Breaking a WoW addiction

It seems to be stated as a fact in this discussion that you can't play a game such as WoW and do anything other productive on the side, but it's a lot more nuanced.

Anecdotally, I've been playing WoW almost non stop since it launched and have been raiding once to three times a week. During this time I also got married, had a kid, founded Shopify, overtook the CEO role, grew it to be a multi million dollar business. In this community that seems far from being a failure.

I'm engaging in anecdotal junk science here but my theory is that the people who really loose themselves in games like WoW are people with very poor time management skills. I'm convinced those people have always been around before. However, previously almost all activities came with some inherent caps on the time you can productively spend on those. All sports wear you out and force you to stop after some time. TV repeats pretty quickly and there is no original content during the night. Reading works but that's a socially fully acceptable timesink.

WoW is just extremely good game that fulfills a lot Maslow's needs, especially the top ones. There is a great asymmetry in the lure of this game and the established defenses of some people.

I think one of the key parts of parenting for our generation will be to equipt our children with the time management skills and the willpower to handle and enjoy games like WoW properly.

What WoW needs to do is start hooking in-game rewards to real-life rewards.

For example, a deal with 24 Hour Fitness where you need to attend for 30 days in a row to unlock some kind of sword. The biometric system at 24 Hour is now sophisticated enough to permit this kind of tracking [with your permission of course].

I'm completely serious. This is an inversion of the Zynga model in which real life money is exchanged for worthless virtual goods. It's more like worthless virtual goods are dangled as an incentive for real life improvement.

There's a lot further you can go with this concept (hooking it up to location based apps, for example), but if we're talking about a "game layer on the world", start with converting an unhealthy dependency into a healthy one.

Caveat: it's very easy to extend the criticism of WoW to life itself.

Working all these years to be a paramedic, going to school, going to work, for what? To drive some people to the hospital? They're all just going to die anyway. Life is meaningless!

What the author is really saying is: "I find more meaning in the real world than in WoW."

But this isn't necessarily true for everyone.

Having said all that, I think WOW is more dangerous than heroin.

As someone who has played and stopped WoW for significant times over the past years. I think the article has some valid points about the addictiveness of WoW, on the other hand I feel that the choice between "real" work and WoW as presented here is a false dichotomy. "Real" work and WoW are not mutually exclusive.

The writer says he started playing he has spend his time working out. I started swimming for 40 minutes each day while playing WoW, a habit I continue now that I stopped.

He also states what if you spend the time you invest in WoW into achieving your goals. But you can't just work 24/7. I spend 8 hours a day doing research and hacking at the university, when I get home I just don't have the focus left in me to code or study. In the past I spend this time playing WoW, right now I spend this time reading fiction or hanging in front of the TV.

Now probably there are people who lose themselves entirely to the game and can't bring up the discipline to also work on their goals, but as everything in life, its really just about balancing yourself.

PS - I actually found myself being more productive during my WoW playing times then during my non-playing times. Reason? If I needed to do something I would not allow myself to log in until it was done. WoW was more addictive then procrastinating so I'd just knuckle down and do it. Now if I need to do something I find myself reading HN instead of just doing it...

Is playing a social game where you interact with other people any different than going out to a club or bar? Joining a bowling league? A cycling group? A health club where you go to regular group exercise classes?

The meme that video games are inherently evil needs to go away. Why is it socially acceptable to join many clubs and spend time with those people all the time but not "people on the Internet"? Like the Internet is somewhere only people that can't make "real friends" go..

Addiction to anything is bad but playing WoW or any other online game doesn't mean you're automatically "a loser" in the rest of your life -- and I don't mean just casually playing. There are people in all of the top guilds achieving high ranked world kills on new content that are also successful in other areas of their life.

