13) First Signs of Obsession?

I woke up 3 days ago and had an urge to turn on Maple Story!

Starting with just the necessity to research the game that has kept hundreds of thousands of kids glued to their computers, I reached the stage where I was really keen to finish off a quest that kept me up to 2am the previous night. In 1 week, I had put in about 10 hours in Maple Story and went from level 21 to 28! Really near my second job advance at level 30!

This also coincided with a relatively-lull period in my life, major projects were taken care of and I had quite good extended itme with my family over CNY (made me less guilty about playing MS).

It didn't matter that my eyes were heavy, my stomach was empty (no breakfast yet) - I really wanted to switch on that computer.

Relax (I did not do it)

I've practiced impulse-control on many other things in may life before and I manged to do it to Maple Story. Frequent periods of self-imposed abstinence from coffee made this feel normal. I'm not an animal without control over my senses and the fleshly desires.

But what about the kids? Would they have practiced self-control when they are left unsupervised and unrestrained on their terminals?

What would happen to them if they do not learn these skills early in life?

Food for thought.

12) Milestone - Lvl 25

Level 25 was a particularly sweet milestone for my character. 5 more levels to my 2nd job advance, and I was able to equip myself with cool weapons and armours. Check me out!

Noteworthy point in how I got to level 25 in a relatively short time: there were "CNY quests" during the festive period, and huge rewards associated with these quests that made playing time "efficient" and "worthwhile" during the festive season.

Each quest involved collection of chickens, fa cai moss, radish & fresh fish to make CNY dishes. And the rewards made levelling up very easy indeed.

Now you wonder why your kids gave up angpow collection opportunities to raid the virtual world!

11) Achievement: Game Guides

I went back to Maple Story for 3 hours while doing all the CNY spring cleaning. Finally levelled up from 21 to 22.

It was then I began to ask around, "how do I get my second job advance?"

I wasted a bit of time asking around but (should have done it earlier) finally consulted one of the "Game Guides" in the MAPLESEA forums. Here we come to one of the most amazing signs of Youth DEDICATION to gaming.

Youths who have spent hundreds of hours playing the games themselves, playing and replaying the same scenes to refine their approach so that they become ruthlessly efficient, playing the game to PERFECTION.

After attaining the ultimate, they come back to SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE - via game guides!

Check out this website, this is simply amazing, how much effort people put into acquiring knowledge about a game that is created by humans.

• It's not like guides developed to help mankind tackle real life issues like overcoming physical obstacles (like mountain climbing)
• It's guides developed on how to scale that virtual mountain in the virtual creation of the game developer.

The process of gaining and documenting knowledge is useful and executed to perfection. But the actual value of that knowledge has virtually no INTRINSIC value.

Perfected Means but Confused Ends?