Mine!

I'm pretty much a two year old when it comes to my characters in games. They are my toys. Mine alone. No one shall touch them. NO ONE!

I have accumulated a multitude of games in the decade+ of gaming that I've done. In each game I have various amounts of characters, many of which I haven't played in years. This does not change the fact that they are mine, and I take comfort in the fact that I can go back to them should I so choose. I tend to have very nostalgic feelings as the bugs, memory leaks, and game breaking patches become a distant faded memory. With that the untouched characters turn into a kind of memorabelia like pages in a scrapbook.

Being tactile creatures, we easily become attached to things we touch. This is why stores go to great lengths to make things accessible to us, and why test driving a vehicle is all but a sure sign of a sale. How does this general rule apply to pixels though? I'm not actually touching the armor, or weapons, or stuffed Bantha doll, but I'm grossly attached to every single piece of gear and item I pack rat on my toons. It's a source of comfort knowing that digitally saved on some distant server sits a character loaded with stuff that, even if outdated and useless by now, is all mine.

There is nothing more frustrating to me in gaming than storage limitations whether they be banks, housing, or personal inventory all because I want to collect more stuff. It doesn't even have to be the best stuff, but what if one day it become valuable somehow? I should probably keep this Jar of Sweat just in case it becomes an important crafting component in the future.

The irony of all this is that in real life I'm the queen of purging my belongings. I am continually cleaning out closets and cabinets and the people at Good Will know me by name. However, in game every piece of junk I loot is mine – forever. Or at least until they shut the servers down. Mine! All mine!