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.

How do you do that?

(Plus, writing addons is a fantastic way to switch mental gears to recharge sometimes, too. And it's pretty decent residual hobby income, to boot.)

WoW is very easy to spend way too much time in if you're not careful, but it's not inherently evil; like anything which is fun and enjoyable, if you spent an inordinate amount of time on it, that time will eventually have to start coming out of other activities. In moderation, it can be great.

I write addons because I enjoy writing them, and because they scratch itches I want scratched. I've never sat down and written an addon with financial incentives in mind, but the resultant income is a very nice bonus.

I know a few guys like the QuestHelper guy were making extremely good money off of addons - enough to be a full-time job - but it's very hard to build a career on that; Blizzard can kill that income stream even more easily than Apple can with an app store app, because they continually fold the popular stuff into the base UI. If your massively popular addon has its concept shipped in the base UI, your installed base drops precipitously, and the income stream dries up.

(I've been meaning to get into mobile app development; I've written a free Android app, but I can't seem to come up with a good concept for something I could charge for)

The end user never pays for the addon. They can pay for a premium client subscription, which gets you priority bandwidth on patch days, one-click updating, no ads, and that sort of thing, but you're very solidly in paying-for-service territory then, and there are still fully functional free methods to get the same addons. I think what Blizzard mostly wanted to avoid was an environment where some players could gain an advantage over others by purchasing some addon, and they didn't want the in-game experience turning into an advertising slum.

The best I can glean from your description is that for some people playing a game like WoW need not be a debilitating thing. I know a person that uses a scary amount of hard drugs and that in spite of that still functions quite well. Of course everybody has been saying 'it won't last long' but they've been saying that for longer than I can remember and he's still at it.

That doesn't mean that in general hard drugs are not a negative and it does not mean that he'll never get the bill. It just hasn't happened yet.

I totally concur with this statement. It's just a matter of prioritizing your time correctly. There doesn't need to be all of this WoW is a drug you need to cut it off completely or else you'll be a fat gamer that hasn't gone anywhere in life.

All of this WoW bashing could easily apply to several other things where people don't take in moderation, like alcohol, watching football, etc.

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.

I'm working on a startup that is taking this concept and applying it to social gaming. We're calling ourselves "Zynga for Heath." We're normalizing activity data from public API's from exercise devices like Fitbit, Nike+, Map My Fitness, biometric devices, etc and assigning it an activity score. Basically, rewarding players for working out, parking farther away from the store, and even just walking around the shopping center. A huge goal for us is partnerships with companies like 24 hour fitness to reward their members in-game.

This score is then used in our game that will be running on Facebook/iOS to reward the player with points that they use to continue building up their fitness/sports world. Our normalization platform will give us the ability to create multiple types of games to appeal to more than just the existing social games that are out on Facebook.

We're very early into our development process, but would love to keep the Hacker News community posted, if interested.

Our info site is http://www.neufit.com/

1. You got on my good side when I saw young Arnie. That's awesome. I hope if you need permission you get it, because it would be a shame to lose him. I got an instant flashback to "Pumping Iron" and how charismatic and inspiring he is in that movie (despite being a dick.)

2. I got briefly annoyed at the initial screenshot. It's obviously a screenshot, but it contains instructions to close the locker door, and I just could not stop myself from spending thirty seconds trying to close the locker door even though I knew it wouldn't work. It's hard to explain, but I just had to try to close the locker door before I could move on. I bet some people will be legitimately confused, too. Screenshots are okay as long as they don't contain instructions telling you to interact with them!

3. Clicking through, looks cool, looks cool, being sold, and then BAM I'm completely sold on the screenshot that shows I can earn stuff for my friends and vice-versa. For many people it's a lot harder to let other people down than it is to let themselves down. I immediately thought of a certain friend who's a rather extreme case, but it applies to me, too. My first breakthrough in fitness, when I went from a wannabe exerciser to a guy who actually does work out a few times a week, was when I had a roommate who recruited me as her running partner. Social pressure, not wanting to send my friend out running alone when she was asking for my support, pulled me through a lot of tough times when I really, really didn't want to work out, and then when I moved out a year later I found I was, for the first time in my life, capable of pushing through those tough times by myself. I bet your product will accomplish the same thing for a lot of people -- you MUST do this!

http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_chatfield_7_ways_games_reward_t...

There was another Ted TV talk that it reminded me of too, but I couldn't remember what it was.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_be...

Hmm... I think it could also work well as a Facebook app.

I'm going to mull this over and see what I can come up with. This could really drive society to improve itself in all kinds of ways.

That said, you could be the middleman and not ask permission from anyone. Just build a 24 Hour Fitness/WoW mashup. The 24 Hour Fitness end would be easy if you have a membership (basically just set up a screen scraper for your biometric login history).

