I would have been happy to keep giving them money too, if they hadn’t kept doubling down on shady and abusive practices like tying digital purchases to hardware, forcing online check-ins for offline games, and patent trolling. That doesn’t matter one jot, though, since the broad appeal of their products means their audience largely consists of people who don’t notice or care about things like that in the slightest. Makes me wonder if that’s part of the strategy, but then again, I doubt it’s any different for Microsoft or Sony, so maybe it’s moot.

Unfortunately, this was before xkcd. If I’d known about the “lucky 10,000”, I might have been more philosophical about it at the time.

I still recall how, as a fresh-faced, young gamer just getting into the newfangled realm of online multiplayer, I got absolutely got in Everquest when somebody told me you could get a numeric representation of your current experience points by typing “/ex”.

It was actually short for “/exit”. And in those days, it took a loooooooooooooooooong time to relaunch the game and get logged back in. Learned a valuable lesson about human nature that day. It has served me well.