Finally over my wow addiction

They say to get rid of an addiction the easiest way to do it is to replace it with another.

I'm finally done with WoW and the MMORPG genre for good. I discoverd DOTA 2 and I'm hooked. I no longer have any cravings to play WoW. The thought of leveling up a character to 90 (which isn't that bad) and then gearing him up for many weeks until it can be somewhat competitive makes me sick. In DOTA 2 I login, play a game or 10, kick some butt or have my butt kicked and then out. No grinding, no gear treadmill, no feeling of always having to play more so I don't get left behind by the other maniacs who play the game.

I feel ... relieved. Too bad it took 8 years and thousands of dollars to finally be done with this, but it's better later than never.

DOTA 2 cost me 22 bucks and even if sometimes I play for like 4-5 hours in a row in the weekend it still doens't feel as addictive as WoW did. WoW, I just couldn't stop playing it, there was always something else that needed to be done, some profession to raise, some more gear to get on alts, etc.

I feel ... relieved. I actually enjoy working at work, because I feel no pressure to go home and grind some more shit in WoW. I go out hiking or just driving around and enjoying the view. It feels great to experience this thing called IRL.

I don't want to make any of you love WoW less with this post. Nobody should feel bad about their hobbies, but me personally I did, always when playing WoW. There is something seriously flawed in the MMORPG genre. I tried Guild Wars 2 which presumably has a lot less grinding, but I hated it too. Even though it has no subscription it still made me feel bad. So it's not about the money, it's about countless hours repeating the same shit over and over again to achieve nothing in the end.

One might say that any game is the same, you keep doing the same thing over and over, but it's not true. Every game I play in DOTA 2 is different. Outcomes, strategies, local fights, everything is different. It's like playing chess, same rules all the time, but every game is different.

I feel ... RELIEVED!

Palee

P.S. No, you can't have my stuff, my subs expired 3 months ago.

I just dont like the pvp, or playing with other people. Thats why I box.

But yes if you have the anxiety telling you that you should be home grinding WoW even though you've been playing all week, then its an addiction and not fun. I have that but what else is there for me to do?

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Originally Posted by Palee

I don't want to make any of you love WoW less with this post. Nobody should feel bad about their hobbies, but me personally I did, always when playing WoW. There is something seriously flawed in the MMORPG genre. I tried Guild Wars 2 which presumably has a lot less grinding, but I hated it too. Even though it has no subscription it still made me feel bad. So it's not about the money, it's about countless hours repeating the same shit over and over again to achieve nothing in the end.

One might say that any game is the same, you keep doing the same thing over and over, but it's not true. Every game I play in DOTA 2 is different. Outcomes, strategies, local fights, everything is different. It's like playing chess, same rules all the time, but every game is different.

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I agree 100% and I felt the same way as you do about 6-8 months ago about pvp and quit raiding along time ago because of the treadmill. It was only when I decided to take away the pvp grind that I felt free to play how I wanted.

I stopped playing WoW about a month before Christmas due to the fact that the more I played, the more I felt I needed to play (if that makes sense). I was spending hours a day on doing my ahing, then time on my farms then time on my dailies then time in LFR or dungeons to get my toons gear then time leveling a monk then time leveling another alt cause I wanted to have more hunters in my team...............

So yer I feel good now, I play maybe an hour of BF3 a night and am devoting much more time to my health (diet/exercise) not living like a slob, reading (1/2 way through the first Jack Reacher book and I'm hooked on the series) and a bit of drawing and painting when I can be bothered.

Although I am fighting an unnatural fucking urge to start playing EVE again :/

I work 70+ hours a week, am married and have friends and family I spend time with. My wife and I raid with a casual guild on tues. and thurs.

i 5box because it is fun and challenging, I do wish I could play wow more often, but that is the extent of my addiction. I sometimes go 3 to 4 days not playing at all. So I don't feel addicted. To me wow is like a cold beer after a long work day. I think that's how it should be.

I miss City of Villains / City of Heroes... The ultimate casual online RPG (I hate the term "MMO" because it's been so devalued that people equate it as "like warcrap", people say stuff like "well, a MMO has to have grind because it's part of the genre" and other such retardedness, grr...), aww.

There was a really good slideshow on Warcrap on Photobucket but it looked like Photobucket stopped doing javascript slideshows and now only allows the crappy flash ones with lowered image quality, aw.

J.mp/warcrap

But if you look at the slides and keep clicking next, you get the idea of the "progression" of I think a lot of the more addicted people...

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Originally Posted by Chivalrous

I work 70+ hours a week, am married and have friends and family I spend time with. My wife and I raid with a casual guild on tues. and thurs.

i 5box because it is fun and challenging, I do wish I could play wow more often, but that is the extent of my addiction. I sometimes go 3 to 4 days not playing at all. So I don't feel addicted. To me wow is like a cold beer after a long work day. I think that's how it should be.

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That's how it works. As Mick pointed out the more time you spend on the MMORPG the more time you want to spend on it. The prereq for the addiction is in a sense having nothing else constructive to do. That's how so many on unemployment for example get hooked.

I was unfortunate enough to pick up my first MMORPG when I was a kid with nothing else to do. So yeah...the addiction got me for a few years. Nevertheless I wound up with a mortgage like most others. With the complexities and duties of home and work, games feel trivial by comparison. Not all of course. Some still demand more respect.

Forums are typically where I lose most of my day.

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Originally Posted by Chivalrous

To me wow is like a cold beer after a long work day. I think that's how it should be.

