It has come to my attention that I am hopelessly addicted to MMO’s.

Now when I say I’m addicted I don’t mean that I am shunning every aspect of my life just to play them. I maintain a work eithic, I do the housework that needs doing and my bills are paid in time. However the second I sit down at my PC to play games I have plenty of games to play that aren’t laborious time sinks yet I will still choose to play them instead of anything else.

Even if it is just for a couple of hours before heading to play single player game my default reaction is to boot up either Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2 or Runescape. Those aren’t even the extent of what I have installed! Flavour of the month sets in and any of those games could be swapped for near enough any MMO that is out there.

Now why am I atracted to this genre of gaming?

I’m socially awkward and anxious so I don’t engage in the social element outside of a small handfull of friends. This then leads me to playing the game mostly by myself, even making guilds just to stop people asking me to join theirs. My reaction time has gone down over the years so that doesn’t make me viable for end game raiding.

So what exactly do I do on these games?

Let’s start by diving into Final Fantasy XIV to see what I’ve been doing. I have played this game since 1.0 came out, it was the first MMO that I could buy myself and it was final fantasy, like holy shit, at that time I hadn’t heard anything mentioned of it anywhere. I didn’t know that it was going to be a thing yet there it was. Sat on a shelf in a Blockbuster in the middle of nowhere.

It was a no brainer to me back then and I bought it but when I got home that was when I realised how stupid I had actually been. There were 2 computers in my childhood house. The family PC that still ran Windows 98 and still… well ran, but barely, and a laptop that I had gotten from my grandparents. Now this laptop had Windows XP on it, however it was a really old Dell laptop that was made specifically for office work and yet I tried to run Final Fantasy XIV on that dark grey brick of a machine.

At that time I could not understand why it did not work. I was upset that I had just spent money on this game and I couldn’t even play it. I was more upset that the 30 day free trial that came with it was wasted because before I could even launch the game to find out that I couldn’t run it I had to make an account and have an active subscription going.

This did not stop me however. I instead settled on saving up to buy a laptop that could run it and a year later I did just that. I had a laptop that could run Final Fantasy XIV, I bought a new subscription, I installed the game and you know what? I hated it, I can’t even remember what specifically was wrong with it but I remember being just so dissapointed.

I begrudgingly played until my subscription was up and I only booted the game again to watch the meteor come down on the servers as the game ended its service.

A year or so later I recieved an email for the beta test of Final Fantasy XIV: A Real Reborn. I was confused since as far as I knew at that point the game was over, servers gone, the end. I started looking into what was going on and found that the game originally ended because it was that bad but that Square Enix were going to fix it, make a better game and release that again. I was sceptical but I joined the beta and this time I fell in love. I don’t know what changed exactly as it was a long time ago and while I did play 1.0 I could not tell you anything notable about it outside of “Game bad, Meteor dropped when servers shut down, Goobbue wall.”

From there I played Final Fantasy XIV near enough every day if I could afford the subscription. Without getting into my weird ass family tree my “Step-Dad” also played the game. This ended up being my first experience with the social aspect of MMO’s and I joined their guild. The people in the guild taught me how to play the game and helped me through the base story. With this guild and their help I had barely scratched the surface of the content that was availible in the game. They were trying to mould me into a static raider so a lot of my time in the game ended up being spent gearing and building my character correctly, especially back in a time when you could build your character wrong. Shout out to those that remember stat allocations in the game, so glad it’s gone now.

During the gearing process in an MMO you are expected to jump through some of the most insane hoops. Raids now come in 3 sets, 8 player casual, 8 player hard known as savage raids and 24 player raids. If you are unlocking the content as it comes out then you would be doing the 8 player casual and 24 player raids at least once every week as they would have a chance at dropping gear that you can get one peice per week however you aren’t guaranteed that a peice for your class will drop and if it does you are fighting other players for the chance to get it. After this you would be doing the highest dungeons you have unlocked to earn a currency to then spend on more gear, gear that was not better than what dropped in the raids, but gear that at least got you closer to making your numbers bigger. However there is also another set of quests you can do for a weapon for your class. These weapons are called relics and while by the end of the patch cycle there are better weapons to use, usually collected from 8 player hard raids, they are still very good weapons.