Here's my perspective as the friend of someone who became addicted to WoW:

I lost a potential programming buddy/co-founder. we used to collaborate on projects, but eventually WoW took up all his spare time. We both graduated with CS degrees, but he is now unemployable. He played WoW instead of working (he worked from home), and has never spent any time outside of work maintaining his skills. I say worked because he no longer works. Hasn't for the past 3 years. Right now he's into starcraft. It's frustrating to me that he and others I built relationships with in college have chosen this path.

I play WoW for five years now. When I started, I used to be an occasional player. But when I hit level 60 (that was the highest level a few years ago) it was impossible to advance further without being in a regular raiding guild. So I started hardcoring: obligatory raids from 19:00 to 23:30, each evening, five evenings per week. Lower attendance was not tolerated. And gathering/grinding materials for potions/powerups afterwards, util 01:00 or so. This took place in a few months around the summer of 2006. The reward was worth it: access to all high-level content, epic items, and being member of the most succesful guild on the server. However, after a few months hardcoring like this, the game felt more and more like a boring job. One day I realized that with this playing style, I would quickly lose all interest in this game, which I didn't want, so I quit the guild (only hardcorers were allowed to stay in) and changed to a casual player, which I still am today.

I didn't want to quit altogether because there was so much more game content to check out (I enjoy the sights & sounds of WoW very much), and so many other classes to try. Up until then I played exclusively Holy Priest.

Blizzard must have somehow realized that players weren't able to get any further without hardcoring. The last years they have created more and more features for the casual player: the Dungeon Finder system, player-vs-player battlegrounds, cross-realm instances, other reward systems; all these have lessened the dependence on a guild.

I now sometimes fire up WoW, not everyday, and play a few hours. I still like it, after all these years (and 3 expansion packs).

Game makers (and some website owners) are discovering what some religious and cult leaders have known for thousands of years: you don't have to give somebody a drug to make them an addict. People are perfectly capable of generating their own addictions without external chemical help.

I _think_ what's going to happen is that we come up with a new moral code -- much like the thing where drinking before a certain time was considered bad, or the idea of doctors prescribing pain pills for themselves anathema.

But really, it beats me. We have a generation of people addicted to a sedentary activity in a way that's never happened in human history. It's very difficult to predict how all this will play out.

eeeeehhh. As a very avid WoW player of some years now, I would say WoW is something that can easily be something that holds your "life progress" or whatever you want to call it back, but it can also just as easily be played at a successful level (define that however you like) without that effect as well.

In the guild I'm in now and a guild I was in in the past I see both: players who are quite literally on welfare or unemployment and just play WoW and other games all day (colloquially "living the dream", mostly tongue-in-cheek), while others have what I would consider successful lives. One of our best priests works as some sort of company programmer or server maintainer/admin. Our best healing druid entered his first bodybuilding contest sometime in September of this year and plans on doing another next August iirc. Our guild/raid leader has an office 9-5 selling toys to retailers or something like that. Lots are in college, myself included. An old guild officer of mine was a Googler. A decent amount have wives/kids/gfs/main squeezes. etc.

I think the best argument of the post is the social obligations point. There are definitely some people who do "no-life" for the guild and such, but again, I think this is a some do some don't thing (as well as being limited to basically people in guild leadership situations). For every guild leader or officer I know who hasn't left a dead-end guild because of a feeling of obligations to the guild, I probably know twice as many officers who did left anyways, and 3-4x as many raiders who did as well. Anecdotally speaking, I left a guild where I was probably next in line to be guild/raid lead for a much better one, and am now debating doing some sort of ESL teach/travel program next year despite having been an officer in my new guild for roughly 6 months now.

The problem for me with games like WoW, EQ and so on is that they aren't based enough on skills so to compensate you need to spend a lot of time in the game.

To contrast. In a game like Quake you are only as good as your Rail-gun aim it's pure skills. Or StarCraft for that matter again skills based.

The advantages from these kind of games in combatting addiction is that they are hard to become good at. you can't just get powerleveled up the latter.

The skills stays with you, the same is not true in WoW.

