2013-10-12, 12:31 AM
After I was randomly hacked, along with hundreds of other people who never shared their personal information, enjoying the game felt very hollow. I knew that my gains could disappear at any time, so I stopped investing as much of myself in it. I kept logging in because I had friends who played, but whenever an event gave out a pendant or something, I couldn't bring myself to care. My friends -- they were so goddamned excited about the stupidest pomegranate, and I think my mood really brought them down, but you have to understand if any of you are reading this: it wasn't that I didn't want to play with any of you anymore; I simply couldn't bring myself to care after already losing everything once. Even after Nexon compensated my losses with some exorbitant amount of maple points, I could only enjoy the game for a few months before coming down from that high.
I kept logging in, though. My friends, they kept me coming back. Then one day they started disappearing. Most of them got tired of the game and quit. One was wrongfully permabanned, but he kept coming back as different characters and I couldn't keep up. One decided he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. Another went off to university and stopped playing as much. Another just vanished mysteriously one day. By the end my buddy list was empty and I spent most of my time wandering around quiet ghost towns, making guilds with funny names, guild hopping in general, and just losing myself in the meaningless of it all. There used to be people you could count on seeing, even if you didn't know them personally. They were always just there for some reason. That Guy who's always AFK in the FM; That Guy who AFKs in his UFO chair; that Night Lord you randomly met in '08 who never logs out no matter what hour you track him; those people who set up their shops in Channel 8 for some reason. But eventually all of those people disappeared too. Everyone was gone, and the people remaining were strangers.
There was nothing pulling me to the game anymore. I would log in because I felt compelled to -- not because I had anything to do, or anyone to have fun with. So one afternoon, on a total whim, I deleted fucking everything and installed Ubuntu Linux. Now I can't return, ever.
Sorry about the blogshit. Getting all that out was like cleansing a backed up sink, though.
I kept logging in, though. My friends, they kept me coming back. Then one day they started disappearing. Most of them got tired of the game and quit. One was wrongfully permabanned, but he kept coming back as different characters and I couldn't keep up. One decided he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. Another went off to university and stopped playing as much. Another just vanished mysteriously one day. By the end my buddy list was empty and I spent most of my time wandering around quiet ghost towns, making guilds with funny names, guild hopping in general, and just losing myself in the meaningless of it all. There used to be people you could count on seeing, even if you didn't know them personally. They were always just there for some reason. That Guy who's always AFK in the FM; That Guy who AFKs in his UFO chair; that Night Lord you randomly met in '08 who never logs out no matter what hour you track him; those people who set up their shops in Channel 8 for some reason. But eventually all of those people disappeared too. Everyone was gone, and the people remaining were strangers.
There was nothing pulling me to the game anymore. I would log in because I felt compelled to -- not because I had anything to do, or anyone to have fun with. So one afternoon, on a total whim, I deleted fucking everything and installed Ubuntu Linux. Now I can't return, ever.
Sorry about the blogshit. Getting all that out was like cleansing a backed up sink, though.