Why I had to quit playing Terraria

I liked the original 1.0 design of Terraria just fine, but they kept updating it, and I kept choking it down. At first they just made cosmetic changes like fancier sprites, which I thought seemed counter to the original retro/primitive theme, but I lived with it.

My original plan was to finish, or get reasonably advanced, and then retire. But it dawned on me that the creators were catering to the people that wanted to continue playing forever, by constantly adding more content. So that didn’t fit with my game plan.

One of my friends at work “rushed” the game (and might have cheated), and got lots of powerful items. But I was having so much fun exploring, so I thought I’d take it slower and enjoy the experience.

But then subsequent updates added tons of new items and bosses, so I got discouraged that making progress was a moving target. It was still fun, but too much of a time sink. I decided I just could not afford the time taken away from family and reading (and sleep!), so I quit, some time shortly after posting September 2015 about why it was my favorite game ever.

In some ways, I wish there could have been a way to freeze updates at 1.0, so I could have just had fun finishing it. But other usability features they added did actually improve the game. I guess in the end, it was a sort an issue with my own self-control. I could not control how much time I spent on it, so I had to give it up altogether.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *