Chp 219. No more Tribal Wars!

Aaaargh!! That’s it. No more Tribal Wars for me, ever! No more Travian. No more Ikariam. No more browser MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) !! Period.



The bane of Online Games!

I remember posting about Tribal Wars a couple of months ago and how exciting it was. I gave a couple of reasons why this game was the next best thing that happened to me ever since I discovered that "the birds and the bees" was just a metaphor.

Chp 205. Online Tribal Warfare!

Reasons why this is an amazing game:

1. Being a browser game, it does not require any CD/DVD installations or high system graphics settings. All you require is a browser (duh!) and a net connection.
   
2. Same rules and styles of strategy games like AOE, Warcraft, ROME etc.
   
3. The style of the game involves slow resource collection and slow movements. Hence you don’t need to sit in front of the game the whole time. You just need to click a few commands once every 3-4 hours.
   
4. It is an MMORPG, hence the other players I am interacting with are real people all around the world. No crappy AI.

Those were the reasons why I thought this game rocked.

Well, I WAS WRONG!!! So wrong!

Yes, I do not waste any precious office hours as I just need to check on the game once every 3-4 hours only for just a few minutes. My work does not get affected in any way.

And it was that very thought which made me blindly believe that there was nothing wrong with the game. After all, work is the most important priority for any individual right? Wrong. My work might not have been affected, but my LIFE certainly was!

Oh dear Lord, the addiction!!!!! The uncontrollable urges! I became a total junkie to this new drug, and I just couldn’t seem to get enough of it! My social life was completely torn apart. My biological clock went haywire.

Sometimes I would wake up suddenly in the middle of the night thinking if one of my neighbors was going to attack me, or if our tribe had made the right decision in allying with another tribe that other players despised, or whether my warehouse would be full before I could come online.

Thoughts that haunted me day in and day out.

At first, it felt great playing this game. We collected resources slowly and started building our armies. It was great taking part in minor wars. It was not a big deal losing my village because it was all a matter of learning – I simply restarted and played everything from the beginning again, not repeating the same mistakes I made. Everything was taken lightly.

But slowly, as I became a PRO from a noob, things drastically changed.

I was no longer playing for fun or leisure.

It was now a matter of dominating my area, my continent, my world! I started devouring villages after villages, mercilessly nobling [TW slang for conquering another village] the unsuspecting players and creating havoc in their area. And then suddenly I realized, what the heck am I doing????

Unlike PC strategy games, there is absolutely no goal in this game. You just keep expanding and expanding by taking over as many villages as possible, while at the same time concentrating on defense so that other players don’t conquer your villages.

You start playing it like a chess game. You try to read their minds. You send fake attacks and you try to determine whether your enemy is sending fakes or not. Should you dodge that first wave of attack?

And the problem is, the more villages you have, the more you’ll have to start monitoring your villages and attacks. Ergo, the more restless and distracted you’ll become when you are away from the internet for a long time.

Everyday I start my day by raiding all the small villages around me for extra resources - I’m bored now because that is soooo monotonous. But I HAVE to raid them because it’s difficult to concentrate on anything else when I know there are "free" resources (wood, clay and iron) available in those villages.

These days, I usually spend the weekends at M’s place. Even though I have an amazing time over there, I just can’t help thinking about my villages and tribes. That’s so damn irritating. nnnnaaaaaarrrgghh!

I needed a break.

In the middle of a party I started thinking about my farm upgrades. Over dinner I was contemplating about sending my nukes out or not. Sitting in the loo I started deciding which 50K player I should invade, weighing all the pros and cons of invading victim number1 and victim number2. Should I research on my cavalry-archers first or catapults? Which player is a possible threat in my area? What is his style of playing – defensive? aggressive? Is he concentrating only on raiding units or heavy on Rams?

Blah blah blah.

Hence after a long hard thought, today I deleted all my accounts in every single World that I was dominating. No more MMORPG games for me. I am now Tribal Wars FREE!!! Yay!

Yeah mum, no need to enroll me in that Tribal Wars Rehab camp, or force me to take part in a Tribal Wars Anonymous Meetings!

Wow! I’ve forgotten how beautiful the real World is like! It's breathtaking! That online madness had really blinded me! Now I can see! Now it’s time to physically get more involved in real-World activities like… blogging, orkut, facebook, twitter and community discussions forums. woot woot!

-----------

Ps. Cheers to all the players I’ve fought with or defeated, the new friends I’ve found and the times we’ve spent socializing with one another. "Baron Mizohican" will cherish those moments forever.