I was addicted to MMO's but survived - discuss

[Shaolin_monkey]

Howdy folks! Sorry for hijacking this thread title from a comment in the Demon Souls thread, but it seemed too good to pass up.

I was addicted to World of Warcraft from pretty much the day it was released, but eventually got bored of it. It was that boredom that allowed me freedom to explore all the other amazing games out there. However, the social aspect of the game draws me back occasionally as I made good friends on there, and one of my best mates from real life is actually running my guild, Stinki Monki Finger!

I imagine I'll be sucked back in when Cataclysm comes along though.

I hear talk of many people playing MMO's with their partners, and I know of at least two couples who met on MMO's and are now happily married with kids. It's a pity my partner was bored stiff playing it, preferring a tighter and more storylined solo rpg, such as Chrono Trigger, otherwise I'd still be playing it now.

So anyway, there are other MMO survivors out there - Mr Marvellous and Magic Knight, I'm looking at you! Tell us of your experiences.

[Sly Reflex]

Where is ZerO_0ne when you need him? He can tell you a good story about this dizzle.

[BertyBottyBiter]

I was addicted to WoW on and off for three years. I have kicked the habit now though - the only way for me was to stop playing it completely, delete all my characters and wipe it from my hard drive.

I am actually much happier since I've stopped playing. The game was magical at first, when all the zones were new and exciting and full of exploration and adventure. I had a small but close guild of friends and did lots of the low level dungeons together.

End game at the time was 40 man raids. The game definitely soured for me when I spent more time waiting at the entrance to Molten Core than I did actually killing things. Sometimes we would be hanging around for an hour and a half waiting everyone to log on and arrive. The fact I persevered goes to show how addicted I was.

I wasn't as big a fan of The Burning Crusade and once I hit level 70 I stopped playing - I didn't want to go through all the raiding bollocks again. Then WotLK came out and I think it recaptured all of the old magic and was fantastic in its own right (I reviewed it for GTM) but it didn't hold my attention once I reached the end game.

[Magic Knight]

My online gaming started with Friday and Saturday night sessions on Jedi Knight, then a mate told me he had imported an online RPG called Everquest. I did not think anything of it until in Leeds one Saturday with 3 friends and we saw it in Game. All 4 of us bought it and that was the start of the slippery slope.

So I could jump into the game as quickly as possible I created a Gnome and rather than put any thought into the name I called him Gnorman, I had no intention of keeping the toon at that point. I found I really enjoyed the class (Mage) and decided to keep the silly name purely because most other people seemed to take their name so seriously, with loads of Conan spellings and Raistlins etc.

I don't think any game with ever replicate the sense of exploration during those early days, there was zero info on the net and just travelling from one continent to the other was a massive effort with a real danger of seeing all your hard earned loot disappear if you could not get back to your corpse within the time before it expired. 3 of us started on one continent and my other mate started a Barbarian which was probably about as far away from us as was possible.

The thing we loved about EQ was the difficulty, in the early days before they dumbed it down and the net was packed with info the game was absolutely brutal. If you saw a level 20 player (the cap was 50) you knew they could play their class well, there were no exploits, you had to earn your xp. Towards the end you could group with a level 70 player who had no idea how to play their character effectively.

Eventually we joined a guild full of Euro's and for years we managed to balance being friendly and having fun with semi hardcore raiding. We were never a tier 1 guild but we had a reputation of being very good players who could punch above our weight with regards to raid targets. I met most of the guild a fair few times at parties and still keep in touch with some of them via facebook and email. The wife used to love taking the piss about me being a nerd and a couple of months ago we attended the wedding of a former guildmate. There were loads of ex EQ players there and the wife was dreading it. In the end she had a fantastic time and could not believe how 'normal' they were.

The last time I remember checking my playtime was about 126 real life days but it could have been much higher by the time I quit. I don't regret it one bit but there is no way I would start another MMO with 2 kids and a wife. I think it's almost impossible to play an MMO casually and just log in for a few hours at a time here and there, even if thats how you start out.

Sorry for rambling on about pretty much nothing, I got a bit carried away. If you want me to recount tales of epic 8 hour raids crushing Dragons and Demons just say!