At the time with A Real Reborn, the relic weapon was awful to get. I have done it. I will wear this as a badge of honour until I die. I have the shiny teapot in my player housing. I HAVE THE TEAPOTS AS A GLAMOUR WEAPON FOR MONK! and yet I want to go do it again, I want to get all of these relics. For every class. For every expansion. This is my goal. But to get these relics, you have to do some of the longest grinds that the game has. For 2 expansions to try and keep the content in earlier maps relevant the quests would have you doing events on certain maps, taking you all over the game and testing your knowledge of where to find specific enemies. Testing your patience with loot drops. The worst of these from the community was the Atma grind, sending you to early maps to complete random events for a chance for a specific Atma to drop, however for me the worst is the step after where you have to complete 9 books, all with 3 random events, 3 dungeons, 3 levequests and 10 different enemies that you have to kill 3 times. When I first started this grind the cost of the books were 1500 of a currency that was slow to gather and you could only hold a maximum of 2000. This grind broke me.

I had to take my first break from the game, the first of many but it has not stopped me from coming back. During my time away the guild I was in fell apart and when I came back it was just me, all alone not really sure what to do or where to go. So I hung around one of the three main cities for a while doing quests I missed. I unlocked other classes to mess around with and I stumbled upon the classes that would change how I played the game as a whole. Gathering and crafting.

These classes aren’t exactly anything fun in the general sense. Most people who look at them only look at the fishing class because I mean come on, it’s fishing. It is the most relaxing class to play unless going for collection logs. Crafting gave me something to do while waiting for new story content but also I found it fun and cathartic to be making things, going out in the world to collect my own materials and just vibing. It is now at a point where once I have finished a new expansions story, the first thing I do is get my gatherers and crafters to the level cap. Gear can come later, for now, we craft. I mean the most recent patch in the game included content for crafters and gatherers and it’s the main reason I log in to the game now, well that and the couple of self imposed challenge characters I have running.

So crafting is the reason I play MMO’s? No, it can’t be that. I’ve been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 and the crafting system in that game is…there? It exists but it doesn’t really inspire me to go do it. Crafting in Final Fantasy XIV has a full rotation to do with your skills. Guild Wars 2 crafting is “click a button and wait.”

So if it’s not for the crafting, why do I play Guild Wars 2?

Guild Wars 2 was the second MMO I ever bought. What drew me in to do so was that it didn’t have a subscription, you bought the game, you owned the game. Now it is free to play the base game, you only have to pay for the expansions. What made me stay however was how freeing the game was to play, outside of standard level gates and expansion locks, you are free to go anywhere and you are rewarded for it. Guild Wars 2 has an interesting take on leveling and progress. Rather than just completing story, which most of it can be skipped or played out of order depending on what aspects of the story you own, the main progress you will make on your character comes from the achievments the game has. To the point that to show this to new players they added in an achievment track for new players that will also help them get to the level cap faster to experience what the game has to offer. Achievments will cover every aspect of the game, from collecting items, to exploring the world, to fighting bosses. Arenanet really refined the way that Guild Wars 2 plays.

Every map has events that pop up and these will be the main content of the game after story. Most mid to end game maps will have a series of events that will lead up to a boss fight, known as meta events. For example in the Silverwastes map the meta quest is to take and hold multiple bases, escorting supplies to and from these bases, defending the bases from enemy attacks all culminating in everyone on the map fighting one of three bosses for big rewards. Like yahtzee said in his old zero punctuation episode “the whole sever is a party and you’re invited.”