Having seen a couple of friends dropping out of university for a year because of games like EverQuest and WoW my advice is:

Don't play games where it's the avatar that gains power. Only play games that makes you a better player.

I know a guy who's really, really into football. Watches hours of games every other night or so, has a "fantasy" team that he's constantly fretting over and checking online stats for, etc.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that distinguishes this obsession from a WoW habit is that more people like to watch football, so it's accepted.

People who get seriously addicted to WoW are usually either looking for any escape from reality, or they have the type of personality which tends to get addicted to something, whether it's online games, math puzzles, tracking railroad schedules, or whatever. There's no question that these people might act in unhealthy ways, but WoW is the symptom of their problems, not the cause.

(disclosure: I used to play WoW regularly)

How do you avoid this trap? How do you prevent [subject] from hooking you into a shadow of what you really want? The answer is simple: don't [do it] blindly. Consider what it is you get out of [subject] . Nearly everything the [subject] provides can be found better and more real elsewhere.

Fattening foods? Alcohol abuse? Sex Addiction? oh, WoW.

This is written with the assumption that the reader cannot think for themselves and is quite insulting to anyone that reads past half of these subjective assertions.

"at the same time there was something disquieting about the fact that all these people were still around"

Sorry your friends didn't die, change all of their habits entirely, or live up to your random expectations of what constitutes too much and too little involvement in a computer game.

Seriously though, its been out how many years, and using plenty of comics and quotations to express this point, its taken you 18 months to regurgitate this same tired public service announcement? This is just trolling literate people that have thought about playing games in the last decade!

Meh, quit gaming a while back but recently want to try it out again but more just to cool off as a "hobby."

I used to think games were evil and against productivity but no longer. I work a lot. I just want to chill out and relax some times and blow shit up. Maybe do a raid or two, so what?

It's no different then spending 3 hours watching a TV show on Netflix or something similar.

It just depends on how you want to spend your time. If it makes you happy, sure.

I think you need a real job before you can consider gaming a hobby though. Otherwise it can lead to a "full time life gig."

Girlfriend will also help make sure you're not wasting your time.

I'm lucky if I can squeeze out 8 hours a week on games. If that. There's weekends though that I have the whole day to myself and I prefer to play a game for a few hours than go to a club and get drunk.

Related is Paul Graham's essay on the acceleration of addictiveness: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

(And to add a shameless plug, my own article on akrasia: http://messymatters.com/akrasia )

I just wanted to add my 2 cents relating to gaming addiction. I've never played WoW so I can't comment on that. But I was kicked out of college indirectly due to my addiction to Counter Strike.

I dunno if the same is true for WoW but one of the reasons I believe Counter Strike is so addictive is the time you have to wait after you get killed, before the next round starts.

I believe this is due to the fact that variable reinforcement schedules are more resistant to extinction:

"Skinner also looked at variable schedules. Variable ratio means you change the “x” each time -- first it takes 3 presses to get a goodie, then 10, then 1, then 7 and so on. Variable interval means you keep changing the time period -- first 20 seconds, then 5, then 35, then 10 and so on.

In both cases, it keeps the rats on their rat toes. With the variable interval schedule, they no longer “pace” themselves, because they can no longer establish a “rhythm” between behavior and reward. Most importantly, these schedules are very resistant to extinction. It makes sense, if you think about it. If you haven’t gotten a reinforcer for a while, well, it could just be that you are at a particularly “bad” ratio or interval! Just one more bar press, maybe this’ll be the one!"

Counter Strike is a variable interval schedule. Once you die you have to wait an unknown amount of time before you can play again. This makes counter strike playing behavior more resistant to extinction and I believe one of the big reasons why people get so addicted to it. If you respawned the second you died in Counter Strike (as you do in deathmatch) I'm fairly positive there would be a much fewer number of people addicted to the game. I believe this is quite a big factor in addiction. I haven't heard of anyone addicted to any FPS deathmatch multiplayer game. I'm sure there are some, but much less so than games like counter strike where you have to wait.

