"I was deeply into Final Fantasy XI(FFXI). I played it not knowing how involving it would become. Minutes turned into hours. I played it midway during my senior year and maintained a fairly good social life. I didn't have any downfalls in my life during when I was involved with this game. The main thing that was getting to me was that everything took forever to do. In these MMORPG games everything takes a day to do. This is one of the biggest reasons people are addicted. In a game like a shooting game or a fighting game or a platform adventure game you won't need to play the entire game just for a day to get anywhere. You won't find someone obsessively trying to find a super powerful thin for hours on end that the developers tease the players with. I remember a day where trying to find a key that players claim can be found in 2 hours ended up turning into 4 hours. It's things like this that make players not want to stop. They always want to finish up these things, then they start another task... and it most likely goes longer than expected. It just builds up and as the player reaches higher standards, the time alotted just gets bigger and bigger. I noticed this eventually and survived the 1st semester through college with good grades. Once my 2nd semester began I ended up cancelling my account because I refused to be another MMORPG failure statistic.

I hear about people quitting work to play the game and such and it's just rediculous. I remember one player hating me because he wanted me to help him right then and there will getting some piece of armor and I wasn't able to help him right then and there because I left the game on to run a bazaar(something a lot of players do to get money)and when I told him I couldn't help him he got extremely mad. It just shows how obsessive these players are. I'm grateful I didn't go any further because the game was becoming a chore after a while. Three hours was the normal time required for trying to gain character levels in parties. Everything was becoming about money and power. People end up needing money for their equipment and levels to show how much they feel they are worth. The game even drops people's levels and it'll cause frustration for the players when they die and lose a level.. and it'll keep them playing even longer.

I love online games, but MMORPGs are way too much to deal with. It's hard to enjoy other games or other activities when wanting to succeed in a MMORPG. Players who feel good about what they got in MMORPGs end up wanting to get more and more. It becomes almost like a competition in a way and RPGs shouldn't really be competitions. I play other online games when I have the time now, and they aren't MMORPGs. I can pick them up and put them down so much easier. This is because I'm never putting anything on hold when I put down the game which isn't the case for MMORPG players. Players never want to put a party to a stop because it'll make them look bad. I remember 1 player stopping a party because he said his mother wanted him to go play the violin. With the games I play now, they have no obligations. There are no spots that will destroy me if I put the game down. a Worst case scenario would mean 5-15 minutes to put down a game, and that's in a hectic situation. In FFXI, where the party normal time is 3 hours, that's if you have a party all ready to go and fight, there were days where it'd take 1 hour just to recruit the party because the jobs were so mandatory.

After going through this I decided enough was enough. I managed to quit before it was going to severely effect me. If players are able to handle dealing with such a game good luck. But with a lot of MMORPG games I know the stories are pretty bad. People are losing their lives, destroying their social lives, and losing their jobs and such. It's not worth it in the long run. MMORPGs are fantasy lands but they don't compare to real life which is an adventure in itself with so much more involved. When I play my games now, they aren't a chore, and if someone calls me up wanting to hang out, I can do that unlike other gamers in these addicting games."