6 ms·

It's interesting to comprehend the amount of lives a hack like this will positively affect. How many will pick up a book, or go for a walk, now that they no lo

by brador 14y ago

It's interesting to comprehend the amount of lives a hack like this will positively affect. How many will pick up a book, or go for a walk, now that they no longer have their go-to fix of virtual reality. How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through. Equivalent to all the cigarettes in the world vanishing for a few hours? Possibly. And equally as effective I say.

TylerE 14y ago
> How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through Somewhere between -infinity and zero.
ben0x539 14y ago
I think you severely overestimate the impact of in-game death.
njharman 14y ago
> How many will pick up a book, or go for a walk, now that they no longer have their go-to fix of virtual reality. Statistically, Zero. Trust me, they are all madly typing on forums, mashing refresh, trying to find out / talking about what happened. > How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through. A few.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  They are not all blogging. Very few do. Millions of WoW players are lazy slobs, who are tweeting their friends "bummer man" and maybe, just maybe, going out for a movie or a walk or something actually, concretely social for a change.
  - jmduke 14y ago
    I think it's impossibly difficult to argue that wasting time playing WoW is fundamentally worse than, say, watching football.
    - podperson 14y ago
      If someone watches football as obsessively as folks play WoW then I'd agree. But if your child falls over and needs attention you can get up and deal with it without "letting down your group/team/guild". I know of multiple cases of child neglect by players... indeed, my wife and I gave up WoW cold turkey when we realized one of our twins had a fever and we hadn't noticed for several hours because we were so engrossed in the game. Haven't played seriously since.
      - robryan 14y ago
        That is true of most team based activities. I think the difference with online games is kind of like working from home. Other people living with you may expect you to be present whereas really what you are doing is similar to being on a sports team. No one expects you to be present to do other things while out on the sporting field in the middle of a match. Granted the time invested is likely a little different.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        Evbn 14y ago
        Or to flip it around, playing WoW during babysitting is like running out to go play a match on the field.
      - Evbn 14y ago
        Holy cow, where were the kids? Were they crying during sleep time or something? /posting from my kid's room while she falls asleep.
        podperson 14y ago
        They were in the room with us in a playpen.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    I challenge you to find ten.
rhizome 14y ago
"Virtual reality?" This isn't 1993. Your plainly-spoken anti-gamer bias is insulting and ignorant. Cigarettes, no exercise, no "real" reading...and I'm not even a MMORPG or habitual gamer.
tomjen3 14y ago
That is properly one of the most arrogant comments I have seen here recently. Who the fuck are you to tell people how they get their enjoyment out of life?
- gfodor 14y ago
  It comes not from arrogance but from an apparent difference in how you perceive addictive video games: harmless entertainment, or harmful addictive substances? I'm not going to put my chips down here, but the point is the original poster sees WoW on par with cigarettes and I think even many smokers themselves would wish they didn't get "enjoyment" out of smoking, but are trapped in an addiction.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    I think it derives more from a too-expansive definition of addiction that serves only to provide a self-justifying platform for prejudice.
    - adgar2 14y ago
      I'm 24. I've been addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, and WoW. It's the same fucking thing. They use the same mechanics to tickle your dopamine receptors so you'll come back instead of looking out in the outside world for that same feeling of reward - family, friends, relationships all get fucked up because you spend your time seeking reward from {cigs, booze, drugs, WoW}.
      - rhizome 14y ago
        I'm sorry for your troubles, but not everything that touches dopamine is an addiction.
        adgar2 14y ago
        You just wrote off everything I said except the word "dopamine." Given your outright advocacy ("anti-gamer") throughout this thread, it seems you aren't interested in a real discussion.
npsimons 14y ago
Chuckle. How many of those will go out and rob a liquor store? How many will perform an act of vandalism? How many will kill themselves because they are cut off from the only friends they've ever known? While I can emphasize a bit (I used to play WoW, but "grew away from it" and now spend a large portion of my time in search and rescue and musical performance), I have to say that this is a very judgmental POV to take. You're seriously going to compare playing WoW to smoking? Even in the worst case, at least playing WoW is a step up from watching some inane TV show with no interaction. It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG. And you can always play moral superior: instead of reading a book, why don't they start their own company? Instead of going for a walk, why don't they run a marathon? Hell, I could see how someone could look down on the activities I choose ("why rescue idiots who got themselves into trouble? Let natural selection sort it out!" or "why perform music that's already been performed thousands of times before by better performers?"), but FFS, sometimes "wasting time" is some of the best time well spent.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  As an ex-WoW addict allow me to disagree a bit. "It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG." this is flat out wrong. Kids suffer when their parents can't bother to change them because they are in the middle of a raid and this boss hasn't been killed yet. Spouses suffer when the amount of time they can spend with their WoW playing spouse dwindles to zero. Parent's suffer when their kids grades head to zero. So any behavior that can warp your life to that extent is a relatively poor choice with respect to any other behavior that does not.
- adgar2 14y ago
  > It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG. Addicts always say they're making a personal choice that doesn't affect anyone else, whether it's WoW or booze or blow. And they're always wrong. The last AA meeting I went to, someone spoke for the first time and told a story about a typical night at the bar. Drinking, watching the game and minding his own business. Just like every night. Except this time, 8 beers deep, his daughter walked from home to the bar and tugged on his sleeve - there was nobody at home but her and she was scared. Bet you'd never heard of "second-hand drinking" either.
frostmatthew 14y ago
I'm not sure what they're doing but I bet none of them are posting disparaging comments about other people's hobbies. How people choose to entertain themselves in their free time is up to them (to the extent it doesn't cause harm to others). So let them enjoy their video game and you can enjoy whatever is you do when you're not knocking the hobbies of people you don't even know.
silencio 14y ago
Please allow me to correct your mistaken impression that WoW players are all addicts that have no lives and no hobbies that impress other people: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/nordrassil/Spink/advanced http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/nordrassil/Spink/advan... is my main WoW toon (already level capped for the current just-released expansion and raiding), with weeks of /played time. http://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/2444699-jane http://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/2444699-jane is the last couple of years worth of books I've read. How many people do you know read 50+ books a year? I prefer to run, and I sustain an average of 8 minutes per mile in 5ks so I'm not an unfit slob. I don't run marathons though, I just run and swim for fun and exercise's sake. I do all of this because it's fabulous stress relief, it's a great time-filler when I don't have the space/time to work (e.g. cooking/restaurants, boarding flights, random 5 minutes at places, right before bed), and WoW in particular enables me to spend time with friends no matter where they're located. I can do this in the first place because I don't do things many people do such as watching TV. It's funny how people are incredibly judgmental about WoW but they find it incredibly impressive I read a lot of books and sustain reasonable times in runs. I find more rational reasons to play WoW (reasonably, that is, and not by ignoring people to do so) than to read. They're both hobbies. Take anything to an extreme and it's bad. But WoW overall is not as bad as the one off horror story you'll read about about parents ignoring their kids to raid.
- Evbn 14y ago
  How do you play WoW in a restaurant? How do you play for 5 minutes? Don't you have to fight big complicated battles with lots of people at a scheduled time?
  - silencio 14y ago
    Mobile auction house and guild chat ;) Not everything in WoW is about raiding, although 90% of the reason I play is to raid..
mcphilip 14y ago
I just finished Carl Jung's The Undiscovered Self whilst comparing and contrasting his thoughts on spirituality to Nietzsche's scathing criticism of christianity's moral code leading to a slave mentality. Oh, and I hit level 60 on my Monk on Wow. Stereotypes are fun, aren't they?
- Evbn 14y ago
  Speaking of slave mentalities, though, I am sure there are some similar critiques written about WoW....

