forums, I had a really cute photo of my hair after I had changed it, but they are gone I think. We'll see! :)

I finally finished Twilight Princess, and it never got better. I kept wishing and wishing it would, but it fell so short of what I expected. Although I did suspect as much, if it was going to be an awesome experience I would have finished it a year ago.

i miss these days. best zelda game. but i did beat it when i was 8, or something like that.

I'm working on a take home final now, I have four more finals and I'm done for the semester. I'm waiting to hear back from the city about a job, it will either be in sales or in firedog pc repairs. i'm suspecting sales though because I have an approachable appearance and personality, but repairs would be a great learning opportunity.

also ... my money plans for games are slowly falling apart. I got invited to warped tour, virgin fest, 2 regular concerts, a beach vacation trip, and multiple random bar adventure nights/birthday nights. My drinking and music life****is beginning to clash with my gaming life**** i need to stop drinking for a month so i'll be a cheaper bar ho. :)

So I got that job at the puppy store, it's been awesome working there. It's hard to imagine I get paid for the amount of work I am required to do. Part of my shift requires me to play with the puppies. I love it :) I have a 2nd job interview tomorrow for a brand new Circuit City opening up. I know these are lame jobs, but I'm not looking for anything serious until next summer when I've got my Bachelors degree. I'll be working as IT desk help over the fall/spring semesters on campus, and during that time I'll start making contacts with companies and holpefully land a job as a junior programmer somewhere.. I'm 100% willing to relocate anywhere east or west coast (no midwest) so I think I'll be fine.

I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics again, or trying to. Everyone I talk with says the game is super easy, but I don't get it. It's hella hardmode for me. A good friend is getting back into wow for the summer, I'm pretty tempted to follow suite. I miss my Druid and Shaman.. But I left for good reasons, and none of those have changed. I should stick to console games, also my new roommate moving in in 2 weeks will be more than willing to spend time with me gaming.

We got GTA4 on Xbox at my parents house, I'm addicted. I need it on PS3... Money :(

So somehow I managed to get a free used Xbox360. It's my brother's.. it RRoD'ed a few months back and recently it stopped working again. It's under warranty luckily, so in his frustration he went and dropped the cash on a black X360 and gave me the old one. It's getting repaired currently. :) I have no money currently, I quit my job a couple months back because it was interfereing with my classes when the bosses promised they would work around my school and did not. I would love to get Bioshock, Eternal Sonata, and Lost Odyssey once I have money again. I am also interested in getting GTAIV for my PS3 eventually.

My EXCITING news though is that I am interviewing today in an hour or so with a PUPPY STORE a block up from my apartment. I'm so excited, I really hope I get this job. The hours are great, the wages not so much but who cares its PUPPIES! Excited. :)

The shifts are so good there though that I can very (very) easily get a 2nd job working nights. So tomorrow I will be applying to some random retail shops around the area. Starbucks & Gamestop are my top two, but I'll go through the mall and see what's what.

Oh also, as a present to myself for a bad bad week, I decided to purchase a new game yesterday. I originally wanted (and still do) Persona 3 FES, but I saw The World Ends With You sitting there and I went on an impulse buy and got it. I'm not disappointed, this game is amazing!

Ok - 2007 was a big year for me, but not so much in terms of gaming. I did get a PS3 though! I'm not big on system wars, I don't care why you like your Xbox, Wii, or PS3 more or less than the others. In the end all three are major purchases and you can't let others influence your decision. I picked PS3 because I love my Playstation and PS2, I don't do so much online gaming so the Xbox 360 is really not beneficial to me, and I don't like the library of games available to the Wii and the upcoming titles.

I only bothered to get a few games for the PS3: Assassin's Creed, Folklore, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I finished Uncharted and Assassin's Creed, I liked them both. I know a lot of people have complaints about Assassin's Creed being boring, but it was a great game in theory and if you didn't try to slam through it, it was enjoyable. It by no means deserved the ratings or hype it got, but it wasn't terrible. I also liked that it set up for a sequel (Even if the ending of the game was mediocre at best), and hopefully Ubisoft takes the criticism it received and makes good changes.