I know it myself. I can run away from my problems by thousands of ways. Cut them all off, and I'll find two thousands more. I can play video games, read books, code some useless programs, engineer some useless devices, surf internet for interesting news, participate in flamewars, write this message, or at the last resort I can just sleep for 20 hrs per a day. If I cannot cope with my problems, then I cannot. My actual behaviour is just a simptom, not the cause of my inability.

It is just anecdotal evidence, for other people it can be the other way around, and maybe for them WoW is the cause of their inability to cope with their problems. What I want to say: don't make conclusions about causation on correlational observations.

I'm not a WOW player (or really any MMO), but it's always impressed me how willing Blizzard is to throw out all the investment people have made in learning the game system details. Talent trees (or whatever they are called) are rewritten practically each expansion to follow very different rules.

I suppose it has to do with knowing that NOT changing is a guaranteed loss over time, but still, it feels like an unusual attitude.

There was some worry earlier this year that it would abruptly die because of US sanctions on Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg who owns the investment group Columbus Nova. The sanctions were freezing assets and blocking payment processing.

There had been earlier reports that Daybreak Games, the company that acquired EverQuest years ago from Sony, had been bought by Columbus Nova. Daybreak later clarified that the person who bought them had been a partner at Columbus Nova, but he bought them personally, not for Columbus Nova, and he was not under sanction.

That was 10 months ago, and they still have their assets and can still accept payments, so apparently they were indeed not part of Columbus Nova. (Although at the time they were bought, a lot of Daybreak people did mention that name, rather than the name of the partner who now they say is the owner, so it is all still confusing).

Anyway, EverQuest today is worth a look if (1) you used to play and want some nostalgia, or (2) you never played but would like to see what one of the classic MMORPGs was about, or (3) if you would like an interesting game, good for grouping or solo play, that has a massive amount of content even if you are playing free.

There were three big changes on the "live" servers (which are distinct from the "progression" servers, which I'll describe later) that made the game a lot more friendly for casual and solo play.

First, a few years ago they added in-game NPC mercenaries that you could hire (one mercenary at a time per character). You can hire a tank, healer, melee damage dealer, or ranged damage dealer, and the AI for the mercenaries is pretty good. They "understand" group play.

With mercenaries, a whole lot of formerly full group only content can be taken reasonably by a couple players each with a mercenary, and even a lot of it can be done with one player with a mercenary, at least up to level 60ish if you are playing free, and up to at least mid 90s if you are paying [1].

Second, they introduced a new line of armor and weapons, Defiant Armor and Defiant Weapons. These things drop from a lot of normal encounters, but the stats on this stuff is comparable to top raid gear from a few expansions earlier. With Defiant, you don't have to dedicate your life to equipping your character to be able to handle the top content from an older expansion. It's only the people who are chasing the leading edge that have to make EverQuest a second career, unlike the old days.

Third, on the role playing server, Firiona Vie, there is a big experience bonus and very very items are marked NO DROP. So if you do need gear better than Defiant gear, you can trade for it or buy it from other players. Mana and healing rates are also higher than older players will remember.

Fourth, there are some new great quests. You start out with a book called the Tomb of the Heroes Journey in your inventory. When you open it, it tells you several zones that would be good at your level. If you open when you are in one of those zones, it suggest several NPCs who have task, quests, and problems you might help with. Just following the Heroes Journey will give you plenty of fun stuff to do, and that is only the tip of the iceberg.

With a mercenary and a free account on FV, you've got an excellent solo game for a long time. Even better for a group of friends.

For those who played before, and are nostalgic for the old days, they have "progression" servers. There are several, but the overall theme is the same. A progression server starts with some old version of EQ, and then progresses through the expansions. Progression servers do not have mercenaries, or Defiant armor. Heck, they are even missing later UI features when they start, such as the wonderful multiple target tracking system that the live servers have.

Progression servers have others rules, varying depending on server, to try to recreate the classic EQ experience that server's players want. For example, one of them is a "true box" server. That means you can only play one account per computer at a time. If you are one of those people who wants to play N characters at once on the same server, you have to have N physical computers if you are on a true box server.

They also differ in when when expansions become available. Some do it on a fixed time schedule. Some do it when the endgame content of the previous expansion is defeated. Some do it by vote. They also differ in how far they go. For example, Agnarr unlocks expansions on a schedule, but will stop at Planes of Power plus the two smaller expansions that followed that. Many consider that the best era of EQ, and Agnarr will be frozen in that era.

Progression servers are not available to free players.

So for those who want a shot of nostalgia, or who never played and want to check out the classic game, the best thing to do is watch for the next progression server launch, and subscribe. A new progression server is always a high population server, with population density comparable to the old days.

[1] The difference is mercenaries. There are apprentice mercenaries, with 5 skill levels (tier I to tier V) and journeymen mercenaries (tier I to V). Free players can only hire apprentices. Around mid 50s a tier V apprentice starts to struggle.

Interesting perspective. I've always wondered if rewarding grinds or unrewarding nongrinds are better for both player enjoyment and monetization. (I think the former does better; it's how addiction works)

I play solo which is an anomaly in the genre I know, but I'm starting to feel burnout: need to run the wheel multiple times so I can do various tradeskills (the 2 tradeskill, including gathering skills, max per character thing) to be self sufficient. Need to do content on characters I'm not interested in doing the content on because, oh, my mage is my tailor and I want to craft bags for my characters which requires non-100% drop BoP tradeskill drops among other things. Reputations supposedly are going to be more forgiving in 8.1, but I'm not sure if it is just Champions of Azeroth that is shared by characters (probably for the neck upgrade) or if all of the BfA reps will be shared across characters (hoping so, for tradeskill rank upgrades).

It's an endless treadmill with diminishing returns. It's full of (digital, ultimately meaningless) rewards which make you stand out above the rest of the players. Some of them are worthless in a few weeks/months (e.g. gear), some of it is timeless (e.g. mounts) but takes 100's of tries (every try 30-60 min) for that 1-5% chance to some mount.

When I played the game, there were people who did nothing all Wednesday (when they could try again for the week) but running hours and hours of dungeons just so they could have a change to get the last 10-100 rare mounts they missed.

The highest-tier end-game content requires large groups (20 players + reserves) to coordinate schedules and tackle dungeons together. This causes enormous social pressure to keep showing up because otherwise the group can't play the game and everyone is mad at you.

It's perfectly possible to play it casually without participating in the above, but it's a game that has a lot of traps for people prone to addiction to fall into.

So my problem was that gaming was winning over other things all the time on almost every occasion. I was evading responsibilities at home, neglecting my relation with my wife and not giving quality time to my daughter.

So now I'm like 3 months free of gaming and while being hard , I can now see I was using it not for the right reason.