8 ms·

eeeeehhh. As a very avid WoW player of some years now, I would say WoW is something that can easily be something that holds your "life progress" or whatever you

by slyn 16y ago

eeeeehhh. As a very avid WoW player of some years now, I would say WoW is something that can easily be something that holds your "life progress" or whatever you want to call it back, but it can also just as easily be played at a successful level (define that however you like) without that effect as well. In the guild I'm in now and a guild I was in in the past I see both: players who are quite literally on welfare or unemployment and just play WoW and other games all day (colloquially "living the dream", mostly tongue-in-cheek), while others have what I would consider successful lives. One of our best priests works as some sort of company programmer or server maintainer/admin. Our best healing druid entered his first bodybuilding contest sometime in September of this year and plans on doing another next August iirc. Our guild/raid leader has an office 9-5 selling toys to retailers or something like that. Lots are in college, myself included. An old guild officer of mine was a Googler. A decent amount have wives/kids/gfs/main squeezes. etc. I think the best argument of the post is the social obligations point. There are definitely some people who do "no-life" for the guild and such, but again, I think this is a some do some don't thing (as well as being limited to basically people in guild leadership situations). For every guild leader or officer I know who hasn't left a dead-end guild because of a feeling of obligations to the guild, I probably know twice as many officers who did left anyways, and 3-4x as many raiders who did as well. Anecdotally speaking, I left a guild where I was probably next in line to be guild/raid lead for a much better one, and am now debating doing some sort of ESL teach/travel program next year despite having been an officer in my new guild for roughly 6 months now.

