Another Life

I've started another blog titled "Life in Ferelden" since I started playing Dragon Age: Origins. Perhaps starting a blog about it is overkill. But I've gotten somehow revitalized by the fact I'm embarking on a journey that will end in the foreseeable future.

I wondered why I was so giddy given DA:O is a fantasy with elements just like every other fantasy, and I've decided it was because of that one thing - "an ending".

MMORPGs have worn me out. It is hard for me to enjoy them anymore because I have this nagging feeling that whatever I do is only a grain of sand on a beach and the game expects me to move that beach elsewhere using a bucket. Do you know how babies are content when wrapped tight in swaddling cloth and uncomfortable when they are flailing about naked? That uncomfortableness is the feeling I get when thinking about playing another MMORPG.

Thanks to the intarweb I was able to easily find an article that describes what is wrong about MMOs for me now. This article is about the series Lost. And how at first it was extremely popular, but as each season ended, you started to feel drug along and drug out.

The author suggests shows like Lost be "reimagined". Instead of a regular television series make it a limited-run show from the get-go.

When it comes to how I feel about MMOs, I couldn't have said it better myself - "Puzzles are meant to be solved, not prolonged. You can only tease viewers so long before they feel like they’re being mocked."

I know DA:O is going to end and I'm all the more engaged in the story because of it.

Edit: Here is a link to an opinion that is just the opposite of mine. The Angry Gamer doesn't want to play a game where what he does won't be lasting. AG says "The problem is that MMO’s have spoiled me to the point where I feel like if I play a single player game I am getting NOTHING accomplished."

When achievements were introduced, I too felt as if I weren't on my main "achieving" I wasn't getting anything done. But what I and AG are both doing is painting ourselves into a corner.

If AG is truly having fun "getting SOMETHING accomplished" by playing WoW that's what its all about.

But if AG is avoiding doing something else fun, at the risk of doing more of the same I say free yourself!