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Ok, sorry for that horrid title. It's a very bad pun.
So I'm wondering what exactly it is that draws so many people to become WOW addicts. How can logical, self-respecting people band together with other people and take pride and dignity in simply killing AI created stuff.
If I'm not mistaken most hardcore WOW'ers spend their time in guilds completing quests and doing instances (after playing WOW for a week I did finally learn what an instance was.)
I mean, during my 10 day free trial I enjoyed exploring and leveling up to level 20 (the max level allowed as trial) but I don't get what the draw is to band together and to just keep owning the new levels or w/e you wanna call them that blizz keeps creating to keep the WOW subscribers entertained.
Any current/past players or people who understand this want to offer their views? I mean there is the explanation that they are all huge losers who don't want to spend their time doing anything in real life so they spend it in a fantasy world. However, being a huge sc nerd myself and spending hours upon hours on this I don't claim the above reason to be why I play sc, so I don't want to jump to conclusions and label all avid WOW players as lifeless escapists (even if it's true!)
 
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
I mean I imagine it is fun to go around beating shit up in "epic" (i guess) fashion.
I think the feeling is similar to hack and slash games, like dynasty warriors where you go "OH MY GOD I AM SO GODLY I AM THE MAN"
There's a definite appeal to those kinds of games, and the variety of such sensation creating games has increased if anything over the years.
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It's a persistant RPG - you level your fictional character and make it stronger. It's like Diablo only in a persistant world. Proper question might be, why would anyone at all play games, when they could be out "saveing the real world".
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The desire to be of even higher level, and to get even better items.
Basically the same as with Diablo 2 but with much more players at the same time (so count in a "better social aspect" too).
And Blizzard knows that this is addictive for many players, so they always make sure there's a) a lot of items to find and that b) the good items are incredibly rare to find.
Then, players will do as much "grinding" or "$boss runs" as they have to just in order to get 1 slightly better item. When you do that, I'm not sure if that's really "enjoying the game" anymore.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
it seems to be a sick, sick pleasure.
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It can also be an escape from your shitty life. Which is ironic, because spending too much of your time playing WoW will make your life even shittier. So if you get addicted, you get addicted hardcore.
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Although, I haven't played WOW itself, I have played some other MMOs. It a vast and impressive world to explore. It also rewards you for playing it by "unlocking" more of the world by you getting more powerful and able to survive these new harsh areas. It rewards teamwork. The better items in the game can only be attained by working together on a large scale. It rewards networking and organization skills. You find people who are good at the game and can be coordinated to play at certain hours for a certain length of time. It will make your progression much faster and easier. You eventually gain regular WOW friends and that in itself will be a reason to log onto the game.
Why I think WOW can be a dangerous drug is how it is only fun to play it if you play a lot. If you only play in short bursts, 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there, the game is unplayable at higher levels. So you end up commiting hours at a time to maximize fun. You also end up sacrificing getting off when you really want to in order to help friends (and so they will do the same for you). Personally I decided it wasn't worth it, and that's why I no longer play anything in the MMO genre.
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Also, I was part of a team of students that researched on the MMO phenomena. And there is a lot of material out there about what makes people play. Something that was interesting was how many different ways people approached the MMO genre. Some people are very competitive and play it to become as powerful as possible. Others play it as a way to bond with friends. Some people simply play it to immerse themselves in the warcraft universe etc...
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You didn't explore shit from WoW by leveling up to 20, and be glad about that. Otherwise it may have sucked you in.
As many WoW players would say: "The game doesn't even start until you hit 60 (now 70 then 80), a.k.a. the level cap."
And there's truth in that statement, to a degree.
Just avoid it alltogether 
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
yar, I played the 10 day trial too. It was really fun while it lasted but I wouldn't pay so much money to play it. *shrug*
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I am proud to say I have no idea what the hell WoW is  
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Physician
United States4146 Posts
I got bored way before I ever gave it a chance. click click click.. same bullshit as diablo..
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This is a really long post, so I'm just going to put spoiler tags to avoid having people run into paragraphs of text.