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Not sure if I share the cold beer view. I have plenty of friends I used to go out with, sit in the pub, play soccer with etc ... they all got married and have a kid/house/garden. Most of the days, they come home from work and plant themselves in the couch watching TV, till it's time to go to bed. I don't know if watching TV for 5-6 hours each day is better than WoW. Am I addicted to wow? Maybe, but probably to the same extend how most are addicted to their TV, the difference I think is that wow triggers my brain (heroic progress raiding is like solving a puzzle and pvp is like chess to me).

If wow is the substitute for TV I think there is little harm in spending many hours.

It's what you make of it. I like wow, I met my wife on it, It relieves stress from work and entertains, don't feel addicted, I think multi is right-it's about having other stuff to do alongside it. Cheers!

thanks for telling us

I in general dislike EQ-clones of which WoW is the pinnacle of that style of MMO.

I like more sandbox open world FFA PvP games. They are just an entirely different experience and in my opinion much more enjoyable at all levels of the game. One of the big pluses to those style MMO is that they are not carrot on stick games. The reward for playing is dynamic social/political interaction between groups of players competing with each other for finite resources. It's like a giant game of paintball where you fight over ammo reloads ;p

Unfortunately the success of EQ and WoW has really retarded developer imagination when it comes to MMOs. There are very few games like that around and most of them are small budget and have their own problems based on being so small.

Many people seem to like WoW and EQ and other theme-park style mmo's, you cant really blame other developers for trying to make a game as successful as wow, though they'd had been better off making more unique games.

There are ways to challenge and engage yourself in these theme parks and also enjoy stress free play at other times. I find competition is what is addictive for me. I can't play LoL or SC2 because I find myself 2 weeks later with stick it notes of build orders and unit abilities plastering my walls and stuck on my forehead and no job. RTS is highly addictive for me, while MMOs aren't quite due to their allowance for a slower pace, in my experience.

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Originally Posted by Chivalrous

though they'd had been better off making more unique games.

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I disagree. If you look at all the games who have tried to "do it different" or unique, they have had limited sucsess..ie Conan..tera..etc.. I think the only MMO that will ever be anywhere near the sucsess of WoW would be a game that would have all the greatness WoW has and more. Things like the smoothness/responsiveness of combat.. how fluid everything works.. mounts, ground and flying... the open world ( curse CRZ though..arrg! ) The amazing macro system..addon community etc... No other game has "matched' any of those features. A lot of games come out the gate TRYING to be different, then later morph into half ass attempts of a WoW clone. If a game leaves out any feature that WoW has.. it will not be as successful. Players have gotten used to them, and miss them in other MMOs, the proof is in the number of players who play a new MMO (example SWtOR ) then return to WoW.

IMO, if you take flying mounts ( as just one example ).. developers do not like them.. because "you skip all that awesome content they spent so much time on". F that! I prefer to see it from the Air! I know a lot of players, especially PvPrs, would be happy to have flying mounts removed.. but WAY more people LOVE them. So when a game leaves that feature out.. its handicapped itself from the start. You cant make an MMO and not have at least the same features, and the only way you can compete with WoW would be to have those features and do some of them better.. if that is even possible! And maybe have a thing or two unique that people will enjoy.

I enjoy the RPG aspect of WoW, the constant upgrading of your character, grinding, acquiring new loot and such. That's something that's been intrinsic to RPGs forever. Of course people complain about having to grind, and gear up, and all of that, and the WoW devs have done their best over the years to create some kind of balance to where gear, loot, and achievements are actually attainable and if one method isn't viable for you, they try to put in alternatives. There are still things that I'd love to have, that over the years I just realized given limited play time and energy are not worth my time.

A lot of these MMO's that have come and gone have listened to the whiny player base of WoW and other MMORPG's and done exactly what they wanted to different extremes depending on the game - removing the grind and constant upgrading of your character, normalizing levels and gear in PVP, etc. Some went too far and removed the whole RPG feel of the game entirely and you end up with a half-assed MMO-something-or-other that doesn't satisfy if you want to play an RPG, nor a FPS, nor a RTS.

Personally I enjoy a lot of the grind, buying new PVP pieces every week, and working for things I want in the game. Some things I deemed not worth my time even though they'd be cool to have (heroic raid gear, rare mounts, titles, more alts, duplicates of classes so I can gear up multiple specs, this and that). The game has changed a lot over the years and unless you're going T2 pvp or bust, or heroic progression or bust, you have options and can get pretty good or even great gear without quitting your real life. Hasn't always been like that.

I guess though, if you can't be satisfied with achieving a small set of goals... and not touching every aspect of the game, if when you aren't playing you worry that your pve gear isn't as good as your pvp gear or you still don't have exalted with this faction or you don't have this mount yet, or you need to farm another 10000g for the best enchants, or you're missing an epic gem, or what I think is the worst of all - wanting every class at max level with all the gear.... then yeah it's probably not going to be healthy or even fun to continue playing.

The grindy aspect of the MMO is something I've hated for a long time. If there is a grind, it should be something that makes sense to the lore. MoP really didn't. We killed Deathwing. Why is Pandaria a step above that? The quests are unimaginative and lax. Nothing really seems coherent to me. So it just feels meh.

In my head the way Pandaria was presented, it could have been the first sandbox continent for WoW. That being a place where nodes are captured, fortresses constructed, razed and pillaged and Sha some meat puppet to beat on in between PvP conquests. If they didn't have this huge PvE gorilla in the room they could have done that. Once the narrative turned to 'We must kiss and make up or the big bad Sha will destroy us all' I tuned out. I hate that shit.

Comparing it to how EQ worked, much the same in some regards. Some of the grinding there didn't make sense but EQ was different in that it was our first. The magic of that being the first was still intact. Some feel that way about WoW because it was their first. But once you've done it you don't want to do it again.