My [soon to be ex...] girlfriend lives for Final Fantasy 11 now. Aside from school, she does nothing other than play this damned game. Calls to her go something like this:

*ring* *ring*
Grace: Hello?
Me: Hey Grace, whatc-
Grace: Hold on.
*sound of typing*
*sound of combat*
*sound of more typing*
*more typing*
Me: Soooo...
*more typing*
*typing*
Me: Well...
*typing*
Me: I guess I'm gonna go now...
*typing*
*typing*
Me: So uh...bye Grace!
*typing*
*more typing*
*CLICK!*

Yeah. I'd suppose this is normal for the first day or five, but this is getting insane.

Anyone else suffer from MMORPGA or have friends and loved ones who need help?

...I need to target the missiles.

It's probably been mentioned before in other threads, but think of how powerful simsense addiction would be, and how much of a problem it probably is in the SR setting. Maybe by 2060+ people are used to simsense enough to not get crazy, people (humans and even culture) do adapt rather quickly, and children even faster; but imagine when it first was released as a commercial product, and I'm not even talking about BTL types.

MMORPG "addiction" is a fairly common thing, I don't understand it, but it's something you hear about from time to time, like right now. If you could live it though, instead of just "playing" a game, then I'd understand, and would maybe be one of the deckheads drooling in a recliner with the drip feeder going. I expect at *least* a mild addiction: Matrix (or simsense) would be a common flaw in most NPCs (and some PCs especially deckers) encountered, well, if they live in the Sprawl anyway.

Just something that jumped into my head.

So lemme get this straight...shoot the missiles into the future?

Yep. Prefect example is the immortal Evercrack... Its just so bloody adicting.

Well I play everquest. Different folks handle it differently. Theres two real issues in understanding interaction with those playing. First is to realize is that any real time mmorpg doesnt have a pause button, and if you mess up it can literally mean hours down the tubes so you cant expect them to drop everything immediatly for the phone. Second is that the same part of the brain used to handle conversation is the one used to read and react to things on the computer screen so its difficult to do both simultaneously. Now, my friends are all familiar with the game and if I get a call and say "one sec" they know it means Im probably in the middle of dying or something and need 30 sec to remedy the problem. But once that 30 sec is over its really easy to speak with them for 5, 10, 30 minutes np; you just tell the folks in game you got a call, they know not to expect chat, and you can use that part of the brain to talk on the phone; problem solved. Now Im not your gf (thank goodness) so Im not sure how she can handle multitasking specifically. And having never played FF11 I have no idea if its similar to EQ. You might try sitting down with her to "see what all the rage is about" and just watch the game, and watch how she plays, and see if theres "downtime" situations where paying 100% attention isnt critical. Best case you figure out how the game works and when you call you can say "let me know when youre safe" and have a fast chat; worst case you lose an hour but save yourself the annoying phone conversations. Just some random thoughts.

I wouldn't classify GTA:VC as a RPG, but when I was working out of state away from my PS2 I couldn't wait to get home to it, then I would spend the whole weekend playing that game. Then one weekend I relised I didn't see my family for almost 2 weeks because of work and a stupid game. Now I hardly play it and when I do it is in one or two hour increments I set for myself. Maybe the fad wore off of me, or I really relised I was wasting an awful lot of time on a stupid game, maybe she'll relise it also and try to salvage what is left of the relationship. Addicts have to hit bottom before they relise something is wrong.

Dwarf: That was a good ten minute convo of my listening to her keyboard. It wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't on it from school letting out to school resuming.

Frag: I'm givin' it a week. Addicts have to hit bottom fast around me.

I played Final Fantasy 1 when it first came out all day long. Well my nintendo screwed me and it lost the game so I had to start from scratch, knowing what I had to go through again I just gave up on it and went to find soemthing else to do. I don't know how FFII works but maybe you could delet her game. Just a thought, it might back fire she might get more determoned to get back to where she was.

Haha, always a thought.

I remember playing UO a long time ago...I still don't understand how people can manage to pay $12 a month to hangout with pricks in a world that's still beta.

And you can't even kill each other!

It depends on what she's addicted to, really. Generally, for me, if I get to doing something else and forget about something I'm addicted to, I stop being addicted. So when FFX-2 comes out, she might be freed of it

We can only hope.

OT: I'm hot and rich and famous, anyone female want to go out with me?

MMORPGs suck. Its like a game that you keep paying for. That's just wrong, especially because everyone in online games is invariably an asshat. It would be like the hostility of a Blizzard game chat room that you have to pay for every month. The only difference is its got a sub par CRPG built around it.

Amen.

But sometimes you get the weird groups of nuts who run freeform D&D in real life because "the rules exist to help the bad roleplayers out" and get in-character in online games... But then again, I'm a strange person, so I do these things. Like having a Diablo 2: LoD druid that I refused to equip with any metallic items (other than jewelry, of course), or that me and some of my friends in KoC have been trying to learn an elven language based on Tolkien's for the sake of sending in-character messages to each other.

And the orc player made up his own version of orcish for the same reason.

We may be insane, but our games are interesting.

There is noting wrong with playing games or trying to add to your experience while playing the game, I know I have done many things to enhance my games. But when you let the games control your life and it effects your life and effects the lives of the people who love you then it is a problem. I believe that is one of the markers of addiction,.