>Although WoW is a much better game than Farmville, with a substantially different business model, their tactics are fundamentally the same: use your social obligations to keep you clicking. Exploit your friendships, sense of reciprocity, and the joy of being part of a group with shared goals. Turn it all from something commendable to something frivolous that serves mainly to increase the game developer's profits.

This put into words something I've been thinking about for a while, but struggled to articulate. There's something wrong when we start doing this to friendships.

Fantasic write up. I don't know if anyone has seen "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" (pretty good - I enjoyed it), but there is a part where the heroes enter a casino. Everything you could wish for was there and so nobody left. And it was a trap -- it's sole reason was to entrap people so they never did anything with their lives. Your description made me think of WoW in that way. I'm sure WoW's intentions aren't evil (they just want your money!) but the outcome is the same.

Short version:

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."

Long version:

Compared to other kinds of entertainment (books, TV, sports, friends) -- World of Warcraft makes you think about it even when you don't play it. The longer you play the game, the more addicted you are, the more you think about all the things you're gonna do. That's how the game's designed.

You think about the game when you're not playing it. It's hard to really focus on something else if you're thinking about the game.

Does that sound familiar to you? If you're a hacker, if you are excited about computers, then it must. It's same with hacking and programming. It's the same principle. For example I tried a little Node.js magic the other night and the first thing I did in the morning was getting live comments to work. Then I found out there could be another cool feature, and so on. Excitement. That's what drives hackers. Call it addiction, whatever. Unlike, WoW, you're doing work, you're making money.

So please, don't be ever excited about WoW. You don't wanna waste your precious excitement thanks to which you make wonders with programming on WoW.

You can do both, but you can't be addicted to both. Which one will you choose?

Exactly why I don't play these, also why I don't try crack or heroin.

I'll add my perspective to this as someone who was addicted to a similar game.

I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server split and I went with them. The new server was fairly desolate and I ended up getting booted from lack of participation. That, combined with how my class had been screwed by the expansion, caused me to quit.

But I ended up selling my stuff on eBay for ~$3500 so it wasn't all bad. But the story doesn't end there.

Atually anoeth factor was that I was moving to the UK for work. That first year the was one of the most productive of my life. I had no Internet access at home (2001), no TV and a fairly active social life. Due to living in a cheap area of London, renting a flat and subletting the rooms and the low rate of effective taxation of contractors I SAVED in excess of $100,000 that year.

After some drama with flatmates (subletting was financially beneficial but a hassle) I moved closer to work. Suddenlyinsread of an our commute each way I had a 5 minute walk. I got cable Internet and bought a PC and a TV.

I started playing EQ again. New server, new class, starting from scratch. I leveled quickly and went through a series of guilds. Raiding can be a huge timesink. This period was the most fun I had in an MMORPG ever.

Later that year I got laid off as in the aftermath of the telco bubble bursting the previous year (it was 2002 by now).

I'd always wanted to learn a foreign language soi moved to Germany and enrolled in intensive learning classes.

But I still kept up with EQ. I transferred servers to a high end guild. The guild was American so I ended up sleeping from 7pm to 1am, playing EQ from 1am to 8am, going to classes til 1pm and then playing til 6pm. I never really adjusted to sleeping at these times.

But I did go to classes. After they ended I stayed and was playing up to 16 hours a day. In the end I got kicked from the guild for doing something I shouldn't have, which was probably the best thing that could've happened.

Still I view that time now as a wasted opportunity. I did learn the language but not as well as I could have and I certainly take full advantage socially or even to see and do things there.

But not before I'd gone back to my old company (they were hiring again) and my weird schedule had brought me into conflict with a toxic project manager, ending that job only a month after it had started.

2002-03 was a pretty terrible time in the UK contractor market (39% unemployment amongst those who hadn't left the industry). It took months to find a new job. I'd also lost that "social" outlet of EQ so was pretty cut off. It was actually a fairly dark period for me.

