I play WoW. I've played off and on since its debut in the MMO landscape. In that time period, I've only ever gotten one character to the level cap. Is this embarassing for me?

Perhaps.

But first, let me explain why I rarely reach the endgame.

I don't care. To phrase it less concisely, I don't care about epic phat purple loots, name titles, a flying mount that goes 280% faster, or about the size of your e-peen. I enjoy playing a game that is too much of a game for the majority of its users to handle.

I've played every class up to at least level 30. I've lived in Barrens Chat for years, and I still find Chuck Norris jokes enjoyable.

I created a Gnome Warrior named Tower and leveled him for months. Why? Because it's ironic.

I've played alliance. I made a dwarf paladin who, along with my brother, formed a guild called Hearth Bros. All we did was go invincible and teleport home when we were found by orcs, trolls, or what have you.

I'm about to tame a giant ostrich as a hunter pet. It's blue. It's a woman-bird. The percentage of all people who use this type of animal as a pet is, so far as I can tell, less than 1%.

I flew into the air to meet an enemy player. I have no parachute. I jumped off my mount, shot him in the face, and fell to my death. He regained all his hitpoints in less than 12 seconds.

When I go to raids, I scream. Often. I jibe people. People jibe back. We enjoy each other's company and killing demigods together more than the purples that drop from these fatties.

Why? Why am I doing all this?

Because I'm having fun.

Now, what is this...FUN? Fun has different meanings for different people. For Hardcore players, fun is often getting that next purple item, smashing someone's face over and over and tea-bagging their corpse, or screaming at people for ruining things. Fun is not created from an enjoyable action, but from an enjoyable reward. Every person has this kind of hardcore player inside of them but, I dare say, it is important to keep this player at bay.

Fun for me and other Hardcore Softiesis doing things that are...

fun.

See a cliff? Does it look like a long way down? Why not see if you can survive the fall!

See a horde of enemy players? All overpowered classes that quickly counter your own? Are you a healer? RUN INTO THEM!

Is that friend of yours Mind Controlled during a raid? Clearly, he needs to die. Race to the finish!

Competition in online games is not the only engine that drives people to dive deep into the crazy challenges that the developers throw at them. Curiosity, perhaps the most powerful of all human traits, is what makes people want to kill a god. It's what makes people stay up for a few hours past exhaustion.

But what happens when the curiosity dries up? Curious things are curious for a curiously short amount of time. We're all smart, we know how to use the GooG (google) to find information we need, and we want to move.

This is my fear, fellow Gamespotters. Once the curiosity is gone, because we've "experienced it all," do we become hardened? Does this game become less of a game and more of -- dare I -- a job?

It's no longer a game. Taking 25 people into a dungeon and having one thing go wrong ruins your REAL day. Some guy asks you for help, and your only response is how selfish he is to ask you for your time. How dare they? How dare all these people ruin your attempt to get that one new item, that one new trinket, that one new shred of pride.

I play WoW. I play Left 4 Dead. I play Fallout 3. I play anything and everything. I play a LOT.

AND YET, I can proudly say I've not lost myself. I've now done nearly every dungeon in WoW. I've played every class, and yet, I'm still not done. Not because I need some phat loot from 25-man Naxxramus. Hardly.

It's because, over the course of the past 4 ish years, I've made friends. I've gotten closer to my brother, who left shortly after we got the game. I've met the people I play with (terrifying, I know) and now spend at least a weekend or two visiting them per year. They even came down for my graduation.

Remember where you come from, gamespotters. In whatever genre you play, remember that you started out as a complete idiot. That you were there to have fun. That you didn't know that you were meant to care about purple things. Then, once the curiosity dries up, get your nostalgia on. Put on the newb attitude from years ago and approach your virtual world with a fresh, friendly, and beautiful face.

Once you go hardcore, you get ugly.