BF3: Walking Away

Having played Battlefield 3 since its release, I've come to the point where I cannot focus on it any more. On July, I hit a snag. The fan on my video card has stopped working. The blades won't spin any more and thus I had to send it to XFX to have it serviced. However, it took XFX longer than I anticipated and I was out of the loop for nearly a month. By the time I have the card back, I was so rusty and so out of touch that my skills (along with my knife) has dulled. Like any gamers, we tend to move on to a different game or fire up an oldie and relive those days. For me, I am in the process of moving on to a different game: Guild Wars 2. Having pre-ordered the game and getting the perks, I will be starting my play on August 25th, while others who did not have those perks will start on August 28th.

This is pretty much as anyone would have guessed and assumed. So to get to the point, and for those who have known me and have played with me in the past, thank you all for the awesome nights. Thank to the handful of you who I have played against and with, along with the shiny dogtags that you have given me. I am retiring the knife and its brother, the ACB-90.

In my stabbing journey, I have managed to claw my way up the world rankings. Keeping up with the rest was a tad rough. But ever since hitting that snag, I have slowed down and pretty much stopped.  I have achieved what I have already sought after, to be within the top 500 in the world. And with that, I can walk away proud for that achievement, even for a fleeting moment.  I can no longer be bothered to step back in, actively, to climb my way back up the rankings and doing it all over again. It is not worth the time nor should I spend that much time doing so.  I have already invested over 600 hours, meticulously restricting my sessions to 2-3 hours per night.  I have done most of what I wanted to do.  I have unlocked most of what I wanted.  I have earned most of what I wanted.  However, the one thing that the game has failed to do is keep me in.  With the way our current PC gaming system works, there is absolutely nothing worthwhile that can prolong the life of this game.  There is no mod tool to create modifications to the original game.  There is no map creation tool to generate new maps. There is no system in place that can help people play on new maps created by the PC gaming community.  And then there's Origin.

There are still numerous things that can be done to save the game, to fix the game, to prolong the game.  The community has given ideas, suggestions, and their thoughts on how to improve Battlefield 3.  Yet all we got in return is silence and more methods for which DICE and EA can generate more revenues.  We are being ripped off time and time again.  And I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I will not bother to purchase Battlefield 4.

Anyway, this is pretty much it... There will be rare times where I play BF3. But in general, my knife is officially retired.