Steve Danuser has tossed up some interesting thoughts, as always, on his Moorgard blog. This time they relate to how growing up and moving on from a game is really no different to, say, growing up and not watching Sesame Street anymore. Why? Because it’s kind of weird to expect those characters to grow up just because you do.
My take? I tend to agree with Steve. There seems to be an awful lot of MMORPGers out there whom, after maxing out their main character, numerous alts, raiding every dungeon 1000 times and having more PvP kills than God, still tend to get uppity that the game owes them something. “This expansion wasn’t big enough! I finished it in two days!” they cry. Or how about this old classic that you see on some game’s online forums, “The game’s not as good as it used to be! I’m outta here!” and they leave in a total rage at the game they used to love, simply because they’ve run out of new challenges.
It’s really sad to see MMORPGs cop this kind of abuse because, more often than not, the gamer simply has outgrown the game, and it’s time to move on. No more, no less. No hidden agendas. Nothing. Getting them to realise this, however, is an all-new challenge.