I wish I shared in your optimism.
From where I am standing I see more and more young people trying to get into our field, and I don't feel there is much of an and entry barrier at all.
Your experience with TERA is akin to mine. Not only the game was innovative, skill based and overall fun to play, the interaction with other players was like none I had ever experienced.
BTW, did you ever made it to exarch[1] in the alliance? I only made it as far as commander during my time.
Ha, I tried, but no dice. Too much competition (and people cheating with multiple accounts). Best I got was Assault Commander, but I kinda liked to stay Defense Commander, the buffs could make a good party unkillable :D.
Probably could've when the game started dying, but I lost interest by then. The mass PVP was really fun with hundreds of people, though often laggy.
The combat system (still haven't seen anything like it, the initial devs were brilliant), the scenery (Seeliewoods was fantastic), the decently balanced, prolonged PVP at the time, all the crafting stuff and absolutely free market, plus the early playerbase made the game great even if it did have a repetitive endgame. Oh and there was no region lock so people from all over the world could play, like Guild Wars.
Spent most money on that MMO, ever. But I guess milking people is overall more profitable.
I lost my account when Enmasse migrated them to Gameforge or something, I just didn't bother. They're shutting it down for good next month.
Kinda why I hate MMOs nowadays, I'd rather have it all on my computer even if I won't play it :D
>The combat system (still haven't seen anything like it, the initial devs were brilliant), the scenery (Seeliewoods was fantastic), the decently balanced, prolonged PVP at the time, all the crafting stuff and absolutely free market, plus the early playerbase made the game great even if it did have a repetitive endgame. Oh and there was no region lock so people from all over the world could play, like Guild Wars.
I couldn't agree more if I wanted to, TERA's combat system and ambiance was unmatchable.
You spoke of Seeliewoods; me and my boyfriend at the time got "married" in the Seeliewoods chapel, it was a blast.
I have such fond memories of the place, it always saddens me knowing that I can't go back.
>I lost my account when Enmasse migrated them to Gameforge or something, I just didn't bother. They're shutting it down for good next month.
Same here, at the time of the migration the game already felt like a shadow of its former self. And even though, just like you, I had spent a sizable amount of money on it, I didn't really bother migrating.
I deeply wish to be able to have a similar experience again. I have tried so many MMOs since TERA and none have ever offered what it did.
I hope they do that with non-cloud voice recognition
My family tried an Echo Auto for voice control in one of our cars last year, but we ended up disconnecting it.
We drive through hills and mountains often, and it was common for voice commands to be ignored or to have seconds in latency because of spotty mobile network.
It worked OK in cities, as long as you were not on an underground parking lot, which was a common occurrence.
My friend, if you find your life to be meaningful, and more importantly you are satisfied with it, then shut all outside voices telling you that you are living it wrong.
You will find that most people are not at all content with their lives, so if you are, you are in a great position.
I'd add the caveat that therapists are like friends and teachers: who they are as people matters for how effective they are professionally.
Treat finding a therapist like dating or considering a friendship with someone. A therapist can be a very good therapist (objectively) but not click with you.
It's okay to say "I'm trying out multiple therapists right now to see who fits best. Can we just do introductions with each other?"
Find someone who you respect, shares some beliefs with you, and generally has a compatible outlook on life.
It may not help in the moment, but best money I ever spent was going to a therapist weekly, or more often, for about 2 years. Many universities offer free mental health services. Therapy didn’t fix everything, but it did help with perfectionism and especially with black-and-white thinking.
as in Google Assistant for depression/OCD/ADD/anxiety management. Specialized for 1-2 problems that were diagnosed by a real doctor.
The biggest problem is it needs to be quite well customized for each user.
I believe talking to anyone/anything helps a lot, and hearing feedback helps even more.
A "personal medical assistant" like that could help manage medication intake, serious episodes, moments when you feel very bad.
I have a prototype for myself, it's just a bunch of cobbled software running on a dedicated smartphone. The voice triggers and replies are prewritten based on my own self-analysis. But I know it all already, so the best part is medication reminders and letting me know what I live for.
However it needs to always be on me, and right now it uses too much custom software to just install on anything. I can't build such an app myself, but it should be possible.
I am single btw, so of course I have no one to talk to.
The therapists I tried were just public ones, so they're more interested in showing up and getting their cut out of the mandatory insurance system.
"We don't take on new clients" or "we only speak German" is a valid reply, and what's a depressed person calling for help gonna do?
Just hang up and give up or best case, call others. It's a shit system.
I gave up on it all and am trying to make/find a "system" that is truly personal, custom, free as in freedom, independent of the gargantuan public and for profit healthcare machines, which are too big to accommodate everyone, plus the disinterest in actual help is obvious in places where insurance is mandatory.
Not knocking on emergency services, surgeons, anyone fixing obvious physical problems, those people are worth it. Mostly mental healthcare, where it's easy for unscrupulous people to fudge numbers and make money for doing nothing.
It's like my hypothyroidism, took me years to get that diagnosis, it's stupid.
But of course, when you say "I'm depressed and I drink a lot', that's not the first thing anyone would think to check for. Or maybe my luck is terrible.
Either way, universal healthcare systems are just huge machines like the justice system, they work for most, but many slip through the cracks and get zero help, being left to self-medicate and self-help, which is hard when said machines gatekeep anything that can actually work.
That's how you get a huge popularity of homeopathy, religion, diets, illegal drugs, and anything desperate people can cling to and believe in.
Well, I am not sure such a thing would work for me, at least not in the long run. But like you said, it could be useful if you are alone and need a voice (even if a synthetic one) to remind you that there are reasons to keep going.
I hope you can find yourself proper counseling though, I didn't know things were so dismal in Germany (I am assuming you are in Germany based on the contents of you comment).
As a Desktop environment, major Linux distros have never been as well polished as they currently are. It's gotten to a point that regular people can use them without much hassle.
From a sysadmin perspective,one always needed to invest time in Linux to be proficient in it, I don't see how that has changed greatly.