For WoW, you might start off by buying a bunch of top swords and stuff from other players to seed it. I vaguely know that Blizzard doesn't like that sort of thing, so maybe you could instead seed it with donations of equipment from people who are going to delete their accounts because of lack of exercise.

At the beginning it'd be semi-manual, with difficult-to-obtain gear traded in person in the game. But I think that would get a lot of buzz on Twitter (and even the NYT) if promoted properly, and would get you a meeting with the Blizzard guys to make it a reality.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in doing something with this, I actually have a whole spec written up (one of 50 startup ideas that I can't actually attend to, what with the primary and all). Drop me a line at sramanujan1729 at gmail dot com if you want to chat.

This idea is kind of like having a math game: the majority of the population will not bother with it. The reason WOW is so popular is because it allows you to get away from your real life.

People have been trying to game-ify real life for years and its never gained much traction. I think this is because people have to sign up for something additional, and at that point (unless the program gains a lot of steam with a lot of people) there's not much tying individuals in.

http://fora.tv/2010/07/27/Jesse_Schell_Visions_of_the_Gamepo...

http://xkcd.com/189/

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.

The illusion of success is there and almost tangible - if you didn't have to "wake up" to your neglected real body and nonexistent/handicapped real life.

And most people I know don't play WOW due to nihilism or at least not initially. They play it just for opposite reasons - it makes it easier for them to achieve something.

Disclaimer: I have played UO and got severely addicted by it. I also played WOW and EVE, I'm very competitive but in the end I figured that to reach the level of performance I wanted to - It would take me 8+ hours (rather 12+) of work a day. So I just quit the damn thing and focused on building my real person - no regrets. I saw WOW at a friend some months ago - and I instantly felt sick, the sounds, the animations... It just made me want to throw up.

If you are playing game all the time there is not much time you have to be "awake" and you may even never be fully "awake" to notice and appreciate your handicapped life.

People can have handicapped life even when they don't play games. They just stay for years in the same place despite their apparent efforts.

Nihilism being the worst of them all. One has to recognize that indeed, there are no supreme values, that there is no guaranteed path to salvation. And that in spite of this terrible truth one must form his own set of values that guide him on a journey that doesn't really lead anywhere specific, but one must travel the journey else he becomes damned.

Man is a creature of creation, to be happy Man has to improve upon himself and the world, to create by definition one needs to have some values. Else we just become decadent and decadence does not breed happiness.

They are re-arranging the materials of the game to create something they desire.

This is the same procedure people use in real life - we rearrange matter and energy to create conditions we desire.

There is nothing inherently more meaningful in reality compared to fiction. All of these things are exactly as meaningful as individuals find them to be.

Some people value wow for itself and there is nothing wrong or incorrect about this. Does it scare you to recognize that there is no logical basis for action?

The basis is emotional. Meaning itself is a word we use to refer to that emotional experience that occurs when we begin to care about life. Some people find it in collecting stamps, some people find it in wow, some people find it in medicine, some find it in the game of being a corporate executive.

None is logically or inherently more meaningful than another. It all comes down to irrational human values.

Road to 60 was actually pretty fun - but once you hit 60 - thats when it really begins. If you want to mean something, you have to raid almost every single day for 4-6 hours - else you don't get a guild and there are no casual raiding guilds since content is so hard that you need to be well versed to get it done.

I'm well aware that one is playing wow because it makes sense emotionally not rationally - but there is difference between "positive emotional action" and "negative emotional action" (meaning, repetition - grind, peer pressure, job like schedules,...).

So I would argue that no, people in WOW are not creating, they are destroying the very fabric that creates society.

Ayup. But then I've brought a few of those folks back, too. Folks that were dead from respiratory or cardiac arrest, or were dying of anaphylaxis or severe asthma, or recognizing an impending fatal condition and just talking somebody into one of those drives into medical care. Pushing a med or defibrillating or whatever, and having them survive. Sometimes just helping somebody get back into their chair, and having a nice chat. That helps offset the ugly parts.

As for heroin, medical-grade opiates tend to be something folks can maintain and can tolerate, it's the random weird stuff and the wildly different purities that can be a problem. Nalaxone can help there, but if I was pushing that, that patient was in compromise or in respiratory arrest from a likely opiate overdose, and usually headed for dead.

And yes, mental issues in real life can extend to and can involve WoW, paramedicine or heroin abuse. Or worse.

edit: fixed some wording

("Meaning" is not something that you can prove to others. Many people would find your job meaningless, while you may find it highly meaningful. The point is that each person's search for meaning is very individual.)

