Bear with me while I post three different “wow addiction” forum posts or news stories.

First, CNet covers some story talking about WoW addiction (posted a while ago). Everyone jumps on the comment board and posts sob stories and blames WoW for everything. More people jump on and point out that their life is fine. Parents jump on trying to cut off their kids and ask horrible tech questions like, “how I unplug t3h WoW from kid?”. Ex-addicts jump on and tell their stories of how they finally uninstalled.

Then, on the official forums, another person posts “How can I quit an MMO?”. He really means it, he wants to know how to unplug. I’m amazed. I read on. People’s responses fall under three categories:

1. Warm Adjustment – Go out more, schedule game time for weekends. Play less.
2. Cold turkey – break CD in half, uninstall, don’t visit guild website or forums.
3. Nuclear winter – Delete your character (Blizzard can restore characters but not items), uninstall, break CDs, never speak of it again.

The responses falled under these categories and it got people talking on the forums. Ok, so far I don’t have a point, I am merely posting similar material … bear with me.

Then, I ran into a comment on Cnet. A recent fianće said her future-hubby runs home from work to play. He runs away after ‘relations’ back to his game. She can’t understand how a hobby could be so ridiculous she says. “I like gardening but you don’t see me skipping work to garden!”

Clearly, people all over the net are talking about this, just like in the ol EQ days (I never played).

I’m not trying to be a jerk. A lot of these stories posted are moving and real. I can understand people’s predicament. I can totally understand the outside viewer’s perspective. I can understand the non-tech parents. I can understand the view of the school. I can understand how teachers wouldn’t understand the game or culture and so they just throw up a hate barrier and start beating their wardrums. I can imagine the PTA meetings. I can imagine the local flyers with all kinds of anti-WoW clipart and informative paragraphs. I can even imagine a lame WoW-slang dictionary brochure going out to parents looking like:

Super Awesome WoW Slang Dictionary for Parents!
“level” – the power of a player playing the game
“loot” – items or things a player can use
“raid” – a dungeon adventure (you could put some adventure clipart here)
“o rly” – a bird that’s extremely annoying
“chuck norris” – a joke that’s dead
“leeroy jeenkins” – a joke that’s not dead to me

Etc. With some cheesy ‘quick tips’ section. Fine. Parents, getting involved, it’s great but glossy PTA flyers are going to miss the point like the ‘Just Say No’ campaign.

I don’t have kids. I can’t say I’m being fair, rather I’m probably being very negative on the parents. I don’t know how hard it is to raise kids. But I know what being a kid is like. Some kids were way into Cabbage Patch Kids. Girls were into Barbie. Boys were into LEGOs and GI Joes. Some girls were into LEGOs/GI Joes and some boys were into Barbie (hey whatever … it happens). I’m not trying to pigeonhole anybody, this type of consumer/entertainment addiction has been around forever.

I guess the new issue is that no one dropped their day job to play with GI Joes. The real issue is degree of play. A lot of grown-ups are mature enough to budget their time but younger players might have a harder time with it. It should be pretty obvious when it becomes an issue.

Certainly, the person who says “I like gardening but you don’t see me skipping work to garden!” isn’t a good gardener. Or at least, not the min-max gardener she could be (if there is such a thing). She’s not an all-pro tomato grower. She’s not stressing over competitions. She’s not in competition with anyone, herself or on any level. Which brings me to my point:

Point #1: You’re going to kill yourself getting to 1st place.

This is true in many things. I could take a job where I travel all the time. I could put in massive hours, get a marginal raise and go all-in to my career. But at the same time, I’d be giving up my mental health, free time and longevity. Who wants to do that? Is it worth it?

My job pays the bills. I won’t work there forever (nor anywhere). It’s not a dead-end job. WoW will end someday, something better will come along. But I don’t live for the end. I’m not a slave to the grave. The end takes care of itself.

