-Soul

Thank You.

-Soul

This question means different things to all of us. Over time RuneScape has evolved and the reason why we play the game could have fluctuated, maybe it was to pass time, maybe your just a little kid with nothing better to do, or maybe it was the pure fun factor of the game that had you coming back for more like that girl you know in school. Its different for all of us, but ill tell you guys about me.

I started playing RuneScape in December of 2004, and i was around 12 years old. I had alot of time. I wish i had that much now. Anyway, you know, tech was still evolving, its always evolving. I was just simply hooked on the game. I started off with a level 70 that my friend told me to cut wood for him. Little did i know he was using me to make cash, so i made up around 300k gold and one day i tried to login and i couldn’t! Well turns out my friend took the account back. But there is one thing i realized after that, i was good at making money. I knew how to work hard and achieve, and since there were no macro bot armies or anything back then well, legal gold making was easy!

So i got my best friend into playing it with me and we both made brand new characters. From there forth we would spend every waking moment we had on RuneScape. We made money the hard way, and quite frankly to be honest, we made alot of money the easy way. We designed scams and tricks for people to fall into, we got tons of santas, masks, and even a few phats. As time passed, playing the game didn’t just revolve around making money, but it went into pking, where we spent hours training pures. It went into main skilling, which i spent hours and hours questing/and obtaining my skills. I wanted to be the best since there was nothing else important.

…Or so i thought.. i started to get older and my school work started to slack. But by playing RuneScape so much, i kinda didn’t care. I put RuneScape in front of my work, my grades started to slack, and my parents started to get infuriated, especially since they are so strict about grades. My life started to rot. But of course, instead of fixing it, i just found “refuge” by playing RuneScape. It was like a drinking addiction, i just had to have more.. to fix things that i thought weren’t fixable, or better yet, i was too lazy to fix them.

My life rolled by and i started to finally realize that Runescape is killing my life. I quit, or maybe, im not sure what happend. It’s like one of those relationships that have no trouble but eventually, they just simply fade with no hurt. So around my 15th birthday, i put the game away. My logins became less frequent, and soon, i rarely even thought of it. But RuneScape had already taken its toll on my life, i became a geek. Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing. It taught me to be the young man i am today. I got into computer programming, learned alot of life lessons, and well, it made me grow as a person. Im not sure exactly how, but it did. I was one of the lucky ones i’d say. I was smart to begin with and RuneScape came out to be at least a bit beneficial to me.

….But this isn’t the case for everyone.

How do you know when your addicted?

I remember one of the funniest thing’s i still remember seeing in RuneScape was this quote by a couple of kids in Varrock East Bank. Excuse the profanity by the way.

“Omfg! My ****ing mom is telling me to go outside and play”, “I hate this *****”, “Ill be back later”

Still reminding myself of that moment just makes me crack up. It also tells you a lot about how young these kids actually are and what their saying. I mean honestly, you can see kindergarteners running around screaming “****”!!

Well, we all have our own idea of addiction to something but in my personal opinion, i would say, you devote most of your free time, and maybe even your work time into playing it. But as the above example shows, it could just generally be obvious.

How do i stop my addiction?

Ok your in for the lifetime classic, THROW AWAY YOUR ACCOUNT!

I’m serious about this one too. It does actually work, but it might just be a little hard. But heres a list of other ways i thought up on how to quit.

• Many of us have routers at home, and 95% of them provide website blocking. Ask your parents to block RuneScape.com and tell them seriously to never unlock it again. Unless at the rare chance that your parents play too, or you have another sibling, it will work.
• Go get your a$$ outside. Im not joking, don’t be lazy and end up like one of those fat kids you see stuck in their bed. Sure, it sounds harsh, but wouldn’t it be great if people stopped dying from heart attacks?
• Spend time with people. This can be very serious. Girlfriend, parents, friends, anyone! Go do things, goto the beach, hang out outside, skatepark, basketball, anything that doesn’t involve sitting around.
• Study! or.. attempt to! You learn something both ways and comes in more handy later in life. Trust me im not saying sit around and be a nerd. But devote at least an hour to your books, it’ll help you.
• Play MMORPG’s, ok, this may sound completely pointless, but once you do establish a fine line of control over your time, go ahead and play! Our new tech world wouldn’t be the same without geeks like us.
• Get a girlfriend! not a gf. ps: c’mon, you know the difference.
• Finally, be creative! I can’t obviously cover everything you can possibly do, but go out and do what your heart tells you to do.

So yeah guys, really. Life isn’t anything that should be given away to a company, but like my story. Something like this can compell you to learn cool things and do some awesome experiements. So thats really all i have to say, i hope you guys take this advice.