Which leads into existence, and whether all of us are merely a figment of the viewer's imagination.

And the point of saving someone's life? That discussion can go anywhere from existential to darwinian to whether you'll choose bluepill or redpill.

As for one trigger of these sorts of introspections, burnout can happen in EMS and medicine in general, and other environments that cope with chaos and death, too. Getting burnt is not fun, regardless of whether EMS was the trigger, or working in a high-stress startup, or whatever.

First, it's a bit more akin to life if you were a serf in medieval times where your whole life is a repetitive task to serve the local landowner (ie. Blizzard).

More importantly, WoW reduces rewards to regular, metered system which I believe is damaging to self-motivation.

There are no experiences in WoW that are unique, there is no unexplored territory, and no accomplishment you can achieve that wasn't predetermined by a designer.

It's tempting to make a philosophical analogy, but there's a major difference. If we are brains in vats we have no choice in the matter; but choosing WoW means choosing an experience in a constrained world, completely devoid of any of the nuance of the physical world, despite the quantity of shiny objects.

I propose this: a space game where you are encouraged to write bots. Place the space game in an ungodly huge procedurally generated universe. The base economic activity is based on mining.

Give users a custom scripting language and API to write their own bots. The number of bots and the amount of CPU time they can have is constrained by tokens in the game. (As in StarCraft.) Players can write scripts and license running copies for in-game money.

What will result? Macro-miners. Then pirates who raid the macro-miners. Then fleets of Macro-miner protection drones supervised by highly motivated Chinese professional gamers.

Voila! Emergent user-generated content!

For the coup -- base the procedural generation on interesting mathematics. Perhaps some macro-miner outfit can be motivated to find a pattern in prime numbers or pi!

Life isn't meaningless. Life is its own goal; doing well in life allows you to achieve happiness.

I think you have to make a more convincing case for why life has meaning and wow hasn't, you can't just spout platitudes and call it a day.

The gist is that Farmville isn't fun. Perhaps the problem is that WoW doesn't allow you to achieve happiness.

I didn't claim that it was meaningless. (I don't think that it is.) I don't really care about WoW. I was just responding to somebody's sad claim that "life is meaningless."

doing well in WoW allows you to achieve happiness

Doing well in WoW will not give you self esteem; it will not help you successfully deal with the real world (for example, providing for yourself materially and intellectually via a meaningful career). Successfully dealing with reality is a prerequisite of achieving an overall, lasting sense of happiness as a human being.

I think you have to make a more convincing case for why life has meaning and wow hasn't, you can't just spout platitudes and call it a day.

I'm not here to write a dissertation to prove my original claim--that you can find happiness in life, and (relatedly) that it has meaning, but that is objectively true. If you haven't or won't put forth the intellectual effort to discover this for yourself, that is truly sad.

Then you completely missed the point of what forensic wrote, because he did not claim that.

The problem with articles such as this, which is what both forensic and me addressed, is that a lot of people claim that time spent on video games is wasted, that time spent in any sort of rat race is bad, without any sort of backing for that claim. And if you don't back the argument you can flip it, which is what me and forensic did.

The author's statement amounted to: "WoW is meaningless for me and negatively impacts my life." forensic's statment amount to: "Well, who's to say life itself is any more meaningful?" My response is: "Wait a minute, I think it is meaningful." And I pointed out that you can achieve happiness in life (and by that I mean genuine self-esteem, not some temporary hedonistic pleasure like you get from playing a video game).

You're also wrong in that backing WAS offered for the claim that time spent on WoW is wasteful; the blogger talks about that a lot, e.g. how you end up just getting more gear so you can go to a bigger dungeon and get more gear, and how spending too much time on WoW blocks you from pursuing major goals in real life (like becoming a paramedic).

You can't tell someone else what is meaningful for them, which is what the OP is doing and you are implying.

I guarantee there are people who find WOW to be far more meaningful than building a career in the health field. That's the nature of humanity. We all find meaning in strange and unique ways.

I guarantee there are people who find WOW to be far more meaningful than building a career in the health field.

I can't argue that because "meaningful" is not well-defined. However, I can make a related statement, as follows. Building a career in the real world is far more valuable to a person, as a human being, than building a "career" in WoW, because it allows a person to achieve real values in life--e.g. monetary wealth, respect from peers, self-sufficiency, and ultimately self-esteem and the genuine, pervasive kind of happiness that self-esteem makes possible. Wow does not allow one to achieve those values.

Why are these things valuable? If we define valuable as worth a lot of money, obviously they are. If we define it as extremely useful or important, then that's just a judgement call again, no?

Now, there are lots of potential standards of value. e.g. "immediate pleasure" (hedonism); what's good for others (altruism); etc.