I’m at 28 days of playtime. Most ever on anything. I plan on playing for a few more years even if I take month-long breaks. It’s a lot of money to think about (in monthly fees) but it beats trying out other crappy PC titles that roll along.

My Grandfather said, “moderation in all things is the key to happiness”. Which is why you won’t see me driving a Ferrari or in BWL getting my Stormrage set.

Point #2: “Moderation in all things.”

Certainly the person that says, “I play WoW and I have a life” is not getting the huge difference of a casual player vs a hardcore player. Just like casual drinking versus a drinking problem. The casual drinking is not a problem at all. The only issue is the hardcore version of xyz. What I mean is, the person that says, “I play WoW and I’m doing fine” isn’t the best player in the realm. Casual vs hardcore.

Of course all of this make me happy that I’m not in a hardcore raiding guild. Sure SASU (this group we team up with) is pretty serious but I’m glad that they aren’t to BWL (2nd hardest place) yet. I hope Blizzard makes even the end-game more accessible as time goes on.

Like, hopefully I can be casual and complete BWL at some point. I think it would be a major game and political flaw to do anything else. WoW is the most successful MMO ever and I’d love to see them end it right.

Can’t we all just have some fun?

The biggest draw I had when I started was playing a game with my friend. We were pretty pissed about FFXI and when he said he was running out to buy WoW, I ran out too. We had a blast in the begininng being complete noobs, not even know how to talk in the game.

Then, I leveled a little too fast and I think that lead to some aggravation, frustration and disinterest in the game. I totally understand. He’s leveled way past me in DQVIII and I don’t feel much like trying to catch up until FFX-2 is done. He eventually quit (to my sadness) and I joined an Australian guild of a bunch of nice, non-hardcore players. I think (and I dunno) also that there was some gender weirdness. I rolled a female human because I always play a guy and I figured it would change up the population on the server. He rolled a male human. I guess that was weird. I dunno, I think the main issue was time. It’s unfortunate, I’ve heard similar stories online a lot.

Recently, two other friends have expressed interest in playing. At one point, I thought they would start. But months have passed and at this point, it’s probably a bad idea. I realize they don’t have the time or the interest. If it was interesting, they’d already be playing. I was already excited before I started playing. Different strokes, different folks.

It’s a shame because I wish we could all just have a bit of fun. I’m feeling pretty blah … I can’t speak for everyone but lots of blah in the crew is going around. Not that WoW is some herbal-receipe, it was good to take a break and come back to it. It’s fun to listen to podcasts and play. It is fun to fish in the game (mindless/relaxing) and watch Adult Swim.

So what’s going to be next?

If I’m playing CS:Source in 2010, gaming has failed. There’s better gameplay out there. I played CS in 1999 pretty regularly and it didn’t really change in gameplay through 2006.

HL3? Too bad no coop most likely. So I guess we’ll be back to playing single player games on our fibre optic networks in 2020 and IM’ing/emailing our status back and forth. “Hey! I finished map 3!” Yeah, I guess that’s cool.

Just seems kinda bleak and broken.

Like emailing weblinks I found to friends, “lol this is teh funny!”, broken technology. In short, I wish we could just play something and have a blast.

Hope and Positive Experiences

Gotta keep it positive. Look at digg and slashdot. As a techy, I want to know what’s next. I want to get excited. I want to believe in something, get pumped. What’s new, what’s happening? What’s the news in the world but not “who is marrying who?” celebrity news.

So I surf digg.com, check out for any new things. I surf slashdot for a second opinion. :) What’s the new hardware that’s out? What killer app is getting attention? Is this escapism or positive exploration? Is it hunting in the hunter/gatherer sense? It’s something to get excited about like The Final Four, etc.

Conclusion

This blog is really turning into a WoW blog. No apologies, no apologies allowed on my blog. I think I’ve written off any RL friends picking it up, I’d seriously suggest against it. You’d probably already want to play or be playing if you were interested.

Hopefully something else comes along that caters to even more people.