semipermeable 16y ago
You discuss how WoW either hold back life progress or doesn't. Have you (or anyone you know) encountered a case where WoW has helped someone?
- slyn 16y ago
  Depends on what you define "helped" as. I don't know anyone personally who has say, gotten a job or learned a new tangible life skill from playing. I can say for myself at least that I have met a lot of people who I would call friends without hesitation, most of whom I would love to meet up with in real life someday. It has also made it easier for me to connect with RL friends as well. Half the reason I started playing was so I would have a way to play with some longtime RL friends while they were living at U of I in champaign and urbana. Intangibly I feel like I have learned a lot about how to communicate with people, particularly from a leadership position. Since communication over text or in ventrilo doesn't have all the physical queues of face to face interaction, you learn to speak with more clarity and precision as time goes on. I feel like it would be pretty easy to be a successful manager of some non-technical sector of work like retail based solely on what I've learned from being an officer in WoW now as well as being an officer in Runescape back when I was like 13-14. Edit: PS. I forgot a big intangible: I've had a lot of fun playing over the past couple years.
  - rsheridan6 16y ago
    >I can say for myself at least that I have met a lot of people who I would call friends without hesitation, most of whom I would love to meet up with in real life someday. It seems like it would be a good thing if guilds could be set up based on the geographic location of the players. If you had a reasonable chance of making "real life" friends, a lot of the objections to MMOs that aren't made to, say, a ski club or a bowling league, would go away.
    - silencio 16y ago
      I disagree. I think a lot of people that play with others geographically close to each other already know each other in some way and the reverse would not necessarily be the same. I mostly play with two "real life" friends, and most of the groupings of people I know in my guilds are couples, friends from college/home, coworkers, and similar. It's usually not "oh we know each other after we found out in-game that we're geographically close". For every interesting person I have met in WoW, I've come across someone I can't even begin to describe...social misfit, awkward, creepy, misogynist, immature, stalker doesn't even begin to cover it. Whenever I find a random group of people to raid with, I am afraid to talk in vent/mumble because I don't want to give away the fact that my voice gives me away as being a very, very valley girl/California English spoken woman. The few times I slip and talk, some players didn't care but others split off into various assumptions, usually along the lines of my being incompetent by being female or "no way, she's a girl! (I'm going to harass her in whispers now!)". The few that didn't care and judged me based on my actual performance were the ones I ended up really appreciating being grouped with and that in turn were the ones that outright told me that they were sad to see me go before I changed servers a couple months ago. The ones that assumed I was dumb, well, I had an ignore list longer than my arm by the time I moved away. Moved away to a guild where I vetted the GM and his guild for his female-friendliness and zero tolerance to harassment first above all other concerns, including raiding. (And for what it's worth, I left my very first WoW guild because I couldn't stand even the smallest playful insults anymore. Starting with "you sure do get around" for getting an achievement for exploring a zone.) So in an environment like that, I really hope that such a thing is never, ever, ever possible in-game and is something people do waaaaay far out of game on their own accord. Blizzard really scared a lot of people with their initial implementation of RealID and still kinda do despite all the privacy settings, and I would cancel my WoW account the day Blizzard ever considers putting in some kind of interface for geographical guild finding no matter how opt-out it is. I want to choose which basis I use to find friends in this game and I never want Blizzard to help me with that. I especially never ever want some dumbass 15 year old punk that hits on me to find out I live in Los Angeles, let alone what my real name is. (And really, I'm sick of the people that think that WoW can't be real life. I have come across some of my best friends online, and WoW is no different from IRC or AIM or email or any means of online communications. It is as real life as it gets without being face-to-face with someone. Some people just don't learn to manage their in-game time very well and that is the fodder for all those horror stories, not the vast majority of people that do know how to stop playing a game.)
- ctide 16y ago
  Sure, playing WoW lead to me getting a job at a startup (Rupture, which was later sold to EA) and moving to San Francisco. Considering I'm radically happier in my life now than I was previous to living here, I'd say it was quite helpful.
- orp 16y ago
  A friend of mine got seriously hooked into WoW. She's still hooked. However, she's made quite a few online friends that translated to real world friendships, and even met her husband in-game. I guess that counts.
- sciolistse 16y ago
  I'm not what you'd probably call a WoW 'addict' (never managed to get into the 4+ hours a day for longer than a couple weeks at a time before getting sick of it and quitting,) but I would consider the time that I've played WoW to be a net benefit to me.. I've played with a fair number of people who are in the same field as me, as well as with my own coworkers and managers, which has allowed me to get to know them pretty well and get pretty good job offers and consulting gigs. But sure, if I had been spending every free moment on WoW, it likely wouldn't have been a worthwhile endeavor.. And for all I know, I would have done something better with the time put into it had I taken up a different hobby.
- ditojim 16y ago
  -leading a guild in wow actually helped prepare me to manage people in real life.
- bretpiatt 16y ago
  Yes, I know a ton of people that learned to program writing and hacking add-ons. WoW has a very powerful add-on system based on LUA. A number of folks that write those add-ons that make a great living doing so.
- zumda 16y ago
  I heard and read about multiple marriages resulting from WoW. There are also a lot of people who have learned to program or make a decent side income with addons. One can also learn a lot about leadership and determination, since a lot of times you will fail horribly but you still continue (and have to keep everyone motivated). Another thing is communication. For example if you are with 24 other people inside a dungeon and you make a mistake, everyone will have lost 10 minutes or more. So you have to handle that and be honest that this was your fault. Me personally? I actually got a free holiday in the Netherlands, since someone I know from the game invited me. And of course don't underestimate the fun that can be had in the game. Oh and nearly forgot: I learned English. It's still far from perfect, but before I could barely read English...
anukulrm 16y ago
i don't play WOW or any other MMOG. But I think that old saying that most things in moderation are good for you, seems to apply here as well. I have no concrete evidence to back this and I haven't defined 'most' or 'moderation' but I have noticed that most people understand this intuitively. Are there exceptions, maybe. Particularly, in this community of people, who spend all their time on one idea trying to make it successful. However, I could make the argument that doing it takes a toll on you and your relationships. Anyways, i can't argue it all that well, but it feels like a good rule of thumb.
astrofinch 16y ago
It seems worth noting that many people are able to take cocaine on a regular basis without it screwing up their lives as well.
- slyn 16y ago
  I guess, but I don't really see how that pertains to the discussion unless you have some extra moral or philosophical objection to recreational drug use that you feel also applies to this video game. Its a hobby. I think some people get sucked in and take it too far, but I also think the vast majority don't. I'm just offering a perspective from the "don't" category.
  - astrofinch 16y ago
    It's generally accepted that it's a good idea to avoid cocaine unless you're really sure that you can take it without getting addicted. Similarly, I think it should be generally accepted that it's a good idea to avoid WoW unless you're really sure you can play it without getting addicted.
  - zumda 16y ago
    I had a friend who literally forgot to go to work for two days because he was so busy preparing for a soccer match. Or I'm sure we all know a guy/gal who was/is drinking all too much. My point is, you can take any hobby too far, it doesn't matter what it is. The interesting thing is, no one blames soccer or alcohol (most of the time it is some deeper issue thats the problem, not alcohol), but everyone is blaming WoW. The problem isn't WoW, the problem is the person who can't treat it as a hobby.
    - tigerthink 16y ago
      Some hobbies are more dangerous than others. I think it makes sense for us to discourage people from getting started on the more dangerous hobbies. Also, people do blame alcohol.