+ Show Spoiler +After years and years of lurking on these forums, I think I have finally found a thread to make my first post in. (I'm really sorry for the long post, but WoW is something I am very passionate about)
To answer the first question, there isn't really such thing as a "WoW addiction", but rather a problem of really bad time management and setting priorities straight. That's about the gist of it, I wouldn't say it's a "drug" like so many people claim it to be (though, that's just my opinion on the "WoW addiction" thing).
For the next questions, a more general response: I used to play WoW, and a lot of it. The first time playing it was a wonderful experience, the world seemed so huge and absolutely fantastic and just drew me right in. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and before I knew it, I've been playing for close to a year and 6 months. Now the level cap was easy enough, getting from 1-70 was easy. Any player that truly knows the game will tell you that the real WoW starts at level 70. That's where all the bleeding edge raiding is done and PvP happens, if that's your thing.
I was one of the "bleeding edge raiders". (Raiding, if anyone is wondering, is pretty much going into a pre-generated dungeon with 24 other people (9 other people for the smaller ones) to take down bosses and most are reset on a weekly basis to give guilds a week's worth of possible raiding nights to finish the dungeon since they're so long). Now before the most recent summer, I was just kind of a casual raiding, playing whenever I could spare time. However, during the summer, that's when things REALLY kicked off. I got sick and tired and being in fairly newbish guilds and applied to a high end guild and was accepted. Now I went from raiding whenever I could spare time, to almost a job-like schedule of three hours a night, 5 days a week for the entire summer. And eventually, we were able to "beat" the game (as in, defeat the hardest boss).
To the topic at hand: Why the hell did I play so much? I'll be looking back on this way in the future and be thinking "God, I was a dumbass". I had to dig deep to find the answer, but I realized that I played because it made me feel like I was part of something greater than myself. Spending hours a week, not just for the benefit of myself, but for the benefit of my guild, for other people, a greater good. I felt like I was with a community, joined together with other people from around the U.S. (and a player from the U.K.) to overcome huge obstacles. I know you're probably thinking I'm an idiot for devoting huge amounts of time and effort to people on the internet, and that's okay, but being part of a raiding guild was such a great feeling to me. I was being completely unselfish and wanted to contribute to the "greater cause", even if it didn't really have bearing on my real life circumstances. Plus, it felt so good to take down a new boss encounter and celebrate with your guild mates.
People could say that why didn't you devote your time and effort then to a sports team or something. Well, sadly to admit, I guess I was a bit lazy. WoW was right there in front of me (and I'm not very good at sports anyways, just not naturally an athlete), and it was summer, so eh...
Furthermore, (yes, there is more, sorry) I also played because of the friends I made. I really enjoyed playing with the people in my guild and socializing (enjoyed just casually talking on ventrillo about anything and everything (though, you could do that IRL as well, but I'm a really shy person and don't make friends that easily in person...)).
Now with school and everything being pretty rough this year, I've decided to take a temporary hiatus from WoW. But, when things die down, I plan to join the game again.
*phew* That's just my (very long) two-cents, I hope it helped out in your search.
(Started typing at around XX:15, it's XX:54 now, lol)
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On November 28 2008 15:54 Jonoman92 wrote:
Ok, sorry for that horrid title. It's a very bad pun.
So I'm wondering what exactly it is that draws so many people to become WOW addicts. How can logical, self-respecting people band together with other people and take pride and dignity in simply killing AI created stuff.
If I'm not mistaken most hardcore WOW'ers spend their time in guilds completing quests and doing instances (after playing WOW for a week I did finally learn what an instance was.)
I mean, during my 10 day free trial I enjoyed exploring and leveling up to level 20 (the max level allowed as trial) but I don't get what the draw is to band together and to just keep owning the new levels or w/e you wanna call them that blizz keeps creating to keep the WOW subscribers entertained.
Any current/past players or people who understand this want to offer their views? I mean there is the explanation that they are all huge losers who don't want to spend their time doing anything in real life so they spend it in a fantasy world. However, being a huge sc nerd myself and spending hours upon hours on this I don't claim the above reason to be why I play sc, so I don't want to jump to conclusions and label all avid WOW players as lifeless escapists (even if it's true!)
ummm... WOW and SC are both games and they are fun to play. Some people prefer WOW over SC, just like some people prefer football over chess or whatever. It depends on weather you are into strategy or not...
if you are going to label WOW players "losers" for playing WOW, then your a loser also for playing SC all day. They are both computer games... your saying WOW players are not doing anything in real life... is playing SC doing something in real life?? LOL your logic is retarted.
btw I'm not a WOW player, your post just pisses me off... just because you don't like WOW you act like it's some huge mystery why other people play it and then label them losers??
