Eve Online, with all the out of game tools available it is hard not to think about it. EveMON, EFT, Capsuleer (iphone), Skill Tracker (Palm Pre, Blackberry). The soon to be released COSMOS should make the addiction even worse.

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Right now the MMO that pops the most in my head while not playing a game is The Secret World.
When I was playing WOW, I used to run through the strats for all the boss fights in MC during my dentist appointments.

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Funny you should post this article this morning. I couldn't sleep last night, and ended up planning one of my Champions Online characters to try to fall asleep... it didn't work. I had to get up and play.

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I havent slept well in like 3 days due to Aions release coming up... Its pathetic.. Its like the night before Christmas when you are a little kid and you cant sleep at all because you're so anxious.

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I realised I was thinking too much about Anarchy Online (years ago now obviously) when I walked into a shopping mall and looked around for the insurance terminal.

The fact I'm writing this at work probably answers the actual question.

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Generally no; but every now and then something comes along which really causes me to obsess. Just recently that has been Aion. It's been one of those rare ocassions in life when something comes up, somewhat out of the blue, that is so much better than what I had expected. Former occassions of this included Xenogears and Sympony of the Night. ;)

But yes, this morning I woke up thinking about Aion. I was working on re-arranging some bits of my blog last night before bed, to accomodate that I will be playing two games now, instead of one. (We'll see how that goes.) I have often blogged about various other games outisde the realm of EQ2, in bits and pieces, or about MMO's in general, but this is the first release in 2 years that has really made me want to be "a fan" if you know what I mean.

Gaming has never really affected my life in an adverse way; I'd like to think I havea relatively low tolerance for sitting in a chair, as it is, and so my typical session might be 3 hours before I need to go out and do something, even if it's just running to the store, renting a movie, or going to lunch, or cooking, or ... usually this short break turns into several hours of my day, and I end up gaming far less than I might have intended.

I work full time, so, I also don't have the physical luxury of being able to play for hours every day. I also work an irregular schedule with irregular hours; so I can toss any notion of being a "hardcore" gamer out the window: no raiding, no regular group, no regular playtime. I take it when I can. In a way, this has worked to prevent me from turning into the zombie stereotype, I think.

But yeah, I do spend way, way more time in games than most people. And I talk about them at work. Although I've learned not to elaborate beyond "I was playing this online game last night" with most people. They give me what I call the "intent vacant stare" -- where they want to show they are listening and interested, but really have no kind of idea of what you are referring to. ;)

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All about EVE. The sandbox nature combined with the large community support out on the web means that, even when I'm not playing, I'm still "playing".

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I've always thought a good game is one that stays in your head even when you aren't playing. WoW does that to me. FFXI did it. On a side note, the Tony Hawk games did it too, but with those it was a matter of my brain working out how to get the mechanics down. There was a certain rhythm to that game. But I digress. Or maybe I don't. WoW has a rhythm too, to the fights. Much like a dance, of course that changes in fights depending on what is thrown at you, but having the knowledge of which ability to use makes it all the better.

I hope this makes some sort of sense. But when I play a game like WAR I don't get this feeling at all. It's more of a....I hope this ability does what is says it will do...although what does it really mean?

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Heh. Interesting topic.

Sometimes I think about MMOs I'm currently playing. More often, however, I think about MMOs that I want to play eventually. But even more often than that, I like to spend time daydreaming about the "ideal MMO". I shudder to think how much time I spend doing that...

Of course, my "ideal MMO" wouldn't suit everyone -- just me. But, basically, it would be designed along the lines of "Dragon Age: Origins" (though maybe in a Tabula Rasa/Sci-Fi setting), only it'd be multiplayer in scope with a multiplayer base, economy, auction house, and crafting. It would allow small groups (i.e., 1 to 4 players) to accomplish the lion's share of the content and also allow you to utilize 1 to 3 well-realized, fleshed-out NPCs if your friend(s) were not online.

I'm not talking just one NPC (as in SWTOR or GW2) or many (Atlantica Online or GW1) but a small group of them, which I find very fun to manage. GW1 came fairly close to my ideal, but that game lacked persistence, etc., and had the way -too-large base party size of 8.

To have the option to play with a friend or three but also have a fully populated world, crafting, and economy (something SPRPGs don't offer) would be very fine and suit me to a "T".

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Definitely EVE. How can you sleep when you know that you could wake up to find that your station you spent days setting up has been attacked during the night? There is just so much that goes on in EVE while you are away that has the potential to have a huge impact on the next time you log in. I haven't seen that in any of the other MMOs I have played.

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The worst is when you try to log in and see that you're in the middle of hours of off-line maintenace time... That's a bummer. (7 minutes 'till DDO is back up! Hurrahh!!)

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I work in a game studio... need I say more? =P

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I work in a game studio. Need I say more? =P

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wtb delete button.

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I remember when I first got gw I played it all the time for like a year straight. I dreamt about it, I couldn't get it off my mind..it was like a leech D:
Although now I barely play, it still get that itch to log on to see if there is anything new.

Now Champs is just plain addicting. I'll log on just to do 1 quests and end up doing 7. I also can't get that off my mind either.

It's like a drug...

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