The Gaming Den

I think that we should all come out with it and admit that we hate WoW.

Here's why I hate World of Warcraft. FFXI, too, but I heard that it was WoW that sealed the deal.

Back when I was in Nuclear Power School, I had a roommate who was addicted to FFXI. Now we regularly did 13-hour days 7 out of 9 days what with the commute and study hours. Because he was addicted, he used what little time he had sleeping to play fucking FFXI. He tried to get me hooked, too, and while I enjoyed it on some level I rarely put in more than about three hours in a week--which made me ditch the game altogether after I realized that there was no way I could make any meaningful advancement with how little I played.

My roommates' grades steadily dropped throughout the time and he became noticeably irritable. By the last 2/3rds of school I would have strongly considered moving out if it weren't for the fact that I was going to move in a month and I rarely spent more than 20 hours awake at home in a week anyway. But anyway, a student who used to be near the top of our class ended up almost failing out because he was so exhausted that he spent the time sleeping instead of studying or training.

So we graduated and went to our ships, did our own thing. He went to a submarine and I went to an aircraft carrier. I would've gone to a submarine, too, but the USS John C. Stennis recently unleashed a LOT of staff so my graduating class was sent there. He went to the USS Alabama, a fast-attack submarine. But anyway, since we were in drydock for the first year and a half and then did workups along for the year after that I didn't see him much.

About two months before my active duty obligation ended I found out from the submarine after it came into our port that my roomie didn't make it to the end of his enlistment. After one underway cycle he ran from the ship screaming and deserted to go live with his grandmother. The biggest reason why he was unable to hack it was because he couldn't stand going months and months without World of Warcraft, which is what he got addicted to in 2006.

Fuck World of Warcraft. Fuck it in the eye.

I also know someone who was addicted to something.

FUCK WARCRAFT.

This is the reason why people who have addictive personalities should not be allowed to play these games, but I can tell you it was your roommate who ultimate bringer of his downfall. I know plenty of people, myself included, who played multiple MMOs throughout the entirety of the Nuclear Power Pipeline and did not have a problem with it.

The problem we had was irresponsibility, not the game itself.

ps: I did not know you went through the pipeline, I feel your pain.

WoW does do things that make you want to play that doesn't directly invole making the game fun.

That being said, if you are weak enough to allow a game to dictate your life, I don't care. That's one less male I have to compete with for mates and territory. And if someone chooses a game over the well-being of those in their life, fuck THEM in the eye, not the game.

Me saying World of Warcraft/FFXI sucks and caused a sad story does NOT mean that I'm saying that WoW will automatically cause addictions.

I was not suggesting you did.

WoW sucks, that is uncontested.

If your friend didn't find WoW, he would have found crack, or weed, or Jesus, and done the exact the same thing.

Your friend couldn't hack it. The rest is just details.

Honestly, I'm fine with WoW.

I don't really need to play regularly, or for a ton of time to make visible progress; and even taking a week or so off isn't a big deal. Even six months, or a year, or two off isn't a big deal, since you can recover being behind in a month or two of playing again.

Even starting from scratch on a server isn't a big deal for a player.

Honestly, it's the player, not the game. The players are already paying, and can expect to make progression if they go out and do more than sit in town chatting.

I actually enjoy WoW, but I have friends who play it, and I also play it for the competitive pvp aspect.

Of course, if you don't play a social game with friends, you should probably rethink why you're playing it at all.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:WoW does do things that make you want to play that doesn't directly invole making the game fun.

That being said, if you are weak enough to allow a game to dictate your life, I don't care. That's one less male I have to compete with for mates and territory. And if someone chooses a game over the well-being of those in their life, fuck THEM in the eye, not the game.

Because your pursuit of territory and mates leads directly to fun doesn't it...

I just never understood how people could get addicted to MMOs. Honestly, it's like... when it's all said and done, those games are boring. I mean, I realize they do a bunch of things to try to get you hooked, but at the end of the day... the game just isn't fun.

It's not so much that I hate WoW, I just really kinda don't get the appeal. RPGs have always been about story to me. The moment I know that other people basically are doing the exact same thing I am, and have the same stories as I do, then the game seriously loses my interest.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:I just never understood how people could get addicted to MMOs. Honestly, it's like... when it's all said and done, those games are boring.

Roulette and craps are boring and repetitive, too.

...and there's a reason why people will play Poker without placing bets on the game but almost no one plays craps or roulette without money involved.

Many video games, especially MMOs, are pretty horrid about this kind of thing these days.

Ah, and even roulette and craps have immediate and significant reward/penalty stuff. MMOs, on the other hand, are all about giving out early and significant rewards, and then scaling rapidity and significance back as you play more. It's psychological conditioning, really, so that eventually you crave the next fix, but it's never enough, because the next piece of gear that took 40 hours' farming provides only a proportional increase of MEANINGLESS%.

I hate WoW because it is one of the most commonplace and somehow acceptable absolute wastes of time. Playing it creates nothing of value and the only thing players get are essentially some kind of dubious brain squicking carefully doled out incentives. I'm told by people who still play that the game is much more accessible than it used to be, especially as far as the amount of time necessary to level up character's goes, but I don't care. I played long enough to get a single character to level 70, this was just after Burning Crusade came out, and even though I played with friends and had fun-ish I honestly cannot regard that time as anything other than a complete waste of life. And keep in mind that even people who aren't actually clinically addicted to the game often have upwards of three characters at level 80, and I would hazard that a significant portion of these people got those characters from 1 - 60 before any of the expansions came out and getting to 60 took literally two complete weeks out of your life forever. That's not even taking into consideration the amount of time that people spend farming or raiding or auctioning or trying to get some fucking meaningless achievements!