The proper standard of value is: what is good or bad for an individual's life, as a human being. So, that's how I'm defining "valuable" here.

Why is that the proper standard of value? Well, any deviation from that standard is going to be destructive to life, whereas following it will sustain life. Living successfully is a prerequisite (and the primary component) of happiness (in the fullest sense of the word--i.e. a non-contradictory enjoyment of being alive and all that that entails).

My statements here are not to be taken as standing on their own. There are lots of questions to ask. (A basic one would be: How can you claim to actually know anything, in the first place?.) I'm not going to try to present the full philosophical justification (i.e. present and validate an entire philosophical system), but it's out there if you look.

I dunno if this is cry for help, if yes I would like to help.

Edit: Why study to become a paramedic? Cause you want to. Cause it is your dream. Cause you ever wanted to work as paramedic. Cause it makes you feel better when you help people. Cause it makes you happy helping people. Cause it makes you happy to work with people.

And your reasons can just as easily be turned around.

Why work hard to win at WoW? Cause you want to. Cause it is your dream. Cause you ever [sic] wanted to be lvl 80. etc.

If your 'argument' applies equally well to any position it is completely meaningless.

Oddly enough, not everyone agrees with that. Some of them are even working on that problem.

I can make these arguments all day. Immortality is not inherently meaningful.

"You believe we have souls. In that case, the death problem has already been solved by Mother Nature, God, or what have you. Current evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the non existence of souls. therefore, death isn't a possible adventure, it's nothing. About the meaning of immortality, I recommend the Fun Theory sequence at lesswrong.com"

No I don't believe in souls. You are assuming beliefs that I don't have.

Nihilism does not require a belief in anything supernatural. I do believe that death is real, and therefore I believe that dying is something that happens to people. The point is that you can't prove in any objective way that death is less meaningful than life.

This is not really due to the nature of life and death, it is due to the nature of meaning itself.

However, current evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the non existence of souls. therefore, death isn't the next adventure, it's nothing.

About the meaning of immortality, you may want to read the Fun Theory sequence at http://lesswrong.com

That's probably true of the vast majority of people, including addicted WoW players.

In WoW, your character has several skills, stats, and abilities that define it. You choose which ones to work on, how to shape your character, and then you put in the time to make that happen. But what about your skills? You are not getting stronger or better at wielding a two-handed weapon. You are getting better at playing WoW, you are improving your hand-eye coordination, you are bettering your combat-driven teamwork abilities, and you are getting better at determination: being patient and working towards a goal.

The problem comes in the illusion of progression. Your character improves almost continuously, building its skills to a point where it is better than all the other characters. Eventually your character reaches a ceiling, but you can always create another character with different skills and do it all again. But you stop progressing much sooner. Early on, your ability to play WoW tapers off to a suitably-high level such that the real gain is in improving your character. You master the conventions of in-game communication. You develop a routine and diligently set to work improving your characters without question. You stop progressing.

But what happens when you reach that ceiling, when you become the best? In WoW and many other video games, the game ceases to be fun when you are as powerful as possible. Since someone else owns the experience, you are stuck waiting for them to tell you what to do with your newfound abilities. This is why I regret the time I sank into becoming an Expert guitar player on Rock Band. When your playing abilities max out, the game becomes a chore, even if you don't realize it. The best rhythm game players spend their time playing the same songs over and over again in an effort to play them flawlessly. The game ceases to be a game.

In "real life," if you manage to "max out" a "real skill," you can actually do something else, anything you want, with it. Rather than hope that song that I love comes out on Rock Band so that I can put my hundreds of hours to work playing it, I could have spent hundreds of hours playing real guitar and be able to play any song. If I sink a lot of time into becoming a great comedian, I can hit the road, make people all of the place laugh, and make money doing it. If I spend time improving my health and fitness, I can run marathons, play competitive sports, or become a vigilante hero. The choice is entirely up to me.

That's what it boils down to. Is your leveling work tying you to a system where you can't control the direction you're heading in? In play, in art, in work, and in life, make sure that the skills you're improving are flexible in a way that allows you to apply them in any way you wish. Otherwise, you're just playing someone else's game.

Note: I used quotes around "real life" and "real skill" because I'm cheating by defining them somewhat circularly. A "real skill" is a skill that can be applied in many different ways, limited only by creativity. "Real life" is the arena in which you practice and execute those real skills.

Sure, some people prefer the blue pill.

But the real world is a strict superset of WoW, and thus (to me) much more interesting.

But this doesn't extend to others. Your argument is about subjective values - you value the superset - but this is wholly subjective as well.

Death is a superset of life, therefore I value death more than life, therefore you should kill yourself to find true meaning. By staying alive you're choosing the blue pill.

