I’m done with MMOs. There, I’ve said it. I feel better, like a load has been lifted from my chest. Because the truth is that I have felt this way for a while now but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. So I played new games and really tried to throw myself in there.

But the magic has gone. The magic has gone. Starting a new MMO instills no new sense of wonderment. Oh sure, the graphics are amazing and the world designs are nice. But it’s all lost in the whiz-bang effects and the rush! rush! rush! mentality. The players aren’t the same either. And that includes me. I don’t have any time for meeting new people in game because I just assume that they’re going to be retarded and a waste of my time and energy. Better to go it alone and not be disappointed. And thus I meet no new people in what are supposed to be MMOs. We are all mice on a revolving wheel. We do things in-game so we can do more things due to the things we have done. On and on it goes. There is no end.

You cannot explore due to the perceived pressure of keeping up with everyone else. BDO introduced the new concept of tabling the top players in each realm. Do you like cooking? Oh look! You’re ranked 345th on the server! Better go do some more cooking or you’ll be left behind! Rush, rush, rush!

And we pay for this. I used to love competition back in the day but it was competition with soul. It had heart. It had meaning. Does that sound nebulous to you? It does to me too but I know what I once had and what has been lost. The game designers promised so much and we were foolish enough to listen. Now we consume games. Rush from this game to that game and on to the next one. We’re desperate to rediscover the magic, but the magic has gone.

You might not approve of this rant. You may think that I am pathetic and that there are many holes in my argument. I don’t care. Poke all the holes you want. It can’t change the futility I feel when I log on to these games. Why am I doing this again? Oh, right – because it’s supposed to be fun.

Well, it’s not fun. It’s not an escape. It’s a grind. I prefer real life now. It’s more interesting. Perhaps that is a good thing. Progress even. But I still love computer games. This blog will live on. I will play other games and maybe write about it. But with MMOs I am done and I am announcing it in this way so I cannot go back to them. There’s no point in looking backwards anyway. We had a gone run, it was fun while it lasted. We had the good fortune of being around at the beginning, at the glory time. Like popular music from 1966 to about 1975. They had a good run too, then it all went to shit.