Time, Time, Time

Yesterday I made the startling revelation that my main, Sayas, a level 80 discipline priest on Farstriders (US) was better qualified for raiding than I had thought. Today I begin to explore what that means.

First of course is the time commitment. Now we’re not talking quantity of time primarily. I spend plenty of that. I’d guess 10-20 hours a week typically. It seems like most raiders devote at least two nights a week to raiding and then many guilds seem to spend one night a week beyond that on “progression.” So, we’re talking three nights, three hours a night… so nine hours. Luckily, my guild really only expects two nights reducing that number to six hours.

But my deal is more about the expectation of nights of the week set aside for raiding. While I spend plenty of time in game, almost all of my time is on an ad hoc basis. I fit my time in between other commitments. Raiding turns that upside down to an extent and says you must to some extent fit those other commitments in around raiding. Still, I want to raid and anything you want doing takes a degree of prioritizing. So what if I committed just one night a week? Would that be good enough? I’m not sure because I know sometimes each raid is a progression in itself. In other words, night two is a continuation of night one. Obviously its an inconvenience at the very least to the others if I participate on night one and not on night two. Then again, what if the day of designated were to fall on day two of our raiding schedules? The chance that I’d be called upon to fill in for someone that started on day one would certainly be diminished from having started the raid in the first place.

I could look at pugging raids instead. I actually do a fair amount of that with 5 mans. But part of my motivation here is guild participation, not just raiding for raiding’s sake so that doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory solution. Also, I could look at raiding with a guild that consistently raids at a more convenient time for me. If I could raid mornings instead, that would far easier for me to commit to. But that would involve me changing guilds and perhaps servers as well. So that kind of would defeat the purpose as well. I don’t even know, is it possibly to transfer to servers in other areas of the world so that my morning might be their evening? Hmm…

So, there you have my thinking on the time issue. Next time, I’ll look at another concern.

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October 14, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Eye Opener

Blizzcon '09
Image by brianjmatis via Flickr

I just had an eye opening and thought provoking experience: I often look myself up at http://be.imba.hu to see what I should be working on gear wise and what content I should be running. Its a great site for doing that. But today I took it a step further and looked up all the priests in my guild. Here is what I discovered:

First, our guild “only” has 19 level 80 priests. That surprised me. I’ve always thought of Ex Cinis Cineris as priest heavy and would have guessed us to have maybe half again that number at very least. But what really shocked me is that I am roughly tied for 4th best in terms of gearing with two others. Looking at it another way, if this data is to be believed, I’m no worse than the 6th best geared priest in our guild. There is some room for error as some folks may have logged off in pvp gear or geared for an alt spec, but still.

What this means is that I’m harboring some delusions as to my status. I’d always proclaimed quite loudly that I was at best 2nd tier and quite possibly 3rd tier in terms of ECC priests. However, assuming 4 tiers of 5 each, I’m right at the cusp of 1st and 2nd tier.

Yet I’ve hardly ever run a 10 man (3 to be exact as of this writing.) and never have run a 25 man instance. At this point I could veer off to talk about problems in the WoW reward mechanics. Clearly I’m over geared for the content I’ve run. But I’ll leave that for others to do. (TotalBiscuit of the Blu Plz! podcast does a fine job running that topic into the ground.) Where I want to go with it is that I am once more catching myself caught up in the position of underachiever. (Wherever I go, there I am again it seems.)

Actually, this revelation of my gearing status within our guild impacts me at least 4 different ways at the same time: 1) I’m proud that my efforts of the last few weeks have resulted in such a gearing improvement. Clearly, upgrading doesn’t take as much as I’d assumed. 2) I’m shocked to discover I’m so deluded. I thought of myself as more prone to honest assessment. 3) I’m disappointed I’ve let myself off the hook so easily. My excuse for not attempting harder content was that I wasn’t properly geared to do so. 4) I’m sheepish that I’ve been letting my guild down even in the slightest. ECC is by no means a hardcore raiding guild. But we are large (500+ toons) and I suspect there are more than a few that would like challenge themselves. Why not? Isn’t that part of the fun? I still think we are probably priest heavy, but I’m also sure I’m one of our few discipline healers.