by brador 14y ago

TylerE 14y ago

> How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through Somewhere between -infinity and zero.

ben0x539 14y ago

I think you severely overestimate the impact of in-game death.

njharman 14y ago

> How many will pick up a book, or go for a walk, now that they no longer have their go-to fix of virtual reality. Statistically, Zero. Trust me, they are all madly typing on forums, mashing refresh, trying to find out / talking about what happened. > How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through. A few.

JoeAltmaier 14y ago
They are not all blogging. Very few do. Millions of WoW players are lazy slobs, who are tweeting their friends "bummer man" and maybe, just maybe, going out for a movie or a walk or something actually, concretely social for a change.
- jmduke 14y ago
  I think it's impossibly difficult to argue that wasting time playing WoW is fundamentally worse than, say, watching football.
  - podperson 14y ago
    If someone watches football as obsessively as folks play WoW then I'd agree. But if your child falls over and needs attention you can get up and deal with it without "letting down your group/team/guild". I know of multiple cases of child neglect by players... indeed, my wife and I gave up WoW cold turkey when we realized one of our twins had a fever and we hadn't noticed for several hours because we were so engrossed in the game. Haven't played seriously since.
    - robryan 14y ago
      That is true of most team based activities. I think the difference with online games is kind of like working from home. Other people living with you may expect you to be present whereas really what you are doing is similar to being on a sports team. No one expects you to be present to do other things while out on the sporting field in the middle of a match. Granted the time invested is likely a little different.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - Evbn 14y ago
        Or to flip it around, playing WoW during babysitting is like running out to go play a match on the field.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Holy cow, where were the kids? Were they crying during sleep time or something? /posting from my kid's room while she falls asleep.
      - podperson 14y ago
        They were in the room with us in a playpen.
- saraid216 14y ago
  I challenge you to find ten.

rhizome 14y ago

"Virtual reality?" This isn't 1993. Your plainly-spoken anti-gamer bias is insulting and ignorant. Cigarettes, no exercise, no "real" reading...and I'm not even a MMORPG or habitual gamer.

tomjen3 14y ago

That is properly one of the most arrogant comments I have seen here recently. Who the fuck are you to tell people how they get their enjoyment out of life?

