I have given up sex for FFXI, many times. Sex will be there tomorrow, but that NM won't pop for another 72 hours.
As for school, I quit FFXI wehn school started up, and then got back into it when I was done.
I've been playing for one year and it has lead to me calling of work twice, directly. 2 times in a year ain't that bad.
On the other hand, I have given up FFXI for my weed addiction. I've said no to a event more than once to go toke. But is that worse than the people who say yes to the event then make you wait for 10 mintues every hour to go smoke a cigarette.... I don't think so.
I'm incapable of enjoying something fun if I still have something un-fun which has to be done. I have always been like this. So I either have to firmly establish with facts that the un-fun thing cannot be done yet, or I have to go do it. I am glad that my mind works like this, as it means that college work will always get done as soon as possible, either because I actually find it fun (more fun than any game) or because it is not fun.
Its interesting because i just had this conversation with a friend.
Recently, he *quit* world of warcraft because he said he was too addicted and it was affecting his life
Ok, so what did he do? Did he go back to school? Did he get a better job? Did he get a constructive hobby?
No
He started playing in some frizbee golf league every day, doubled the amount of pot he smokes, and goes out drinking on the weekends with his useless wastes of space friends
Is warcraft an addiction? No... it just fills in the space for people with addictive personalities. When WoW is replaced, these people go back to drinking, gambling, smoking up, and wasting time in other ways.
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
edited April 2008
I had a pretty terrible first year of college, when people I thought were my friends ended up disowning me, had me kicked out of my dorm into an off campus room, and I finished the year super depressed. So I skipped most of my finals, barely passing the year. Over the summer I was super lonely, so to get in touch with some high school friends by picking up WoW. WoW has been a place I've been consistently happy, or at least a place I can forget how much I despise my life. So I haven't really left in 2ish years. Every time I put the game down and make forays into the "real world" I end up getting really depressed and failing at whatever I attempt.
That's pretty much my WoW story. Sorry to depress XD.
I quit playing WoW after I realized that I was begging 40 some-odd assholes to help me with something for several hours a day. For a week straight. Without even a response.
On a related note, I can't stay addicted to stuff. I'll binge on things I enjoy, but I burn out too fast for it to cause problems. Which is why I don't play MMO's for longer than a month at most.
I used to be addicted to Everquest and Ultima Online for years, but I was much younger when they came out. When it came to WoW, I was addicted maybe for a month or so. But then, for some reason, it just bored me to tears. I'm not sure why MMO's don't affect me like they once did. Though now that I'm in college, and have been for 3 years, I don't think I could pick up an MMO and still keep up with my school work.
The worst part is when you do the /played. on my realm forums right before BC some of the older more hardcore players had a /played thread going and most people were over 250 days.....
During high school i was a pretty hardcore raider, but then again it was high school and there is not a whole lot to do during the week. I quit midway through my senior year aka when BC came out and was clean untill my second semester of college started. There were a few factors making me come back including the free trial and wanting to see the expansion. second my old guild got about 20 of the old members back on one server and back raiding again. i do not know how this happened even still.
Although Wow may have ruined what i could have had for a social life, it has had its fun times and i have met alot of people that are fun and that i play and hang out with even when i quit wow. Now going on 3 years since we all met each other and we all still play games together.
I had a friend throughout the last few years of college. We are pretty good friends, nothing crazy. We would hang out on weekends with everyone and what not.
Then one day I showed him WoW and he started playing. The relationship bloomed into a wonderful flower. Now I am the best man at his wedding in may.
When I started playing WoW most of my friends ended up getting into it pretty heavily. It came out right after I finished high school so it helped us keep in touch since we weren't seeing each other every day anymore. We still got together regularly but playing WoW together meant we were hanging out and talking almost every day and I think it helped keep us from drifting apart after high school.
As far as school work was concerned I've never had a problem taking the time I need to work on stuff when its important, and WoW didn't change that.
I have a friend whose brother quit his job and lives with his parents. What does he do all day? Just plays WoW. He literally has over 100 days logged into his healer. Imagine what you could do with those 100 days.
At this point it's his job that he doesn't get paid for. And doesn't shower.... Or eat sometimes.
