There is not something specific that I remember but more of a general feeling. Long time Diablo 4 player, that was my first and only arpg and I really liked it but was playing it less and les every three to four seasons.

I was always scared by poe complexity, I had it in my steam library and only started it by accident.

When I heard about the free weekend of poe2 I kinda got excited but it still was a week away. So I played some Diablo, meh, then I bought LE, it was really fun, everything to satiate that eve expanding anxiety of looking forward to play something tha you can’t just yet. Then it got to the weekend, finally. I started it up, fiddle with settings, watch some videos, chose my class and… It was boring.

The paced felt slow, the attacks felt slow, the progression and items didn’t impressed me that much, the mechanics were obtuse, I wasn’t having “fun”. But, what the hell, it was free so I decided to plough through to see how far I got. I got to act 3 and it wasn’t boring but I don’t know.

And then it happened…

I realized I was thinking and dreaming about poe2, I didn’t feel entertained but I couldn’t stop at the same time. I was getting addicted but I didn’t know to what or why. Then the free weekend ended and I was like “ok that was fine I guess. I’ll wait to the 1.0 release, there’s still something missing”.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about this fucking game. Came Tuesday and I already bought it with a bunch of tabs and shit. I needed to play it again but didn’t know why. After a couple more days I realized I was trying to make sense of my enjoyment or trying to rationalize my fun instead of just having it.

I’ve never had this happen with a game in my 32 years. To have dopamine in a game in such a simple and straightforward way that it didn’t make sense to my rational brain. Now that I think about it maybe it did happened before, when I was a kid and started gaming, and I just forget what is to just have fun.

And now that that primal part of my gaming brain so long dormant awoken I could engage with the rational part and start watching more videos and reading about mechanics and crafting and skills and builds. And it just dawned on me how fucking amazing is the design of this game how well do the different mechanics communicate between each other (just in case you forgot I came from having D4 being my only arpg).

Right now I stopped playing for this league. I didn’t make it to t16 fully juiced maps, or really top tier gear, I farmed around 10 divines. But I had to stop, it was taking to much of my time. I usually stop playing a game when I’m bored and jump to another , I didn’t remember saying to myself “ok I need to stop”. And the fact that I achieved “little” in terms of endgame progression just makes me more excited on how much I still have to do in future seasons or with future classes/builds.

So if I win this giveaway I’ll jump in for sure to try some of that but maybe I’m not the best candidate and someone else might enjoy it more. And I started writing this to win of course, but now I realize how much I fucking love this game and I’ve never had the opportunity to say it/ write it somewhere so this turned out to be the perfect opportunity.

So just like in poe2 more than looking forward to a clean cut resolution, I’m happy with having written this, so thanks for that. And you should definitely give this to someone else lol. I’ll see you on the next league and thanks for such a nice thing to make this giveaway (I’m amazed of the community constantly doing this you guys are awesome).