WoW Therapy

I resisted the MMORPG scene for a long time. KT and Kevin tried to talk us into playing Everquest, and then when they switched to World of Warcraft, they tried to talk us into that.

I resisted. It seemed to eat up a lot of time, and I didn't have all that much spare time in my schedule. I had even less spare time when Penny was born (though to be scrupulously fair, I got a fair chunk of time back when the Meadehall stopped running).

Two and a half years ago, I went on vacation to Cancun. I was gone for just a bit over a week, and Matt was left home with Penny, who had just turned 3. And when I got home, Matt had started playing WoW.

I watched over his shoulder for about a week before I agreed to get a trial account and, well, try it.

I signed up less than 24 hours later. It was completely engrossing, and I was hooked.

Since then, I've played nearly every week, and very nearly every day. Lately, I mostly only play in the evenings, after the kids are in bed -- and since I've lost my ability to function on less than six hours of sleep, I need to log out by 10 or 10:30 so I can be in bed by 11. Which means that I get, at most, two hours of consecutive play-time.

It's affected the way I play. It's not really possible to do most of the game's instances in only two hours, so I don't run instances, and I certainly don't raid. I don't have the reflexes for PvP play. All of which sort of cuts me out of the end-game content. So I'm working on leveling a couple of alts, and now that WotLK is out, I'm slowly working my original character through the new content.

But it's been bothering me, lately, that I'm sinking so much time into something that isn't useful or productive. At the end of each week, I've spent about 10 hours playing WoW, and I have nothing to show for it. I used to make scrapbooks (physical and digital), read books, take photos, write, go on crocheting or knitting binges...

I took a mini-break from WoW this week. I hadn't really intended to. I took Wednesday off to get caught up on some scrapbooking. I didn't log in Thursday because I was doing some Christmas preparations. Friday was Matt's and my usual movie night.

So when I sat down to play one of my alts Saturday night, I was expecting something of a rush from it -- the addict's heightened response to a drug too long neglected.

But instead, I felt overcome with ennui. I had done all this before.

I thought about switching over to my first character to do new stuff, but even the stuff I hadn't done before... I had done before. Kill fifteen of those. Collect twenty of these. Go talk to that guy. Burn down that building. Pick that flower. Make this recipe. The new stuff looks cool and different, but it's not really new.

The game is still fun, but it's not engrossing. It's fun the way Minesweeper and Solitaire are fun; comfortably entertaining, but not challenging or even interesting.

WoW isn't even social for me, any more.

Some of that is my fault -- I don't have too many friends on the servers where my alts are, and most of them don't log in very often. But some of it is just the nature of the game. Even when I'm where friends are, we're not talking that much. They're raiding, or questing, and dealing with combat, and don't really have time to chat. When we do talk online, we mostly talk about the game.

(Before I played, we'd get together with WoW friends and I wouldn't have any idea what they were talking about. Then I started playing, and we'd get together with WoW friends and I'd know what we were talking about. But now that so many of them are raiding, we're back to getting together with WoW friends and I don't have any idea what they're talking about...)

It's not a criticism of my friends. They're having fun.

It's not a criticism of the game. It's a fantastic game.

I'm just not sure that it's for me, anymore. I loved Diablo II, too -- but by the time I'd finished it once and then played around with a couple of other classes, it had lost its shine for me... and I wasn't paying an extra $15 a month to play.

So I'm going to take a longer break -- probably for the rest of the month. I've got scrapbooking to catch up on, Christmas gifts to wrap (and one or two left to shop for), holiday activities to plan, at least three major household projects that I could work on, a digital SLR camera I've been loaned to play with, books to read, and Netflix movies to watch. Hell, I could probably come up with a different activity to do every night between now and when we leave for Chicago, without even breaking a sweat.

I'm going to go do stuff. Productive stuff, or at least alternate entertainment stuff. I'll probably tell you about it as I go.

And then sometime around New Year's, I'll let you know whether I've missed WoW enough to come back, or if I'm going to put my account on hold for an indefinite period. (No, I'm probably not quitting entirely. I know people who have gone on hiatus for as long as six months before coming back.)