I have a friend whose brother quit his job and lives with his parents. What does he do all day? Just plays WoW. He literally has over 100 days logged into his healer. Imagine what you could do with those 100 days.
At this point it's his job that he doesn't get paid for. And doesn't shower.... Or eat sometimes.
I have a friend that has a very addictive nature when it comes to video games. Before WoW it was Halo 2, yeah he played Halo 2 for maybe 8 to 10 hours in a sitting. I don't know how someone could play Halo 2 for that long but he did it. Then I introduced him to WoW (yeah I feel bad). I played with him so we talked about it constantly, we would work out together and talk about wow, we would go drinking together and talk about WoW. Our lives revolved around WoW.
What really bothered me was he was an overall better student than me even though I played much much less than him because I studied and had a job. He would wing out those projects the night before and ace every test.
Now he has a decent job that he goes to every day, a very nice wife, and still constantly plays WoW every afternoon after work.
I don't play WoW anymore and have a decent job. I would say you can very much be addicted to WoW but if it has a negative effect on you, its your own fault, not the games nature.
I have a friend whose brother quit his job and lives with his parents. What does he do all day? Just plays WoW. He literally has over 100 days logged into his healer. Imagine what you could do with those 100 days.
At this point it's his job that he doesn't get paid for. And doesn't shower.... Or eat sometimes.
I had over a 100 days played on my priest before BC came out. Not sure what it was at before I quit, but I'd say quite a few people around here would have at least that much time spent playing, many probably on one character.
I have a friend whose brother quit his job and lives with his parents. What does he do all day? Just plays WoW. He literally has over 100 days logged into his healer. Imagine what you could do with those 100 days.
At this point it's his job that he doesn't get paid for. And doesn't shower.... Or eat sometimes.
Thats.... really sad actually.
Oh and he's 28.
urahonky on
0
jpegODIE, YOUR FACEScenic Illinois FlatlandsRegistered Userregular
It's golf, with a frisbee. Lots of fun when you've had a few beers.
Disc golf is straight up fun, period.
I played WoW for exactly one year to the day. During that time I had ~60 days played. When I realized this, I quit immediately and replaced that with more art time and more guitar time. I get some pangs to play every once in a while (like this week, fuck all this WAR news making me want to play an MMO), but for the most part it wasn't like I couldn't stop myself.
jpeg on
so I just type in this box and it goes on the screen?
Playing World of Warcraft in college has kept me close with my brother.
I quit playing about six months ago, and found that we stopped talking to each other. Just being able to log on Ventrilo while reading at my desk and casually talk is almost as good as being right next to each other.
Since I restarted a few weeks ago to PvP with him on a new server, I found that we keep in contact a lot more.
On the addictive nature, I never really considered myself addicted, mostly because I didn't really play when I wasn't raiding. There were weeks when I would only log on for raid times, (and as a consequence, I was always dirt poor) though I do know some people who play way too much. I think it's more to do with whether or not you have an addictive personality.
Well the whole argument on game addictions can go ether way. Back when i was raiding alot more there were a few people that were married, and three different people ended up divorcing partly because of Wow.
Three of my friends that I knew from freshman year got heavily addicted to WoW. Two of them were kicked out of college because of poor grades. They came back and got kicked out yet again. The other friend of mine was a full semester ahead of me in engineering. Now I am a full year ahead of him. These mother fuckers would never go to class, just play WoW all day. Fucking terrible. :v:
I don't blame WoW, they are just fucking idiots. :^:
Difference between obsession and addiction. Addiction is when your body is not physically capable of doing normal functions without the addiction.
Not that I want to start debating semantics, but any Psychologist would disagree.
edit: also that video is hilarious
815165 on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited April 2008
I have probably accumulated about 50 days /played since the end of September last year, across two characters, one which I levelled from 54-70 and another which I took from 1-70.
Well, my friend on FFXI has over 367 days on his ''played time''
He checked that a few months ago when the service hit 5 years.
So that's a fifth of his life since it came out. That's an average of 5 hours a day, everyday since the game came out. and from personnal experience I know that that average isn't decreasing anytime soon.
Difference between obsession and addiction. Addiction is when your body is not physically capable of doing normal functions without the addiction.
