Saying Goodbye to Home
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
It has happened to most of us I am sure: a friend suddenly decides not to come into Home anymore. It has happened to me a few times, and depending on how deep the friendship is it can be a gut wrenching experience. It hurts.
Some people might say, “So what, there are plenty of virtual fish in the internet ocean that is Home”. This is a true statement; there are friends out there yet to be met and cherished for all of us if we extend our hands toward people we meet. But that doesn’t change the multitude of feelings that occur when a good friend suddenly decides to go, for whatever reason they might choose.
When I first came into Home I met and befriended a group of very nice people. We became good friends and spent a lot of our time together laughing and having a good time dealing with trolls in the plaza and just talking and enjoying getting to know each other. This continued until that fateful April when the hacking of PSN sent all of us into Home limbo for three weeks.
Home returned, but three of my six friends did not. I was shocked, they were very involved in Home life, they bought a lot of properties and clothing, yet they left it all behind without an explanation. They simply decided to walk away from all of it and never look back. I have kept them on my list and have only seen them in Home three or four times since the outage. I am still sitting here wondering why this occurred, and though I asked them why, they never gave me a definitive answer. I wonder how many people did the same thing after the outage. When I think about this, it gives me pause.
Trolls, one reason people have left.
Why do people leave Home? I think there are probably many reasons, but I am not talking about financial ones, like their PS3 dying and not having the money to buy another, or perhaps to pay for the internet. What other reasons could there be? Why would people who have spent hundreds of dollars and lots of time and effort building their spaces and clothing their avatars just walk away? What would cause you to do this?
IrishSiren wrote a great piece here a while back about her experience and why she left. One of the reasons was trolls, she was tired of the daily harassment whenever she went into public spaces, and in that I don’t blame her. You have to develop a thick skin in Home if you are really a female. Luckily I had one before I came into Home in the first place; working in bars will do that for you. But even with a thick skin, if you like to frequent public spaces it can get pretty bad at times for women and girls. The new ignore features have been helping that a lot lately though, so I hope anyone reading this would come back into Home and try that out before deciding to leave forever.
I know a few people who have left because they were hurt deeply by someone they really cared about in Home. It happens to good friends as well as lovers, when you come to count on another person and they let you down in a bad way it can certainly hurt, even in a virtual setting. The feelings are the same, and when you have a circle of friends who all know each other, unless you are willing to delete them all to get away from the person who hurt you, leaving Home is a choice you might make.
Gone but not forgotten.
Then there is the choice that my good friend ItchyHeini made recently. I did one of my very first stories in this magazine about him. He is a well known character within the Home community who has spent an exorbitant amount of time, energy and money creating five identical avatars to entertain the Home community with. He has a wonderful, quirky sense of humor and is a good friend of mine. He told me a while back he had been considering leaving Home because there were freezers following him and freezing his PS3’s on a regular basis. Apparently, the freezer community had decided it was a cool meta-game to try and freeze all of his avatars at once when they were in public together.
When I talked to him, he said he wasn’t leaving Home altogether, though he won’t be coming in like he used to. He said Home had changed so much from the early days when he could have fun with his avatar group. He felt it had run its course as entertainment for people with so much to do in Home now. I was sorry to see the Itchys go, but I understood his reasons; everything has a time to leave and he felt this was his.
Would you ever leave Home? If so what would make you do so? This is a good question to ask yourself, I have and I would be hard-pressed to find one right now. I think that in the long run Home is going to have to leave me instead, through my PS3 dying with no way to replace it, or through Home stopping at some point in the future. Either way, I will miss it and the joy and good times it has given me. I hope you would too.
January 14th, 2013 by Burbie52 | 8 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
alot of people also leave home because there not really anything thing to do anymore alot of people loved doing the fun quests on the activity board like they used to… and aurora the quests aurora had were deeply fun .. its seems more about profit now than fun.. not many people come to home can afford these new expensive clothes and things.. or just refuse to pay 5 dollars for a shirt lol im not saying i wouldnt because i can every time i get a chance.. but i remember when home was about having fun and things so to do … not pretty much in order to do anything fun you have to buy things just to even be apart of it.. bring back quests and hunts and the old hub bring back some of auroras things … i dont know bout everyone else but i honestly dont see the point in the blimps lol i miss espionage .. and doing activies. i know quite a few people who do as well… however i am greatful for the chat board being gone. i miss it but at the same time it needed some people to watch what was posted and delete alot of the trolling and threats e.t.c but home really has lost alot of its funness
but i do agree with you burbie idc what happens unless i die or something global happens i will never leave home i am a PROUD HOMELING
alot of it is harrasing and trolling, and yes the activities and quest are as well. but you seem to take away alot of the fun places or update them to where they are not so fun anymore.alot of us like rpg and racing you guys should bring mercia up to date or something. mercia and all of them places like that aurora things you can have us do to keep us coming back. because after you go to a place after a while once you complete everything it gets kinda old and you dont have noone else on home to go.. i know you all are trying to get new people but us older home fans like to keep having fun as well and yes we do miss alot of our old home places.if anything bring some of them back like you did for halloween and companions ..so for my reason if i left home because it got old same kind of things alot..not much of changes except clothes and stuff..My girlfriend she loved your guys old beach and your activity quests as well as the old aurora
It’s been more than a year that I use Home and I like it more and more. Anyway I feel bad for those that left for the reasons that are known… Selfish people, scammers, spammers, and more.. Some people can be very selfish..
The only thing that is good about home is the community , the games are playable but none are great, the spaces are usable but its the community and memories of community moments that makes them special. The constant adverts and brand new virtual stuff is no different to DLC new outfits, but its designed with an im better than you philosophy. trying to get you to buy a gold re-coloured suit for 5 times the value just to show your wealth. But its the community and fan sites that show people the way to get free stuff and look good and decorate on a budget. So basically once the community starts becoming unattractive through people being idiots or people I care about leaving then thats the time to find something new. I used to have a better social life on midnight club than home, chilling by the beach talking to people on headsets, showing off our latest designs of cars, the games ok but the community at the time meant I didnt really use home for 12 months, unfortunately that changed as people left so I ended up back on home. Its the new user that concern me, how many does home lose because they dont know anyone in the community, think what would you see first, if you were on home for the first time , users harrassing other users, a map system that can only described as extremely poor, every time i walk in to play a game its says I have to buy something, load times that my commodore 64 would of been quicker at. If home does not replace the leavers quicker than they are leaving there will be a time more serious decisions will have to be made.
Great article Burbie,
So many experiences mirror someone else’s here in Home.
Reading some of these articles is like a page from your own diary sometimes. Good job!
I just signed up here and this was the first article I read. Was a really good read and I hope the rest are of this quality.
Great article Burbie, as usual. I cannot see a time when I would leave Home. I have far too much invested here in time, money and most important, relationships. I have felt the loss of friends just leaving and there are people that have hurt me as I am certain I have hurt others. This is real life in that we are dealing with real people. The value of Home is not the stuff we buy or the gaming, it’s the fact that for those that value this for what it has become, a social platform where we meet people that we come to care about from places we may never go to we are invested in the friendships. Does rambling Strom have a point? I do, and it is that Home has become so important to me and many I know that I know we will never leave Home as it stands right now. We have to get kicked out, at least I can speak for myself here. I got roots, I’m now getting uprooted anytime soon.