I actually wrote a few of the stories in a 500,000 word cluster dump on reddit i wrote in 2months but i ended up deleting the account. I got temporary ulnar tunnel syndrome(UTS) from writing for prolonged periods of time. I had psychological issues that I needed to explore so thats why the text dump was so long. I ended up writing my own awful version of existing psychology theories and did things to prove /disprove it.

I still have a backup of it though, i hashed out many specific gaming stories thoigh. I would have to string together stories across multiple MMOs ive played to make it more fluent

I still have my old youtube channel too under a different pseudonym, this MMO game is still popular today (its not WoW). My favorite comment I still treasure to this day is how a surgeon would watch my videos and practice his ambidexterity and motor skills for life/death situations with guides ive made. That changed my perspective in life, its also why I see value in everything. I was going through shit times after getting burnt by 3 internship offers bc of dual citizenship legality issues and getting fired from my summer job while being deathly ill from eating chipotle.

NDA is long since irrelevant now though. I had to send my drivers liscense photocopy with the NDA too

I still have screenshots too showcasing how absurdedly rich i got in the game(about 1000xs more money than the average player, i did alot of census surveys of people who paid for my services out of boredom at the time). I am 100% certain I was the richest selfmade player in a game of 5million+ people bc I monopolized one dungeon run that no one was able to do for months. Nobody could figure it out and everyone was trying to emulate me for the longest time. Dealing with scammers in instanced zones was a PITA. I even had people on payroll to badmouth all the Korean copycats emulating the setup I had going. Thats literally what i did for fun in high school.

I used to just theorycraft the millions of permutations of builds available in this MMO. It was sandbox heaven. Game was commonly called "build wars" bc of this reason. I built absurd builds designed to handle 4v1 situations that actually worked in PvP. I would submit these builds to the buildlist wikis but they were always rejected and never caught on. I still remember all the skill stats and combinations to make them today, its just ingrained in my head now. Thats how I learned to get really good at managing multiple things at a time, and how in another game I popularized the most shitty class. I am still considered the godfather of that class /build and its still a popular MMO today.

In this "build wars" game I was also the designated strategist for competitive GvG (guild vs guilds). I led what is essentially my own esports team before esports became a thing. Having to schedule practice sessions, practicing dry runs, etc.

The economy crashed from an exploit I leaked to a friend who leaked it to the public. I knew how devasting of an effect it had so i dumped all my stock into items that would go up in value. I had secret trading routes that no one knew even after the fact either.

Insider trading was fun trying to predict which materials would go up in value. I had access to all the crafting recipes before anyone else did, in the private test servers. The NDA agreement never mentioned this conflict of interest. I dominated certain niche market avenues. I used bots to automate trade posting.

I failed pretty hard at making my first guildhall. People wanted to join it and wanted me to spearhead it but i learned that i suck at being a leader. What I found was I enjoyed really teaching macroeconomics and entrepnueurship in high school though to guildmates.

I used to play tons of Korean MMOs growing up(similar to runescape), I learned the hard lessons of bait and scams here with awful trade windows. I bait scammed a few people myself. I learned my first korean words (baljong for rez me) and found most asianic players just knew a few english words, namely "fuck you". I learned how to trade with WTS and WTT spamming. I was in middle school at the time.

I used to play competitive DoTA before it was a thing and played with some of the top players today, merlini and w33. I wrote a post about this elsewhere on reddit, when iwent to my first esports outing.

I used to play league/scrims in CSGO too, but FPS is just what Im okay at. I learned about good HUD and UX design from playing so many video game genres.

My favorite songs came from audiotracks in starcraft modded maps (daft punk and zergling runs). I used to make my own modded maps in elementary school too and that was my first exposure to IRC. I got my first exposure to porn, specifically hentai, from thumbnail generated maps in elementary school. So many things were born from starcraft modded maps, for instance tower defense like fieldrunners or TD balloons.

Diablo 3 I was one of the first 100ish people to beat it on inferno mode too. I used to have a trading partnership where we'd use currency differences between real money auction house and ingame auctionhouse to make actual money (similar to forex exchanges)

No joke video games have taught me so much in life its not even funny. I hadnt even played EvE which is another can of worms and many absurd stories are birthed from there as well.

When i watch readyplayerone, enders game, SAO, the main characters remind me of my own life.

For the longest time though I didnt tell anyone in real life any of the stories and gaming adventures. It was hard on me too because it was also what I was most prideful of but I had to straightup lie in interviews on lesser accomplishments I did.

During highschool I got shutin so I also wasnt in good shape either. I was both skinny and fat at the same time as well. 9" biceps and 27"thighs someone once joked I looked like an anime character casually and that was the biggest burn I have ever received in my life. I got harassed alot in school so thats why I played lots of MMOs growing up. I have pictures of these still.

I also partially managed reddit r/place, the worlds largest online art collaboration as well too under a different pseudonym. I managed 30 contributors in real time for 20 hours. I dont know why I volunteered to do it I was just situated to handle it at the time. I know of almost every meme made (even the ones that didnt make it to final version) from r/place because I was the one who led documentation efforts.

Ive done a lot of weird stuff growing up. I have just accepted that I'm weird and learned to appreciate it now, I didn't so much in the past though. But I feel like these types of stories are generally more accepted now due to VR implications etc.

I dont play any video games much anymore because I have other ambitions I want fulfilled.