by slyn 16y ago

semipermeable 16y ago

You discuss how WoW either hold back life progress or doesn't. Have you (or anyone you know) encountered a case where WoW has helped someone?

slyn 16y ago
Depends on what you define "helped" as. I don't know anyone personally who has say, gotten a job or learned a new tangible life skill from playing. I can say for myself at least that I have met a lot of people who I would call friends without hesitation, most of whom I would love to meet up with in real life someday. It has also made it easier for me to connect with RL friends as well. Half the reason I started playing was so I would have a way to play with some longtime RL friends while they were living at U of I in champaign and urbana. Intangibly I feel like I have learned a lot about how to communicate with people, particularly from a leadership position. Since communication over text or in ventrilo doesn't have all the physical queues of face to face interaction, you learn to speak with more clarity and precision as time goes on. I feel like it would be pretty easy to be a successful manager of some non-technical sector of work like retail based solely on what I've learned from being an officer in WoW now as well as being an officer in Runescape back when I was like 13-14. Edit: PS. I forgot a big intangible: I've had a lot of fun playing over the past couple years.
- rsheridan6 16y ago
  >I can say for myself at least that I have met a lot of people who I would call friends without hesitation, most of whom I would love to meet up with in real life someday. It seems like it would be a good thing if guilds could be set up based on the geographic location of the players. If you had a reasonable chance of making "real life" friends, a lot of the objections to MMOs that aren't made to, say, a ski club or a bowling league, would go away.
  - silencio 16y ago
    I disagree. I think a lot of people that play with others geographically close to each other already know each other in some way and the reverse would not necessarily be the same. I mostly play with two "real life" friends, and most of the groupings of people I know in my guilds are couples, friends from college/home, coworkers, and similar. It's usually not "oh we know each other after we found out in-game that we're geographically close". For every interesting person I have met in WoW, I've come across someone I can't even begin to describe...social misfit, awkward, creepy, misogynist, immature, stalker doesn't even begin to cover it. Whenever I find a random group of people to raid with, I am afraid to talk in vent/mumble because I don't want to give away the fact that my voice gives me away as being a very, very valley girl/California English spoken woman. The few times I slip and talk, some players didn't care but others split off into various assumptions, usually along the lines of my being incompetent by being female or "no way, she's a girl! (I'm going to harass her in whispers now!)". The few that didn't care and judged me based on my actual performance were the ones I ended up really appreciating being grouped with and that in turn were the ones that outright told me that they were sad to see me go before I changed servers a couple months ago. The ones that assumed I was dumb, well, I had an ignore list longer than my arm by the time I moved away. Moved away to a guild where I vetted the GM and his guild for his female-friendliness and zero tolerance to harassment first above all other concerns, including raiding. (And for what it's worth, I left my very first WoW guild because I couldn't stand even the smallest playful insults anymore. Starting with "you sure do get around" for getting an achievement for exploring a zone.) So in an environment like that, I really hope that such a thing is never, ever, ever possible in-game and is something people do waaaaay far out of game on their own accord. Blizzard really scared a lot of people with their initial implementation of RealID and still kinda do despite all the privacy settings, and I would cancel my WoW account the day Blizzard ever considers putting in some kind of interface for geographical guild finding no matter how opt-out it is. I want to choose which basis I use to find friends in this game and I never want Blizzard to help me with that. I especially never ever want some dumbass 15 year old punk that hits on me to find out I live in Los Angeles, let alone what my real name is. (And really, I'm sick of the people that think that WoW can't be real life. I have come across some of my best friends online, and WoW is no different from IRC or AIM or email or any means of online communications. It is as real life as it gets without being face-to-face with someone. Some people just don't learn to manage their in-game time very well and that is the fodder for all those horror stories, not the vast majority of people that do know how to stop playing a game.)
ctide 16y ago
Sure, playing WoW lead to me getting a job at a startup (Rupture, which was later sold to EA) and moving to San Francisco. Considering I'm radically happier in my life now than I was previous to living here, I'd say it was quite helpful.
orp 16y ago
A friend of mine got seriously hooked into WoW. She's still hooked. However, she's made quite a few online friends that translated to real world friendships, and even met her husband in-game. I guess that counts.
sciolistse 16y ago
I'm not what you'd probably call a WoW 'addict' (never managed to get into the 4+ hours a day for longer than a couple weeks at a time before getting sick of it and quitting,) but I would consider the time that I've played WoW to be a net benefit to me.. I've played with a fair number of people who are in the same field as me, as well as with my own coworkers and managers, which has allowed me to get to know them pretty well and get pretty good job offers and consulting gigs. But sure, if I had been spending every free moment on WoW, it likely wouldn't have been a worthwhile endeavor.. And for all I know, I would have done something better with the time put into it had I taken up a different hobby.
ditojim 16y ago
-leading a guild in wow actually helped prepare me to manage people in real life.
bretpiatt 16y ago
Yes, I know a ton of people that learned to program writing and hacking add-ons. WoW has a very powerful add-on system based on LUA. A number of folks that write those add-ons that make a great living doing so.
zumda 16y ago
I heard and read about multiple marriages resulting from WoW. There are also a lot of people who have learned to program or make a decent side income with addons. One can also learn a lot about leadership and determination, since a lot of times you will fail horribly but you still continue (and have to keep everyone motivated). Another thing is communication. For example if you are with 24 other people inside a dungeon and you make a mistake, everyone will have lost 10 minutes or more. So you have to handle that and be honest that this was your fault. Me personally? I actually got a free holiday in the Netherlands, since someone I know from the game invited me. And of course don't underestimate the fun that can be had in the game. Oh and nearly forgot: I learned English. It's still far from perfect, but before I could barely read English...

