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Disclaimer: Oh and if youre one of those rare 2-3% whos got a top arena team or something of the like and you're currently being sponsored and making a living off it more power to you. This does not apply to you.
Clearing up some misunderstanding I've played WoW and plan to play it when the expansion comes out, because I enjoy the game as well as the community but I'm going to make damn sure that I don't confuse my priorities when I start getting into raiding etc.
![[image loading]](http://media.strategywiki.org/images/thumb/1/14/WoW_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King_box.jpg/250px-WoW_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King_box.jpg) If it bothers you that much then just quit already
Justifiable Nerdrage
Bear with me as I just got through reading another 'oh noes I'm addicted to WoW thread', honestly this is just a test of self control. If anyone accuses me of being addicted to something I immediatley ask myself is it something I can just drop and forget about. The real issue with WoW isn't even the game, its how it forces you into a community where you are 'needed' something that is a weakness and a strength on the human psyche.
Aside from the standard reporduction and survival, a great portion of people growing up have a wanting to be useful to someone, a form of recognition. WoW offers that to the most insignificant person not to mention so LITTLE work is require to achieve it, you could be needed as many as 50 people if you're the best geared for progression.
This then skews your priorities, you judge these people as more important to family or friends you live and interact with(hopefully) on a daily basis. Most of the time the people who want you to stop playing are people you had a bad relationship to begin with stemming from the same problem which WoW is solving, a 'place to belong' so to speak.
WoW in itself is a food for the neverending desire to be 'wanted' or 'needed' by someone, whether they be a small insignificant person or a whole damn lot of people, argue as much as you like when you have people cheering you on for accomplishments that take absolutley nothing. THEN compare the amount of thankless work it is required to acheve just about anything in society. Even then you can go unnnoticed unless you do something AMAZING, it's completly understandable why people would choose to play WoW over anything else.
You still have remind yourself that as good as this feels now it isn't going to mean shit later. Oh so you helped them out on a server first and your name is posted on some website with gold trimmings and little cherubs holding your name on a banner made in your glory. That isn't redeemable for a food stamp, you've got a frost drake for doing all the heroic achievements in ICC25man, but that thing isn't going to get you to a job interview. Whenever I heard any lines like that, pointing out to me just how useless it was all those little achievemnts I'd get, or epics I'd found, it pissed me off. It's even more infuriating when you KNOW its true, and yet you keeep doing it.
In short, the game is designed so well that people can get the recognition they desire with the most minimum effort. Those are the people who are most susceptible to addiction, the ones who have had a history of being outshined, or just going unnoticed for the greater portion of their life. (I am guilty of this)
+ Show Spoiler [mini testimony] +
Almost a month ago I was apart of TL's WoW guild, as well as an arena partner to ToT)Midian. During that time I was under a terrible delusion that nothing could be accomplished without me. This comes back from when I used to idolize ToT in my Brood War days, and my little fanboy self who had remained buried cries out to me 'OH LOOK SOMEONE IMPORTANT NEEDS YOU, THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT THING RIGHT NOW'. I would be lieing if I didn't say that I was ashamed of those delusions, but I have to say I felt a lot better realizing exactly what was keeping me held down when playing. I wanted to truly understand what was it that made it so hard to quit. Of course this isn't the same case for everyone but the main point still holds true, whether its a delusion or reality that people are relying on you.
 
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Ya, I raided pretty hardcore in BC, came back after quitting and got above 2200+ in arena in WotLK with terrible gear then quit again. It really does take little effort (but normally a lot of time) to be important. And honestly, so many people have huge egos even when they have really been carried by their guild/partners. I'm sure raiders know of people in their guilds that always seem to fuck up yet have awesome gear. Personally, the game turned more into a task or job I had to do and I stopped having any fun, despite having a lot of friends who played it. I still laugh at experiences I had with guildmates but they were more about just talking with people than the actual game. The game just got incredibly boring by the time BC was coming to the end (I started playing WoW around the release of BC) and I only lasted around 2 months in WotLK in my comeback from quitting. At least now I have absolutely no want to play WoW ever again lol.