I know that the people who play wow a lot would find some other way to waste their time or otherwise be destructive to themselves. But come on, at least everyone knows now that nicotine is addictive and you can have an intervention and insist that someone start going to gambler's anonymous. Sure, places like WoWDetox exist, but gaming addiction doesn't seem like it's risen high enough in the public consciousness to be considered as serious a problem as it actually can be. So yeah, fuck wow. I hate it and it sucks so there.

Um, no.

I played wow in college. I was on scholarships. I didn't lose my scholarships. I got a good job.

I have lots of friends that play. They are all responsible adults. Anything can be addicting if used a subsitute for something more important - like talking to people.

Wow is fine. Even after 5 years its still fun. New content is made, its still enjoyable to interact with my friends online.

So, if you don't like wow because you don't like MMOs or you don't like its art, or you think it doesn't have good enough pvp or any specific reason to hate wow as a game that is reasonable.

Not liking wow because you have a sob story about somebody who had an addication problem is the sort of thing that normally gets mocked at the gaming den.

...And this thread is just a pile waiting for the video of some guy playing it and randomly blurting out obscenities. That and my SO hates WoW (and pretty much all MMOs, anyhow, but...)

You know, nothing gets made when people watch TV, either. Or when they read a book. Of course, they could read an educational TV show or book, but that stands the same for games. It's just a pastime. Nothing gets built when we post rants on the bulletin board or blogs saying we hate WoW, either.

I'm going back to the other threads about building things. And the news. Might be able to do something with that.

-Crissa

I'll never get addicted to WoW, and not because I live an exciting, rewarding life and am not the kind of person to be addicted to things, because some argue that none of the above are true. I fully get the article closing with "Basically real life is so shit that people look for an escape and bury themselves in it, trying to replace their lives. If it's not WoW, it's Internet porn*, or heroin, or painting little minis that cost thousands of dollars, or tea, or whatever". I totally get that.

It's just that WoW is a really shit game.

*Note: according to experts, it takes something like 16 hours per day of porn use for it to become a problem/addiction. So I imagine we're all safe. Alternatively, the experts have a problem and really wanted to make sure they were in the green.

Life ruining tea addiction?

I never said life-ruining, just that tea addiction can totally happen *sips*

Though I wouldn't even call this an addiction: there are days I go without because I forget, or can't be bothered preparing it.

The thing about addiction is that you can get new addictions that are better than the old ones. It's only bad when the addiction is harmful to other parts of your life.

So my mom's gambling addiction is bad and has cost her over $150K a year for the last five years, but her new addiction is writing romance novels. She spends the same amount of time per week doing it, but the new addiction doesn't put her in debt.

Crissa wrote:You know, nothing gets made when people watch TV, either. Or when they read a book. Of course, they could read an educational TV show or book, but that stands the same for games. It's just a pastime. Nothing gets built when we post rants on the bulletin board or blogs saying we hate WoW, either.

I'm going back to the other threads about building things. And the news. Might be able to do something with that.

-Crissa

This is the most ironic thing to say about a forum dedicated to fucking roleplaying games, by a person whose listed occupation is Game Design Analyst.

Anyway, WoW is WoW. People get addicted to stuff. It's up to them to give up the addiction or limit it to more healthy recreational levels.

I hate to agree with Crissa, but this is seriously stupid.

Why are people complaining about how "playing Wow Doesn't Create"?

Playing Far Cry doesn't create. Playing Fallout doesn't create. Playing X doesn't create.

That doesn't mean it's bad. That just mean it doesn't create. I mean fuck. If you spend time, and enjoy that time, and have nothing to show for it, then it's exactly like you played a fucking board game.

I mean, fuck, you can even sell WoW characters, so it is slightly more than nothing to show for your time.

Kaelik wrote:I hate to agree with Crissa, but this is seriously stupid.

Why are people complaining about how "playing Wow Doesn't Create"?

Playing Far Cry doesn't create. Playing Fallout doesn't create. Playing X doesn't create.

That doesn't mean it's bad. That just mean it doesn't create. I mean fuck. If you spend time, and enjoy that time, and have nothing to show for it, then it's exactly like you played a fucking board game.

I mean, fuck, you can even sell WoW characters, so it is slightly more than nothing to show for your time.

People are complaining about how "playing WoW doesn't create"? That's news to me. It seems the thread is just complaining about WoW being addictive. Only Jilocasin mentioned anything regarding WoW not creating anything of value.

And Crissa going "Haha I'm gonna create stuff while you people rant!", when she's a self-proclaimed analyst as opposed to designer. You know, someone who analyzes stuff as opposed to creating them.

This whole creation business is honestly a weird and ironic tangent.

WoW isn't actually that addictive. It's not like people being addicted to it were shining stars getting more people to follow them or something better was being done.

My point was that complaining about WoW is even worse than playing it. But it's not the first time a point has gone over your head...

-Crissa