anukulrm 16y ago

i don't play WOW or any other MMOG. But I think that old saying that most things in moderation are good for you, seems to apply here as well. I have no concrete evidence to back this and I haven't defined 'most' or 'moderation' but I have noticed that most people understand this intuitively. Are there exceptions, maybe. Particularly, in this community of people, who spend all their time on one idea trying to make it successful. However, I could make the argument that doing it takes a toll on you and your relationships. Anyways, i can't argue it all that well, but it feels like a good rule of thumb.

astrofinch 16y ago

It seems worth noting that many people are able to take cocaine on a regular basis without it screwing up their lives as well.

slyn 16y ago
I guess, but I don't really see how that pertains to the discussion unless you have some extra moral or philosophical objection to recreational drug use that you feel also applies to this video game. Its a hobby. I think some people get sucked in and take it too far, but I also think the vast majority don't. I'm just offering a perspective from the "don't" category.
- astrofinch 16y ago
  It's generally accepted that it's a good idea to avoid cocaine unless you're really sure that you can take it without getting addicted. Similarly, I think it should be generally accepted that it's a good idea to avoid WoW unless you're really sure you can play it without getting addicted.
- zumda 16y ago
  I had a friend who literally forgot to go to work for two days because he was so busy preparing for a soccer match. Or I'm sure we all know a guy/gal who was/is drinking all too much. My point is, you can take any hobby too far, it doesn't matter what it is. The interesting thing is, no one blames soccer or alcohol (most of the time it is some deeper issue thats the problem, not alcohol), but everyone is blaming WoW. The problem isn't WoW, the problem is the person who can't treat it as a hobby.
  - tigerthink 16y ago
    Some hobbies are more dangerous than others. I think it makes sense for us to discourage people from getting started on the more dangerous hobbies. Also, people do blame alcohol.