What to do, what to do… ?

The ever-present existential dilemma about spending time in New Eden is rearing its ugly head again. This time not from over-playing, being bored or even being angry at CCP for whatever reason that could make one angry. It seems that I’ve just lost interest. The last time I logged in my skill queue was a couple days overdue and I couldn’t care less. At the time of this writing the subscription is coming to an end and I’m not even sure if I should renew it. Apparently spending an entire summer playing tons of drums and riding hundreds of kilometers on my bike has done something irreversible to the gamer I used to be. Oh I still love gaming, only I want to play games that don’t feel like work. Hell even PvP feels like work sometimes. If you’ve done over 20 jumps without finding a target or spent over 30 minutes goading a target (or another fleet) into an actual fight where action might happen (no garantees), you know what I’m talking about. Yeah the cat and mouse game can be great fun – it is some of the best fun even – but when I already have a lot on my plate I simply don’t have time for it anymore.

I know what a lot of people will say because I’ve been at this for 5 years now. "Join a new corp!", "You fly in Empire space, no wonder!", "Join FW!", "Join RvB!"… and of course the obvious "Can I haz yer stuff?". Yes some of those might help. No, you’re not getting my stuff. But all these happen in a game that has the tendency to suck more time than a black hole sucks light. I know some people say they play EVE casually, or that their corp is casual. But in order to be active you have to log in a lot and for decently long periods of time. And I won’t even talk about big alliances with mandatory ops using hundreds of brainless grunts just for the sake of numbers. If being ordered around by some unknown guy makes you feel good cuz you feel like you’re part of something then good for you. It’s just not for me.

So while the subscription fizzles out I will take a quick breather, have a chat with my corpmates over a beer or three (this is priceless by the way) and decide where I’m going with this.

And the other stuff I’m interested in ? Mechwarrior Online for one ; I already have tons of IRL friends playing and I’ve always been a huge fan of all things Battletech. I’ve also been hearing the call for some eSport FPS stuff, mainly Quake Live with a dab of Warsow. And now Elder Scrolls Online is in the works and it looks like it will be everything I love about the Elder Scrolls universe. And these are all games where if I don’t play for 3-4 weeks no one will start wondering if I dropped off the face of the Earth or something. Cuz you know playing drums is lots of fun but chops need to be worked on. Riding a bike and disconnecting from this universal drug called The Internet is also great fun and oh so necessary. And maybe finding a girlfriend would be fun too you know ! Kinda hard to do that when you spend countless hours glued to a monitor.

It’s been a long and hard road since January 2008, but as I’ve told people around me I’m starting to think that "third time’s the charm" as the saying goes. The third hiatus could very be the one where I say "So long space crazies, have yourself a great immortality". My texts are more positive when I write about other subjects anyway !

Undock or Unsub ? That is the question…

o7