Not that I want to start debating semantics, but any Psychologist would disagree.
edit: also that video is hilarious
Don't say that and not give me the reason why.
Someone can still eat, sleep, socialise, work and be psychologically addicted to say, gambling. The recognised definition of addiction amongst many Psychologists is continuing a behaviour in spite of the negative effects it has on that persons well being, to not be physically capable of normal functions someone would be basicly having to incapacitate themselves.
In regards to the video saying "World of Warcraft isn't addictive" in itself is true, but then heroin isn't addictive either, the mix of the above and people may lead to addiction. WoW has several mechanics with the intent to keep people playing, why do you think getting to level 2 takes 2 minutes? It's all about how people respond to rewards.
I'm not saying the intent is to get people hooked forever but the whole genre is built around mechanics intended to compulse the player into getting that next level, or that next item. It's all about giving people rewards for their effort that they don't get elsewhere and then scaling the difficulty of attaining those rewards up with time as people become invested in their character. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but addiction is a very likely side effect of such mechanics.
The difference between obsession and addiction is often semantic but your definition of addiction would mean very few behaviours currently deemed addictive would actually be so.
Never played an MMO until after college, but I had such alcoholic friends that if I told them I was blowing them off to play a game they would have blinked at me for a second, then thrown my PC through a window. So no, it wouldn't have been an issue at all, because I just wouldn't have played.
It's helped me for the most part because everybody here at MCAD fucking does drugs, smokes, and drinks. Everyone.
I honestly think I'm one of 5 people that doesn't do any of those things. So when my two roommates (who, for the record, are great guys) go out and party, I stay in my apartment playing WoW hanging out with my guild and such. It's just another form of social interaction, albeit I don't have to get wasted to have fun.
That said there have been a couple occasions where I didn't go to one of my classes so I could play WoW (or just sleep :P).
Part of the issue with art school is, it's not like I can come back to my apartment after classes, do my homework, and then mess around. Since this is an art school, we don't get papers we have to type, or tests we have to study for. We get massive projects that take 3-15 hours each to complete on average. And when you have 3-4 classes that give out assignments like that on a regular basis, it's extremely time consuming. Luckily for me I'm a pro speed-artist. I can draw things relatively quickly, so "cramming" certain projects is doable, but definitely not preferable.
And you can ask almost any student here, after 5-hour long studio classes (of which each student has about three a week) the last thing you want to do after getting back home at 6 in the afternoon is more work.
The obvious thing is if I wasn't playing WoW chances are I'd be spending a lot more time reading books or working on my art, but I've been playing it for three years straight and not even college has phased my interest in playing the game.
But believe me, I am well aware of where my priorities are. I'm paying about $36,000 a year to go to this school, so fucking up is the last thing on my mind. I haven't lost site of what's important, not at all. It's just that WoW is a great escape from all the work I have to do, I just occasionally take advantage of it more than I should
How did WoW affect my College life? It saved me an absurd amount of cash!
I went to college for a year and a half, all while playing WoW on a regular basis and ended up dropping out for reasons not relevant to WoW in any way. During my first month in college I was a pretty well-liked guy, went to a few parties, dug the whole social scene, and very quickly realized I would need a job to support my social habits.
I then began to weigh my options:
- Be a WoW nerd again (I played during high school, quit a few months before graduation and bummed around during the summer, working odd jobs and such), not have to seek serious employment, still have a pseudo-social life, and save a bunch of cash
or
- get a job, get a car, have to toss up for booze, have to fund a potential relationship... etc.
It basically came down to: I was probably going to blow off school and being a firm believer in the 80/20 rule, regardless of which path I chose, school was going to be coasted through. Based on the fact I've never been a socialite, have yet to seek any kind of meaningful relationship, or like to spend cash on stuff I can't get any kind of return on my investment on, I went with the lesser of two evils.
I skipped a class yesterday and ran an instance, but I wouldn't have gone that day anyway. Four of the friends I was sitting next to were doing homework and one of them was playing Mario Party DS, so I was multi-tasking between tanking heroic magisters and asking people to explain random terms I kept hearing (every single person but me in my social circle at school is a music major, and I hate hearing some specialized vocab term and not knowing what it means. So I have to ask or check wikipedia.)
