MMOs - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly pt.2

As you might remember from the last article in our series, MMOs can be pretty awesome and fun to play. Well guess what? It's not all fairies and roses. So sit down and let's get ready to take a bite of this turd sandwich.

The Bad

As I said in the last article, much of the fun in MMOs is in the sense of discovery and team work. A lot of this stuff takes place mostly at lower levels. This is because like Scientology, you have to delve a bit deeper in most MMOs before their insidious nature becomes apparent.

When your character is a lower level, it usually takes a reasonable amount of exp to level up, you gain money at a decent rate from just doing quests and exploring. Equipment usually doesn't cost a ton and you can get by without a whole lot of gear. Life is good! You are drawn into this world and you get hooked. Then the grind begins.

As you reach mid-levels, the exp requirement to level begins to climb. Gear starts to cost more and to gain access to cool items and areas there are usually a few hoops you need to jump through. But you tell yourself, "Nah it's not that bad. Just 5000 more exp and I can wear my new armor!" So you play for another hour or two, level up and put on your armor. You feel awesome...for about a minute. Then you start looking at your next spell, or weapon, or ability. There's always something else just around the corner. The good old carrot on a stick!

As you keep playing exp requirements skyrocket, you don't find nearly enough money and most good weapons and armor are retardedly expensive or only available through difficult and time consuming quests. You play for hours just trying to level up, or get a rare piece of loot. At this point you're not really having much fun anymore, you're just grinding out another level. It's called grinding because that's exactly what it feels like. A boring, repetitive task. It's just like a job. It's even worse if you're like me and have a job you actually enjoy. Plus you are accomplishing something and getting REAL money!


Which brings me to my final point of this article, RMT. That stands for real money trading. Basically companies hire large amounts of people (usually Chinese) to play the game all day and just gather resources, then sell them to get in-game money. They then use their website to sell the game money for REAL money! Basically a digital sweatshop. And it works, because of how much of a fucking grind these games are.

Many people realize that "Hey, instead of playing the game for 5 hours to get 100 gold pieces, I can work at my job for 2 hours and just BUY 100 gold pieces. That saves me 3 hours!" Yes that's right folks, people will pay so they don't have to play this fucking game they are paying $10 a month to play. Why? Because they are completely addicted.