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For 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, 4 weeks a month and 12 months a year I played the online sensation known as World of Warcraft. To say I was addicted to WOW would be the understatement of the century, no, more like the biggest understatement in the history of known existence, human or otherwise. It has stymied the educational aspirations of kids the world over, destroyed marriages and managed to commandeer my entire life since late 2007.
For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft is a video game, more specifically an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) and can only be played on a Mac or PC connected to the internet for a monthly fee. In short, you start the game as a level one character. You have no money and very little in the way of armor and weapons needed to advance your progression. By completing quests and slaying virtual creatures you gain experience. Accrue enough experience and you will “level”, going from a lowly level 1 character to a marginally better level 2. At the time of this writing the level “cap” is at 80, a number most gamers strive to achieve in as little time as possible. The vast majority of WOW’s best items can only be acquired by reaching this plateau.
I got into WOW a few days after Christmas of 2007. I knew it would be a very time consuming endeavor which was fine with me. I wanted to cover up a lot of the sadness I was experiencing at the time. I had spent the previous year in Los Angeles, CA trying to rekindle my love of music. A successful treatment of my depression had me feeling good about life and confident that I could move to this huge metropolis and find success. I had wild ambitions of starting the most kick ass rock and roll band ever. Dreams of playing at the Whiskey-A-Go Go, earning critical and commercial success, cavorting with groupies and . . . well, you get the idea.
It didn’t take long for these dreams to shatter when my best friend and primary musical collaborator (let’s call him “Al”) decided that he was going to ignore me, totally taking my friendship of 15 years for granted in the process. To this day I’m not sure why he shut me out like he did. An ironic twist of fate as Al was the biggest proponent of me moving to LA, which I had resisted for a few years. Things got even more complicated when my aunt passed away from complications of lung cancer shortly thereafter. I suffered a broken heart a few months later when I learned that a good friend of mine and his brother were shot and killed in front of their home in an act of unprovoked random gang violence. I would have attended his funeral had I the capacity to endure more sadness, which at the time, I did not.
I used to sit in my apartment staring at the walls with tears in my eyes, upset by the loss of my friends and family. My mother and I were at odds and my relationship with my college sweetheart had all but dissolved. I packed my bags and moved back to San Diego to lick my wounds, which by now had become gashes. These were the situations that have, and continue to cause me pain. I was able to mask a portion of that hurt by immersing myself in the World Of Warcraft. It was escapism in a box, a long stream of zeroes and ones that assisted me in my quest to shut out the real world and the anguish I was getting from it. A selfish way to block out the most heinous six months of my entire freaking life.
But what a relief it provided. Contrary to the chaos in my personal life the World of Warcraft offered me huge colorful world that I could control. Nobody gave me a hard time, and when I completed quests, I was rewarded. I could do as much or as little as I wanted. I could go fishing, explore winding caverns or just go to a major city and talk to a total stranger about the cool new sword I just got for slaying a dragon. I learned a trade, started a guild and met people from all over the world without leaving my bedroom. Playing WOW made me happy when my personal life made me sad.
For hours on end I would game in my own digital cocoon. My personal hygiene suffered and my social life and finances diminished. I was working part time at a dead end job, pissed as hell that they had the nerve to take 4 hours out of my week to have me come in and labor for them, time I could have spent gaming! Even my cousin shutting off the internet didn’t stop me. I simply moved my rig to the house of a friend who had web access and let the madness resume. The World of Warcraft had become my master, and I, its slave. I was averaging about 4 hours a sleep a night while logging the balance of my waking hours to WOW. I played when I was happy, played when I was sad, played through hunger and through the urge to urinate. If I had a girlfriend she would have left me. That is, considering that she would have hooked up with a total loser like me in the first place.
Oddly enough I understood all along that my excessive WOW playing was to my detriment. No one forced me to log on and I was cognizant of the destruction I was causing. But I kept on playing anyway.
How did I find time to draft this confessional while hooked on an MMO? The Law of Diminishing Returns. I had played this video game for so long that it stopped making sense. I was looking at the screen confused about what to do next. My high school history teacher once told the class that all living things contain the seeds of their own demise. I had milked the cow dry and exhausted all of my concern for this epic online adventure. In short, I got burnt out.
But I learned a few things along the way. The World of Warcraft has its own economy, its own trade mechanisms and mediums of exchange. Items found in the world can be sold on its action house, and lassies faire is in full effect. By playing WOW I learned some of the fundamentals of business. I learned how to price my products competitively and undercut the competition. There was constant monitoring of inventory, the desire to keep overhead low and attempts to stay abreast of in game events that I could capitalize on financially. In short WOW has given me the confidence to become an active participant in the real world economy, confidence I may not have developed on my own.
I hope to start a business in the coming years. I hope it will be successful, it probably will, as long as I don’t get hooked on WOW.