(I can make these arguments all day. You're never going to be able to prove to others that your form of meaning is somehow rational or logical. All of your arguments are back rationalization - postdiction.)

"I find the red pill more meaningful because it is redder than the blue pill and red is the colour of the sunset and the sun is really big." <-- This argument is no less arbitrary than your "superset" argument.

Um, no. It's pretty well established that one can start or stop playing WoW at will from real life. There is no evidence that one can return to real life from death.

Of course there are some belief systems that claim that death leads to an unimaginably wonderful heaven, but even those belief systems tend to discourage suicide.

What about all the dead people who come back to life thanks to medical intervention?

This is an outdated perspective. Loads of people now living were once dead.

Scientific evidence indicates: Matter starts out dead, becomes alive, then becomes dead again, then rots into the ground and eventually becomes alive again.

After your corpse rots it becomes dirt, the dirt is eaten by plants and insects, who are eaten by animals, and the animals are eaten by humans, and that matter is then used by humans to create babies, and then babies are alive.

This is a fact. Dead things become alive through natural processes. But to be alive you first have to be dead.

Your superset theorem of meaning is probably a rationalization of some deep emotional bias that has roots in your genes and early childhood environment.

Then they weren't really dead.

> This is an outdated perspective. Loads of people now living were once dead.

Maybe if you're using an outdated definition of death. By death I mean brain death, from which there is no recovery by definition ("the irreversible end of all brain activity").

The cessation of breathing etc. is no longer a useful definition of "death" precisely because of the "coming back to life" you describe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death#Problems_of_definition

> Dead things become alive through natural processes. But to be alive you first have to be dead.

The dead things are not "you" in any useful sense of the word. Yes I know it's the same atoms, but "you" are not just your atoms. "You" are an emergent pattern of thoughts and memories, which cannot begin to emerge until your brain develops.

Sure, you can take the cosmological approach that we are all connected, all things are one etc., but in practice, once your definition of "you" no longer distinguishes "you" from "not you", it's no longer a useful word.

> Your superset theorem of meaning is probably a rationalization of some deep emotional bias that has roots in your genes and early childhood environment.

Sure, I clearly stated it was just my opinion. All opinions have roots in genes and experiences. But the experience of arguing with you has thus far failed to change my opinion, it's merely persuaded me that you use very different definitions for words than I do ;)

My point is simply that death itself can hold just as much meaning as life because meaning is deeply subjective. No scientific fact changes this.

Tomorrow we may discover a way to raise the dead - to turn the people you currently define as irreversibly brain impaired into... living humans.

The ancients used to refer to the breathe of life, now you have to refer to a very controversial operational definition.

I contend that this has little effect on the subjective human experience of meaning and whether or not the human emotions find meaning in death.

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...

Waterproof laptop?

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.

The article makes the difference abundantly clear. This is what the writer learned by meeting the guild leader in real life:

"She was perfectly nice, and an excellent cook. But it was hard not to notice certain things - no matter how bad I felt for noticing them. It was hard not to notice she lived in a crappy apartment in a crappy neighborhood. It was hard not to notice she was fat. It was hard not to notice that despite her dreams of going back to school and becoming a paramedic, she just worked part-time at a local pizza joint."

It is that level of personal, real, gritty, disturbing, eye-opening raw detail that is often hidden behind an avatar.

I know some stuck up people that wouldn't consider talking to someone without a bachelors degree. Since meeting some people from WoW in real life they changed their attitude.

These virtual settings allow everyone to meet people from all stages of life, people one would never meet otherwise. And this diversity makes life interesting.

The point is that World of Warcraft was taking all the time & energy that could have went into improving her life, and that she besides not on any sort of growth trajectory, may well have been getting worse - that she wasn't investing even the minimum necessary to keep her life (such as it was) viable.

According to my worldview, it is preferable because it is real.

The key difference being body language. So much of successful human interaction comes from non verbal cues and if you're someone for whom that doesn't come naturally then socializing in WoW is not going to provide you the same benefit as in person interaction period.

If visual contact was essential for forming significant relationships then the blind would be unable to make friends.

I think they do actually. Otherwise, why would people go through the trouble of meeting physically when they could do it on the Internet? It's not like people who meet in real life don't know about the Internet (I'm thinking of tech conferences, HN meetups, etc.) The physical experience is simply better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78553575@N00/321522242/

What can be learned by a blind person touching an avatar on a computer screen?

Would orange flavored candy be a sufficient substitute here? I'd say no.

Maybe the blind are much less successful at making friends. What is your evidence to the contrary?

