my descent into MOG addiction is now total. i am so hopelessly addicted to AC there is no hope for me. if it were possible for me to quit doing things like eating and sleeping all i would do is play AC. i resisted playing these games fro so long becuse i knew this would happen. not only have i become hopelessly addicted, but i have spread the disease to others. my friend nomadic is playing it too now, thanks to me and my corrupting influence.
my girlfriend, pandy, is to blame. she got me hooked. she doesn't play much anymore either. i was hoping that getting nom hooked would help ease the addiction, but i had no such luck. nom and i are now hopelessly hooked.
the game is populated by all types, but there are a large number of "powerlevellers" who sacrifice gameplay, learning, and even socialization (the three things i think make the game worthwhile) so that they can max their characters out in the shortest possible time. these guys get powerful spells from toehr people in order to fight far beyond their level, and even use programs to hunt for them, called macros, so they don't actually have to play the game to level up. these players are usually young (like teenagers) and they end up not learning much about the game that way. these guys are easy to spot, they have very high level characters with mismatched armor (why put together something that makes you look cool? being 100th level is cool enough), and they act like retards in game, talking trash and stuff like that. they also don't know their asses from a hole in the ground when it comes to playing the game, since they rely on buffs and tiems from other people.
normally i just snicker at people like this. they don't bother me, even if they are actively trash talking me. i will meet someone in their 20's or 30's, hunt with them for an hour or two, and then when i see them again in a week they are twice my level, which is fine, i just accept that i am a more avid role payer as opposed to a power gamer. i also like to play a large variety of characters, so while one person may have a level 70 something sword character after a year of playing, i have 4 characters that are 40th. i also reroll characters that suck, so many of the ones i have are on their third, or in the case of my archer, their 7th iteration.
since i started playing AC, i had been in pandora the hopeful's monarchy, the children of hope. they were a small clan, mostly inactive, and they had been playing for years, so they were mostly characters over 60th, far beyond any of my characters. so i got used to hunting and questing alone, without any assistance. pandy gave me some gear to get started with, but i pretty much was on my own, so i had top learn to take things at my level, and to play wisely since i couldn't get much help if i got myself in to trouble.
now that pandy doesn't play so much, i joined the monarchy of one of her friends, opti silmara. opti is great, and her clan is way more active than PH, which is lots of fun. the people are friendly, and her clan has lots of very high level people. before joining her clan, i talked to her about the fact that i am not a power leveller and if there are not many low level characters in her clan, i won't be of much help on quests and stuff. she said it would be cool and there would be a place there for me, and for nom, so i agreed to join.
opti helped me get a cottage (which is a nice status symbol) and has been great to nom. she even offered to make me part of the honor guard, something like the inner circle, for her group. i turned the honor guard down (which i think she might have been a little cheesed about) because asside from being the monarch's boyfriend, i was just another soldier in CH. there are more people with better qualifications to be leaders in that group.
with all that said, the issue of my level has come up a few times. i have made jokes about it, and played it off, but it's always there, to the point that opti appointed someone to help me get another 6 levels to the magical 50th mark on my highest character. it's not like gaining levels is bad in my mid, it's just that i want to earn my levels the right way, by actually playing the game. i suppose it's time i got somebody up to 50th, and i agreed to do it, but i would have rather made it there myself, and if i was going to need asssitance, i'd rather it came from somebody i know, like my patron who is a real life friend of mine, not some random guy from france.
so it looks ike it's time to break down and take a little assistance from somebody to hit the big time.
it's not like i'm selling my soul, i just want to stay self sufficient as much as possible, even if it means being a perpetual newb.