Guild Wars 2 also has an interesting way to build your classes, there is technically no wrong way to build your character, however all your skills and traits can be swapped out at any time as long as you’re not in combat and some of the expansions brought class specialisations with them that again you can switch between and each specialisation changes how your class abilities work. Each class can equip multiple different weapons, so if you want to you can be a ranger that uses daggers or a great hammer or two flavours of bows at once. You can be a big tanky looking class that focuses on support or a class that looks like it would be a healer doing nothing but big damage numbers.

Once you’ve hit the level cap, that doesn’t mean that experience is useless from there. Presenting Masteries, these unlock permanent buffs and abilities for your account. You read that right, not your character, your whole account, any future character will have these inately unlocked and these can range from movement stuff such as a glider and mounts that can then be used outside of the specific expansion zones, to unlocking better rewards from meta events, to even crafting better and stronger weapons, unlocking certain shops and more.

So with everything I’ve talked about, it’s the progression and the combat that I enjoy? Not necescarily no. Look at Runescape. The entier game is a grind, every inch of progress towards anything can feel like pulling teeth yet I still play. I am terrible at the combat yet I will still sit there throwing myself at the boss fights until one of us breaks.

So Runesape. Specifically Old School Runescape. Occasionally Runescape 3 but not as often as leveling is so much easier. This is the first true MMO I ever played and it wasn’t even for me, growing up one friend was lucky enough to have internet and a computer for themselves. They played a lot of Runescape, but they would use me as free labour. I wanted to play this game so bad that they would have me training the skills they didn’t want to for hours and me being fairly young at this point was just happy to be playing the game. It wasn’t until high school that I actually played it on my own account and I did what I do best, I gathered, I crafted. I was a natural skiller. However due to the long hours I would spend on the game just cutting oaks or mass mining on a free to play account while not talking to anyone, I often got reported as a bot and lost a fair few accounts due to this but I would always come back.

I wasn’t until I had my first job until I tasted what being a member was actually like. More skills, more world, more quests. There was so much to do and I had no idea what I was missing out on until I finally paid that dreadful subscription.

With Runescape you never quit, you only take longer and longer breaks. This is true because while I’m not exactly anywhere near max level on any skill and all my quests are currently blocked off by me being bad at the combat it doesn’t stop me hopping on, popping a bond and playing for a bit, slowly chipping away at this massive mountain of exp that I needed to get.

If I don’t feel like progressing on my main account I also have many challenge characters on the go, I have an Ironman, Hardcore Ironman, Group Ironman, Skillers. There is so much to do and you are the only one who can set your goals.

So then what even is the addiction coming from?

I have reason to believe that my addiction comes from the goals I keep setting myself in these games. Final Fantasy XIV I have challenge characters which I would like to see through to the end of the game. My main I want to complete everything on, every log, every trading card, every relic, every achievment. Guild Wars 2 I want to finish the story that I was jumping around for years, I finally have all of it unlocked and I am slowly catching up and after that I would like to craft my first ever legendary weapon, maybe even unlock every mastery track. In Runescape I want my character to be maxed on all skills, I want the quest cape, I want to try every raid at least once and if I git gud at the combat then maybe even look into the collection logs there.

A lot of the MMO’s that I play on the side are ones that I have similar goals or even have goals along the lines of just to explore the world more or to learn how the game works properly. Even in the case of Elder Scrolls Online, I usually boot that when I want to play an Elder Scrolls game but can’t get Oblivion running or I’m sick of playing Morrowind.

I suppose I should come to a point for this rambling mess of a break down of the three main MMO’s I play and if there has to be one then it would be to never give up, just take breaks when needed. My goals in these virtual worlds grew my tenacity throughout different aspects of my life. I fight like hell for the things that I want, need or for a better life in general. Also maybe break big tasks down into smaller tasks that are easier to do, makes things easier and puts it all into perspective.

Still don’t know how to end these things properly so, peace out.