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On November 28 2008 16:54 Humbug wrote:This is a really long post, so I'm just going to put spoiler tags to avoid having people run into paragraphs of text. + Show Spoiler +After years and years of lurking on these forums, I think I have finally found a thread to make my first post in. (I'm really sorry for the long post, but WoW is something I am very passionate about)
To answer the first question, there isn't really such thing as a "WoW addiction", but rather a problem of really bad time management and setting priorities straight. That's about the gist of it, I wouldn't say it's a "drug" like so many people claim it to be (though, that's just my opinion on the "WoW addiction" thing).
For the next questions, a more general response: I used to play WoW, and a lot of it. The first time playing it was a wonderful experience, the world seemed so huge and absolutely fantastic and just drew me right in. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and before I knew it, I've been playing for close to a year and 6 months. Now the level cap was easy enough, getting from 1-70 was easy. Any player that truly knows the game will tell you that the real WoW starts at level 70. That's where all the bleeding edge raiding is done and PvP happens, if that's your thing.
I was one of the "bleeding edge raiders". (Raiding, if anyone is wondering, is pretty much going into a pre-generated dungeon with 24 other people (9 other people for the smaller ones) to take down bosses and most are reset on a weekly basis to give guilds a week's worth of possible raiding nights to finish the dungeon since they're so long). Now before the most recent summer, I was just kind of a casual raiding, playing whenever I could spare time. However, during the summer, that's when things REALLY kicked off. I got sick and tired and being in fairly newbish guilds and applied to a high end guild and was accepted. Now I went from raiding whenever I could spare time, to almost a job-like schedule of three hours a night, 5 days a week for the entire summer. And eventually, we were able to "beat" the game (as in, defeat the hardest boss).
To the topic at hand: Why the hell did I play so much? I'll be looking back on this way in the future and be thinking "God, I was a dumbass". I had to dig deep to find the answer, but I realized that I played because it made me feel like I was part of something greater than myself. Spending hours a week, not just for the benefit of myself, but for the benefit of my guild, for other people, a greater good. I felt like I was with a community, joined together with other people from around the U.S. (and a player from the U.K.) to overcome huge obstacles. I know you're probably thinking I'm an idiot for devoting huge amounts of time and effort to people on the internet, and that's okay, but being part of a raiding guild was such a great feeling to me. I was being completely unselfish and wanted to contribute to the "greater cause", even if it didn't really have bearing on my real life circumstances. Plus, it felt so good to take down a new boss encounter and celebrate with your guild mates.
People could say that why didn't you devote your time and effort then to a sports team or something. Well, sadly to admit, I guess I was a bit lazy. WoW was right there in front of me (and I'm not very good at sports anyways, just not naturally an athlete), and it was summer, so eh...
Furthermore, (yes, there is more, sorry) I also played because of the friends I made. I really enjoyed playing with the people in my guild and socializing (enjoyed just casually talking on ventrillo about anything and everything (though, you could do that IRL as well, but I'm a really shy person and don't make friends that easily in person...)).
Now with school and everything being pretty rough this year, I've decided to take a temporary hiatus from WoW. But, when things die down, I plan to join the game again.
*phew* That's just my (very long) two-cents, I hope it helped out in your search.
(Started typing at around XX:15, it's XX:54 now, lol)
Pretty much this.
For me, it was and would still be if I logged in, such an amazing feeling of awe that comes over you, when you realise just how big the game is around you. For you to be able to explore everything, does quite literally takes months upon months. And the game has been made so beautifully that you sort of want to explore everything and experience everything.
Beating a computer in Starcraft, you feel no sense of real achievement, but in WoW it rewards you by making you stronger and giving you better equipment for doing so. Progression and self betterment (if that is a real word) is the drug that is WoW that keeps you wanting more, bigger, better.
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On November 28 2008 17:39 stk01001 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2008 15:54 Jonoman92 wrote:
Ok, sorry for that horrid title. It's a very bad pun.
