Hey there!
I have not posted here in a long time. Let's fix that. Warning, there is no deep philosophical, smartypants stuff in this post, but I think you can deal. :)
Truth be told, I've been busy with nothing the past few months. I believe at the start of last December, a friend of mine pulled me back into Maplestory because he wanted to get back into it. People often ask, "People still PLAY that game?" and of course, the answer is still "yes". People don't just stop playing a game just because you left it. The show goes on, and if there is a profit to be made, you can guess what happens. I find MMORPGs to be a extra addicting. I always end up trying to out-do everybody else. I wanna hit the damage cape in Maple, be the "stronkest". You are probably not familiar with the game mechanics, so let's talk about it quickly. Maple is 2D sidescrolling game with cartoonish graphics. The damage gap is very large, meaning the strongest and the weakest players in the game have a huge difference in terms of how much damage they do.
In fact, let me go on because this is my blog and I can talk about whatever I want. :) This is a game where the equipment is more important than the levels. This is a game where damage is really all that matters. It's also very pay to win. There's no conceivable way to get to the very top without spending real life money in some way. There are multiple ways to achieve this. The legit way is to buy NX, which can be spent in the "Cash Shop" to buy stuff from cosmetic changes to equipment changes. Most of an item's power (in general) comes from it's "potential". What effect the potential has is random (in general). If you wanna be da berry best, you've gotta set down a ton of cash to randomly hit the best potentials. That's the legit way. You can always buy the items pre-done with a ton of mesos, the in game currency. The inflation is so bad from bots to the point where 1 BILLION mesos costs only $3 USD. That means the inflation is x12 worse than Runescape. The max cash stack in many games is 2.1 billion due to the limits of 32bit. It's now 10 billion in Maple, but that is still way too low for high-end equipment. Of course, buying mesos with real life cash or buying equipment with straight up dollar bills is prohibited, and the in game messages make it a point to repeat that until it's drilled into your head, but actions speak louder than words. The fact is, nobody gives a crap if you do. The money grab here is insane. I don't think the players for the most part understand just how pathetic the damage gap is because they've never reached anywhere near the top.
Well, I have. Chalk it up to addiction. We end up playing this broken, pay to win game, with glitches and tons of server downtimes. Sure, and it's true, the funnest moments of the game were when my guild buddies were screwing around with me in the game. We've had some pretty hilarious moments for sure. But there's this need to do the maximum damage possible, at least for me. Here's the thing, right. You can start casually, then realize with basic math that you can save so much time training your character for the next level by purchasing a double experience ticket. It makes total sense mathematically to do so. While that's true, such math misses an important aspect of it all. Then you realize that buying 1 billion mesos only takes $3. How much time does it take to make 1 billion mesos provided you are not amazing at what you do? Quite a while. Ok, then you escalate to get some more cash. Some NX here and there for more double xp, cosmetic crap, etc. Pretty soon, you don't WANT to know how much you've spent. That's when you know you have a problem on your hands. The slope is very real my friends, and it sure is slippery. One thing led to another and at the height of it all, I dropped 3 grand. Holy. Fucking. Shit. Sure, my damage was unbelievable. I was the strongest in the guild and the allianced guilds by a mile. I was carrying everybody. I was think about it this way: Do YOU want my damage? No you don't, because if you wanted it bad enough you'd be working extra shifts at work to get to where I am. Sure, I could actually cover the extra costs by working extra shifts if I do the right things. But again, that is missing the bigger picture.
The bigger picture is that we all know where the road ends. I guess... for most of my life I was playing Runescape, the game gave me direction. I have a reason to get out of bed and I knew what my goal was. Or in elementary school, I wanted to have read the most amount of books in the year, to have my name on the top of the list. So I read a book a day, every day, day after day. I want to be the expert at SOMETHING, and if I can't attain it, well, why even bother? In fact, when I quit Runescape, I remember it being a strange feeling: Waking up and not having your life be about some one thing. And just kindda... living. It's crazy.
The road has to end somewhere. This cannot keep up forever. I can't just play Maple and cover the expenses with more shifts. I'm going to have to find a way to sustain my life on my own eventually and it has already taken a long ass time. What about ingame? Well, new equipment will eventually come out, the damage cap will be increased further. Is being stronger more fun? Not really. While I made it a point to not join some elite bossing guild, but rather to hang out with my buddies, it's the same. In fact, it's arguably less fun now because everything dies in 10 seconds. There's no struggle, there's no Hank dying over and over again. Am I chasing damage, or am I chasing happiness?
2 days ago I decided that I wasn't happy with my current situation. So, I turned around and I started selling my gear back for cash. So far, so good. There is always a risk of getting scammed with these types of transactions. There are ways to mitigate that but without going into too many details, there are pros and cons to each method of selling or buying items. I don't scam people because well... that's not how I roll. People have been remarkably honest to me thus far.
I don't hesitate to blast my mother when she says some ridiculous bullshit. But in this case she was on the money and I knew it from the start: You can play now and get screwed later in life, or you can work hard now and be able to afford to screw around for the rest of your life. The former makes you miserable, the second makes you a baws in lyfe. And the people I bought my gear from understood this. They are probably selling their gear to go to college. And the people buying my gear will eventually understand as well, and they will sell the gear to somebody else. The cycle continues.
So now I am back to trying to study. Let's see what happens now. But Maple? No. Now I'm stepping outside of the zone and looking back at Maple... not again. The game is just broken. It was the people that made it fun. And those people will be around whether I hit shit damage or godly damage, because that's why they are people worth hanging out with.
And, I'm not naive or stupid enough to think everything is magically gonna be all better now because I quit. This is just the first step in a thousand-mile-long trek and in every step of the way there is a chance I will fail. The road to being an actuary is long and hard. I know I cannot understand what I am getting myself into. But I'll give it one last shot, so I'll try to make this one count. I hope for my sake that I make it.
By the way: This is why people annoy me when they make small talk. Well, it's one of the reasons. I hate it when people ask me about school or work, because I don't like talking about this stuff. Well, I just did. Don't make me regret it. We all have our failings. This is mine.
