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my experience
In high school, i was under close supervision by my parent and sibling so I always was on task with homework and work etc etc. In fact, I was the valedictorian of my class.
Then, when I started college, i had to live on campus (since it several hours away from my home). I started my first MMO and after that I was addicted. I didn't go to class nor did i even do any homework/work. I prob play from 7 AM to 5 AM on some days. For four years, I screw up my college life doing this.
At the end of my fourth year, I met up with my high school friends, who all graduate with a degree in 4 years. I felt like a big failure... after that I quit MMO all together.
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On August 08 2011 05:09 TerraTron wrote:I'm just addicted to computers, it doesn't matter what I play, I just can't get off the computer, aka just go home and stay on comp all day long. WoW is the game I playED because most MMO's actually put me to sleep faster than a dedicated pill. I could stay on the computer 8 hours a day doing nothing but reading forums (A lot of Teamliquid...  )
Same here.
Sad thing : I just moved so I spent a few days without internet. I still just "browsed" my computer endlessly for 2 days after I was done setting up my new place...
I enjoy wasting time more than actually playing games I think.
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My reasoning for playing back then was to help me relax in the evenings. I stopped playing FPS games because the adrenaline would keep me up at night so WoW was a good fit. I regret playing it too much because I realized that's all I did for fun. I realized I missed out on a lot of other things I could've done. There were movies I wanted to see... but never saw them. Missed out on a ton of OTHER video games. I tunnel visioned onto WoW. Nothing wrong with that, just not inline with my goal of keeping my recreational activities a bit more varied.
As with a lot of other posts like this, it always seems to people move from one time waster to the next. Don't force yourself to do something because it makes you feel more "productive."
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Why QQ about it?
I played WoW from day 1 till i killed the Lich King, quit after and started SC2.
I played 8-10(12)hrs a day, went to raids (was in 1 of top 3 guilds on my realm)3-5 days a week, pvp'd allot..
In that time i got married and did all the things "normal" people do.
If u are a gamer- u'r a gamer.
Pople around you have to exept it, they have to love you for what u are not what u can become.
Btw i'm 30, and it's been goingong on for a while now(gaming), u can't change what/who you are.
If u think people that said u played allot were right, make up for the time u spent away from them, hang out with them, or go do what u think u should have done back when u played WoW.
Now!
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Congrats on being super healthy now, bro. 40 lbs and a 15km is no small feat! I guess we have to learn from our mistakes, try not to repeat them, etc.
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Man... in WoW vanilla I played kinda casually, had some friends in good guilds so I kind of came along for runs of BWL, MC, AQ (if you can call our attempts at AQ 'runs').. in TBC I got more serious, raiding 4 days a week for 4 hours a night, got the realm firsts for literally every single raid, and then 'quit' shortly after clearing Plateau ... In WotLK I came back with the desire to not get hooked on raiding so I became a PvPer... I then proceeded to get 2.7k as LSD (lol) and got hooked again. About a year ago I actually quit for good and started playing SC2 and LoL!
I'm glad to see other people are also breaking free!
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Glad you broke out of it. I played for a long time too. Never enough to hurt me or anything. But when i look back at my WoW playing i just think of how much fun it was raiding and pvp'ing with all my friends, many who i went to high school with. Even if i spent a lot of time playing i spent a lot of time with them and i never lost interest in playing sports or hanging out.
Hopefully anyone who has a problem like this can snap out of it or get help
Glad you got through it bud 
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WoW is just the new thing to blame the problems on. The root of the problem with kids failing school and not being social is obviously sandwiches, and rock music.
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I played a lot of WoW, maybe even more than you. I had at least a year of ingame time (that is; /played >365 days) but I don't really regret it. It was what I did with my free time during high school, like all my friends, and I had a blast.
Eventually, with the newer expansions the game got boring. It probably wasn't even the expansions so much as just playing the game to the very limit. So I stopped, and now I play SC2. Probably not as much, but I play a lot. It's cool though, because if there's one thing I've realized it is that I enjoy doing it. And as long as that holds true, I'll still be gaming.
I guess my point is that there isn't really any reasons to hold so tightly to regrets. You played the game for a reason, you enjoyed it. Or am I completely wrong in that? Because I know I enjoyed it, and I've made friends through that game that I'll probably always keep in touch with.
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yeah. the toughest part about getting over an addiction is when you finally get rid of it but you are left with so much more time on your hands that you eventually go back to playing because you can't find something better to do.
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something similar happened to me in middle school with maplestory, though not to such a huge extent. when i quit i was like .....wow I have so much time
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Same thing with me, I got out after a while though.
Which can't be said about my friend, she still plays way more than what a normal person should, and she dropped out of high school to play the game more.
At the same time on the virtue of being an attractive girl gamer she gets tons of views on her justin.tv stream and makes just barely enough to live lol.
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This happened to a lot of people and honestly you're nothing special, especially because you were in high school at the time.
