Conquering the addiction known as World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft. Every gamer has heard of it, and just to guess, about 90% of gamers (PC gamers, at least) have tried a 10-day trial.

For those of you who were fortunate enough to try the 10-day trial and think to themselves "This game just seems like a waste of time and money," kudos to you. For the other 12+ million people who have not been able to just say no to this home wrecker, don't feel ashamed, you're definitely not alone.

I, myself, have been addicted to WoW since 2005. I started playing in the summer of 7th grade, since I had no car, parents worked all during the day, and friends all lived far away (not walking distance) I was stuck at home with really nothing to do. So I decided to pick up an MMO. It came down to Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft, and you all can pretty much guess which game won the title of life killer for me.

I started out in the enormous world of Azeroth as a puny Dwarf Rogue named Clarkbert. After realizing how much of a noob I was, I quit playing WoW after only 3 days. I got to level 10, without doing any quests, and then got lost in Stormwind... and no, I didn't have anyone to play with and I didn't know how to use a map, so laugh it up.

After quitting for almost the whole summer, I found out one of my other friends played it as well, so we started playing it together. I started up a new character, this time a Night Elf Hunter named Energizerbun. We started to read up stuff online, I was too lazy to do this before apparently, and started getting the gist of this very detailed game. It blew my mind how in dept the game went and how much there really was to do and I didn't realize that this was the beginning of the end for me.

After a long year of dedicating 2-5 hours a day to WoW, I finally reached an end. I decided that I'd commit WoW suicide, so-to-speak. I was in a pretty good guild, and we were running MC (for those who play(ed) WoW pre-BC know how fucking long and boring MC could get, especially with stupid players) that night. After spending like six hours on MC, we got to the fire dog (don't remember his name) who is guarding Domo's chest. We wiped a lot, and I was getting to my wits-end with the game.

Now to put this into perspective, the game back then wasn't like it is now, people RARELY were dicks to each other. And people NEVER NEVER NEVER steal during fixed raids, especially with DKP, that's just fucked up!

But anyways, back to the story. We finally downed that dog-thing, and there it was. Domo's chest. I thought about it for a second, while everyone in the group was getting ready to spend their DKP. I thought, maybe I should end it all here... and then I did it. I ninja'd Domo's chest. I became the most hated person on my server in the matter of 5 seconds (server was Terenas). I couldn't get groups, people stalked me (literally) over myspace... somehow..., and I got so many complaints they shut my account down.

At that point I thought I had defeated the heinous addiction. I was the victor in the war of wills! I had no account that I could think about recovering, it was done.

But then... several years later.. a friend, who is a writer for this blog, started to play. He got another friend, Avante, to play. So everyone was playing other than me. After weeks of pitching me reasons why I should play, I was finally suckered into it. And that is when my addiction came back in full-force.

I played like all day, pounding my way to level 80. And then at 80 I became an uber-nerd with raiding. Eventually I got my priest to be the #34 priest, gear-wise, on the server. But then all of my friends up-and-quit. So, again, forever alone on an MMO. So eventually I got my girlfriend to play and then my addiction kicked in again.

Luckily about two months before Catacalysm came out, I quit. I didn't get my account banned, but I quit. I thought I defeated this monster.

There is another "but".

Two weeks ago, I got the itch again. And it came in full-force, with everything it had. Again, I gave in to it's ugly demands and renewed my account. I currently have my account up and going but have put limits on my play, to help tame the beast slowly.

My major point of this story is to show how dangerous WoW can be. It CAN be extremely addictive, especially for someone who is bored often. But there is a cure!

If you ever get addicted and finally lay the account to rest, leave it. If you have cravings to play again, just go do something else. Go outside, play disc-golf, hang out with friends, or you can fight fire-with-fire and find another game to get addicted to that's less harmful (i.e., Halo, Call of Dookie, FIFA, or Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3), similar to fighting a heroin addiction with methadone.

If you've never tried the game, leave it that way. There are those who try it and hate it or can resist it because of the monthly-fee, but there are a lot of people who can't. Don't take the risk. Just stick to a different game or just something more fulfilling in life. That $15 per month payment adds up quick.

Whatever you do, don't give in. Don't be an Alex.