I started playing EverQuest (EQ) in about December of 1999. At the time I was completely mesmerised by the experience, it was immersive, it almost felt real.

I started playing EverQuest (EQ) in about December of 1999. At the time I was completely mesmerised by the experience, it was immersive, it almost felt real. And it sated by desire to live in a fantasy world. I did the EQ thing until the betas of World of Warcraft (WoW) arrived. I had enjoyed my time in EQ, but it was getting tedious to do anything, especially leveling. I was in a good guild (Dragon Army of Tribunal /represent!), but you pretty much had to devote 100% of your time to advance, especially in a raiding guild. Along came WoW. It was a perfect out for me. I no longer wanted to commit myself to serious raiding and rely on a guild to simply level. I wanted an experience that was fun (i.e. non-tedious) that I could advance in (i.e. Quests were much more structured and fun) and I didn't have to rely on a group to advance. Life was good. Until raiding began at the highest levels. Raiding was fun, but in some ways was worse than EQ. You had to have the perfect raid compensation (mostly to accommodate weaker players, but sometimes not) to finish a raid. So guild recruitment became hard core, if you didn't represent a class of need for the current expansion, it could be hard to participate. Luckily, starting over and leveling up wasn't so hard, so if a guild's live was for you, you could change your class pretty easily (compared to EQ). And WoW raiding became the game. You had to level to the max (as fast as you could usually) so you could get into the good raiding guilds, bypassing all the good story line that was there for you. It became the same competition that EQ had become. And it was not fun. I was lucky, my last forays in WoW were with a group of people mostly made up of competent friends from EQ and their friends. We were able to start fresh, ramp up and take on Karazhan in the Burning Crusade while BC was the current expansion. Yes, we weren't the top guild, but raiding Karazhan with a good group of friends was probably my best experience in an MMORPG. That said, though, once my daughter was born, I was done with MMORPGs. They were fun, but too time consuming for the dedicated parent. I have since played here and there on Skyrum, but my duties as a parent take precedence. That all said, though, Raph has a screenshot of Minecraft as the ultimate sandbox. My kids (now 6 and 3) love interacting together through Minecraft. Even the soundtrack is a staple of our lives. I don't know what I intended with this post, but MMORPGs have been a good experience for me and I'm carrying that on, I hope, via Minecraft and a more sandboxed experience. WoW and EQ were fun, but as I've grown and have had kids, something like Minecraft makes much more sense to me.