There was a really interesting post over on Alternative Chat the other day that got me thinking -- it talked about the Toy Box and a little bit about a curious phenomenon called completion and how it affects players. I have to say I'm one of those players it affects, particularly in the waning days of an expansion cycle when there's little else to do. If you give me a list of things, and I only have part of those things, and there are more of those things to get, I will inevitably go out and try to get them all. Why? I don't know. But if I did, I'd doubtless have the secrets of the universe in my grasp.

The same applies not just to collections, but to things like reputation bars -- if they are not completely filled, I have a curious compulsion to fill them. If I have some kind of progress counter, I need to fill up in the same way. What makes this interesting, as Alternative Chat pointed out, is that it creates a different kind of content, one that maybe isn't for everyone, but it's viable all the same. The Toy Box was created in part as a space saver, to get all those delightful little items out of people's bags and allow Blizzard to freely add more of these kinds of items at their leisure. But hey -- throw a few achievements in the mix, make a pretty UI interface for the thing, and suddenly you have another game of gotta-catch-them-all that will keep people busy for months, maybe even years.

I know I'm not unique in my collecting obsession -- and I know I'm not the only one staring at my Toy Box and mentally checking off items and where to go to get the things to fill the darkened spaces. But I'm curious just how many of us there are out there. Do you like the collecting game? Are you using the Toy Box? Are you finding yourself going out of the way to track down those elusive toys you didn't realize you didn't have? Or are collections, achievement points, reputation bars, and all the rest simply things you don't really pay attention to or care about?

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