So I'm wondering what exactly it is that draws so many people to become WOW addicts. How can logical, self-respecting people band together with other people and take pride and dignity in simply killing AI created stuff.
If I'm not mistaken most hardcore WOW'ers spend their time in guilds completing quests and doing instances (after playing WOW for a week I did finally learn what an instance was.)
I mean, during my 10 day free trial I enjoyed exploring and leveling up to level 20 (the max level allowed as trial) but I don't get what the draw is to band together and to just keep owning the new levels or w/e you wanna call them that blizz keeps creating to keep the WOW subscribers entertained.
Any current/past players or people who understand this want to offer their views? I mean there is the explanation that they are all huge losers who don't want to spend their time doing anything in real life so they spend it in a fantasy world. However, being a huge sc nerd myself and spending hours upon hours on this I don't claim the above reason to be why I play sc, so I don't want to jump to conclusions and label all avid WOW players as lifeless escapists (even if it's true!) ummm... WOW and SC are both games and they are fun to play. Some people prefer WOW over SC, just like some people prefer football over chess or whatever. It depends on weather you are into strategy or not... if you are going to label WOW players "losers" for playing WOW, then your a loser also for playing SC all day. They are both computer games... your saying WOW players are not doing anything in real life... is playing SC doing something in real life?? LOL your logic is retarted. btw I'm not a WOW player, your post just pisses me off... just because you don't like WOW you act like it's some huge mystery why other people play it and then label them losers??
they're very different games. i don't think i can describe it accurately here, but here's a shot. in sc, the game has a definite end point. most games do - chess, football whatever. from what i understand, WOW does not, you keep on leveling up, right? the problem is this - to get better at sc, football (anything within the first set of games), you have to orient your real life to getting better at that endpoint - there are various goals you can set "outside the game" so you can get at some discrete outcome (spending more time, learning whatever, etc). in WOW, you do as well, but because the game doesn't have an end, ultimately you can't compartmentalize goals without being "inside the game". the game is immersive enough to define and become the medium to carry out these goals.
the whammy is that it can become addictive because the game contains elements of real life - obtaining "items", beating up bad dudes (i.e. overcoming obstacles in life). it is much easier, i imagine, to also "level up" in WOW than to learn something in real life. there's an instant gratification aspect as well.
combine those two: the vague objective of the game, and the game as a proxy for "real life", and it becomes possible for someone to substitute the game for many aspects of real life and act upon it as if it were real.
by the way - you hear it in the news all the time, but i've known a few people who have become attached enough to the game that they have dropped out of college. one of them still doesn't have a job, just stays in and plays WOW all day. it is probably extreme, but not that rare - regardless of what somebody says about someone being a loser or not, it certainly is very sad to see someone unable to tell what they are doing to themselves.
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On November 28 2008 16:54 Humbug wrote:This is a really long post, so I'm just going to put spoiler tags to avoid having people run into paragraphs of text. + Show Spoiler +After years and years of lurking on these forums, I think I have finally found a thread to make my first post in. (I'm really sorry for the long post, but WoW is something I am very passionate about)
To answer the first question, there isn't really such thing as a "WoW addiction", but rather a problem of really bad time management and setting priorities straight. That's about the gist of it, I wouldn't say it's a "drug" like so many people claim it to be (though, that's just my opinion on the "WoW addiction" thing).
For the next questions, a more general response: I used to play WoW, and a lot of it. The first time playing it was a wonderful experience, the world seemed so huge and absolutely fantastic and just drew me right in. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and before I knew it, I've been playing for close to a year and 6 months. Now the level cap was easy enough, getting from 1-70 was easy. Any player that truly knows the game will tell you that the real WoW starts at level 70. That's where all the bleeding edge raiding is done and PvP happens, if that's your thing.
I was one of the "bleeding edge raiders". (Raiding, if anyone is wondering, is pretty much going into a pre-generated dungeon with 24 other people (9 other people for the smaller ones) to take down bosses and most are reset on a weekly basis to give guilds a week's worth of possible raiding nights to finish the dungeon since they're so long). Now before the most recent summer, I was just kind of a casual raiding, playing whenever I could spare time. However, during the summer, that's when things REALLY kicked off. I got sick and tired and being in fairly newbish guilds and applied to a high end guild and was accepted. Now I went from raiding whenever I could spare time, to almost a job-like schedule of three hours a night, 5 days a week for the entire summer. And eventually, we were able to "beat" the game (as in, defeat the hardest boss).