So I guess it was half-and-half hanging out with friends and playing WoW that caused me to skip class. Other than that, I guess I tend to check WoW forums (and these boards) during math too often because goddamn we don't need to do twelve separate examples to get people to understand one concept what is wrong with people.
Posts
I have given up sex for FFXI, many times. Sex will be there tomorrow, but that NM won't pop for another 72 hours.
As for school, I quit FFXI wehn school started up, and then got back into it when I was done.
I've been playing for one year and it has lead to me calling of work twice, directly. 2 times in a year ain't that bad.
On the other hand, I have given up FFXI for my weed addiction. I've said no to a event more than once to go toke. But is that worse than the people who say yes to the event then make you wait for 10 mintues every hour to go smoke a cigarette.... I don't think so.
So, yes, it goes like this:
Weed>FFXI>Sex>responsibilities
but only sometimes.
Yum.
there really won't be much sex in the future if you don't change that shit around
Recently, he *quit* world of warcraft because he said he was too addicted and it was affecting his life
Ok, so what did he do? Did he go back to school? Did he get a better job? Did he get a constructive hobby?
No
He started playing in some frizbee golf league every day, doubled the amount of pot he smokes, and goes out drinking on the weekends with his useless wastes of space friends
Is warcraft an addiction? No... it just fills in the space for people with addictive personalities. When WoW is replaced, these people go back to drinking, gambling, smoking up, and wasting time in other ways.
That's pretty much my WoW story. Sorry to depress XD.
On a related note, I can't stay addicted to stuff. I'll binge on things I enjoy, but I burn out too fast for it to cause problems. Which is why I don't play MMO's for longer than a month at most.
I think I'm getting addicted to LOTRO though...D:
During high school i was a pretty hardcore raider, but then again it was high school and there is not a whole lot to do during the week. I quit midway through my senior year aka when BC came out and was clean untill my second semester of college started. There were a few factors making me come back including the free trial and wanting to see the expansion. second my old guild got about 20 of the old members back on one server and back raiding again. i do not know how this happened even still.
Although Wow may have ruined what i could have had for a social life, it has had its fun times and i have met alot of people that are fun and that i play and hang out with even when i quit wow. Now going on 3 years since we all met each other and we all still play games together.
Then one day I showed him WoW and he started playing. The relationship bloomed into a wonderful flower. Now I am the best man at his wedding in may.
As far as school work was concerned I've never had a problem taking the time I need to work on stuff when its important, and WoW didn't change that.
At this point it's his job that he doesn't get paid for. And doesn't shower.... Or eat sometimes.
Thats.... really sad actually.
What really bothered me was he was an overall better student than me even though I played much much less than him because I studied and had a job. He would wing out those projects the night before and ace every test.
Now he has a decent job that he goes to every day, a very nice wife, and still constantly plays WoW every afternoon after work.
I don't play WoW anymore and have a decent job. I would say you can very much be addicted to WoW but if it has a negative effect on you, its your own fault, not the games nature.
I had over a 100 days played on my priest before BC came out. Not sure what it was at before I quit, but I'd say quite a few people around here would have at least that much time spent playing, many probably on one character.
Oh and he's 28.
Disc golf is straight up fun, period.
I played WoW for exactly one year to the day. During that time I had ~60 days played. When I realized this, I quit immediately and replaced that with more art time and more guitar time. I get some pangs to play every once in a while (like this week, fuck all this WAR news making me want to play an MMO), but for the most part it wasn't like I couldn't stop myself.
I quit playing about six months ago, and found that we stopped talking to each other. Just being able to log on Ventrilo while reading at my desk and casually talk is almost as good as being right next to each other.
Since I restarted a few weeks ago to PvP with him on a new server, I found that we keep in contact a lot more.
On the addictive nature, I never really considered myself addicted, mostly because I didn't really play when I wasn't raiding. There were weeks when I would only log on for raid times, (and as a consequence, I was always dirt poor) though I do know some people who play way too much. I think it's more to do with whether or not you have an addictive personality.
I have always considered it a sign that someone has problems rather than the cause of them.