I was just as hooked but when I look back on it I don't really care / wouldn't have done it differently. What else was I going to do while chained to high school? It's not like I had anything else going on in life or could up and leave or something. I passed all my courses and that's all that really mattered.
Anyone who was 20+ and got hooked in the same way had it MUCH worse.
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I have 100 days playing WoW. (2400 hours)
I started at the begining of TBC. I actually really enjoyed myself playing the game, and the way my game skills improved was amazing. I learned to keybind after playing for almost a year of clicking, I learned how to not move when the boss used flame wreath, how to quickly make decisions, and maybe even basic economics. I know most people wouldn't consider WoW as a game that teaches basic skills, but I was dumb as shit when it came to teamwork, coordination, and playing games in general. This has helped me play SC2 and will help me play any other game that comes around.
There are times when I wasn't having fun and just kept playing. Those are the ones that I somewhat regret. Like the OP, I had free time and spent it sitting in Ironforge, mostly because I didn't know of many things I could do other than WoW.
And then there was the time when I spent my entire spring break trying to find the very rare spawning TLPD:
+ Show Spoiler +The "Time-Lost" Proto Drake, not the liquipedia ![[image loading]](http://static.wowhead.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/162534.jpg)
I was one of my guild's core raiders, their best mage/shaman. I started playing as a mage, but switched to a healing spec shaman towards the end of WoTLK because I was bored of raiding the same bosses for 2 months on a character I knew everything about (mage). Cataclysm rolls around, and I want to switch to my mage because I loved the class and, because of my huge amount of experience with it, I knew I could flawlessly do new content. AFTER I get to 85, my guildmaster, who is normally a great guy, told me I couldn't be in the guild if I wasn't healing. It was extremely lame and I quit soon after.
Cataclysm is a pretty boring expansion anyways from what I could see. People on any WoW forum seem to agree with me. I blame it on everything being too well designed; everything has a spot that is easy to find, blizzard is telling people where to do things (Everone is in Stormwind now as Ironforge is left to rot), getting into a dungeon is as easy as pressing a button. They even took out all of the bad talents. Players can't really make a bad talent build anymore. That is like removing all macro from SC2 build orders, so that players couldn't make mistakes.
I don't regret my playing WoW because I had a ton of fun. Even though it was 100 fucking days.
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http://wowdetox.com/
I would recommend everyone here to contribute and write their story down. If you quit, reflect back on the days you actually played and just spill your thoughts.
It felt good writing my story.
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I still have withdrawal symptoms about WoW. I can't even watch a youtube vid about it or see pictures without feeling the crave of raiding...
I spent so much money and time in that game (which I don't regret totally since I had loads of fun), but I wish I would have played a normal schedule and not be the GM/Raid Leader of a hardcore guild raiding everyday...
Still though, I did try out cataclysm and didn't have much fun the first 20 minutes so I uninstalled and have been free ever since
by the way, OP you played alliance, ewwwww!!
jk ^_^
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I can't help but get the impression that a lot of people are proud of being or having been addicted to WoW. Like this so called addiction is something cool and mature, and helped one grow as a person when getting closer to adulthood.
I don't get that impression from the OP though. Just throwing it out there because it's pretty standard for WoW players to look back and talk about how crazy they were playing so much, comparing stories about who was the worst. I doubt that it actually caused any significant trouble for most people and if there wasn't such a culture about calling it an addiction, people would look back at it in a more positive manner and not fret so much about it.
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If it's not WoW, it's always something else. I think what most people fail to realise is that you would probably just spend that time playing another game, or playing a sport, or reading a book, or watching TV, or sleeping, whatever. It doesn't matter what you do with your spare time, as long as you enjoy it.
I spent like 12 hours playing HoN on the weekend. It was a total blast. Pretty sure my life isn't ruined as a result.
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On August 08 2011 10:48 Dox wrote:
If it's not WoW, it's always something else. I think what most people fail to realise is that you would probably just spend that time playing another game, or playing a sport, or reading a book, or watching TV, or sleeping, whatever. It doesn't matter what you do with your spare time, as long as you enjoy it.
I spent like 12 hours playing HoN on the weekend. It was a total blast. Pretty sure my life isn't ruined as a result.
Except WoW eats up your all of your free time, and then spreads throughout your daily schedule like a fucking creep tumor to the point where it's real life shit that becomes free time. Extreme analogy, but this is actually true for many people, and me at one point of my life.
Quitting WoW leaves a giant void in your day and a huge problem is finding something to do. I agree with you about how most people would just spend their day doing nothing even if they quit WoW. My old friend for example quit the game and "got a life" and yet he still plays video games all day with no social life whatsoever.
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Heh, good to hear everything's good again, OP.
Played it myself for about a year, starting when the game was released. I was never obsessed with it at all, but a couple of friends I played with ended up being very much affected by the game. One of them even came to the point where he forced himself to destroy his computer in order to quit playing. My other friend went from being a healthy and fit guy to pretty much the complete opposite. Now, the former friend is doing very well, but I'm 99% sure the latter friend would've been doing so much better now had he not started playing WoW.
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EPT