To the topic at hand: Why the hell did I play so much? I'll be looking back on this way in the future and be thinking "God, I was a dumbass". I had to dig deep to find the answer, but I realized that I played because it made me feel like I was part of something greater than myself. Spending hours a week, not just for the benefit of myself, but for the benefit of my guild, for other people, a greater good. I felt like I was with a community, joined together with other people from around the U.S. (and a player from the U.K.) to overcome huge obstacles. I know you're probably thinking I'm an idiot for devoting huge amounts of time and effort to people on the internet, and that's okay, but being part of a raiding guild was such a great feeling to me. I was being completely unselfish and wanted to contribute to the "greater cause", even if it didn't really have bearing on my real life circumstances. Plus, it felt so good to take down a new boss encounter and celebrate with your guild mates.
People could say that why didn't you devote your time and effort then to a sports team or something. Well, sadly to admit, I guess I was a bit lazy. WoW was right there in front of me (and I'm not very good at sports anyways, just not naturally an athlete), and it was summer, so eh...
Furthermore, (yes, there is more, sorry) I also played because of the friends I made. I really enjoyed playing with the people in my guild and socializing (enjoyed just casually talking on ventrillo about anything and everything (though, you could do that IRL as well, but I'm a really shy person and don't make friends that easily in person...)).
Now with school and everything being pretty rough this year, I've decided to take a temporary hiatus from WoW. But, when things die down, I plan to join the game again.
*phew* That's just my (very long) two-cents, I hope it helped out in your search.
(Started typing at around XX:15, it's XX:54 now, lol)
Ok I understand that the raiding and guild play was interesting, but what got you hooked originally? Like, what made you want to stick around until level 60 or 70? I played WoW until like level 15 and was bored of the world by then. Running from place to place tediously killing 10 or 15 of the same monster was extremely boring. Obviously there was more to explore, but I didn't feel like it was worth it to put in all that time to level up. So what was interesting in that period from 1-60(70)
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The original WoW was fun when I bought it 4-5 months before the expansion. Some friends of mine already played this before I have and thus I had the benefit of getting some help with this game.
To me, if you have no real life friends to play with, you will need a true boner for this game to enjoy it. But seriously, playing these types of games by yourself?
PvP was fun and more skill-based since getting epic gear was difficult back then. Low end epics also weren't always suited for PvP style so I always had a chance against weak raiders. PvE was also much more difficult in terms of Raiding from what I hear especially Naxxramas although I hardly raided past the first few raids (ZG, MC) in pick up games. The PvE Raids now I hear is a joke.. I was more of a dungeon person. The small dungeons were called instances ( 5 man) where me and my friends would try to figure out how to beat it sort of like a puzzle from the nooby ones to the more difficult ones. Many wipes but still.. good times. A lot of the pre expansion instances were really well designed in my opinion (brd)
I quit along with all my friends a month before the expansion. A few years later I leveled my friends 2ndary character from 60 to 70 to see how the expansion was like before helping him grind some honor through bgs/arena, etc and then quitting again, this time for good.
Everything made easier (getting good items, making money) basically for the not so bright masses while the people who valued the competitive parts of this game get hosed besides the not-so-competitive arena which they implemented. Everything also become normalized, horde and alliance specific classes given to both sides and stuff like that.
Oh yeah, they also nerfed undead shadow priests so that they no longer were one of the premier pvp classes
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as for the all WoW players are loner losers argument, more people around you play wow then you think. With these expansions coming out, WoW is truly a casual gamer's dream with the sheer easiness of making gold, getting "good" items, and other stuff. Plenty of people I know play WoW (casually or hardcore) and looking at them you wouldn't even expect them to be a gamer. They may want to play with real life friends or family and/or simply because it is an entertaining game. On the flip side some dudes on my dorm floor are hella obese and play WoW all day with their similarily obese girlfriends that also play WoW for 0420840824024082842 hours. For people like that, WoW is a sickness that needs to be cured to salvage what little soul is left in them.
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EPT