I don't blame WoW, they are just fucking idiots. :^:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5327497459334792260
Entire video on WoW.
edit: also that video is hilarious
Don't say that and not give me the reason why.
I think this is pretty much it.
but, i was at a new job far away from family and friends, and it fueled a lonely depression for a long while
then later on, i got a new job, and it was a hell of a bonding between me and a coworker, hanging out and playing wow together
then it got in the way of work/grad school/marriage, so i quit.
i miss it occasionally, but im certainly not going back before the xpac, and maybe not then.
and i never passed up relationship stuff for wow
SE++ Map Steam
He checked that a few months ago when the service hit 5 years.
So that's a fifth of his life since it came out. That's an average of 5 hours a day, everyday since the game came out. and from personnal experience I know that that average isn't decreasing anytime soon.
In regards to the video saying "World of Warcraft isn't addictive" in itself is true, but then heroin isn't addictive either, the mix of the above and people may lead to addiction. WoW has several mechanics with the intent to keep people playing, why do you think getting to level 2 takes 2 minutes? It's all about how people respond to rewards.
I'm not saying the intent is to get people hooked forever but the whole genre is built around mechanics intended to compulse the player into getting that next level, or that next item. It's all about giving people rewards for their effort that they don't get elsewhere and then scaling the difficulty of attaining those rewards up with time as people become invested in their character. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but addiction is a very likely side effect of such mechanics.
The difference between obsession and addiction is often semantic but your definition of addiction would mean very few behaviours currently deemed addictive would actually be so.
It's helped me for the most part because everybody here at MCAD fucking does drugs, smokes, and drinks. Everyone.
I honestly think I'm one of 5 people that doesn't do any of those things. So when my two roommates (who, for the record, are great guys) go out and party, I stay in my apartment playing WoW hanging out with my guild and such. It's just another form of social interaction, albeit I don't have to get wasted to have fun.
That said there have been a couple occasions where I didn't go to one of my classes so I could play WoW (or just sleep :P).
Part of the issue with art school is, it's not like I can come back to my apartment after classes, do my homework, and then mess around. Since this is an art school, we don't get papers we have to type, or tests we have to study for. We get massive projects that take 3-15 hours each to complete on average. And when you have 3-4 classes that give out assignments like that on a regular basis, it's extremely time consuming. Luckily for me I'm a pro speed-artist. I can draw things relatively quickly, so "cramming" certain projects is doable, but definitely not preferable.
And you can ask almost any student here, after 5-hour long studio classes (of which each student has about three a week) the last thing you want to do after getting back home at 6 in the afternoon is more work.
The obvious thing is if I wasn't playing WoW chances are I'd be spending a lot more time reading books or working on my art, but I've been playing it for three years straight and not even college has phased my interest in playing the game.
But believe me, I am well aware of where my priorities are. I'm paying about $36,000 a year to go to this school, so fucking up is the last thing on my mind. I haven't lost site of what's important, not at all. It's just that WoW is a great escape from all the work I have to do, I just occasionally take advantage of it more than I should
I went to college for a year and a half, all while playing WoW on a regular basis and ended up dropping out for reasons not relevant to WoW in any way. During my first month in college I was a pretty well-liked guy, went to a few parties, dug the whole social scene, and very quickly realized I would need a job to support my social habits.
I then began to weigh my options:
- Be a WoW nerd again (I played during high school, quit a few months before graduation and bummed around during the summer, working odd jobs and such), not have to seek serious employment, still have a pseudo-social life, and save a bunch of cash
or
- get a job, get a car, have to toss up for booze, have to fund a potential relationship... etc.
It basically came down to: I was probably going to blow off school and being a firm believer in the 80/20 rule, regardless of which path I chose, school was going to be coasted through. Based on the fact I've never been a socialite, have yet to seek any kind of meaningful relationship, or like to spend cash on stuff I can't get any kind of return on my investment on, I went with the lesser of two evils.
Getting a job, then a car... and having to fund for a potential relationship... Or play a video game. Such a tough choice.
So I guess it was half-and-half hanging out with friends and playing WoW that caused me to skip class. Other than that, I guess I tend to check WoW forums (and these boards) during math too often because goddamn we don't need to do twelve separate examples to get people to understand one concept what is wrong with people.