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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I think you're mainly viewing WoW from the PvE (player-vs-environment) perspective. In PvP (player-vs-player), there is a system much like the one present in Starcraft II (except that there are no leagues, only ratings).

In a game like Quake you are only as good as your Rail-gun aim it's pure skills.

If you spend years playing Quake/Starcraft, you will be good at it.

The advantages from these kind of games in combatting addiction is that they are hard to become good at

I don't see how that combats addiction. I played competitive Counter-Strike Source for some time, and the main thing that kept me going was just that feeling of competition, and wanting to become better.

WoW's addiction factor is different. It's more like "if I don't do X on day Y, I get behind other people" where in games like Quake/Starcraft, that just doesn't exist.

Exactly the point that I was going to make. Not all games are bad.

I played Quake 3 competitively for 7 years and I have seen a lot of players in the scene having success in different fields outside of computer games.

Games based on competitiveness and skills give you a good deal of insight on how to achieve things in real life.

As for most addicted WoW players, these people are just looking for instant gratification for just a little bit more than minimal effort. They want to achieve something and feel good about themselves and WoW pretty much offers the perfect combination of grind/reward, random surprise (items that drop) and a feeling of belonging.

I doubt that any of these people could stick to long term goals as soon as they stop playing WoW. They would just look for their next fix of quick gratification

Not only that, the skills gained in games like Quake (eye-hand coordination, reaction time, etc) transfer over to real-life. I think Quake is to WoW as psychedelics are to narcotics.

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