Balancing NEED with WANT and Games

As I sit here, watching the ticker on my Fileplanet Download Manager slowly tick downward, I'm arguing with myself. (I like doing that, either way, I win) On the one hand, I could suck it up, and pay the $39.99 annual fee to become a member, and Skip the Line. I could - it ways so right on the download page. 'skip the line'. Ahhhhhh - that sounds so NICE. Like getting cut-sies at Starbucks. On the other hand, that's $39.99 out of budget that I don't really NEED to spend.

I'm downloading the Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning (WAR) open beta. Or, I'm going to be, just as soon as that little ticker moves me to the front of the line. When I first logged on to Fileplanet, did all my account creation, Beta Key activation who-ha, downloaded the Download Manager, I was number 1139 out of 1139. Now, 5+ hours later, I'm 203 out of 2112.

I admit, I am slow to the starting line with this. I'd been reading bits and pieces about WAR, but did not really pay attention to any release dates until last week. And then, didn't even catch that the pre-order folks would get open beta and head-start on the other dweebs - uh- players. But I should have, after all, Lord of the Rings Online did it, as did Tabula Rasa. The front of my forehead has a hand print from me slapping myself on it. Multiple times, as I had to go to three different stores just to find the boxed version of the Pre-order for WAR. I could have just done full-download only of the pre-order, but I'd heard Amazon was having "issues" with delivering the beta keys. And that is the whole reason I'm even bothering to pre-order. I. Want. The. Beta. Key.

Why? I need something fun to play. I've been rather bored with Wow lately. My 54 priest has not been leveling very fast, despite Blizzard's adjustment to XP needed to get from 20-60 (and soon from 60-70). And my 70 is just a gold farmer at this point. As a matter of fact, Wow is in the background right now. I set my toon flying somewhere, the flight timer said 12 mins, so I went poking around for something else to do. Lucky you, this is what I chose! I recently purchased Age of Conan (AoC) to try out, and it really did not grab me. I've already paid for my first month (after the free one) so I really need to re-visit it to decide whether I'm going to keep it or not. If WAR beta is better than release AoC, then I think I'll be dumping AoC. After all, I'm not planning on dumping Wow with Wrath of the Lich King coming out in a couple of months, and how many monthly subscriptions do I want to carry? If my contracting job was pulling in more money, I could be a little more relaxed about it. But it's not, so I'm not.

Back to WANT vs NEED. Looking around Fileplanet and GameSpy's sites to see if the $40 spent would be worth more than line-jumping to me, I do see some other games I'd like to try. Spore looks like gobs of fun. And Cysis Warhead kind of looks like fun. But I can get those at the Brick and Mortar stores without spending $40 on top of the game prices. Sure, it won't be the very minute the games are released, auto-downloaded for me. But do I really NEED that? WAR Beta doesn't even start until tomorrow. So spending $40 tonight will get me nothing more than less eye strain from no longer staring at those tiny little number (I'm at 138 of 2221 now). And the awful temptation of spending more money on games way too easily. Plus, I wouldn't have the pretty boxes to line the shelf over my desk. I like my pretty box collection. There, see. I've just won the argument with myself. I do NOT need to spend $40 just to jump the line, because if I did, I wouldn't have my collection of game boxes to gaze at while I'm deep in thought.

I guess I'll go kill some aliens in Unreal Tournament III for a while.

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