I play Everquest, an online game called an MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role playing game. I started because a friend of mine was playing, and wanted someone he knew inside to hang around with.

It's a fun game, if a bit monotonous at times. The idea is that as you kill monsters, of which there are many, you gain experience and go up in levels. As your level increases, so does your ability to fight, so you can take out stronger monsters. It's a vicious cycle.

The game is pretty much designed to force you to group with other players against the monsters. In a group, you split the experience earned among all the participants, but you can usually defeat things at a rate so much higher, and of such greater difficulty, that you usually wind up advancing faster in a group than out of one. In order to prevent certain forms of cheating, only characters whose levels are close enough together may group together.

So anyway, it has worked out that I tend to have the chance to play pretty much on weekends only. My friend who got me involved, and everyone else he's met in the game, tend to play whenever they are conscious. The result of which is that they all advance much more quickly than I do. Which means, after almost two years of playing, all my characters have fallen behind to levels too low to group with any of them. Thus, I am here rather than there.

My strategy up to this point has been to wait until they get their characters up to a level that one of mine can group with, ride the wave while it lasts, then wait for them to get to the next guy.

If I had a point, I've forgotten it.