[Bilge Rat]

I am currently pretty adicted to World of Warcraft. I played Burning Crusade off and on for about a year, normally for about a couple of months at a time before taking several months break. Once WotLK came out I again played for around two months before stopping.

Six months later and I have started up again, this time in earnest. I have made the very difficult transition from solo play to dungeons / raids and it gives me a lot more to do in the game. However, I have become aware that it is taking up a hell of a lot of my time. I have never missed any major commitments yet but the signs are creeping in - getting to work a little late most days, staying up later at nights, ignoring the phone and doorbell etc. There have been a few occassions as well where I have stayed up ridiculously late to finish a raid on weekend nights and I always feel bad about it afterwards. I have been ignoring people on the forums I normally visit (not this one because I can access it from work) and I have even been neglecting my porn, leaving one of my favourite adult torrent sites ignored for over a month

The thing is that it is kind of good for me as well. When playing other games I got precious little human contact, whereas in WoW I am at least talking to and working with other people. WoW is also saving me a hell of a lot of money, since £45 for a six months subscription is considerably less than what I would have spent on new games by now if I was playing regular stuff.

I think part of the problem is how I deal with excess. When I have been given too much chocolate by my gran I tend to eat loads of it at once rather than ration it out - more to 'get it out the way' than because I am greedy. The same thing normally happens with games, where if too many come out at once I try to blast through them as quickly as possible so I can move on. Unfortunately WoW is never ending so my habit of spending as much time as possible to get through it isn't going to work

[Shaolin_monkey]

I know what you mean mate - if there's alcohol in the house, I don't stop drinking until it is all gone. I have one of those personalities too, and WoW captured me big time.

I tried a few of the big raids dungeons in the recent expansion, Ulduar etc, and while the vehicles and stuff added a nice new dynamic, it got old pretty quick. I used to live for the PvP too, and was constantly being called upon to help out in Alterac Valley and Arathi basin. Even that feels jaded now, even with the big new PvP stuff.

I also agree with your point about saving money. If I was still as into WoW as I was, say, two years ago, I'd save an absolute fortune through not buying console games.

If I didn't love my pet ape, Ernesto, so much I probably wouldn't be too fussed about not playing it again... until the expansion at any rate.

[Sherak]

I'm a gamer, have been all my life but I find MMO's weird and a touch creepy and have never let myself get involved with them, I'm not having a dig at anyone who likes them, It just somthing I cant shake... Possibly a reason I have never had the urge is I also find RPG's a bit odd.... this could wholy be down to a guy I used to work with when RPG's were just becoming more abundanct on the video game scene, early 90's, this guy was off the hook and not in a good way, he used to tell me about gathering he conducted as dungeon master were 6 of his freinds would play as a different characted and cast spells etc etc.... it was pretty uncomfortable listening to him but he recomended RPG games to me and I made it a point to avoid. I do find WoW and all the stories I have read unsettling though...

Oh yeah and a guy I went to uni with aced his first 2 years then bombed out in the back half of the third cos he found everquest.... pretty scary!


EDIT: Just to add, I'm not sterio typing MMO players, just explaining why I have this irrational idea fixated in my head, my brother in law was a big WoW player and he aint no freaky imaginary sword waving pasty white

[CheesySmoker]

I was addicted to SWG and lived to tell the tale. I guess i should be somewhat thankful to the game being ruined by the NGE as that is what ultimately made me leave. it was my first MMO and definately my favourite.

i used to love playing SWG and took pride in my many capped toons, i still get sad when i think about the good ol' days of playing this game before it was ruined but it was probaly worthit in the long run. i cant think whether i would still be playing if the NGE hadnt have happened, the game was amazing! and as a star wars fan it was everything you could want.

after SWG i went searching again and ended up playing WoW but just didnt get into it like SWG, WoW was good but just as i had grinded to 70 WotLK came out and meant i had to grind another 10 levels! so i quit and didnt look back

MMO's are a curse and they will destroy your life if you let them...

[Bilge Rat]

I finally decided that WoW is not having a positive influence on my life. Although it had some good effects on me this thread helped me to realise that I was still spending way too much of my time on it. There were loads of things that I still wanted to do in the game but ultimately I was not really achieving anything. My long-term goals were to earn the achievements for completing virtually every quest in the game and for obtaining the elusive violet proto-drake but it finally hit me that achieving those goals was just pointless.

