RIP Marcoland

One week ago, the game I had been playing for a ridiculously long time went the way of the moa. I signed up to Marcoland back in 05, when I was in Japan, in November if I remember rightly. That's 3 and a half years ago - about a sixth of my life, crazy to think I played it for so long. In that time it was one of the things I'd do on the Internet every day, and I would hate to think the amount of time I spent there.

It was a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), you spent your time increasing your stats. There were also towns (the ML version of clans/guilds/etc), which would have wars with each other, a daily arena, a pvp system, and a whole bunch of other things. But, as with virtually all games of this type it got pretty repetitive, and if it hadn't been for the community there, in towns, in chat, in the forums, I'm sure I would've left a lot sooner. It was one of those games where you could play it in 5 minutes, or spend however much longer than that you wanted to there. And it was completely free, you couldn't get any advantages by donating (just nice things like a coloured name, an avatar, no ads, a custom emoticon, etc).

It's weird to think that it's gone, but I'm fairly sure it won't be back, at least not permanently that is. I've been finding I have a lot more free time so it's probably a good thing. I'd thought about quitting for a while for that very reason. I remember the day the site went down, a week ago now, I got on my computer, finished doing the other things I do on the net, and then was like, what do I do now?

I quite enjoyed the game though, it appealed to me in a number of ways. Firstly, it was a long term game, it involved a lot of planning. It also gave you a lot of stats, which I always like going through. I even programmed a few things for it, like a simulator to simulate the training beach to figure out what monster would be best to fight, a town war visualiser thing (which I never finished) and a little script-like thing that would parse the rankings pages to list players with the most protection.

The in game chat room was almost certainly the place I wasted the most time. I didn't start using this until I had been playing for about a year (or so, can't remember exactly), but I spent so much time there. Met a bunch of people - who I'll sadly lose contact with now. I had something like 80,000 chat lines I think. Which is sick. All that time lost. I was even a chat mod for a few months before the end.

I was pretty strong as a player goes, about 100th in terms of total stats, and about 30th in terms of stats/age (which gave a fairer reflection of how well younger players were doing). I would've been better than this but I didn't play so well at first, but I made up a lot later.

So would it have been better if I had never started playing? I reckon no. All in all I reckon the time I spent playing was a positive. It helped me out I reckon, and there'll be people I'll try to not lose contact with. It was something that was always with me, and would often cheer me up when I wasn't feeling so great. I don't want to play another similar game though, because I know how much time it takes, and would prefer to spend the time studying, or out in the world with friends, or whatever.

Anywho, good bye Marcoland, you were good while you lasted. And thanks Marco, thanks for all you gave to the players of ML.