I have played MMOGs since then but never to the same intensity and, frankly, I think the magic was gone. I'd seen it all before. Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc).

What I learnt about myself is that I'm fairly singleminded. This can be used advantageously as I'll dwel on a problem at work until I solve it. But if I have an unresolved issue personally it can, in a way, consume me--or at least consume my attention.

I do think I'd be better off without a TV or even without a home Internet connection. But I guess balance is my personal cross to bear.

Are these games dangerous? Possibly but I tend to thinkpretty much everything is dangerous to some people. Alcohol. Gambling. Trading. Even working out. It ultimately comes down to personal responsibility.

EDIT: One last thing I'll add: one problem with this kind of game is the longevity (timesink) nature. You see a similar (but much less severe) problem with tabletop RPGs. Because you invest so much time it increases your threshold for putting up with crap, basically.

In RPGs it might be a 7 hour session where nothing happens. In MMOGs it's spending 1-2 hours LFG (looking for group), a week figuring out a raid encounter, spending an our doing a CR (corpse recovery) and so on.

These days my leisure gaming activities are dominated by tabletop board gaming of the Euro variety (Agricola, Age of Steam, Reef Encounter, Le Havre, Dominion and so on). These tend to last 2-3 hours tops and, as such, have very little "downtime". I find it a much more rewarding experience than huge timesink games of any variety. Plus it's actually social.

On a side note, if there is anyone in NYC with interest I playing such games, contact me via my info. :)

EDIT2: fixed some typos (typing on an iPad is error-prone), :)

patio11, we need you here. Where are you?

From what I know, Patrick used to spend a lot of time playing WoW. It will be interesting to know what he actually got out of the game and what made him stop playing the game (assuming he has indeed stopped playing the game)

How interesting.

I had been playing like mad since the new expansion came out. The other night in a dispassionate drunken decision I cancelled my subscription AND permanently deleted my characters. I wasn't a hardcore player but over about 14 months I had 1500 odd hours racked up across maybe 10 characters. Around 65 days play time.

I woke up the next day with a pretty bad hangover, but suddenly had a lot of spare time that I usually didn't feel that I had.

I went for a bike ride, caught up with friends, read bits and pieces of some books, played piano and hung out with my dog. Instead of a 16 hour stint trying to 'gear up for the new cata raids'.

Last night I had dreams that I was playing though... But I can't go back, everything is gone! To go back would mean starting again and I don't feel like sinking two months of my spare time into 'levelling up' again.

My own experience: http://inter-sections.net/2009/02/21/destroying-the-world-of...

Yes, if you have the right kind of mind, WoW is a soul-sucking, life-destroying monster. Don't let it into your life.

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-gam...

I haven't ever played WoW - and I doubt I ever will, but I would have imagined that the skills gained as a 'guild leader' would be commutable to a lot of management level jobs?

Is this a fair assumption?

It seems like the problem is the addiction. The author seems to acknowledge this is the title, but goes on to mostly treat WOW or gaming addiction like it is semi-unique. Granted, blizzard intentionally includes many elements that are more or less designed for addiction (quite common in the industry/genre) and that intention is troubling.

But otherwise it does seem like it shares a lot of traits with other addictions. You can waste your life away watching TV, playing games, shooting heroin, blogging, gambling, refreshing facebook, whatever. To be sure certain of those tasks seem much more likely to lead to addiction (warcraft/heroin) but it's clearly not the only factor.

There is also the question of whether addiction can be a pre-existing condition more or less waiting to go off. I am far from a psychologist, but I know that drug addicts often suffer from depression or other mental problems and it seems likely that instead of the drugs causing them, at least some times it was the condition that lead to the drugs (though I'm sure they become heavily intertwined). Are WOW addicts more likely to be depressed or agoraphobic? It seems quite possible. Would they have all developed this because of the game? I don't know.