For 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, 4 weeks a month and 12 months a year I played the online sensation known as World of Warcraft. To say I was addicted to WOW would be the understatement of the century, no, more like the biggest understatement in the history of known existence, human or otherwise. It has stymied the educational aspirations of kids the world over, destroyed marriages and managed to commandeer my entire life since late 2007.
For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft is a video game, more specifically an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) and can only be played on a Mac or PC connected to the internet for a monthly fee. In short, you start the game as a level one character. You have no money and very little in the way of armor and weapons needed to advance your progression. By completing quests and slaying virtual creatures you gain experience. Accrue enough experience and you will “level”, going from a lowly level 1 character to a marginally better level 2. At the time of this writing the level “cap” is at 80, a number most gamers strive to achieve in as little time as possible. The vast majority of WOW’s best items can only be acquired by reaching this plateau.
I got into WOW a few days after Christmas of 2007. I knew it would be a very time consuming endeavor which was fine with me. I wanted to cover up a lot of the sadness I was experiencing at the time. I had spent the previous year in Los Angeles, CA trying to rekindle my love of music. A successful treatment of my depression had me feeling good about life and confident that I could move to this huge metropolis and find success. I had wild ambitions of starting the most kick ass rock and roll band ever. Dreams of playing at the Whiskey-A-Go Go, earning critical and commercial success, cavorting with groupies and . . . well, you get the idea.
It didn’t take long for these dreams to shatter when my best friend and primary musical collaborator (let’s call him “Al”) decided that he was going to ignore me, totally taking my friendship of 15 years for granted in the process. To this day I’m not sure why he shut me out like he did. An ironic twist of fate as Al was the biggest proponent of me moving to LA, which I had resisted for a few years. Things got even more complicated when my aunt passed away from complications of lung cancer shortly thereafter. I suffered a broken heart a few months later when I learned that a good friend of mine and his brother were shot and killed in front of their home in an act of unprovoked random gang violence. I would have attended his funeral had I the capacity to endure more sadness, which at the time, I did not.
I used to sit in my apartment staring at the walls with tears in my eyes, upset by the loss of my friends and family. My mother and I were at odds and my relationship with my college sweetheart had all but dissolved. I packed my bags and moved back to San Diego to lick my wounds, which by now had become gashes. These were the situations that have, and continue to cause me pain. I was able to mask a portion of that hurt by immersing myself in the World Of Warcraft. It was escapism in a box, a long stream of zeroes and ones that assisted me in my quest to shut out the real world and the anguish I was getting from it. A selfish way to block out the most heinous six months of my entire freaking life.
But what a relief it provided. Contrary to the chaos in my personal life the World of Warcraft offered me huge colorful world that I could control. Nobody gave me a hard time, and when I completed quests, I was rewarded. I could do as much or as little as I wanted. I could go fishing, explore winding caverns or just go to a major city and talk to a total stranger about the cool new sword I just got for slaying a dragon. I learned a trade, started a guild and met people from all over the world without leaving my bedroom. Playing WOW made me happy when my personal life made me sad.
For hours on end I would game in my own digital cocoon. My personal hygiene suffered and my social life and finances diminished. I was working part time at a dead end job, pissed as hell that they had the nerve to take 4 hours out of my week to have me come in and labor for them, time I could have spent gaming! Even my cousin shutting off the internet didn’t stop me. I simply moved my rig to the house of a friend who had web access and let the madness resume. The World of Warcraft had become my master, and I, its slave. I was averaging about 4 hours a sleep a night while logging the balance of my waking hours to WOW. I played when I was happy, played when I was sad, played through hunger and through the urge to urinate. If I had a girlfriend she would have left me. That is, considering that she would have hooked up with a total loser like me in the first place.
Oddly enough I understood all along that my excessive WOW playing was to my detriment. No one forced me to log on and I was cognizant of the destruction I was causing. But I kept on playing anyway.
How did I find time to draft this confessional while hooked on an MMO? The Law of Diminishing Returns. I had played this video game for so long that it stopped making sense. I was looking at the screen confused about what to do next. My high school history teacher once told the class that all living things contain the seeds of their own demise. I had milked the cow dry and exhausted all of my concern for this epic online adventure. In short, I got burnt out.
But I learned a few things along the way. The World of Warcraft has its own economy, its own trade mechanisms and mediums of exchange. Items found in the world can be sold on its action house, and lassies faire is in full effect. By playing WOW I learned some of the fundamentals of business. I learned how to price my products competitively and undercut the competition. There was constant monitoring of inventory, the desire to keep overhead low and attempts to stay abreast of in game events that I could capitalize on financially. In short WOW has given me the confidence to become an active participant in the real world economy, confidence I may not have developed on my own.
I hope to start a business in the coming years. I hope it will be successful, it probably will, as long as I don’t get hooked on WOW.