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Warcraft Will Ruin Your Life: A Story of One Man's Misery
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2:20pm Today
FYI, a co-worker of mine showed me this on a blizzard forum, the response's to his post are pretty funny.
I'd like to start off by saying this game is fine if you play it for 10 or 15 hours a week. Blizzard made a near-perfect game, but even Blizzard would agree that seeing people destroy their lives on this game is a tragedy.
I started playing WoW in June 2006, right after I graduated High School. I won Defensive Lineman of the year award in our school, got a partial tuition to college to play Division II football, and life was good. I had a lot of friends, a girlfriend, and while overweight, was physically fit. I met most of the physical minimums for Division I football. During the summer, I played WoW on my off days from work, and I knew shortly after, I was hooked. I'd never played an MMO before, but the combination of a social atmosphere and the number-crunching of min/maxing for raids/etc. made me wanna play even more. I met some cool guys on the way of levelling my first 60, and we dinged 60 all together. At this point, I wasn't terribly addicted, I had some WoW buddies, but I still did RL stuff. During September, my WoW friends went back to college, some quit and some had reduced playing times. I decided to app to a raiding guild (cleared ZG), since our casual guild fell apart. I was a rogue, and even though I was wearing all blues, I lead the damage meters on every boss fight. People sent me tells, telling me how great I was and how I did it (spent 15 minutes reading on the Rogue forums for best dps strats). I felt great; I was the alpha male of the guild, so to speak, and it was great. I got cut from the university football team since I did no working out during the summer, and soon I found myself skipping my Labs so I could be early for the raids. Mid-terms came for University, and I didn't study a thing. I failed three of them, and I decided to withdraw from university because I knew I'd fail all my classes that semester.
I had a lot of free time on my hands, so I went back to WoW, where I was a success and no one bothered me. Unfortunately, the 2.0 patch came out, and raiding halted. I was bored, so I started playing more and more on an alt (my second level 60, a paladin on a different server). I made a few friends on that server, and after falling in love with the Paladin playstyle, the friends I made invited me to their AQ40 guild if I could ding 60 before a better app got accepted (they were short paladins). I skipped work for 3 days straight (and got fired), and I got from 40-60 in about 10 days. I was having 'fun' again raiding, and getting geared out along the way.
One of my old WoW buddies contacted me, and told me that one of our mutual friends before I re-rolled committed suicide. I didn't really know him, but I started talking to my old WoW buddies more and more, and I eventually transferred my Paladin to my original server.
I lied to my old guild, telling them I went to basic training, and that I was back to play. We pvp'ed and stuff, and when Burning crusade came out, I told them that I would level a paladin to 70 for the guild. This is where my life turned even more downhill.
BC came out, and I started levelling my paladin. During most of the time, I was in 2nd/3rdplace on the paladin race to 70, and first place was being powerlevelled by his guild. I had no help at all, just 100 gold I farmed on my rogue before bc. I hit 60 in two weeks. 9 Days played. I woke up, played WoW until I passed out and woke up a few hours later and did it again. I hit the outlands, and dinged 70 two weeks later, making me the third paladin on the server to hit level 70.
WoW life was great, but real life was horrible. I was the talk of the town; everyone wanted me in their groups, and everyone wanted to pvp with me. I was promoted to Officer in my guild, and was eventually leading our Karazhan group. I'd play 16 hours a day, and had group invites for every 5 man from the moment I logged on till I went to sleep. WoW Life was good.
In real life, I lied to my extended family about quitting University. I didn't speak to my real life friends since november, and i didn't really care about them. Worst of all, I lied to my parents. I told them I didn't want to go to university, but instead I wanted to go into a trades profession. In my mind, this was great. I wouldn't have to worry about that till next fall, which would give me 8 months or so of solid WoW playing time. I lied to my parents about applying to jobs, and I found nothing wrong with this.
Back in game, things were going amazingly. I was on a top 2v2 team for arenas, and I had 8 server first item drops from karazhan. When our co-guild leader went AWOL, I was promoted, and was even more popular. Me and the guild leader were pretty well inseperable, grouping for a good 10-12 hours a day together (he was a shadow priest, this was back when shadow priest+holy paladin made any 5 man easymode). This went on until April.
In April, my worried parents asked me to go on a trip with my grandparents overseas, so I did. They thought I was depressed, but I couldn't tell them about me just playing WoW all day, so I went along with it. Instead of going out and seeing the scenery/etc. I found myself in the internet cafes reading our guilds website and our servers forums. However, during the trip I ironically became depressed. I gained about 60 pounds, lost a lot of muscle, and was embarrassed for the first time in my life being in a social setting due to my body type. I decided enough was enough, and I was going to quit WoW when I got home.
I got home, and decided I was going to tell my goodbyes on vent and then everything would go back to normal. I logged on vent, joined the channel right as we downed Maulgar for the first time. I lost all desire to quit, and sucked myself back into the game.