gfodor 14y ago
It comes not from arrogance but from an apparent difference in how you perceive addictive video games: harmless entertainment, or harmful addictive substances? I'm not going to put my chips down here, but the point is the original poster sees WoW on par with cigarettes and I think even many smokers themselves would wish they didn't get "enjoyment" out of smoking, but are trapped in an addiction.
- rhizome 14y ago
  I think it derives more from a too-expansive definition of addiction that serves only to provide a self-justifying platform for prejudice.
  - adgar2 14y ago
    I'm 24. I've been addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, and WoW. It's the same fucking thing. They use the same mechanics to tickle your dopamine receptors so you'll come back instead of looking out in the outside world for that same feeling of reward - family, friends, relationships all get fucked up because you spend your time seeking reward from {cigs, booze, drugs, WoW}.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      I'm sorry for your troubles, but not everything that touches dopamine is an addiction.
      - adgar2 14y ago
        You just wrote off everything I said except the word "dopamine." Given your outright advocacy ("anti-gamer") throughout this thread, it seems you aren't interested in a real discussion.

npsimons 14y ago

Chuckle. How many of those will go out and rob a liquor store? How many will perform an act of vandalism? How many will kill themselves because they are cut off from the only friends they've ever known? While I can emphasize a bit (I used to play WoW, but "grew away from it" and now spend a large portion of my time in search and rescue and musical performance), I have to say that this is a very judgmental POV to take. You're seriously going to compare playing WoW to smoking? Even in the worst case, at least playing WoW is a step up from watching some inane TV show with no interaction. It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG. And you can always play moral superior: instead of reading a book, why don't they start their own company? Instead of going for a walk, why don't they run a marathon? Hell, I could see how someone could look down on the activities I choose ("why rescue idiots who got themselves into trouble? Let natural selection sort it out!" or "why perform music that's already been performed thousands of times before by better performers?"), but FFS, sometimes "wasting time" is some of the best time well spent.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
As an ex-WoW addict allow me to disagree a bit. "It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG." this is flat out wrong. Kids suffer when their parents can't bother to change them because they are in the middle of a raid and this boss hasn't been killed yet. Spouses suffer when the amount of time they can spend with their WoW playing spouse dwindles to zero. Parent's suffer when their kids grades head to zero. So any behavior that can warp your life to that extent is a relatively poor choice with respect to any other behavior that does not.
adgar2 14y ago
> It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG. Addicts always say they're making a personal choice that doesn't affect anyone else, whether it's WoW or booze or blow. And they're always wrong. The last AA meeting I went to, someone spoke for the first time and told a story about a typical night at the bar. Drinking, watching the game and minding his own business. Just like every night. Except this time, 8 beers deep, his daughter walked from home to the bar and tugged on his sleeve - there was nobody at home but her and she was scared. Bet you'd never heard of "second-hand drinking" either.

frostmatthew 14y ago

I'm not sure what they're doing but I bet none of them are posting disparaging comments about other people's hobbies. How people choose to entertain themselves in their free time is up to them (to the extent it doesn't cause harm to others). So let them enjoy their video game and you can enjoy whatever is you do when you're not knocking the hobbies of people you don't even know.

silencio 14y ago

Please allow me to correct your mistaken impression that WoW players are all addicts that have no lives and no hobbies that impress other people: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/nordrassil/Spink/advanced http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/nordrassil/Spink/advan... is my main WoW toon (already level capped for the current just-released expansion and raiding), with weeks of /played time. http://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/2444699-jane http://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/2444699-jane is the last couple of years worth of books I've read. How many people do you know read 50+ books a year? I prefer to run, and I sustain an average of 8 minutes per mile in 5ks so I'm not an unfit slob. I don't run marathons though, I just run and swim for fun and exercise's sake. I do all of this because it's fabulous stress relief, it's a great time-filler when I don't have the space/time to work (e.g. cooking/restaurants, boarding flights, random 5 minutes at places, right before bed), and WoW in particular enables me to spend time with friends no matter where they're located. I can do this in the first place because I don't do things many people do such as watching TV. It's funny how people are incredibly judgmental about WoW but they find it incredibly impressive I read a lot of books and sustain reasonable times in runs. I find more rational reasons to play WoW (reasonably, that is, and not by ignoring people to do so) than to read. They're both hobbies. Take anything to an extreme and it's bad. But WoW overall is not as bad as the one off horror story you'll read about about parents ignoring their kids to raid.

Evbn 14y ago
How do you play WoW in a restaurant? How do you play for 5 minutes? Don't you have to fight big complicated battles with lots of people at a scheduled time?
- silencio 14y ago
  Mobile auction house and guild chat ;) Not everything in WoW is about raiding, although 90% of the reason I play is to raid..

mcphilip 14y ago

I just finished Carl Jung's The Undiscovered Self whilst comparing and contrasting his thoughts on spirituality to Nietzsche's scathing criticism of christianity's moral code leading to a slave mentality. Oh, and I hit level 60 on my Monk on Wow. Stereotypes are fun, aren't they?

Evbn 14y ago
Speaking of slave mentalities, though, I am sure there are some similar critiques written about WoW....