I’ve been thinking of myself as a charity case in need of help when instead I’m at a point where I really should be helping others. I don’t mean just those newly arriving at level 80 but maybe all but the the very top levels in my guild. Maybe even those top players could use my help if only to fill in spots on a 25 man roster from time to time.

I’ll continue this next time talking about what this revelation means to me in terms of gameplay. I know I still want to limit my gameplay time. But maybe its time to reevaluate how that time is being spent.

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October 13, 2009 | Tags: , , | 6 Comments »

My Guild in the News


Around Azeroth: A cause to remember

Grizzleton writes that his guild, Ex Cinis Cineris of Farstriders, has changed its tabard to pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. “One of the guild’s officers is a breast cancer survivor still in treatment, and many other guild members and their loved ones have had experiences with this disease. In the public forum on the Ex Cinis Cineris website is a very helpful thread dealing with this issue. As the aforementioned officer put it when the guild rallied behind supporting this cause, “We may be gamers and geeks, but we have hearts!” For their first event, the guild formed a pink ribbon with their avatars on the Stormwind Harbor steps. ECC has also planned a Farstriders serverwide Pink event for Friday October 16th in Stormwind Harbor. Check the Blizzard Farstriders forum for details.”

My guild, Ex Cinis Cineris got written up at wow.com. How cool is that? What is happening is that we’re having a series of events to commemorate Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I’m very happy with my guild in general which in turn makes me proud to be a part of them. Something like this makes me even happier and prouder.

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October 12, 2009 | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

World of Warcraft Burn Out

Watchmen Invitation
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You all know I haven’t been playing hardly at all the last few weeks. I’ve been far too busy getting this and a couple other websites going to play World of Warcraft. To be honest with you, once I got over the lost of routine and the guilt factor for abandoning my friends, I haven’t really missed playing that much. Could it be the addiction is receding? I don’t really think so. More that it was time for one of my periodic breaks from World of Warcraft.

Which leads me into today’s topic. Today I want to talk a little about the flip side of World of Warcraft addiction. In my mind, that would be World of Warcraft burn out. Yes, World of Warcraft burn out happens just as much as World of Warcraft addiction.

Playing with the next Expansion in mind. « Kinless Chronicles

I’ve got tons left to keep me busy without being 80, and the Expansion will only open up another grand playground for me and the wife. I don’t plan to, or need to, fast track to the end-game and burn out.

Kinless really has it spot on in the above quote. Why do we flog ourselves if its only just a game? We burn out because we’re addicted and playing too much. We vacillate, going back and forth between addiction and burn out, addiction and burn out sometimes barely noticing the brief stopover at enjoyment in between the two.

Instead, why not relax and enjoy the game for what it is… a game! One of the beauties of this particular game is that its open ended. So do what you want in game, when you want. Right now I’m doing one of the very few “mandatory” tasks which is checking the mail every thirty days so you don’t lose items in transit. That’s all you have to do: Check in once a month to make sure you aren’t losing mail. How easy is that?

If you play, you’ve recognized it in some of your friends, guild mates and other acquaintances. Frequent complaints of being bored, general surliness, inability to focus on any one task, these are all signs of burnout. Maybe you’ve seen it in the form of erratic behavior; suddenly quitting a long time guild relationship, dropping out in the middle of an instance run, not being around when they said they would be.

Perhaps one of the tricks to beating both World of Warcraft addiction and World of Warcraft burnout is one and the same. Maybe we just need to slow down. You know, actually read the quests instead of just rushing through the objectives. Following the story lines rather than running about willy nilly to level in the fastest manner possible. I know what I’m saying here is heresy for my leveling guide friends, but so be it!

I don’t know what it is for you, but whatever it is, take time away from task orientation and do what you enjoy with friends. If that means fishing while chatting with guild mates, do that. If it means crafting, do that. If it means shopping for risque outfits or beautiful robes, do that!

If you do what you want, you derail the compulsion aspect of the game. Also, you will enjoy your time more and thus avoid the World of Warcraft burn out factor.

