Our guild, Time Well Wasted on Rexxar, is going through a bit of a rough patch. First some members broke off to form their own guild. Then some of the members got bored with doing dailies over and over for badges and either quit playing World of Warcraft or decided to take a break.
All this diminished our ranks, making raiding harder. We had been raiding Ice Crown Citadel two nights a week and we were making progress. We had the first four bosses down pat and were making progress on the fifth. But the loss of some of our regulars meant we can’t raid as often and when we do we aren’t as successful. This in turn (along with other things) caused a number of members to join raiding guilds. The end result is we don’t raid as much as a guild now. But hey, I like the guild and I am sticking with it. I don’t mind pugging an Ice Crown raid or two a week. The guild will build itself up again.
A couple of our the players who have left for raiding guilds have returned. I asked why and they explained that they just didn’t have time to raid three nights a week, three hours a night. I totally understand. My wife and agents would not be happy campers if I spent that much time a night playing WoW. But boy I would have so doing that if WoW had been around a few decades ago (yikes) when I was in college.
I am pretty sure that if WoW was around back in my college days I would have had five or six level 80 characters, each of them geared to the hilt. I would already be all the way through Ice Crown Citadel and I would be whining that Blizzard is too slow with new content. I would have been a much better WoW player than I am now (I am average at best). At least in my case I am actually glad they didn’t have WoW back then. Playing space invaders, fooseball, dungeons and dragons and pinball was bad enough. Back then I wouldn’t have had the maturity to walk away from the computer. Heck, it’s hard enough now! But now I do know there is real life work to be done that must be finished first before I can reward myself with WoW. As fun as WoW can be, it’s still not as fun as hanging out with my wife, son and friends. Real life has to trump game life. I see that clearly now. Not sure younger me would have.
If WoW was around in my younger days I’m not sure I would be where I am today. I like to think I would be, but I was a really shy guy my early years in college. Sure, I played a lot of video games and role playing games back in the day but in doing so I was usually in a game room or a dorm room filled with people. I actually learned to interact with people through these games. They helped me break my shyness. If I could have sat in my room playing with virtual friends over a computer things might have been different. I like to think I would have at least got bored with WoW after a while and ventured out into the real world. Would I still have played baseball and done karate? I hope! Hmm, would I have settled for being average at baseball and karate when I could have been great at WoW? I guess I’ll never know. (Though I am certain the ladies would have been more impressed by an average ball player than a great WoWer. So yeah, I would have walked away. I think.)
The good thing: WoW wasn’t around when I was younger so the point is moot. I was able to mentally grow and mature (mostly) to the point where I can walk away from WoW when I need to. For those of you who may be a little younger, remember to turn off the computer and get some real life in. The opposite sex is far more impressed by real life than WoW…I think.
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Interesting article. Being only a wee lad of 19 I played WoW for a while back when I was at high school, for me WoW was fun for maybe about a year then it did as you say become boring but the problem is you don’t stop playing at that point and it did quite frankly ruin my AS Level results.
Fortunately I had the common sense to not only cancel my subscription I locked out the account and binned the disks. As a result I achieved success in what I wanted to do with my life (at least i’d like to think so) but other people who I played with on WoW back then are still playing and haven’t done well at all with many being unemployed with others unqualified to boot. I’m not sure who I feel worse for: the ones who perhaps weren’t great academics anyway or those who did get success and wasted it all on a game.