A few months ago my friend Chris had been telling me that I should start playing Call of Duty: World at War on XBOX Live with him. I had only played online a few times and that was almost 3 years ago when I had just gotten my XBOX and had the free 30 days to use. I only played NCAA Football and it just wasn’t fun to me so that was the end of that. But I had another 30 days to use, so I signed up and let’s just say I got hooked.

I remember playing online way back in high school. We used to dial-up to this one guy and play Command and Conquer. We didn’t do it many times but it was pretty fun to play against someone online. My friend and I would team up and strategize and see if we could outwit the other guy. I never did any online gaming after that until college.

My freshman year roomate was hugely into Counterstrike. I knew what Half-Life was but had never heard of Counterstrike. So he got me into trying it and I was hooked. We played on the LAN and even setup a server. There were always people on (it was engineering school!) so you could always get a game. Before long we were having LAN parties and even clans for each floor! (We were DK7, Dark Knights of 7). I know of at least 1 person who dropped out exclusively because of CS. After that got old, I played some Diablo 2 and that was pretty much the only game I played online until post-college.

After I got out of college and had a job, I got bored and so my friend (the same one who got me into CS) and decided to start playing Battlefield 2. We were into for a while but had trouble finding times to play together so it didn’t last all that long. Fast forward a few years to playing Call of Duty.

It was a pretty fun 6 weeks. I wasn’t playing everyday, but almost and I put some serious hours in on the weekends. It was totally fun and for a while I could see how fun an addicting it was. But once you make it to level 65 (the highest level initially) and go to Prestige Level 1 (basically starting back over from level 1) the novelty starts to wear off. I certainly had improved, but I don’t think that I can get a whole lot better without logging even more time playing. And that just isn’t worth it. Add to it the wanks online and it gets tiring.

There are silver linings though. I had a lot of fun playing with friends and I would love playing with friends anytime. If I had enough peeps I would try to get some private games together. I already have a spot in an Online dynasty for NCAA Football 2010. I would love to play some co-op HAWX or even co-op CoD:WaW. I think in moderation online gaming could be fun. If nothing else CoD got me to buy an XBOX live membership, so I no longer have any excuses.