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On June 22 2010 17:36 jodogohoo wrote:
1. i agree with you, i fucking hate wow, i hate its players, wow is fucking for retards
2. disregard #1
3. wow makes people happy, but it also turns them into retards, not all of them, but if your playing a computer game that takes no skill 8 hours a day, CAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO WASTE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION, then your not spending that time doing other shit.
4. BUT, bottom line is, wow makes people happy, what the fuck is wrong with making people happy? yeah. exactly.
Don't hate the game hate the player yo.
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i just realized i have reading comprehension fail
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Melbourne5338 Posts
why aren't you on irc anymore. i miss ethnic diversity and watermelon tuesdays.
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I don't play WoW but when some1 showed me that video of Frankie's wow acct getting hacked I felt so bad for that guy. 
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I've played WoW since its original release with 1-2 month breaks here and there. I quit around 5 months back because i no longer had the time to support playing it. Before that i spent most my time hard core raiding.
I can really see the point your making about being needed because i came into a similar situation where my guild started relying on a very small group of people(me included) to tow a a very large group of people forward. And it really did become an issue of self control where none of us wanted to start sacrificing time spend on friends or family in order to play because there were others relying on them. Often forcing tough choices on how to spend your time.
Though i have to say its not all down to being needed or not. If you know your own limits its perfectly fine to spend alot of time on any game. Most games wont land you a job or a relationship or anything like that but you play for fun in the end. So long as you dont start sacrificing your personal life its perfectly fine to have fun with games.
Ill never look back on any of my WoW time or game time in general and think "Jeez i wasted so much time i couldve spent on studie/work/friends/whatever" because i never sacrificed anything in order to play. Sure ive replanned things around raids a few times but i never came to point that i canceled anything in my social life in order to raid. Thats probebly also why i can resume playing when Cataclysm is released and i have a little more free time on my hands.
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the game is designed so well that people can get the recognition they desire with the most minimum effort.
so true. what so funny is that people take so much prides in their meaningless achievements that they look down and belittle other players with lesser achievements. I raided 40nax back in the day and killed kt before BC came out. After i quit raiding and joined a different server to play casually with IRL friend. the same people that i had been raiding with for 4 years started badmouthing me to my new server.In short, WoW player are really mean asshole.
nice blog i agree with most of it.
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Netherlands19129 Posts
Mono . We miss u on IRC and op IRC bro! Get back to us! Good read though XD. Hope you're ok and doing great!
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On June 22 2010 17:30 Monokeros wrote:
You still have remind yourself that as good as this feels now it isn't going to mean shit later.
Unfortunately that applies to life in general does it not?
If people seriously enjoy WoW I don't see why they shouldn't play it. Although it may not be the greatest act of aid to humanity, it certainly beats a lot of negative things you could be doing.
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Yeah, it's not like knitting or playing golf or whatever contributes so much more to society. As long as you can let go when you need to there's nothing wrong with WoW.
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I used to play, but it severely affected my social/school life, so much so that I was BSing people I knew to stay home and raid rather than hang out. Eventually I got so super busy at school, I just stopped playing. I renewed my account for a couple of months after that, but hardly played, so I decided to just not renew. I picked up WotLK and played till I got 1 80, then decided that it was too easy and also that I was too far behind to fully enjoy the raiding scene (which is what I liked about the game).
WoW is easy to quit. Just focus on RL, and it solves the problem for you.
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Wow I skipped the first part of your post.
Hell yeah man!
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Ever since they introduced arenas and improved PvP rewards I've never had any trouble maintaining top or near-top gear on an 1-3 hours a week played purely for fun. I'm happy to say I can enjoy WoW intermittently like any other game. The only difference is WoW can cost me money even if I'm not playing, so I have to intentionally choose to stop playing for a month or two when I'm getting tired of PvPing.
The "needed" thing is totally accurate though. I always felt guilty ditching a raid because our guild had a really small roster.
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Once the servers are back online I'm gonna go knock out all the Midsummer achievements and get my purple protodrake.
