This might not be what you expect it to be. Since I've more or less stopped drawing, dA's become a place for me to do some writing and (semi-)vent a bit.
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Need For Speed World was a game I played in probably 2013? I forget exactly when, but it was reasonably early. Early enough that earning in-game cash was quite difficult and the majority of cool cars and items could only be purchased with real currency. While the game isn't necessarily the important part of this, I still like(d) it so I'll go over it a bit. We know I like racing games, and customisation is a pretty big part of the experience for me. There's a reasonable amount in there, though I prefer something closer to the original Underground and Underground 2 (in my opinion 2 went a little overboard, but I still liked it). But back to World, I liked it because it was refreshing, had a good range of new and old cars, and had decent multiplayer. (I don't have particularly high standards, anyway.) The map was a bit nostalgic, because it was just Most Wanted and Carbon combined, but it had been long enough since I'd played those that it didn't get too boring or repetitive.
I think one of the reasons I didn't mind the Pay to Win part of World was that I'd previously played some similar online games (card games, because I like those too apparently) with paid content and seemed to do fine without. Those games, I won't talk about them here, were reasonably achieveable without paying money (I admit I did), but did end up pretty fun in my 12v/13v years. I imagined that World would be similar, that so long as I didn't mind missing out on some of the best, fanciest cars I could get by on the free content, and that was somewhat true, I suppose. I did get bored of it sooner or later, though, so I did quit for a long while. I mostly forgot about it, made a few jokes about the about of paid content, and went on to other things from there.
As most teenagers do, I decided at some point to revive some of my old interests/hobbies, and racing games were high on the agenda. I went back to my old NFSs (I owned 4 on PS2, and a few other games as well), which were pretty fun, and I also got back into World for a while. I noticed that it was a lot easier to earn in-game money compared to what I remembered a year or so earlier, so that was a nice addition. I played quite a bit then, logging in daily for daily rewards (only reached a streak of about 2 or 3 weeks, because of intermittent events and such), and it was actually quite fun saving up to buy cool stuff, some of which I actually got pretty lucky on. Of course, with any games like this there's a lot of chance, and I suppose I went 50-50 in terms of getting things I wanted. I did end up saving for a Lamborghini (Reventon, it was the last car I bought and I quite enjoyed my time with it), as well as some other nice things. Around that point I started reading up on the internet (mostly the forums) about World and the things going on with the game, and I found out to my disappointment that the game's servers would be going down at some point in the near future.
I suppose, at that point I changed my view on the game quite a bit. It was still fun, as a quick diversion, but with the events and reminders that "it's only so long until the end of the World" the game really felt like it was coming to a close. So I enjoyed it for a bit, while I could, while not investing too much time into it, knowing that the deadline was soon. I, with some others, would've wanted the last week or day(s) to release all locked content for free, for people to mess around with while the game was still up, but that never happened in the end. I don't really think this game now that it's dead, but I remember being a little disappointed; after all, there were cars I wanted to drive, mods I wanted to try out, that in the end I just couldn't get my hands on. In the end, though, I left a fair bit before the game was over, at least a week, and didn't stay for the final cruise that was organised for its last hours.
Looking back, I'd like to say that I fled the sinking ship before it went down, though of course I believe the game ended on a reasonably good note. (At least it didn't go into decline, with empty servers on the last week.) And even earlier, that was the same mindset I wanted for one of the online card games I had played for a long time, but quit before it was shut down. I like to think that I left while I had the choice, and while I still enjoyed the game - it was reaching a point where, in my opinion, any new releases were uninteresting and progress felt like a grind (which, before, it already was, but then I had some sort of mental goal to work towards). If I knew that the game was going to be shut down, and that the time, effort and $10 I put into the game would be worthless at the end, would I still have chosen to invest in it for two years in hindsight? And on a different scale with World, would I have chosen to return to enjoy those later days if I'd known that my daily pastime wouldn't exist in two or three months time?
I still don't have answers to those questions, and I think they would often change depending on a whole bunch of factors. But while this is all reflection on the past, and how I spent a small fragment of my teenage years, for me living now as a Christian, I have (among others) a much more pressing, consequential, urgent question, first and foremost to myself: If this world is going to pass away, if I myself will cease to live at some day, and I know there is an eternity in store, how do I spend this life? Do I invest my time, effort, money, into this world now? I believe that my answers are given to me from the Bible. And it's ironic to me that Need for Speed World was called that, as it's sort of a metaphor for my own world, and that this analogy would become relevant.
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Food for thought, I guess. But what about you? Is this a question that you believe is relevant, and do you have, or even want, the answer? At least for me, eternity is a long time. ~~