I would like to see the industry self police itself a little better. Online games may always be addictive, but are lots of "brain hacks" intentionally being used by the genre to extend lifetime engagement. They're easiest to see in the more transparent copies - Zynga, foursquare, xbox live achievements. Maybe they should need to cut the most manipulative of these out or suffer chinese style regulation. We do, after all, try to shield kids from alcohol and tobacco.

The author touches on something that is very important: if you're playing WoW as a substitute for accomplishing things/meeting people/etc, therein lies the problem. At the end of the day, WoW is cheap entertainment, and needs to have priority as such.

I've met friends through WoW, but that hasn't supplanted my need to have real friends. I've accomplished things in WoW, but that hasn't been a substitute for accomplishments in my actual, real life. Heck, to extend the metaphor, I've even made good money with WoW, but it's not a replacement for my normal income.

When you let the the serotonin rush from a raiding achievement replace your desire to accomplish tangible things, then you're in trouble. If you use it as entertainment, an augment to an existing healthy life, it's an entirely different story.

At the end of the day, your gear and achievements and whatnot don't mean anything; they are just trophies of time committed. That's fine, as long as that's all they are; when they become a substitute for real success or social involvement, you've crossed over from entertainment to dependence, and it's a long, dark road from there.

An article about the psychology of gaming which I found quite interesting:

http://ifat-glassman.blogspot.com/2009/11/work-games-and-sel...

Personally I'm finding my interest in games is waining. A whole bunch of very impressive AAA games came out this year - in the past I would have played all of them, this year I only played Bad Company 2 and Halo Reach. I think I no longer have the time/energy to make that initial investment in a game, where you jump through a bunch of frustrating hoops until the fun starts and/or you feel immersed in the game world. However, I still enjoy the competition online - outsmarting other humans in a game of skill and strategy. So I play Bad Company 2 on Live frequently, but I don't pursue the social component of it (friendlists, clans etc). I'm not sure if I'll ever get bored of that.

And for that reason I avoid WoW like the plague: endless human competition, massive social aspect. Bound to be addictive (mind you, i'm not sure what you actually do in WoW gameplay. the adverts are all cutscenes)

I have been playing WoW for 4 years, now off and on. My co-workers at the time, some of whom are still my co-workers at a different job, got me into it.

I have found that a good way to moderate my play is to refuse to make appointments to play with others at a specific time. This effectively keeps you from hardcore raiding, and minimizes real-world conflicts around the game (affectionately referred to as "wife-aggro"). Eventually, I get pretty much capped on gear and stats, get bored, and set the game aside until there is new content. (Yes, I am playing Cataclysm after a hiatus in the Fall).

I am 44, and pretty much in the best shape of my life, because my attitude is that I'd MUCH rather have skis, snowshoes, hiking boots, or Five Fingers attached to my feet, than a game keyboard under my fingertips. I have never been to a gym.

I don't have as many side projects as before WoW, but I try to make sure I'm getting that out of my system at work now: making interesting things out of interesting technologies.

Drugs: My anti-World of Warcraft.

Good read. I'd like to add that a lot of the good parts of WoW, (PvP, Social Interaction, Character Customization) have equal or better equivalents in other games that take up far less time. League of Legends, Call of Duty, Counterstrike, Warcraft/Starcraft can all easily be played with friends and in moderation.

Devils Advocate:

Who are we to say what a "real" accomplishment is. Maybe spending 6-8 hrs in a virtual world every day makes that world real to someone. If that world becomes reality then goals met in the virtual world are real accomplishments to them. In the grand scheme of things isn't life just trying to be happy killing time until we die. If I go to the gym every day but spend most of my life miserable is my life any more fulfilling than someone who spends 8hrs a day playing WoW and loving it?

No game in my life was nearly as addictive as reading HN (or digg before that, or watching news on tv before that).

Games in my life reach at most level of wikipedia reading. 12 hours grind once in two months and casual use now and then.