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March 8, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Ten Indicators You Might have World of Warcraft Addiction

Heroin bottle
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addiction – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Main Entry: ad·dic·tion
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈdik-shən, a-\
Function: noun
Date: 1599

1: the quality or state of being addicted
2: compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal ; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful

OK so there we have a generally accepted definition of the term addiction. Notice how it only suggests addiction to physical substances and ignores completely the area of psychological addiction. I think as much as anything that shows the definition hails back to a time before such things as video games were even a popular thing. Still things like gambling addiction have been around forever. I think World of Warcraft addiction has more in common with gambling addiction than heroin addiction in many ways.

Now that we have a standard definition, lets take a moment to look at World of Warcraft and come up with a list of ten indicators that you might be suffering from World of Warcraft addiction:

  1. You lose interest in other activities you previously enjoyed.
  2. You start the with the best of intentions to “get something done” and “only check auctions” early in the morning only to discover that the sun is now setting and you are still logged in playing.
  3. You become irritated when someone interrupts your playing even if you’re not doing anything particularly intense.
  4. You lose track of things like eating or sleeping.
  5. You make excuses to miss work or other activities in order to spend more time playing.
  6. When someone comes in the room to talk to you or you get a phone call, you keep trying to play while holding your conversation.
  7. In game occurrences have a huge impact on your mood for good or for bad.
  8. You realize in mid conversation that you’ve nothing to talk about other than World of Warcraft.
  9. You constantly interject in game references into real world conversations even though you know the other person doesn’t follow or isn’t interested.
  10. When you are not playing, you are still reading about or involved with World of Warcraft in some way.

Do you recognize yourself or someone you care about in the list above? Good! Believe it or not recognition is a fantastically huge first step. I think far more people suffer in guilty silence or in all out denial or defensiveness about this particular addiction. But there is hope. You can reach the point where you enjoy World of Warcraft while avoiding any or all of the above. Stick around and we’ll start exploring how to check yourself and other related topics as well.

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February 14, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Welcome!

World of Warcraft Cosmic Map, showing Azeroth ...
Image via Wikipedia

Full time WoW addict

I’m guessing i will slowly get more fun out of playing Wow now i start to see it like a game again instead of a second job.

What an interesting post to run into on the eve of launching this site. Welcome to world of warcraft addiction. What’s this blog going to be about? Well the long and short of it is that it will be about my personal struggles (as well as guest contributions) in maintaining balance in life while playing World of Warcraft. Will I be advocating complete and total abstinance? Not necessarily. Yes, my personal World of Warcraft addiction was such that I had to take an extended vacation away from the game. (More on that later.) I’ll also readily admit that as someone prone to obsessive/compulsive behavior, I need to check myself constantly in order to stay on the tightrope. I’m sure there are many that are better off to stay away from the game completely. But primarily I’ll be targetting those that realize the game can be enjoyable and rewarding when taken in moderation. Its this moderation which will be my main focus.

So what is World of Warcraft anyway? It is currently the most popular of a genre of computer video games known as mmorpgs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games.) To give you some idea of its impact, the latest figures I read claimed the game has over eleven million subscribers world wide. Often times games of this type begin to wane in popularity with time but World of Warcraft passed its fourth anniversary November 23rd, 2008 and is still increasing in popularity.

What makes it so addicting and popular? Well, we’ll delve into this topic much more as time goes by. Its difficult to capsulize in just a few words. World of Warcraft emerses you in an alternate universe. In it, you escape your real life problems and challenges for a time and have the freedom to recreate yourself replete with a new reputation, a new status, a new set of quantifiable goals and achievements, and not least important, a new set of friends who are often times much more supportive than the real life variety.

I’ve played the game since its final beta test phase only to wait eagerly for the released version to hit the shelves weeks after the beta test shut down. It was during those earliest times of commercial release that I was most addicted. For a time there I was indeed a big shot in Azeroth (The World of Warcraft world.) and all but disappeared in the real world.

Mostly I would like to give others trapped in Azeroth hope that there is an alternative to completely stepping away from the game or completely losing yourself to World of Warcraft addiction. Again, I welcome you to follow along, to participate in any way that benefits you as we delve into the topic of World of Warcraft addiction.

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February 13, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »