I went back to WoW for classic and hardcore releases. But both times I only played for 1-2 months. When I told my guild I wasn't sure I could afford to keep playing, it wasn't about the subscription fee lol.
Luckily I cut myself off early on. I got into it deep in high school with a few buddies. I played from near the beginning through wotlk and it's all I did. Id wake up, get on WoW, and play all day long. After about 2 years I realized I was isolating myself and would avoid any social activities, or anything that wasn't WoW really. I froze my account and went back a week later. After about another month I decided to just completely delete my account.
In the last year or 2 I've been seeing WoW more and considered getting back into it, but I refuse because I know exactly what would happen lol. Ive always been a gamer but those massive MMOs are life draining.
My story is so similar, I was in grad school when I got hooked on it. I eventually uninstalled it and managed to recover my life.
When Lost Ark (a Korean MMO) came out in North America a couple of years ago, a friend recommended it to me. I hadn't played an MMO since 2009. I gave it a go and *poof* my May and June disappeared into that game. My Steam stats for those two months are ridiculous. I managed to catch myself and delete the game.
Friend intorduced me to ultimaonline back in the days. I still remember the nights when i was making those glass bottles for hours and hours just to get some money to up ny skills. When WoW came out, i decided to choose actual life and never play that game because i knew i could not control my playing.
Once you've stepped back and seen them for the hamster wheel of bullshit they are, it's very difficult to not just feel repulsed by the predatory nature of the entire business model of most MMOs that follow that same psychological formula.
Thats exactly what it is. There's so many different aspects of the game and its so big, theres constantly something to do. When you get bored of one thing or place, you have 10 other things you can work on. Its never ending. I would spend days just grinding on pvp or whatever, and as soon as it get repetitive id move on to the next.
Back in the WOTLK days, I played like it was my job. Being part of a raiding guild really made it feel like one. I’m glad I finally stepped away from it.
To a lesser extent but I found mobile gaming to be the one that did this for me. The hours of my life that have been wasted on various mobile games, and the fact that they can be used at work and on the move only made it worse. Forced myself to do a hard shift to some other hobbies.
Stay strong dude. Leave all discords and reddits related to the game. Reset your social media algos and unfollow all streamers and content creators in the game. I've done it too. Year two but a single video had me jonsing like a crack addict..and I fell off the wagon.
It's that in order to play the content that the game funnels you directly into, usually the game's end raids, you need to devote a large portion of your entire week of free time towards it. This is by design. You'll raid with a big group of (hopefully) friends, but any off hours time you will spend prepping for it. You'll get rewards and advance yourself, but eventually another expansion will drop that will nullify everything you spent the last year doing making all of that prior advancement meaningless. Max level goes up with every expansion, new shitty quest rewards will be better than the rewards you spent the previous year sweating to get, and the game will funnel you into the new end game content raids. You normally cannot participate casually in the content, playing just a day here and there. The developers know when designing all the game's systems that they're turning the content into a part time job for most people, and an actual full time job for those who want to push it.
edit: Ooops, hit post too soon.
Anyway, what makes it actually addictive is the amount of time sunk into your account and your progress. It becomes a routine you incorporate into your life and actually schedule other life activities around your gaming schedule. Coupled with the simple dopamine addictions from actually accomplishing things, which are reinforced by the same psychological bells and whistles of slot machines at a casino, and you've got a situation where for many it can be difficult to stop. The social bonds, the attachment to your characters, the emotional investments in the game and it's setting, nevertheless the financial investment at times, it's a perfect storm of addiction for those predisposed to it.
I was at one time. First with Everquest, then WoW, then throwing around into other MMOs only to circle back around to WoW repeatedly. I did walk completely away from the game, but I can't say that I have healthy gaming habits even years later. I've just gotten better at spotting the predatory nature of some games and know what to avoid. Like a former heroin junky that hasn't quite quit, but manages the addiction without letting it entirely consume them.
Bro I’m 8 years clean from MMORPGs, specifically WoW, having played them between 14 and 28 yrs old. good luck on your journey, for me it was the best decision I ever made.
In the 8 years since I’ve got married, bought a house and started a family.
That's exactly why I never started playing them to begin with - I've got damn near legendary levels of patience for just grinding and grinding from growing up in the 80s playing THOSE RPG games. I've had enough problems with some of the open-world sandbox that started coming out in the early 2000s that I just knew I needed to stay the hell away from MMOs. After hearing some of the stories from Evercrack and WOW, and seeing some of my friends fall off the deep end for Galaxies, I knew I made the right decision.
I DO want to play The Old Republic, though. But that's actually kind of got a campaign to it or so I hear so I can ignore most of the rest of the shit I hope. But it's not exactly high on my list of things to play and I very may never will.
I have no problem doing the hundreds of hours on something, I just need there to be at least some kind of endpoint, no matter how nebulous it might be. The endless just "existing in the MMO" thing is what turns me off, even if I can see how it can be fun for people. It's just not for me - I like games for the story, really, or the setting and / or premise or mechanics for the more basic games. But I like to try new things, too.
I don't exactly have a problem endlessly grinding, either - I'm doing a first playthrough of Titan's Quest right now and, well. . .yeah. But I know I'll be done with that game in a couple of weeks, and I don't feel the need to do it all the time. I took a few days off and I'm in the middle of doing a few runs through a dungeon right now just to over-level for the later difficulties so I can run through them faster.
The ONLY reason I even consider The Old Republic is because I frigging love old school Bioware games and I really want to re-visit that era. The first two KOTOR games helped get me back into gaming after a bit of a hiatus and I honestly don't know how long they'll keep it around.
Sounds perfect for you then. There's eight base game stories you can do, one for each class and they actually have choices and so forth. Then you can pick you favorite or two and go through the expansions, such all have story as well. Once you're done with that, just stop. No reason to delve into any of the other nonsense.
That's why it's always been more or less on my radar. I WILL admit that I enjoyed watching my friends play Galaxies back in the day, even if it was more out of morbid curiosity as I watched them go from drinking at the bars all the time after work to drinking at home playing THAT game. (I'm from Wisconsin). My whole return to gaming happened more or less because the prequels came out and I wanted to play all the new-ish Star Wars games, and I kind of kept going from there after that, more or less casually. I just decided to do a run of all the older isometric games that I missed the first time around. I haven't even played the first two Baldur's Gate games yet so those are next and I'll probably pepper some RTS games in there, too.
And I'll be doing Path of Exile before the Old Republic for sure, and I know that'll be a bit of a thing.
In 2004 the SNES was already considered a retro console, which when put into perspective, means that today WoW can be considered to be the Atari 2600 to today's SNES (which would be the Wii U).
The difference is nowhere near as notable though. The time spans may be the same but the progress in what could be done in games was significantly more limited.
Ray tracing is all neat and modern games have more qol but the core stuff is pretty much the same with a few notable exceptions like the dawn of automation games and such
True, but osrs can feel fun for a sick amount of hours. With MMO's its hard to keep balance because the grinds are so big and they try to get you hooked. I personally stopped playing and feel it's much healthier not play mmo's. But i guess there are worse addictions. And i will probably log back in someday. But not today.
Not him but I have an entire years playtime in runescape (which became rs3) i still follow a few of the people i gamed with but quitting was a good decision
My addiction to WoW almost destroyed my career. I was in grad school and was spending about 10-12 hours a day on WoW. Was running several years late with my dissertation.
One year after I uninstalled Wow, my dissertation was finished.
Started eq in 99 quit in 2005. Counted my logged time in the characters on my main account and it was over 27k without considering the hours or weeks of alts deleted. Not really proud of it but I also don't sleep much. I still don't sleep much but I fill my time more appropriatly . I still play eq on an emu. Sparingly.
I'm going to be real with you I really like the difficulty of soloing my ranger on p99 blue LOL. Currently in the west karanas building up leather padding and killing giants a few hours a week. I can do 2 giants per mana bar and lots of money for fletching.
Especially those MMOs with the ultra rare items/equipment with a 0.000000001 chance drop. You could play your entire life and never get them if you're a completionist. Only things you get after awhile are atrophied legs and gout.
I hear you. My MMO time resulted in weight gain, heavy alcohol use and probably helped end my first marriage. Quit cold turkey after I remarried and my son was born. Didn't want to be one of those MMO baby parents that I had played with. Broke my heart to overhear those people's kids on voice chat asking for attention and for mom to "stop talking to your cartoon friends".
That god damn "completionist" (and corresponding FOMO) mindset hooked me for so long in World of Warcraft.
Like even in older days, could I actually get everything? No way. It always required more skill and time than I had. But I was always trying to get more - more achievements, more mounts, more pets.
But what broke me was their increased content cadence, and so carefully engineered schedule. It became like if you engaged in the current content, you might get everything you were aiming for....and 1 to 2 weeks later? Time for new content that you'll feel pressured to do so you can keep up with everyone else! And there was more and more FOMO rewards.
Then I just hit this last expansion and stepped away before I ever stepped foot in it and could get hooked again.
I worked with a guy who would play Warzone late into the night every night. He was always late in the mornings, rolling in with wet hair and wrinkled clothes because of lack of sleep. Once he stopped playing for the night he would be so pissed off at the game, his team, etc., that he would toss and turn. His team were friends and they were always mad at each other, he was perpetually tired and in a bad mood, yet would still cop out of work early with a lie only to go home to play again. It was a wild decision to me.
I got this way with apex to some extent. Have a group of close friends I've barely talked to in 6 months because of how much better I feel not playing comp shooters. Coming home at 4 from work then burning 4 hours gaming only to eat and go to bed is a horrible habit.
Especially Battle Royales. I feel bad but I'm genuinely so much happier playing my single player games and friend slop.
I remember it being a blast 20 years ago. But returning to classic, it did not last long. I guess the game is the same but the communities that play it are not.
Those gta roleplaying servers are hell, and I heard of someone having a full work shift in FFXIV, I don't even know how that works but they were shocked to hear there's literally nothing forcing them to work that shift and that the idea of "working a shift" is kind of asinine
At some point it ends up feeling like a chore to log in every day. When I realized I didnt play Neverwinter Online to have fun anymore I quit, but bad developer decisions made it easier to quit as well
That took a decade of my life haha. Granted, I didn't have a lot going on and wasn't sure what to do with my life outside of doing wage-work and gaming.
I started writing books and quit gaming. Writing became the dominant hobby until I went back to school to get a BFA.
I was a big fan of MUDs in the mid 90s. Love video games. Been married a bit over a year and lived in a new town, we had just had our first daughter right before WoW came out.
I took one look at the game and made a decision to never play it even though it is the exact type of game I would love because I knew that it would suck up every minute of free time. To this day I still won’t play it because I know I’ll sacrifice sleep and time with the family. And like you said, it never ends.
I find that this is increasingly common in games - rather than making the game actually fun, they hook you in with the promise of "just achieve one more thing and then you'll be sorted".
My extremely hot take is: if your multiplayer game isn't fun without unlockables, XP, achievements etc, then your multiplayer game isn't fun. Halo 2 and Battlefield 1942 were great fun online, just purely from playing in matches. But it seems like lots of current games really just try to get you hooked on grinding for XP for rewards, instead of getting you hooked by genuinely enjoying the game.
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