Online games give you abilities online that you don't have in real life. Your friend might thank you for destroying a huge orc that was going to crash your skull in... This gives you happy emotions. Everyone in the world just goes about their daily routines trying to get happy moments. Re-creating them in a virtual environment is no different. It's hard being an over-weight, non-attractive glasses-wearing nerd. (I tried it for like, two years...) Online gaming turns these outcasts into super-humans for a short time. farking with their game, is like farking with their life.

i'm intrested in any response

My response? You shouldn't be allowed within ten feet of a suicidal person. You want to get your rocks off scaring people or making them beg for their life, go become a professional dominatrix.

As long as you have got your elf, thats the main thing

mythago--

i would never attempt to do that to someone. like hubiestubert said it was just a thought experiment. my point was not to make them beg as you say, but to make them realize that their life has meaning to them. i understand it is radical but once again i'd like to point out that it is just an unformed thought. many good ideas evolve in this manner. there is no need to resort to insults.

hubie--

i was just thinking. sorry if i didn't make that real clear. i'm no mad scientist. i promise.

happy:

from my own suicidal times (teenage years, ah, how fun) i would have charged anyone who did that to me.

i want to shoot myself for saying this, but the only thing that pulled me out of those times was falling in love w/a little girl. (an adopted sister you pervs.)

that is to say, i think for most ppl, the depth to which you are suffering equates to the emotional strength it takes to either break you or pull you out of it. in mudding terms, if your mental sanity needs to be -10 or lower to commit suicide, and yer at -8, offin yerself will be *real* easy (-2) compared to pulling out (8).

this kid seemed to be at a -9.

kungfu films, but i'm pretty good with screma sticks (quarter sticks) and some basic stuff. self defense and some boxing from my era of teen angst. i beleive it's good to think about things too. if it wasn't for contraversial thought there would be no science, or psychology. for that matter there wouldn't be any thing that ended in "ology", and we'd still be afraid to travel for fear of falling off the "edge" of the world. hehe.

hubie--

hehehe. thank you! i must go sleepy now, have school tomorrow. sleep sweet. enjoy farking.

I remeber in sixth grade playing Middle Earth Role Playing (yes based on the books). My friend bought the book and we played as characters. I did'nt get into it that much (I was more interested in tracing and drawing the monsters and characters) but my friend told me that the game has an ending, and he completed. I know nothing about EQ thank my pagan god...I mean God, but one of the posts said the game had no ending. I think an ending to EQ would end some maybe all addivtive behavior, like it did for my friend after he conqured Middle Earth, he was done after that.

My story was a little strnager though, as I said I used the "MERP" book to sketch, I later bought a D&D book and used it for the same purpose. At this time I was in seventh grade, and not playing the games, but drawing the drawing the apsects. My mother, being a religoud zealot, found the book and ripped it up. I never consoled to RP again.

My friend and I went to different junior high schools and were reunited in high school when we played football together. I asked him if I could borrow delapitated MERP book so I could draw the monsters again. I just kept it on my shelf, until recenlty, when my friend came over and wanted the book back. He said he was going to program a crued RP computer game off the book, strange.

My point is that RP games need ENDINGS to form a goal in mind. Consider the four year old game Star Craft (I play B-Net regularly), what if it was and RP game and had the B-Net feature. It would be total chaos. Instead there is a ending top the nicely crafted and srory driven game, and B-Net is a feature for fun and entertainment. Online, SC is popular beacuse it is comptetive but "allows you" to leave because you had already complteted the game.

In case you won't read my story...

ALL GAMES NEED IS ENDINGS! INERNET GAMES SHOULD NOT CONSUME A PERSON IN ORDER TO ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME.

I lost solitare just now, anyone got a gun?

Scary, surprising, astounding. What have we come to? Just yesterday it seemed I was sitting in front of my computer playing Railroad Tycoon and Civilisation II to all hours. Then I grew up. I started going out, taking drugs, dropping out and getting laid. I went into the real world, took a shot at things and as it turns out, real life ain't that hard at all.

I'm not going to heap shiat on this kid cause he had no life or whatever problems, because I know that at the heart of it, his addictive gaming is a streak that runs through not only myself, but many others that have posted in this thread. I just wish I had the chance to meet him, take him out to a trendy club where he could watch beautiful women snort coke off each other's naked bodies. Show him that it's not that hard to talk to girls, make new friends, or be the party animal you always thought you weren't.

It's so sad when you reflect on the multitude of social and personal problems created by an affliction like chronic shyness or social ineptitude which on the surface seems so harmless.

Gnomepoop, for someone to reach level 60 in EQ (the max level), they have to play for literally hundreds of hours. I would not be at all surprised to find that someone with a level 60 character had to play for 1000 hours to get there. Even so, it isn't an ending in and of itself, because even at level 60 you can still kill things looking for better equipment. And even if you had a level 60 character with all the best equipment for your class, you can always start a new character and level them up too. There are over a dozen classes, so whether or not there is an *ending* at level 60 is moot. You never have to stop playing the game.

Also, not everyone plays to win. As many people have stated in this thread already, a lot of people play mainly for the social interaction. If Sony were to put an ending in there for killing some kind of final area or final boss, that would imply that half of their playerbase is playing the game "the wrong way" because they have a goal other than trying to finish the game.

And Sparky, get over yourself. Not everyone has a burning desire deep down to screw coked-up hookers, if only they had the initiative and spunk that you do.

SPARK_DOG: You speak such truth, and so eloquently. I think you and I have been down similar roads. Ironic too...the scenario you mention is reminiscent of my good friend's bachelor party last night. What a blast--we partied, smoked out, and went to a gentleman's club (my second time to a club so far) And I actually thought about this guy Shawn Wooley, since I had discussed the news story with those guys. I was thinking how sad it was that he might have never experienced life in this way...being lived moment to moment in a beautifully simple, semi-fakey yet wonderful, indulgence. And I'm not speaking strictly of going to a strip bar either. Happiness manifests itself in even subtler and more authentic ways. But when I was depressed and chronically shy, I could have never foreseen that I would have those kinds of experiences. I couldn't have known how life can be when you doctor with someone and attain a healthy state of mind through treatment. Anyway, thanks a lot for your comment.