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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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.

There seem to be changes in my guild (Ex Cinis Cineris on Farstriders US.) I think I’ve made mention that I felt hopelessly behind my guildmates. Now, while I’m still behind, it seems like I came back much more able to participate. I’ve been running heroics enough that I’ve been able to skip right over Naxx and get into our baby ten man Ulduar raid team. (ECC fields three ten man teams at the moment.) I do want to go back and experience Naxx but don’t have a driving gear need to do so. Presently I’m one trinket short of being in all two hundred plus epic gear.

How am I doing with the addictive aspect of World of Warcraft? Not too bad I think. I have put in several long play days but I’ve also been able to set it aside when appropriate or limit my play time on occasions.

So yeah, I’m back and actually a viable baby raider. It feels good to be participating in the “endgame” if only on a limited basis.

Well it turned into a virtually World of Warcraft weekend for me. Why? Because I had other things absorbing my time and interest. Did I feel a little guilty for not playing? Oh yeah, for sure. There were “the shoulds” creeping in every now and then which is so silly but a sure sign of addiction I think. But as I said last time, why should I feel compelled to play if I have other things I want to do or even worse, simply don’t feel like playing? (gasp!)

Today I want to introduce the role of guilds in World of Warcraft addiction. I belong to an absolutely fabulous guild on my main server. (server Farstriders, faction Alliance, guild Ex Cinis Cineris, main Character Sayas though Dhume has been seeing more play time of late) Ex Cinis Cineris is a huge “social” guild of 500+ characters representing 200+ players. By social, this guild means exactly that: the guild is more about friendships and socializing than it is raiding, leveling, roleplaying, pvping, etc. That makes it the perfect guild for someone like me in that I can log in any time and have someone to chat with or at least “eavesdrop” on in guild chat. It doesn’t matter if my character is in all greens and they are all purples or whether I’m logged on as a level 13 and they are playing a level 80. On those occasions when I need help, someone is almost always available and willing to help, but by and large I’m left to do my own thing. Not ignored, but certainly not pressured.

That’s one way a guild can be really bad: You feel as though you are letting the others down if you aren’t logged on often enough or aren’t available for your raid role, etc. I know when my daughter was dating a major WoW geek, he’d have to explain or make excuses to his guild as to why he wasn’t available for thus and such. Bad enough that his new love interest was a bloodelf palidan! Sometimes in smaller guilds it even takes on the air of necessity. In my guild, if I weren’t online, there would probably be 3 or 4 other priests that could fill in for me. But I’ve been in many guilds where I might be the only priest of a certain level, spec, or skill set.

Even without that sort of pressure though, there is another. I simply feel like I’m being flakey with my friends. One weekend I’m on all the time. Next I might hardly be on at all. You’ll notice on the guild forums that some of our members feel compelled to post messages explaining or forewarning of absences. In my guild, its largely me making me feel guilty of flakiness. But I know there are guilds where you would get the boot after only a few weeks unexplained absence.

So I think of guilds as both a good thing and a bad thing when it comes to World of Warcraft addiction. Its wonderful to be noticed and welcomed every time you log on. But it can become a bad thing that fuels addictive tendencies if it reaches the point where you feel compelled to log on because of your guild.

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