platypus-online
Latest
The Perfect Ten: Stages of returning to an old MMO love
In my illustrious career of sitting on my butt and mashing the 1-4 buttons over and over, I've returned to many MMOs like an addicted boomerang. I learned early on never to say those immortal words of, "I quit and I'm never coming back! This is it!" because that was only setting myself up for major pie in the face later. Better to return with a head held high than to slink through the doors of the account page, hoping that nobody sees me. We return to MMOs a lot, don't we? There are so many reasons we do it and they're mostly boring, so I'm not interested in talking about them here. But what I do want to chart is the progression I've seen in myself and others as we've come back to an old MMO flame. I've identified 10 stages (well, 11 really) that the returning gamer goes through, and in the interest of SCIENCE, I want to be the first to write the defining document of this significant process.