When we downed High King and Gruul that night, the officers and I decided that we would raid 5 times a week, so we could overtake the guilds in front of us in progression. This lasted a month or so, but when due to a lack of talent in our guild, and lacklustre effort, we began to deteriorate; with our good players getting sucked up by the guilds ahead of us in progression. During this time, I played on an alt, and got a priest to level 70 just because I was bored. There was no reason, there was no social aspect of the levelling. i just did it out of habit. He got to 70 and just sat there. During this time, we hadn't progressed at all, and officers slowly started to leave. One day out of nowhere, our guildmaster up and transferred servers to a guild working on Kael'thas. I felt betrayed; I mean I spent the majority of my days just talking and playing with him, and he up and left.
It was June 2007, one year since i began playing. I gained 60 pounds, bringing myself up to 330 pounds, and lost a LOT of muscle, meaning I gained even more fat to make up that weight. I was depressed, my hygiene went to hell, and the only real life social interaction I had was with my brother and talking on instant messaging with my last real life friend I had left.
In game, I was now guild leader. I couldn't handle the drama from a few of our oldest officers (one was an alcoholic, he would scare away our good players by insulting them for no reason). I decided to /gquit after talking with a few of my old friends.
At this time in my life, my parents forced me to get a job, otherwise they'd kick me out of the house. I got one at a gas station, but as soon as I got home, I'd log on and play until 5 or 6 hours before my next days shift.
I was guildless for about a month, and so I got bored and levelled ANOTHER 70. I deleted my 60 Undead rogue, because i thought orcs looked cooler. I levelled him up to 69, where he is today, 2 bars from dinging. In late July, one of my old friends from my original guild begged me to join the guild he was in at the time (they led server progression at that time). I said alright after some deliberation, and I was plunged back into the raiding world.
This guild had the best players, and a Psychiatrist would have a field day studying these people. There were a few people who never talked, they just showed up and did what they were good at. More than a few were egotistical, especially the officers. They topped the charts in everything, and assumed because they could make digital numbers higher than the other people could, they were superior human beings. This was generally accepted amongst the guild as the way things worked. We raided 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, until the straw that broke the camel's back happened.
Our Paladin class leader was a decent person from what my first glance was, but soon turned out to be much, much different. The guild used a DKP system, which was fair by all standards. I got a brand new epic from SSC my first raid, since all the paladins were negative. They were all happy for me, and I thought it was because I got a serious upgrade.
3 weeks later, we were doing Gruuls lair on an offday. This meant a lot of alts came. The Tier 4 pants dropped off of gruul, and I bid on them, since i wanted the 4 set bonus for my protection tanking set. My class leader was vocally happy that I took them, at first I thought it was because I was working on a tanking set, but afterwards he said over vent "thats one less person ahead of me on DKP", and that was the sole reason he was happy.
Something went through me there. My supposed friend was happy that he COULD possibly get an imaginary purple item before I did. He put worthless virtual items before the 'friendship' we built, just like my Co-Guild leader did. This didn't cause me to quit WoW, but it showed me the psyche of some of these WoW players.
One week later, I was home alone while my family went on vacation. During that time, I started to develop a blistery rash on the side of my neck and head. I thought I was having an acne breakout (my first in 3 or 4 years), and thought nothing of it, and went back to WoW. 2 or 3 days later, it was spreading, and becoming bigger. I began freaking out, thinking I had a tumor or something. I called my parents, they told me to go to the doctor. It was raid night, and our first full fledged attempts occured on a new boss that night. I didn't go to the doctor, I raided instead. The next day, it began appearing on my shoulder. It was extremely painful to even wear a shirt. I was confused, alone, and in pain.
Something clicked. I thought to myself, why the hell am I playing a video game instead of seeking immediate medical attention? At that very moment, I did a hard shutdown on my computer, and drove to the hospital.
The doctor told me I had shingles, which is a virus related to chickenpox. It targets your nervous system, and therefore if you even slightly touch your skin against something, you end up with searing pain. After I got home, I never logged onto WoW again. I gave some excuse to my guild that I had to take some time off, and I just never logged on again. Well, that's a half truth. I logged on. I added all my played time on all my characters. It totalled 220 days played. Thats over seven months of played time. Take away time I was afk from the game and I would still be around 7 months played. I averaged 12 hours a day almost while I was addicted to WoW; in that time I gained about 100 pounds of fat, lost all but my closest friend, and dropped out of University for a video game.
I'm now currently enrolled in a college that is a step down from where I was. I've lost 20 pounds since quitting one month ago, and even had a conversation with a non-related female for the first time since I graduated High school. I will not sell my WoW account, I will not delete my characters, but I will let it sit there, and remind me of how I almost ruined my life and health over a video game.
A message to people addicted to WoW- It can be done; you can quit. It took me 3 tries before I finally quit. The first thing you have to do is to stop playing. No goodbyes, no saying "I'll stop playing once my timecard runs out". You will be sucked back in, the game is very addictive. Let a friend or family member change the password. Throw away the discs. Don't feel bad if you look back. I look at the server forums once in a while, but I laugh when I think that I cared about that stuff. I bought an Xbox 360, and play it about 10 hours a week, when I'm not trying to get back in shape for football at my new college. Find a non-electronic passion: getting in shape, a sport, even finding a significant other. You will look back at your WoW playing days, and laugh.
I've been off WoW for 5 weeks now, and you can be too.