On the quest to be entertained, one may stumble upon the holy grail of entertainment. What, for $15 a month, could provide endless time-filling occupation better than World of Warcraft? Nothing, I say. I know of which I speak because I have been addicted to WoW, as they call it, on and off for over 4 years. My addiction has seen many attempts to quit, often on the heels of some disappointing drama. Somehow, I keep coming back to its simplistic offer of brainless boredom salvation. I've recently called it quits for the fifth time, once again hoping that this will be the time that sticks. I wrote a similar article for my forth attempt, but even that proved futile in my resistance.
For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft is an online multiplayer role-playing game where players control customized characters in a fantastic 3-dimensional world that covers roughly the same area as the state of Rhode Island. Players are compelled to work their characters up to a maximum level of 80, but the real game doesn't start until you do. At the maximum level, a player equal to those around them must go to various lengths to acquire weapons and armor that will set them apart from the rest and give them an advantage against others.
My previous reasons for quitting the game were simple enough; it was taking up too much of my time. Nothing I did in the game amounted to anything in my real life. I was foregoing parts of my social and professional life to play the game. All of that holds true this time, too. What is the draw, then? The game can't be just a time sink for someone to just throw their life into it without some feeling of satisfaction. Let me explain.
WoW is a game of personal and group investment. Players are encouraged to seek out each other and band together to form large teams. These teams act as support systems, guilt trips, social circles and, most of all, binding obligations. The average player will find themselves involved in a guild of 30+ people who regularly play together to accomplish some goal with the lure of better equipment and social prestige. There are some who play solo, or in smaller groups, but there is always something for them to accomplish, no matter how large or small the scope of their involvement is.
The most accurate description of the game that I have heard is the analogy of a dollar auction. In a dollar auction, you are obligated to pay for your bid, even if you don't win. The only problem is that in this auction, you're bidding against the bank. Every action you do adds value to your play experience, and if you were to walk away, everything you've done will have gone to waste. For players engrossed in a large guild, their responsibility to their role and their obligation to their fellow players acts as a solid grip on their conscience. This is the situation I found myself in, time and time again.
This last time around was different. I had never been more involved in the game before. I was the leader of a guild. Not just any guild, but one that consciously worked to be one of the best. I played the game with a goal and was driven to constant investment of time and thought. Three to four nights a week, I scheduled events called raids where I organized 25 players together and coached them through dungeons that required strategies and skill. Our goal was to prove that we were the best guild at doing this and this took a lot of work.
Raiding was a lot more than 3 nights a week. It was research on strategies. It was practice beforehand. It was gathering materials necessary for all the supplies that would be used while raiding. It was managing of 25 players and their personal schedules. It was recruitment and public relations. For every 3-hour raid night that I was involved in, I spent another 6 hours of preparation. I also had immeasurable emotional investment in the success of the raid that I was leading.
I've known plenty of people who can look at WoW and say they don't see how people can get so involved, but this is only because they haven't given a single minute to the game. Investment is the key here, as commitment is not possible without the feeling that a little bit of you belongs to something. Once you give a little of yourself up, it snowballs into a part of your life that balloons within your cramped schedule and manages to push things out of the way.
In comparison with the other times that I have gotten involved in WoW, I felt like this last time was more controlled at first. I did not give the game any more time or effort than it deserved and I maintained a social life in spite of any commitment within the game. That all changed when I was presented with the opportunity to create and run a raiding guild. This had always been a secret desire of mine because I knew how to do two things well; play my character and lead people. This was my opportunity to show my skill at both. I dove into it with enthusiasm.
At this time, I did not have a job. I had been a victim of the current recession and my schedule was wide open. Seeking occupation for the many free hours that I now had, the investment needed to head such an operation was an easy reality. I took to it with passion and fervor. There were moments when I felt like I could have been using my time more wisely; like generating some cash while I didn't have a job. I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind while I focused on the more immediate and pressing issue of raid planning. A couple months into it, I could have claimed my guild to be a success, but it was by no means in cruise control. It took constant attention to keep players happy, egos in check and the roster full. My job search suffered because of this.
What makes someone invest so much time into a game? For me, as I've stated, it was to exercise my abilities as a player and a leader. I've always been convinced that leading people is what I was born to do, so I jump at any opportunity I get to do so. I saw it as both a chance to prove myself and a way to practice what I hoped to do some day in my actual life. I suppose it is best to get the kinks out in an environment where there is no accountability. Accountability, it seems, is what ultimately drove me to quit this last time.
Quitting takes an intervention of some sort. For me, its usually from my own conscience. The guilt of playing builds up with all of the reasons why you should quit, but they are pushing against all of the reasons why you have to keep playing. It usually takes one big push... a happening that shakes your grounding in the game enough to dislodge your imaginary investment from its mooring. The motivation for my severance came in the form of a recurring argument. Arguments in the game always shake things up because they snap people out of the comfortable trance of mindless entertainment and make them rethink why they are playing.
When you put so much effort into something, you hope for a couple of things. The first of which is success, which we had. The second thing is respect, which is a nebulous concept in a world of anonymity. When held to the fire, I realized that in a game where accountability could be erased by typing a few commands, using my brand of passion and sacrifice was like feeding caviar to your cat. Vague, I know, but it doesn't matter what happened. All that matters is that I have quit and I am now using what I learned to help my life in areas that actually matter.
Does anyone want my account?
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