It's funny reading this article and all the comments. IT's not so much about WoW vs being productive as diversions in general. I know people who spend most of their free time reading fiction. Isn't that just as bad? What about watching TV and movies? How about browsing the internet for hours on end? Yeah, maybe you learned something interesting, but unless you're going Jeopardy it probably won't really pay off.

Being productive for productivities sake is also an interesting view point. At what point do you decide to just enjoy your life by doing the things you enjoy rather than trying to "make it better". If you enjoy the journey then great - if not, do you arrive at a point where you are satisfied? Or do you continually struggle to reach some goal that is always just out of reach?

Yes - some people may feel trapped in a game like WoW. I think there are also many people who just enjoy the game and the experience and prioritize their life accordingly. Just because someone doesn't have the same aspirations as you doesn't make them a bad person. I'm sure if you ask most people they would like to be more successful - but few are willing to give up all distractions and diversions to achieve that.

(I'm not saying WoW is a sport, just to pre-empt a diversion in that direction).

What is morally superior about exercising an hour a day over playing WoW an hour a day, provided the lack of exercise doesn't make one dangerously obese or similar? Yet all rants like this one are based on that premise - 'I used to be such a loser, now I work out, I'm so much better than those WoW losers'. Usually from former players, too; just like former smokers are the most obnoxious about how awesome they are for quitting, the former WoW players seem to know something about self-righteousness, too.

Anyway, like anything, it's about moderation. If you play a couple of hours a week and don't let it take over your life, there's nothing wrong with it. I asked my girlfriend to set up the 'parental control' feature on my account, so I only got to play 4 hours a week. If anything, WoW at least lets you do that; I have yet to see the first skateboard or piano that has a lock like that, and there are many people who 'waste' (in the article's definition, not mine) much more than 4 hours a week on those.

"Posting all these years to get higher karma, reading the source articles, reading the comments, for what? To help another person who thinks they have an innovative startup idea? They're all just going to get bought by Google anyway. Life is meaningless!

Do you think it is any different on the social obligation side for somebody to show up for a raid in WoW versus showing up for the league match? Is there a lower social obligation for the bowler to practice between matches than there is for a player in WoW to prep for that raid?

Competitive social MMOs are the recreational sports leagues of this generation.

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 quite a lot of videogames, and I play wow, but I'm a grown-up, I have a job, I have a home, I buy my own food, I pay my mortgage, and if I fail at my job, I'll starve and lose my home and my ability to play videogames. Why hasn't your friend come to the same realization?

Perhaps his friend choses food and roof far cheaper then he could afford in order to have more time to spend freely not on paying for those.

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).

I had an alt that wasn't in a guild or cared to raid that just recently joined the <reddit> guild because I really wanted those perks while being in a guild that didn't demand anything of me. I only raid a very strict max 3 hours 3 weekdays a week on my main toon in another guild and I refuse to tie myself down with raiding on a second one, and <reddit> is perfect for that...people are always online to play with, raids are always going on if I ever want to check them out, but I'm free to stay in the guild with zero commitment towards any time sink and I can solo all the content I want. You might want to check out joining a similarly large and open social guild for yours.

It's awesome - though the biggest change I've made is moving to the USA, where I absolutely cannot raid as the European guild I'm in raids during my workday. (And the latency).

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.

Heh. Heard of this other addictive sedentary activity that people call "TV"?

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/americans-...

The _average_ America watches 153 hours of video per month (2009). 5.5 hours per day on average.

Looking up TV addiction yields many very similar articles.

I expect that some people are more susceptible to gaming than TV, and others the opposite.

But the results from TV seem very comparable to gaming: some is probably fine, maybe even beneficial depending on your choices. Too much is bad for your physical, mental, and social well-being.

kb

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.

Its a hobby. I think some people get sucked in and take it too far, but I also think the vast majority don't. I'm just offering a perspective from the "don't" category.

My point is, you can take any hobby too far, it doesn't matter what it is. The interesting thing is, no one blames soccer or alcohol (most of the time it is some deeper issue thats the problem, not alcohol), but everyone is blaming WoW. The problem isn't WoW, the problem is the person who can't treat it as a hobby.

I don't know anyone personally who has say, gotten a job or learned a new tangible life skill from playing.

I can say for myself at least that I have met a lot of people who I would call friends without hesitation, most of whom I would love to meet up with in real life someday. It has also made it easier for me to connect with RL friends as well. Half the reason I started playing was so I would have a way to play with some longtime RL friends while they were living at U of I in champaign and urbana.

Intangibly I feel like I have learned a lot about how to communicate with people, particularly from a leadership position. Since communication over text or in ventrilo doesn't have all the physical queues of face to face interaction, you learn to speak with more clarity and precision as time goes on. I feel like it would be pretty easy to be a successful manager of some non-technical sector of work like retail based solely on what I've learned from being an officer in WoW now as well as being an officer in Runescape back when I was like 13-14.

