finishing-the-game
Latest
Breakfast Topic: This is the game that never ends ...
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Once I finally reached 80, I felt so accomplished and at the same time so behind. I still had not finished all the Northrend quests and needed to get going on heroic dungeons, maxing my tradeskills and maybe working on some achievements. Now that Cataclysm is coming soon, of course, we all have our bucket lists to be concerned about, as well. Sometimes this becomes frustrating. I love to make myself to-do lists, much like collecting quests in my log -- but even more so, I love crossing things off the list that I have accomplished. With WoW, I always seem to feel like I am just trying to keep up. With more and more things about the game that I discover I want to accomplish, my to-do list grows longer. However, I guess that is inevitable when you play a game "that never ends."
The Daily Grind: When have you felt a sense of completion?
By their very nature, MMOs discourage being done. Not necessarily in an insidious sense -- but when your game relies upon people playing it for months on end, there's a natural emphasis on letting tasks stretch off to infinity. But while it's certainly possible to wind up with almost astonishingly long-running tasks, such as assembling the Relic Weapons in Final Fantasy XI, with enough persistence you eventually arrive at the day when you have your brand-new Excalibur. It's almost enough to just kill something with it and then declare yourself done. Even with an emphasis on long-term goals, there come certain points when you feel that your character has finished everything you want to do -- or perhaps points when the player behind the character just feels done. You are at the apex of power and knowledge, and there's no new challenges that won't be more of the same. In what moments have you felt a sense of completion and finality? Has that been your signal to quit, take a break, or just set a new goal for yourself? Are you happier with games that let you achieve several smaller goals, or one huge goal that feels more significant when you hit it?
