Tales of a Married Gamer pt 7 – Goodbye MMO’s

No pressure…

Walks into room, steps up to podium with several microphones…

This is my official announcement. I am retiring from Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (or MMORPGs as we all call them now).  I have traversed my way through many games: World of Warcraft, Warhammer, and most recently Star Wars the Old Republic.  My retirement is a heavy decision, but I’ve finally decided to say farewell to the games I loved, and focus my future on my family, career, and life outside of the virtual space.

So what does this week’s article have to do with married gaming?  Well, everything, to be honest.  I’ve spent a good amount of hours on playing MMO’s, but I have always felt that there was something lacking.  It really isn’t a criticism of the games.  I really like playing computer games, partly because of the social interaction, but also the ability to use a variety of play styles, strategies, and so forth. Most people reading this are thinking that you can play with different styles in MMO’s, and that social interaction is one of the big points that sets MMO’s apart from normal video games.  This is true, but I’m a picky person, and I like to really help drive the story-line of a game, and to be honest, except for a few video games out there, you will always be somewhat placed on the railroad tracks.  Thus, I’ve decided that it is time for the retirement, so that I can focus on board games where I can play with friends in person, as well as role-playing games like the new and old versions of the Star Wars RPG.  In this manner, I feel like I’ll have more freedom.

Another thing it will do is get me playing more games with my wife.  The only game on a computer/tablet/system my wife plays is Chess.  She is not a big fan of video games, though I found out that she did once play video games when she was a college student in China.  Times have changed, and games are really a way for us to socialize now.  So my moving away from MMO’s is going to eliminate the time I played games by myself, and turn some of that in to time I can play with my wife and our friends.  I know there are several people out there shaking their heads right now, but if you have read my previous columns you know that life and marriage is compromise, and the one I am making is something I think will improve my relationships with the things closest to me.

So, to all my MMO characters, I wish you well as you float in cyberspace.  Maybe someday I will hop on and give you a quick testimonial (in Europe retired players are given a last tribute match which they get to keep part of the revenue from) and donate the money you have to the guilds my friends are in.

But that is it, that is the end of my career… of course Michael Jordan and Brett Favre said this before and came back, so you never know. ;-)

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Agent 88, also known as Nick to a few intelligent species of the Earth, dates most of hist interest back to the days of his childhood where his dad made the claim that he was really Darth Vader. Despite decades of video and computer games, it was not until his 20′s that Agent 88 picked up roleplaying games, mostly focusing on Star Wars and D&D/Fantasy. In the 12+ years since then, he has dabbled in a variety of games and systems, and has now taken up the world’s most expensive hobby: Warhammer 40k. In his other life, Nick is an assistant professor at a university somewhere in the world. His research uses statistics, math, game theory, and other concepts to examine sporting contests and other games. Nick is currently attempting to design a board game based on his research and love of games, though his non-stop pvping as a Jedi Sage in SWTOR gets in the way of accomplishing this goal.

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