WoW ? if I wanted to do chores all day, I'd get a job.

It's all part of the culture of entertainment we've developed, that is surely partly to blame for the economic situation that western societies are finding themselves in. These anecdotes about individuals extrapolate easily to millions of people who are fixated on various ways to waste time.

I played WoW for about six months when it first came out, and since stopping playing it (and most video games in general) I've often wondered what our society could achieve if the immense creative and mental exertion spent on games was spent on tackling real problems instead.

Certainly some people are working hard at meaningful things and using games as downtime, but I suspect they're a minority.

I dislike this type of article, because it seems predicated on the notion that everyone experiences these games in the same way. I've had no trouble keeping my gameplay moderate; it's not that difficult.

The problem is not the game, it's that people don't know how to directly improve their real life. The steps aren't obvious, and you don't get to start with the knowledge that simple persistence will win nearly any task you can set yourself.

The game is a symptom, not a disease.

Haven't had a chance to read the article yet - but I already see where this is going. I essentially lost a chunk of my life from 21 to 23yo playing EverQuest with a guild that was rated one of the best to ever play the game. With that came the caveat of constantly being the first at conquering new expansions, leveling as fast as possible so you CAN conquer the new expansions, and end less other power play moves (questing for keys, blah blah).

Long story short - my life was rather pathetic during these times. I found myself so immersed in the MMORPG world that I'd pick raids and my friends in the game over family/friends for any circumstances. Birthday parties, engagement parties, night out with friends at the bars, hacking all night on something that can potentially change the lives of people one day -- all gone. Zero motivation, zero care in the world except to get that new robe for my necromancer.

I remember my friends would drive by the window and start screaming for me to come out with them for once. I would literally turn off the lights in my room so they couldn't tell if I was home or not. Sad.

We had raids that lasted from 6pm on a Friday night and wouldn't end until 12am on Saturday. Anyone remember Veeshan's Peak in Kunark for EQ? Not only was my social life directly impacted by way of never having a significant other, I wasn't picking up any new programming skills, my family was constantly on my case, and my close friends eventually just stopped calling, they gave up. What was more embarrassing is the once in a blue moon when I would show up some where, the comments were unbearable. "Oh look, Steve decided to join us instead of his MMORPG friends for a change."

I am not exactly sure where I am going with this - but one day when I woke up and saw five empty 2 liter bottles of coke with ten boxes of pizza collecting, lying next to my desk, I was disgusted with myself and my lifestyle. I was over weight. I probably didn't shower as much as I should have. I was disgusted with myself and my lifestyle. I was burning the most crucial years of my life away on something meaningless. These are the times to be learning and exercising your brain beyond its capabilities as learning only gets more difficult through out the ages. I bet most of you were writing bad ass code when you were 21,22,23 and learned a lot faster then than you do now if you're part of the older HN crew.

Given my competitive nature, I was never able to play an MMORPG casually. I had to be #1. Being #1 requires a lot of dedication (ie, time invested), and if you are not willing to put in the time, don't bother, you'll never be as good as the other guy or have the same inventory or capabilities as them. You'll be average at best. I have the sense that a large population of HN does not settle for average given the intelligence of the community.

Long story short, the only escape I had was to go cold turkey. Going cold turkey doesn't mean saying "Ok, I'm not going to login ever again" - that never works out. You always get sucked back in at some point. I had to go the drastic route. I had to sell all of my assets, which sold for $5,000 USD at the time. There was times when I was going through withdrawals and wanted to purchase my account back, but the original buyer refused. Thank god he did.

Saying that this was one of the smartest things I've ever done would be a huge understatement. I've achieved things I'm personally proud of since quitting playing any MMORPG including the following:

- I have a healthy balance of a social life and work life.

- I am respected among my peers for building new technologies/infrastructure out.

  - I got married to the love of my life and had a baby girl with her, which is now the most important person in my life.

