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I played a similar game (Rise of Kingdoms) for three years, and I agree that the sense of community is a compelling reason to continue to play. When you're in a top alliance, the shared commitment—both money and time—creates an environment where relationships can really flourish. It also drives a great deal of drama and creates great stories. There are certain conditions created in pay-to-win games that can't be replicated in games with fairer monetization models, and those can be a real draw for some people.

> There are certain conditions created in pay-to-win games that can't be replicated in games with fairer monetization models, and those can be a real draw for some people.

Doesn't need to be "pay to win". It might be free, but reward the time commitment or regularity. But it has to matter to the player in some way.

Back in high school, we felt the similar draw and had some similar stories wrt. OGame - a space-themed browser MMO (kind of like dumbed down Stellaris, but with no animation and everything taking hours of real time to happen). There were "alliances", formal and informal. There was exploiting game mechanics to gain the upper hand. Scheduling attacks so that the fleet arrives in the middle of victim's night, hoping they aren't crazy enough to be logged in then (not like us). We paid with nothing, except our own time and attention.

Yeah I remember a similar game around 2000-4(hazy on timing) called EmpireQuest[0]. All text, ticks happened every few hours. Planets, ships and alliances. Similar time investment.

[0]: https://www.mmorpg.com/empirequest

I imagine there's a lot of former OGame & Planetarion players who still dread hearing an IRC tone in the night knowing it'll be someone either waking you up to say "you've got incoming!" or "send your fleet!". Planetarion still has quite an active community but unsurprisingly they've geared it to making sure people don't need to survive on 3 hours sleep now.

Do you regret your time/monetary investment?

Sounds like a fun experience to me, like most things like this: it's not a problem until it a problem (aka it affects your life negatively). At least compared to most people vegging out on their couch binge watching Netflix.

I spent several thousand dollars on a mobile game like this when I was making $12 an hour. I absolutely regret the time I spent and the money I wasted on it. I got fired from another job because I wasted all my time playing the game. Ultimately it was impossible for English Speaking people to win anyway as Japanese players outnumbered us. So all the money we spent was for nothing.

What I was talking wasn't just merely over-investing in a game. This particular part of his comment was the relevant bit:

> I met people from all over the world who play. We had discords, ran guilds, had actual leadership responsibilities, would call people in the middle of the night when they were being rallied, etc.

Being a serious gamer is often much more than just the game, but the community/social experience and (potentially) personal development in highly a competitive environment. Eve is similarly known for being much more than a game but running pseudo-corporations. Of course the addiction/time/money stuff is where you start risking hitting the live wire.

Yeah, the game I'm talking about was like this. I spent 80+ hours a week on it. I spent literal years of my life on World of Warcraft, stagnating my life for almost a decade because of it. I was in one of the top guilds in the world for while. It was a full time job and to my detriment.

I hate every time I think about it, I could have been learning to code, advancing my career and doing interesting things that I think back fondly about. Instead there's just a void in my life where I did nothing, learned nothing, and copied other people's builds in a game and hit buttons really fast and stayed out of the red areas during raids while hitting buttons fast. It makes me feel gross.

You learned how to maintain a membership in one of the top groups of one of the top games. that's not exactly a marketable skill on paper, but you sound like someone who knows how to grind when you set your mind to it. As someone with ADHD who can't stop chasing squirrels, I admire that.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Do you mind me asking a couple of questions? Did you enjoy it at the time, or was it more numbing or just compulsive thing?

And was it a social thing? Did you make friends, enjoy talking to people etc?

You could have become a medical doctor with that time. Instead, you played a fun game.

Why rub it in?

It's a lesson to the rest of us. Let it hurt

Didn't they already say that themselves?

Did you miss out on your ususal chance to kick a puppy on your way to work today or something?

Well, you are probably right. I imagine quite a few people on here had time-consuming digital lives at some point or another.

What you have shown yourself is you can stick with something. Why not try something else now, that you can do for the rest of your life? Carpentry? Guitar playing? Not obsessively, but just regularly. You have time.

Try to forgive yourself. You can't take it back. The time you spend in regret is more time you are losing to the game. Maybe you can turn your experiences into something that can help yourself or others.

I'm not OP, but I took my time in World of Warcraft as seriously as them, with similar strong communal vibes, and have absolutely no regrets. Learning to speak confidently and lead a group of 40+ people has proven invaluable in my life. Similarly, getting pay-offs that make you renowned, but that require months of commitment prior to payoff, really taught me a lot about being patient and putting in the effort before expecting the reward.

It's tough to compare what I got with my time to what I missed out on, though, since I can't live those other lives. :)

I remember a classmate played a similar game called Travian with similar dedication (I remember an advanced tactic being launching several raids by different allies with different travel times so they landed simultaneously) in highschool, almost two decades ago.

Numbers games work the same, when people play the same number, they can't stop, because they'd hate themselves if that number was ever drawn! So sunken cost fallacy can definitely be a part of a gambling addiction. (Heard this on a recent 99% invisible episode)