wow... i'm confused about WOW - Page 3

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)