How WoW really ruins lives…

Courtesy of BoingBoing, this article confirms for me the raw essence of why I have resisted getting World of Warcraft for so long. This is exactly what I’ve witnessed with other games for other people and been a party to myself during my time playing Gemstone IV.

It appears, given the description in the story, that WoW has basically turned up the knobs that control the “I must keep playing to retain my place in the world” response. I like passive roleplaying games like Gemstone IV, but the social nature of these games will drive people constantly compare themselves to other people in the game (their “friends”) and continually progress. Eventually you find yourself having to continually run with the pack in order to keep up in terms of ability, roleplaying, or loot-getting. After college and the friends that I had were scattered to the winds, Gemstone became much less fun for me. The social aspect of the game was largely gone, my real life support structure for my in-game habit was gone too. I realized that the hunt for loot, gather experience cycle was really just situational OCD and it really stopped being fun. I mean, how many times more do I have to type “attack [creaturename]” before I get the next level? Is this even fun?

The answer for me was no, no it wasn’t. I was spending many, many hours of the day (or night) to keep growing my character. So I cancelled my account right around the time that I got my job, starting training seriously in karate again, and went on with my life. I’m happy I did.