I have destroyed all of my alts, selling everything of value and trashing the rest, transferring the gold to my level 80 main. He meanwhile is auctioning everything of value (at considerably less than it is worth to guarentee sales) and doing his last few daily quests to get the round numbers of emblems needed to buy stuff of value that can also be sold. He is also collecting together replacements for all the stuff given to him by his guild over the last few months - potions, fish feasts and a copy of some nice BoE bracers that were given to him a while back.

In a few days I will disenchant all of his epic gear, dump all my stuff in the guild bank, hand over my 2500-odd gold and delete him. I will then cancel my subscription, uninstall the game and bin the disks. It may seem a little extreme but if the game was still on my hard-drive or my character was still there then I would be bound to end up playing again eventually. I think this is the only way to save myself from wasting any more time on it.

Granted I will doubtless go back to wasting my life on a load of other games but none of them have ever consumed me as competely as WoW has in the last few months. I will never buy another MMO again.

At least now I will be able to find time for porn.

[Sherak]

I finally decided that WoW is not having a positive influence on my life.

I like your turn of phrase Like when you first decided to get involoved with WoW you did so to positivly improve your life.... I think the correct phrase would be it's having a negative influence on your life LOL....... What I find amazing about this game is completly summed up in your post man....

You have finally realised the game is screwing your life up and rather than just uninstalling, cancelling subsciption and binning the disks you have to embark on 3 or 4 days of consolodation and still reffer to your main like he is a real person, why? because you cant give it up, its like a smack head saying I finially realised herion isnt having a positive effect on my life so I'm gonna sell everything I own, consolodate it all up, buy a big bag of the brown stuff and then fire it all in my viens..... why? cos if I didnt get rid off all my worldly posetions then I could still buy smack..... face it man, you are hooked.... if you really think WoW is having a negative effect on your life just bin the disks now... what you are doing considering your going to bin them anyway is just pointless...

[Bilge Rat]

As I said earlier I did think before that WoW was having some positive influence since it was saving me money and making me interact with other humans more than I otherwise would. One of the main problems in my life is my inability to deal with other people so anything that tricks me into spending leisure time with them is a good thing. However I have decided that this benefit does not outweigh the negative effects.

And the reason I am spending so long dismantling my character is not for my benefit but to give something back to my guild. There are some nice people in there who helped me a lot in the game. My character still has considerable resources and it would be a shame to destroy them all when they could benefit a lot of other people. After another day or so I will have sold all my stuff and provided the maximum amount of resources for them to be getting on with. I'm definitely not going to continue with the game after this.

It's more like the smack junkie selling all his possesions and giving all his money to charity before comitting suicide. Your version of the analogy doesn't work at all.

[YoshiKart64]

I've never managed to get into an MMO although to be honest I've never really tried that hard. The main two things putting me off is that I don't like gaming too much on my PC and I'm put off by the amount of money it would cost.

The new Star Wars one might be a brilliant opportunity for me to try one out though - what are the chances it would run on a new laptop though. I'd think it would have to so that i could play it whenever.

[Sherak]

It's more like the smack junkie selling all his possesions and giving all his money to charity before comitting suicide. Your version of the analogy doesn't work at all.

Yeah sorry, I didnt know about the guild thing or anthing... fair enough....

[Bilge Rat]

Job done. Last night I disenchanted most of my remaining possessions and sold everything else. This morning I dumped all the disenchanted stuff in the guild bank and mailed everything else of value to our raid leader. In total he got about 8000g worth of cash and rare items.

I would like to think some people will care that I am gone but I doubt most will. The guild mistress promoted four other people ahead of me last night. I don't think she has ever like me, but then most people don't.

To perfectly summarise my WoW experience I mentioned to a single guild member this morning (who I don't really know) that I was about to delete my character. He asked if he could have some of my gold. The whole game is infested with greedy, lazy people who want something for nothing. The problem is that life is just the same and I don't know how I am supposed to cope in the real world any better than I did in the virtual one.

[Sly Reflex]

I'm proud of you man, well done for giving it up.