Weekly World of Warcraft Addiction – 3/20/09

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Performance Anxiety | I Sheep Things…

I’ve had some really good questing buddies in the last few days. I usually play solo, I think you’re probably all familiar with my unfortunate guild situation at the moment, so the time I spend it groups is limited at best. It’s rare for me to want to quest with a random stranger, especially for quests that don’t involve an instance or elites or other group-requiring details. In my experience most of the people who group randomly are either sort of irritating, complete newbies who can’t find the party chat, or loot ninjas who don’t bother to /roll before grabbing. So I’ve typically steered clear of random groupings.

Progressive WoW: Leave of absence

I know it’s been a while since my last update, and that’s because I always update from work. That being said, I got laid off last week and as such I haven’t been at work to update. You’d think that means I would have more time to blog, but I guess I like to do other things online when I have full internet access.

What Happens When You Are “Done?” – Project Lore: World of Warcraft Videos and Guides

I’ve touched on this before, when talking about a lack of end game in the current content. But once again I personally have reached an interesting point in the life of my Paladin. When Wrath first came out, and I first got a look at all of the loot tables I spent a great deal of time planning my gear. I found every piece I wanted, determined what was the best in each slot, debated what set bonus were worth while, and finally came up with my “gear plan.” More or less I decided exactly
what I wanted my character to look like when I had everything I wanted.

Coming to terms with sex as an addiction

William Cope Moyers says: “Addiction is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. Addiction is not caused by a person’s character, or willpower; it is caused by the way an addict’s brain is wired.” I would add that especially with sex addiction, it is caused by the way early life experiences shaped the brain.

What are the social consequences of video game addiction? | addictionblog.org

Does playing video games negatively effect the time adolescents should be spending in more developmentally appropriate activities like sports and hanging out with friends? I’ve got a personal bone to pick with gaming. Although I intellectually understand the appeal, I emotionally resent
the pull of games. Specifically, I wish that sports would once again replace video games. Not to mention that it’s now the chosen method for how my husband unwinds at the end of the day.

20 Questions with Nassira | The Hunting Lodge

I don’t know about you, but one of the fun things and maybe one of the more fun and misunderstood aspects of WoW is how social this game is. True, chat within the game itself can rapidly become mundane with LFG, WTB, WTS, and Chuck Norris jokes. But if you look beyond that, you can’t help but see the proliferation of WoW related blogs, sites, and other sources like Twitter.

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March 20, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Bad Case of the Shoulds

World of Warcraft Cosplay Girls
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So since starting this blogging stuff, I really haven’t had much of a chance to play World of Warcraft. Should bother me, huh? Strangely though it doesn’t. The only way it does at all is if I get caught up in the “shoulds.” You know all those things that you should be doing at any point in time. But why in the world would you let something like World of Warcraft into the realm of shoulds? To me that smacks of addiction.

Last night I did play for a few hours. But you know how I spent the better half of that time? Doing my auction house routine. Now for me, the auction house is how I make my money. Others do dailies or farm but I do auctioneering. I do pretty well at it and of course there is always that next big purchase looming out there that has me feeling like I should be doing my auction routine. But the thing is it takes time. Why should I feel compelled to spend what time I do choose to play on tasks if I don’t feel like tasking?

One other note: I relearned an old lesson yesterday. When leveling multiple characters, there is often no need to go through the same areas over and over again. Right now, I’m (belatedly) leveling a death knight and following the typical path through Hellfire, just lightly touching Zangarmarsh (because I didn’t like it the first time around) before heading over to Terrokar where I was languishing doing a series of quests that were for largely too easy for me.

Well along came a friend and with his help I ran all the Burning Crusade northern areas picking up the flightpoints along the way. Most of the areas I’d never hardly seen with Sayas. Now I’m thinking Dhume, my death knight is going to spend what time he has left in the Outlands in Area 52 and Netherstorm. Then when heading over to Northrend, I’ll do the same thing and hit areas I didn’t get to with Sayas on his way to 80. I figure I should be able to see fresh content with at least three characters this way. Then you figure the difference between Alliance and Horde perspectives and there is plenty new stuff for me to see before the new expansion hits a couple years from now.

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February 20, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , | No Comments »