Yesterday, my kinship leader in Lotro said, “I hate this game. I hate this game and I don’t know why I log on. But I do.”
It’s not that he just failed some instance or something. He really hates Lotro. He added up all the time he’s played on his current characters, and it adds to 8 months of online time. That’s over 5000 hours. Considering he’s played for two years, that adds up to an average of 56 hours per week, or 8 hours per day, every day.
Most people who are burned out will log on less. Not him. He logs on every day and plays for hours. I suggested trying a new MMO. “This is my first MMO, and it will be my last.” he said, “They take too much time.” I don’t normally think of MMO’s as being difficult to quit, especially not after they stop being fun. But if anyone makes me think twice about the addictive model for MMO’s, it’s my kin leader.
Yet I’m sure if he just quit the game for a while, maybe six months, the burnout would fade and he could come back to enjoy the game again.
We normally call that “a job,” although people don’t necessarily hate those that much.
I have always found it easy to move on from an mmo. For a day or two I miss the game and want to log in but after about a week I have generally found other things to do and no longer have any desire to log in. Perhaps I am just lucky, I have never had an eight hour a day mmo habit but given that this is your friends first mmo perhaps he doesn’t realise a few things:
Quitting an mmo is easier than quitting fags or booze, there is no physical addiction involved its just a time filler. There are lots of other things you can do with the time. I generally fall back on single player games.
Quitting an mmo is not like a divorce. You can always go back. In fact quitting for a while and going back later can be a very healthy experience. Its a great way to get off the grind ladder and focus on the bits of the game you really like.
Your kin leader is a crazy person. That’s ok, it happens.
Yeah, that really doesn’t sound healthy. I can understand the feeling though. I’ve reached the point where I wasn’t enjoying a game but realized I felt compelled to log on, and at those points I quit. After a good break from the game, I usually enjoy it more. Or I found another game I enjoyed more. Either way, like mbp says, quitting isn’t hard at all. You feel compelled to log back on for a few days, or maybe a week, but after that, you forget why you even cared. As it should be; it’s just a game after all.
That guy must be mad…. Gaming should be fun. If there is no fun then you should quit.
I play LOTRO and EVE, but when the game stars to suck I just leave.
I suspect it’s the social aspect that’s keeping him in, those are the ties that are hard to break. Note that Facebook is now the media’s current pet for addiction stories.
I stuck with WoW for months after I’d burned out on it, just because that’s where my friends were. I use MSN Messenger (or whatever they’re calling it this week) because of my friends list, but I’m still astonished at how badly bloated IM software is.
Given that he’s a guild / kinship leader, he’s probably even more socially bound than most.
Zubon, people usually get paid for jobs, though, not pay for the right to have one. *shrug*
It’s always hard to /quit your first MMO. I had a very difficult time leaving EQ back in the day. All my friends played and it felt like I was abandoning them as well as my characters. Eventually, I got over it and realized it’s just a bunch of code and friends, well, friends last forever.
I don’t have any problem now leaving a game, but I can see the difficulty in leaving your first.
All things are best in moderation, somethin like that?
Well, we know he hates it and we can kinda infer why he keeps logging in, because we’ve all been there. The more interesting question would be why he hates it, not why he “can’t” quit.
We all know the answer to why he can’t quit, don’t we? C’mon. We can be frank. We’re all friends here. :)
It was LOTRO….’nuff said.
I think LOTRO is like cigarettes for some people. They taste horrible, and you keep spending money due to the addiction.
But truly, they keep sending me those “come back” notices, but I just do not feel like ever stepping into that game anymore.
It seems to cause a malaise in players I have not seen before.
He really needs to let it go, because the addiction wears off eventually…cold turkey works.
I just don’t get how you can hate a game and not quit it. I can barely bring myself to do things I have to do that I don’t want to do (work, mowing the lawn, taxes), there’s no imaginable set of circumstances that would make me play a game I didn’t enjoy.