  - I have worked at startups where I've learned priceless lessons.

  - I bought a house that I would never be able to afford if I stuck to MMORPGs as my skills were no where near as blossomed as they are now - I'm assuming I'd be working an entry level job somewhere filling in Excel spreadsheets if I kept it up. Even then, I'd be lucky.

Good riddance. Do I still think about the days I played and get a small itch? Sure. I even keep in touch via Facebook with a lot of the people who suffered a similar addiction to me. Will I ever touch another MMORPG? I can guarantee you on my daughter's name that I will never get involved in one again. Fortunately my addiction now includes a healthy balance of time with my family, building awesome technologies, eating right and working out.

I quit Reddit cold turkey by deleting my account. I have only occasionally looked at the front page since then, but it hasn't re-hooked me; getting rid of the orange-red compulsion and the karma score was really effective at breaking the addiction.

Now if only account deletion was enabled on HN...

I think people are primarily motivated by social status (after basic needs are taken care of). The deal with WoW is that it becomes your social status to the people you spend most of your time with, the other people in WoW.

If I could only do this with reddit and hn, but work instead of working out!

Gaming like cigarette, do it once and you are smoker forever.

Actually it all comes down to a simple choice - Do you want to take the red pill, or the blue pill....

Here's my perspective --

I've played WoW pretty hardcore for a little bit less than two years before I quit. For me, I can actually say that the experience was beneficial to some extent. This was around 4,5 years ago, before I even knew HN existed.

Before I started playing the game, I heard some of my friends talk about raiding. For people that are not familiar with the concept, once you reach the maximum level in the game you join a guild. Once you're in that guild, you can go into dungeons with people from your guild and slay bosses. These bosses drop items that in turn allow you to upgrade the gear of your character. The cool thing about these bosses is that some of them actually quite challenging to beat. Once every couple of months, the developers of the game add a new dungeon that you can clear with your guild. They were also talking about these high end guilds that apparently consisted of insanely good players that would clear these dungeons before the masses did.

To give myself a challenge I decided to play the game but with a goal in mind, join one of these guild. Once I managed this I would quit. I began as a noob. I levelled up a character and joined a guild. Once I outgrew this guild I joined a better one.

I played for around a year in this specific guild. While playing here I actually met two people that I would call friends. Their background is so different from mine that the chance is so slim that I could have met them in real life. We've met up several times (in real life) and if I needed their help they'd be there for me. In this guild I was also in charge of leading the group of players through the dungeons. You're in charge of communicating how to do certain things and during the fights you give guidelines if something goes wrong. I raided 4-5 days per week from 19:00 - 23:00ish in this guild.

I then managed to join the guild that was N°1 at that time, together with one of my friends from my previous guild. In this guild, it was all about achieving the world first kill of a boss. It's great when you arrive at a boss and you have no idea as what to expect and how to kill it. It can be a pretty hard puzzle sometimes. If you're not there as one of the first you can read up on proven ways to handle the fight, which is less challenging. Also, contrary to popular belief, these guild usually play less then the other guilds. They go all out when a new dungeon is released (1-2 weeks) and then they play one 5 hour day a week for 4-5 hours a day and they wait for the next one. The funny thing is, the majority of the people that were playing here were also working as lawyers, programmers or were entrepreneurs. I spent a couple of months with the guild and once we cleared the last dungeon and had to wait for the next one, I quit. After that, I also quit the game.

Many people told me I was addicted to it, but considering it was rather easy for me to quit I'd say I wasn't. I was working towards a goal.

So what have I learned? I personally see life as a game. You win some, you lose some. Regardless of what you want to learn or achieve, you can. Also, communication is important in whatever you do, especially when you're in a leadership position. Oh, and I had a great time playing it. :)

See this video? "Rogue Complex" funny shit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBqjDYJ6dCY

Haha, this shows how much of a jock nerd I am. I thought WoW meant Work Out World, haha.