There is also a new patch released today with new raid content (along with some limited features of Battle.net, namely real-id). You guys should probably log back in and check it out!
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I knew a kid who would stay home all day and play WoW. We tried to get him to come outside, but he would answer the door in his underwear or something and say he was "busy".
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wow i've never thought of it this way thank you for your highly original revelation of a post, the content of which hasn't been said 50000 times before in the exact same way
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On June 23 2010 05:42 xLethargicax wrote:
Wow I skipped the first part of your post.
Hell yeah man!
Glad to know I'm not alone :D
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WoW was the first game I ever felt like I was wasting my time truly, when I couldn't ditch a raid but didn't get anything out of it and had to wait until next one to get my shit, and when u ditch ppl just bitch hardcore so not worth it. Maybe one day when ill have time to waste and not feel guilty about it^^
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I just don't like how the each server is 'run' by a group of guilds who think they're gods gift to video games. Me and some friends just decided to get server first Malygos(10) and Naxx(10) on a whim when WOTLK was released. Which we did, on one of the most popular oceanic servers. Now i come back a year later and I can't even get into a malygos run because my GS is too low, and the only way to increase my GS is to run some 25 mans, which i can't get into because my GS is too low.
And my main issue is the same people kicking me out of icc(25) runs because my GS is too low are the same people i was kicking out of my EoE(25) runs because they were just bad at the game, I didn't care if people were wearing greens and blues, i was concerned if they didn't know what a rotation was or of they stood in the flames.
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This post is so true... I haven't played WoW since the vanilla days back when 60 was the level cap, and it has really changed into something that purposely tries to get you hooked. I have a friend who is addicted to the game, other friends and I were hanging out with him tonight when he suddenly had to go because he didn't want to miss his guild's raid. We couldn't convince him to stay and go out with us, but eventually he came back because he couldn't log on for some reason.
Anyway, he had fun hanging out but we're trying to get him a hobby to keep him away from WoW. Anyone have some success stories?
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On June 23 2010 17:07 c.Deadly wrote:
This post is so true... I haven't played WoW since the vanilla days back when 60 was the level cap, and it has really changed into something that purposely tries to get you hooked. I have a friend who is addicted to the game, other friends and I were hanging out with him tonight when he suddenly had to go because he didn't want to miss his guild's raid. We couldn't convince him to stay and go out with us, but eventually he came back because he couldn't log on for some reason.
Anyway, he had fun hanging out but we're trying to get him a hobby to keep him away from WoW. Anyone have some success stories?
Yeah here's my story. I played WoW, my semester GPA then dropped to 2.9, I quit.
Happy ending.
In all seriousness though it was a fun game, I played with my roommate, a couple friends from his hometown, and we just had fun playing. Used vent, dicked around alot, failed hard at 5's, but it was awesome doing it. One time 4 of us had died in a 5v5, and our last remaining friend happened to kill one of their guys, and he starts yelling on vent "WE MIGHT GOT THIS." Probably one of the funniest things I've ever heard.
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WoW was nice before WOTLK, it was secluded to whomever you played with, but the problem is that players started to leave. Sadly, those were the players that had played back in MC, you know, when the game didn't play for you.
Now what happens, there's a ton of new players that are the core basis of population. The hardest raid they had ever done pre-wotlk was typically karazhan when TK and BT was out, and when sunwell came out, those same players in BC finally started to do Mag/Gruul.
That's all fine, that niche happens often, but with the random dungeon group slammed in with a bunch of more or less 'required' daily's to be hardcore (when ICC launched you did those random heroics for your two frost badges, which do add up,) and when you queued with less than 5 people, the random person you got was typically a pile of complete trash.
Shortly after, people get bored towards the expansion and things start to tilt apart just like any other game. People are waiting for new content, they grow tired of the issues in the last iteration, etc.
Well this is when the bad really starts to shine, how so you ask? Oh ho. Let me tell you!
- The game is based on an extremely overblown achievement system, the casual player won't give a crap, but those nerd points are highly valued by some of the hardcore players.