Edit: PS. I forgot a big intangible: I've had a lot of fun playing over the past couple years.

It seems like it would be a good thing if guilds could be set up based on the geographic location of the players. If you had a reasonable chance of making "real life" friends, a lot of the objections to MMOs that aren't made to, say, a ski club or a bowling league, would go away.

For every interesting person I have met in WoW, I've come across someone I can't even begin to describe...social misfit, awkward, creepy, misogynist, immature, stalker doesn't even begin to cover it. Whenever I find a random group of people to raid with, I am afraid to talk in vent/mumble because I don't want to give away the fact that my voice gives me away as being a very, very valley girl/California English spoken woman. The few times I slip and talk, some players didn't care but others split off into various assumptions, usually along the lines of my being incompetent by being female or "no way, she's a girl! (I'm going to harass her in whispers now!)". The few that didn't care and judged me based on my actual performance were the ones I ended up really appreciating being grouped with and that in turn were the ones that outright told me that they were sad to see me go before I changed servers a couple months ago. The ones that assumed I was dumb, well, I had an ignore list longer than my arm by the time I moved away. Moved away to a guild where I vetted the GM and his guild for his female-friendliness and zero tolerance to harassment first above all other concerns, including raiding. (And for what it's worth, I left my very first WoW guild because I couldn't stand even the smallest playful insults anymore. Starting with "you sure do get around" for getting an achievement for exploring a zone.)

So in an environment like that, I really hope that such a thing is never, ever, ever possible in-game and is something people do waaaaay far out of game on their own accord. Blizzard really scared a lot of people with their initial implementation of RealID and still kinda do despite all the privacy settings, and I would cancel my WoW account the day Blizzard ever considers putting in some kind of interface for geographical guild finding no matter how opt-out it is. I want to choose which basis I use to find friends in this game and I never want Blizzard to help me with that. I especially never ever want some dumbass 15 year old punk that hits on me to find out I live in Los Angeles, let alone what my real name is.

(And really, I'm sick of the people that think that WoW can't be real life. I have come across some of my best friends online, and WoW is no different from IRC or AIM or email or any means of online communications. It is as real life as it gets without being face-to-face with someone. Some people just don't learn to manage their in-game time very well and that is the fodder for all those horror stories, not the vast majority of people that do know how to stop playing a game.)

Yeah, but that's partly because when you meet a random person online, odds are that they don't live near you because any two random internet denizens aren't likely to live near each other. The point of geolocation would be that you could feasibly meet if you wanted to.

I don't see what the problem would be with opt-outable geolocation. You could set your location to private, or don't enter it at all, and join a guild/clan/whatever that isn't local to a specific area.

A game or a guild that geolocated should also be harder on creeps, banning people who were creepy and not letting in 15 year olds in the first place if that's not who they wanted. It would be more like a real life social group. If you don't want to hang around with someone in real life, you don't, and if you're not in high school yourself, you probably don't socialize with 15 year old boys who aren't related to you. I understand your concerns but I think there are solutions to them, and there will always be alternatives for those who want to keep it strictly anonymous and online.

>And really, I'm sick of the people that think that WoW can't be real life. I have come across some of my best friends online, and WoW is no different from IRC or AIM or email or any means of online communications. It is as real life as it gets without being face-to-face with someone.

But there are still some things you're missing without face to face. And having a social life centered around electronic communication with people you don't know in real life is almost as stigmatized as WoW addiction anyway.

Me personally? I actually got a free holiday in the Netherlands, since someone I know from the game invited me. And of course don't underestimate the fun that can be had in the game. Oh and nearly forgot: I learned English. It's still far from perfect, but before I could barely read English...

I've played with a fair number of people who are in the same field as me, as well as with my own coworkers and managers, which has allowed me to get to know them pretty well and get pretty good job offers and consulting gigs.

But sure, if I had been spending every free moment on WoW, it likely wouldn't have been a worthwhile endeavor.. And for all I know, I would have done something better with the time put into it had I taken up a different hobby.

However, she's made quite a few online friends that translated to real world friendships, and even met her husband in-game.

I guess that counts.

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.

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.

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

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)

Do you agree that more people get addicted to playing WoW than tracking railroad schedules? If so, what are some of your hypotheses for what is causing this discrepancy?

:-P

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

"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?

Yes, some personalities are more prone to addiction than others. But it's also true that some substances that give instant gratification are more addictive than others.

I wonder what, if Heroin was as freely available as alcohol or tobacco, its addiction rate would be like. It's my suspicion that drug addicts tend to come from the addictive personality subsection of the population

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), :)

Basically, MMOGs are all like resort casinos. There's some spectacle and entertainment. The driving mechanic is the addictive variable schedule of reward.

