A video game TO addictive?

fine, let me put it to you this way, nicotine affects you by disturbing the reward system, which is responsible for feelings such as happiness, through the deregulation of dopamine pathways, which is the primary reason that it causes addiction.

I don't think a game can do that to you....

it did it to my brother, and i actually understood that, it affected it so it was the only thing to him that made him happy and was fun, nothing else compared to it for him.

MMORPGs are more "addictive" then normal games because they have a social influence in them.

Seriously, MMORPGs are really giant attention-whore games. The people that no life them do it so that they can get a sense of pride and flaunt their "success" in the game to other people playing. People play MMORPG's to impress the other players, thats why they are seemingly more addictive then single player games.

Oh and people who play WoW and whine about it being to big/long/grindfest seriously need to STFU. Go play runescape and then come back and tell me WoW was hard.

im not complaining of the hardness, wow isnt hard, its time consuming, i played the game, and had fun, untill i saw what it happened once my bro hit 70. (BC not Wotlk) and i instantly quit. Like i deleted my account. it was a fun game, some ppl can handle it, others cant. the fact that they make a game where a good percent of the ppl who play it cant handle it is disturbing, that blizzard is making money by ruining countless lives... thats disturbing, but the day and age we live in.

No offense Xzav, but if someone has an addictive personality, then they shouldn't use anything that can be addicting. I have an addictive personality, it's one of the reasons I don't do MMOs and don't plan to consume much if any alcohol in my life. I can play normal games because I have a coping mechanism that works, and because I have friends and family that are perfectly blunt with me when I start obsessing about something. This is as much responsibility as anything else. If you can't swim you don't go in more then 3-4 feet of water, it may not be everything fun about water, but it's still fun and you can use it without endangering yourself.

My brother has an addictive personality, but hes also an arrogent person, he used to be alot better with it, then he picked up the game, and every bad habit imaginable happened. and i dont even want to list them out of shame.

i agree with that, but it is the acholohic syndrum. the man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, the drink takes the man

MMORPGs require no skill. It is the game with less necessary skill in the gaming community. Racers, Fighters, Shooters rely on physical abilities. RTS and RPG with leveling rely on tactics and brains. I started playing Dragon Age Origins and boy, i had not played a game this hard since Final Fantasy. It is complex and really good layered. It is mentally challenging. MMOs have a predetermined line to evolve. You think anyone reaching level 70 studied what to level or what to do? No, they either A. Went with the momentum B. Looked it up on the net. The most challenging part are those guild quests where you have to manage many people. But apart from that, i havent met any MMO wich required 'skill' in comparison to other games.

i agree with that, its all, everybody does there job in a raid. its a matter of doing what your told to do, and hoping you get the loot, and hoping everybody does there job right, its clicking bottons, you had your "rotation" of skills u use... i hated that, ive always wanted a hack and slash mmo


knights online was good for that, because you skate and that gave me a feeling of fighitng still. which was good. then KOxp came out, and you could set it to multishot nearest target and hit them with three arrowss... and then everybody was doing alot of bs stuff with bots and macros... so then i quit. i hated that.


ive wanted to try dragon age origins, whats it like?

It is the embodiment of the expression Role-Playing Game.

i just want my mmo jka. that would make me happy. having a jka server with 256 ppl, and the map being GIANT!

^ Would be fuggin' great.

^/agree

like a rpg hack and slash is my dream! like the loot just being like for a cool looking sword or whatever, like M&B where the nice stuff kills, the old stuff still kills... its still a you get hit you take a lot of damage or die.

No, SWG is an RPG.

i mean, i want a hack and slash mmo, where the loot is something for the cool factor, and just for kicks, and there were no levels. no learning more moves, just you, a shield, you can get new shields and swords or whatever. but like a MMO M&B or JKA

I'm sure the have a mod for MB:WB that makes it like that.

that are coming out with 256 player servers, which would be epicly amazing if i ever was able to buy the game....... which ive been wanting to do for a long time, but ofc. my parents would flip as they think i already have enough games, when it isnt another game, its the multiplayer to the one i have!

They already have those... The 256/255 player servers.


They're not always full, and it's a fucking lag-fest, but they're there.

its not a lag fest for me. Ive played in those 256 servers, its a fucking mayhem war. You feel like your in a battle, at least more than the 32 people servers.

@Dray

I agree that the base gameplay of MMORPG's is pathetic. Its mostly a mindless grind fest that is intended to steal peoples time rather then challenge them. But in certain games, the multiplayer/competitive aspect of the game opens up a whole new level of depth.

Take runescape for example, that is the biggest grindfest you will ever see. Its primitive gameplay and poor design make it seem like it was made by some Atari developer from the 70s. However, when I played with other people, my goal was to become as rich/powerful as I could. This either involved mindlessly grinding the game, wasting countless hours of life, or it involved me thinking of strategies to maximize the amount of power/money I gained. Trying to find the fastest way to make money, the fastest way to gain xp in a skill, the best way to combine the two, the most efficient order in which to complete quests, all combined to make a very challenging experience. I examined and calculated nearly every facet of the game, and I was rewarded richly for doing so. I found secrets that I can safely say only 1% of the RS population knew. I was becoming richer and more powerful at a rate 10x faster then the people around me. I truly felt proud over what I had achieved because it wasn't mindless grinding, it involved complex strategy and research. Knowing that I could accomplish more in 2 hours of gameplay then 95% of other people could in 15 was an awesome feeling.

Runescape's economy also has a feature that adds a huge amount of depth to it, its basically a virtualization of the real world economy/stock markets. I don't know if other MMORPG's have the same kind of depth, but the level of strategy involved in playing the market and manipulating it more then made up for Runescapes horrid grinding gameplay.

Well that was quite off topic(and long), I'll post later about addictive gameplay

So you were playing the stock market? Wow what fun, pity thats not what i consider dignified of calling gameplay. If you are into that, you might consider playing THE SIMS too. If i wanted to play in hte stock market or do things i can do in real life, i would do. I find it abhorrent calling games to simulators that allow you to simulate real life situations. OH well...To each their own.

Dray The Fingerless wrote:So you were playing the stock market? Wow what fun, pity thats not what i consider dignified of calling gameplay. If you are into that, you might consider playing THE SIMS too. If i wanted to play in hte stock market or do things i can do in real life, i would do. I find it abhorrent calling games to simulators that allow you to simulate real life situations. OH well...To each their own.

But it wasn't a "simulator", it was a game that had an economy that closely mirrored what real life was like. People actually had merchant clans that would buy out massive quantities of items to screw the market. It wasn't the focus of the game, but it gave the game another level of depth to it.

BTW, video games these days are always getting more and more "simulative". Just look at JKA, its basically a Jedi Simulator, the most dynamic sword fighting game I've ever seen. Now take The Force unleashed, it ditched the Jedi Simulator in favor of making a mindless action game that you can beat by pressing 2 buttons repeatedly. TFU is was less of a "simulator" then JKA, and its also way more boring and lacks depth to it.

Yes because Jedi Lightsabers and the Force are real life activities these day...........


-.-

And if being resemblant to the stock market is a selling point for Runescape, i rest my case on wether that thing deserves the word game in it.

alright, @moneyman: they killed runescape once they added the grand exchange, i could no longer, hop onto a server, but rune essence for 15-20 gp a piece, then go to a dif server, and sell for 40+ and i mean in bulk, making half a mill in each trade. the GE killed that. and at that point. i stopped playing runescape.