Married or just fooling around?

What is your relationship to your favorite MMORPG? Are you married to one, or are you just fooling around and carry on with several of them?

What I observe more and more, is a culture in which the dedication you show towards a single game and character gives you status in the eyes of other players. Everything players in MMORPGs are so proud about is stuff they acquired because they spent more time and effort on achieving it. Thus they concentrate on a single game and a single character and advance him as much as possible.

For me that way of playing isn't all that much fun. I believe that you can not actually "achieve" anything in a video game. Even if you had the highest gearscore on your server and had killed the last boss in the game before everybody else, that all counts for absolutely nothing in the real world.

In my opinion games are for entertainment, not to "work" towards some virtual achievement. And to maximize entertainment value, it makes more sense to play several characters in one game, and sometimes even change games and try something new. There is nothing wrong with just wanting to log on and play a bit, that is actually what games are for. If you get a virtual reward for that playing, that can be fun. But in the end those virtual rewards are just pixels that count for nothing, and they are certainly not worth neglecting other parts of your life for.