I'd like to make a game where true exploration is the base mechanic. There would be no storyline, just exploration. All content would be either procedurally generated, created by the users, or evolved through genetic algorithms.

These games are formulaic because the formula works. I've thought of numerous things I would like to see done differently, but really the way they are done now are what get people to play them for so long. I've played some really great games, but I've never played any of them for nearly as long as I've played WoW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctis

It's a facinating game.

Not all bad news, then. Was she pretty? :p

Ok, now I'm curious. I'm just thinking with 16h/day you're fairly hardcore, guilds must be after ppl like you, no? Why the kick, if you care to elaborate?

At one point an item was left to rot as no one wanted it.i came to the raid late and passed the corpse. I looked on it and saw the item. Now it was nothing I'd spend points on but I did want to experiment with it so I took it. Someone saw me and an officer who I didn't get along with kicked me from the guild. The guild leader was basically inscribe by that point so wouldn't overrule the officer and that was that.

So I was technically in the wrong but, like many things like this (in game and out), it wouldn't have mattered if I was in the in crowd but I wasn't so it was a valid excuse to get rid of me.

As for playing 16 hours, in the fueled I was in that was normal.

As for being in demand, it's a bit more complicated. Some classes are more desirable than others. I was primarily a rogue, which at this point in the game was largely useless in raids except for scouting and CR. The class balance shifted from expansion to expansion. The next expansion made rogues desirable again.

Plus I HATED the current expansion and had had my fill of raiding pretty much so I didn't pursue other guilds but it would've been toughg to find one with room for a rogue.

Bear in mind that raid sizes were limited. At that time it was 72 people for one expansion and 54 for the next so there was pressure to reduce guild size anyway.

Most guilds operated as close to 100% capacity without going (much) over as possible. To go lower was to be under strength. To go over was to force people to sit on the sidelines, which is no fun.

Too far from NYC to join you, but I recommend trying meetup.com:

http://board-games.meetup.com/cities/us/ny/new_york/

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)

There was an event in my family: the details are private, but it caused me to reassess What I Wanted From Life. Better purple pixels figured rather low on the totem pole. I quit. A few days later I picked up a new hobby: see, there was this teacher who wanted to play bingo...

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.

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

"So, when World of Warcraft came out, I knew that it was very important that I avoid playing it, because it clearly was a game that I would get instantly addicted to."

I was also into MUDs big time while I was in school. That addiction was not all bad since I eventually got into the hacking-the-codebase side of it, which was in line with what I was studying. But as soon as I heard of it, I knew that WoW was bad news for me. It would become my MUD addiction on steroids.

Thankfully I've managed to stay away from it so far. But I'm not really that strong. Most of the credit goes to my aversion to having to pay a subscription fee to play it.

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

Is this a fair assumption?

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.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3085/behavioral_game_d...

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.

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 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.

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?

WoW accomplishments only feel like accomplishments because there is an artificial barrier in place to reach them. At the end of the day, the net result is "I added a database row". Compare to something like getting in shape, at which point the net result is "I've improved my health and added 15 years to my life" or to learning a skill that helps you contribute to financial success or the creation of something that increases the beauty in others' lives.

If it were actually difficult or noteworthy to achieve things in WoW, then yes, they would be "real" accomplishments. However, a DBA could run a query and give you 6 years worth of "accomplishments" on a whim (at no cost to anyone else!). How can they be called real accomplishments when, after the varnish has been stripped away, they can be granted with six seconds of work?

There are some real accomplishments to be had - you might learn how to manage people, or the basics of supply and demand and arbitrage and resource speculation, or time management, or hone better reflexes and spatial awareness, etc, but none of those are "WoW accomplishments". What I mean to say is that WoW is not fully valueless, but that the things it presents as "accomplishment" are empty and meaningless at the end of the day.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. :)

I'd agree in general that those who really focus to zerg a new boss as fast as possible end up playing less over time, but I also found many many people of my old guild who played almost constantly once content was cleared. Several would strive to have multiple highly geared alts, clearing the same content multiple times a week on alts as well as mains in case the next encounter needed a different class composition. Few of the people I raided with had jobs or openly talked about them. People who turned up once a week for the farm raid were mocked as being casual.

It's addictive in the way a job is addictive. Once your mind accepts there is some reason for you to be in this raiding cycle, and especially if you play an integral role (I was a main tank and tank officer), you feel you have to be there every night - and it just becomes the centre of your world, despite not receiving any real world compensation. The acclaim, worldwide achievement and knowledge of being part of something that is undeniably awesome all tie into it.