- The arena system is just quite frankly terrible. I've played at the 2350s during WOTLK on my Resto druid... p.s. it wasn't the first season of the expansion. It always seems the mid-range seasons have the biggest variety in team types, before and after you see an exclusive FOTM comp shop of the good teams at the top, and the good teams with the good players and the very top, and below both are the good players with bad comps. That sucks ass. In DaoC you had to follow an archetype to compete in 8v8, but at least it didn't require a particular class, just a particular archetype and different classes could compete as long as they met the requirement.
- The random daily heroic, if you aren't a healer or a tank in your hardcore guild, there's a good chance that you aren't going to always have a tank or healer at your disposal. Well, due to the population of the game, you will be waiting in queue for some time to get your hands on a group. There's an even better chance that when you do get into that group you will be surrounded with terrible players. It's just fact. 11 Million people play this game, I honestly didn't realize how fucking awful 10.5 million of them were until this whole 'random heroic' business started. People with huge gear scores struggling to pull 4K DPS. It blows my mind.
- It's okay if you can't do it yourself, we can buff the whole raid. Starting yesterday, when you walk into ICC there is a zonewide buff for your entire raid group that does the following:
*Increased health by 25%
*Increased healing taken and absorption effects by 25%
 amage done increased by 25%
Add that in with an already mediocre dungeon except 1 boss for sure, maybe 2 on hardmode (See Hard Mode Arthas,) and you have yourself a pretty sweet game that used to make people cry in the early tier of dungeons (Remember Vashj in SSC, or the Archimonde DPS check, how about Alar or the KaelThas fight?) in the first expansion, and turn it into a complete mound of thick goo that everyone can take a straw to and get some food for themselves.
It's really such a shame to see what happened to the game happen, but that's just how business works...
- Everyone sees something really hard done on X
- People try and fail to do X
- Business sees people trying to do X to be cool and have fun
- Business makes X easier
- Everyone is now able to perform X
- Business makes more money, population is happy with their performance, the two continue to grow side by side
^ That is the reason you see dungeons nerfed to hell so everyone can tiptoe through content at one point in time.
I but 99.99999999% of the wow players that even go to TL never did Firefighter Hardmode pre-nerf in Mim's room (press dat red button yo!,) but I can bet that at least 75% of the people that will read this thread have done it eventually. Try to compare the two feats, during it's original conception it was nearly impossible, now a days... meh.. everyone has gear from two tiers later in the expansion and the fight was nerfed into the ground.
/rant.
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Interesting, it's something I've thought of, but never actually heard anyone flat out state that as their reason for liking WoW.
IMO it is a solid, possibly great game(relative standards) that has succeeded beyond it's design merits, probably since it has social/psychological factors such as the one you've mentioned.
To me, the allure of an mmo has been the persistence of your character and the availability of people. Also mmo's are a good time filler since there's always little things to do. Good for when youre too tired to do anything physical/mentally taxing or you're depressed etc lol
Anyway, the title made me think of something else. Expecting some big posts from wow players arguing with each other on the difficulty of current and past versions, and bragging raid accomplishments. This happens in all of these threads. :D
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On June 24 2010 00:25 ironchef wrote:
Anyway, the title made me think of something else. Expecting some big posts from wow players arguing with each other on the difficulty of current and past versions, and bragging raid accomplishments. This happens in all of these threads. :D
That's pretty funny, I don't think there's any point to really doing that anymore. Even if something was done previously and someone considers themselves better than player x, at the end of the day everyone will eventually kill that boss, regardless of how tough it was, and it really doesn't matter at all.
See the end of my post above yours, same concept. Doesn't matter, have fun, it is what it is.
Edit: I lied, guild recruitment actually does look at the kill dates for high end guilds, that's about it. But typically meters are more important.
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Raided in a tier 1 guild from MC through sunwell. Placed top 10 in every bracket most seasons. Had damn near every item useful item in the game at 70 (illidan mace, memento + skull(LOL), 8/8 t6 all specs, etc) and didn't sell because I'm an idiot. My account was worth so god damn much at one point it was literally the perfect druid there was no item I needed lol.
God I wish I sold....
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EPT
