I feel conflicted - I feel bad for playing Diablo 3 over 5 times without understanding the story (because I skip through all the cut scenes), yet I feel like every minute I spend leisurely playing the game, the more time I've wasted from finding that awesome, imaginary item drop I'll luck out on.

On day one I got caught up with the "finish everything as quickly as possible" craze. I completed normal in around 9 hours straight with a friend and his posse. I watched all the CG cutscenes, the Tyrael battle at the end of Act 1 was amazing, but anything that had a dialogue box with a cross is always skipped. I didn't even know when a certain character, (Decard Cain, dies and who did it until my Monk says it at the end of a boss battle in Act 2. I was consumed with the urge to get my Monk stronger and get the best weapons and armor for a non-existing PvP mode.

I thought I'm viewing this game the wrong way; it isn't a MMO but a single player game. Yet it is designed with MMO mechanics like the AH, constant connection with friends and strangers, a active dialogue box and enemies designed to increase in difficulty when player drop into the game. It certainly is similar to how Borderlands is set up as well, you can play that game as a single or multiplayer game with loot grinding as one of its main replay mechanics and play as a specific class.. But I digress. This isn't an MMO because it isn't set in a persistent world with other players, Sanctuary is essentially a game room created by players which others can join. I go through at least 5 Sanctuarys before I find a stranger(s) genuinely interested in progressing their story.

Its a catch 22 with me. I'd like to get into the game story but I'm a nutter looking to finish Inferno with loot I can only find by repeating Act 1 over and over untill I get a good drop... But I get bored doing. I start a 2nd character, but i'll naturally reminde myself that I'll never find anything as good as the equipment my lvl 60 monk has. So i'll eventually spend like an hour playing my Monk and get frustrated when I run into a elite pack and then get decimated because they all have arcane molten vortex wall. Then I find myself back to my 2nd character rushing my way to inferno again - which is boring because there isn't any decent gear untill Inferno.

Maybe I'm just exhausted of playing this game for over 100 hours and the best solution is to just stop playing Diablo 3 and go through my other back catalogue of games and come back in a month.

The great thing about video games is I can freely start the game from the beginning and play it for the story anytime. I'll just have to ignore my friends list and that feeling they are endlessly progressing to better loot every second. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the non existant expectations I put myself when it comes to games encouragiing competitive play - comparing myself to others, I should remember games are created to be fun and its only ever intended to be one of the funnest form of pass time.