I was in a casual raiding guild, 3 nights a week 3-4 hours a night, which wouldn't be bad if I didn't have a girlfriend or a full time job or other shit to do. But neither would a hardcore raiding guild.

I can't handle raiding with my schedule, just doesn't work.

Any time. I've been in your situation, sort of, before and I understand how it's aggravating and depressing. But just have a little faith and it'll turn out okay. May need work, but these things do find a way to work themselves out.

And go hiking and camping out. You won't regret it.

Penny, your's is the only post I read. I don't know what everyone else said.

This is a hard attitude to take towards the world and very conceited to say the least but it greatly alleviates depression to actually think you are better/smarter than most around you. The impression I get from you on the forums is that you're a fairly smart guy, and that sort of attitude may not be far from the truth at all.

Quite frankly, sometimes it's hard not to. People can only let you down for so long before you stop having faith in them.

I'm so detached, I can't help it. I know its self righteous and stupid and all that but... for some reason, I just can't help but live my life inside my head. Everything I do and say... its like its calculated.

Video games appear to becoming more and more addictive. D2 was way too addictive for me, and I played A LOT during my first two years of college. I was lucky enough to have already met a good core group of friends during classes, and they always got me out to go drinking, partying, and chick lurking. Honestly, if it wasn't for them, I would've probably gone through the same thing you're going through now. I was constantly cutting classes, pushing off projects, papers, studying, etc. just so I could play Diablo constantly.

I mean, there were weekends when most of my friends would go home for the weekend, and I didn't go out and just played Diablo all weekend. When they came back, I would lie to them and tell them all kinds of fabricated stories about parties, blacking out, etc. just so they didn't think I was such a complete fag. I would then tell myself that I'm not going to do that again, because I was only kidding myself and ruining my college experience, but low and behold, when the next opportunity arose, I would do the exact same thing.

I did that for my entire first year of college, and during my second year, I forced myself to stop. It wasn't easy, I'm telling you, but it was neccessary. I called up people, joined intermural sports, worked out at the gym, ran a lot, etc. just go get myself out of my dorm room and away from Diablo. And it definitely worked, believe me.

Being addicted is never good, no matter what it's too, except for sex. You seriously need to get away from it, and stop yourself from getting too much of a superiority complex. You need to force yourself to do extraciricular activites. You made the first good step, now finish it off!

Advice, cash in all your WoW hours on eBay and give up MMOs forever. I came to the same realization you did about WoW (this time applied to City of Heroes/EVE) and while I didn't put nearly as much time into it as you did (probably less than 1/10th) I realized that it is totally pointless and not worth the destruction of effort/motivation it causes.

I was going to attempt to sell my account on e-bay, but when I think about all of the time that I myself put into it, it's not really worth it to me. I'd rather keep it and hop on to screw around from time to time.

My mage has ~200 days played time. That's 4800 hours. At minimum wage, that's Just under $25,000.

I mean, that's not really a good comparison, but it puts into perspective how much I've played the game.

Being addicted to video games is a tad bit a new fad nowadays. I was addicted to games when I was younger, but I'm not so much anymore. I can't find any game to be addicted to.

I'm well aware of that. I've dealt with video game addiction before and not just with me.

And its fucking hell.

Which is probably why you should push the account out the door and don't look back. So what if you won't get the minimum-labor value for it, at least you will not be paying a monthly fee to "get on and screw around every once in a while" which doesn't seem likely to happen quite that way from what you've illustrated. Seriously, get what you can and try to put the era behind you.

I agree. It's not easy, but necessary.

You make a strong point.

However, I am a strong person... Lately I have done a good job of controlling stuff. I talked to my guild leader and told him my problems and he's a great guy... basically said "Look, only log on when you want to, and there will be no problem". So now, I don't really have to force myself to play when I don't want to, or feel like I need to raid everynight or anything. I think I am capable of backing away from the game slowly on my own merits, just like I did with Diablo 2. Things get boring, it happens... until then I'm jut going to do what I want. Not like "HEY I WANNA PLAY WOW ALL DAY LOL IMA DO IT", but like "I enjoy fulfilling my responsibilities in real life, and playing WoW in part of leisure time".

Aside from this I hope to go out every weekend night, and probably once during the week. I'm also going to be playing soccer a lot and I'm trying to start working out.

Life's good!

Quit the game.

Grats. You just gained a level IRL.

Haha... ty very much.

However being in the real world makes me realize how fucked up it is.

Man, I can sure do a lot with all this time on my hands though.

Don't know how I missed this thread, and I can highly relate to many parts of it...

I'm right up there myself, I actually just passed 270 days /played since release, not counting characters I've deleted. It's a truly sobering realization that I've spent 74% of a year logged on to the game. I was also unable to play for a period of 5 months during that time where I was largely unemployed too, that would have put me pretty close to a year.

I've been struggling to quit, however it's one of the cheapest forms of entertainment I can find since our budget isn't so great, Abby is still locating a job having just graduated from College. Add that to the fact that I'm in charge of a casual raid guild (so I somewhat have a responsibility to the guildies) and it always arms my other side of the brain with enough ammunition to keep me playing.

I'm growing away from it, and looking to fully switch over to casual gaming before the school semester starts up again, because my school performance this last semester suffered due to WoW (I actually had to withdraw from two classes due to work and WoW).

Grats on beating it, Penny. I hope you can stay off it and maybe things will look a little brighter for ya. I'll be joining you soon enough, after I get things set up for the guild to continue after my departure from the game.

That's one thing you just have to let go of, Volls. Responsibility to other players.

It's a video game. When you can't decide when and when not to play it because of "responsibilities" to other people, it's not a video game anymore.

Aye, and that's where a lot of my realization came into play. Extensive responsibility sounds more like Real Life or a Job than a video game. With a job, college, and a fiancee, I really shouldn't be putting myself in a position to be stressed on a video game.

I won't be picking up any Raid MMOs again, I simply don't have the time these days to stay competitive. I am interested in Warhammer though, pending how casual friendly it is, hoping my Bungie buddy will come through and score me a beta key. :)

Well, my realization was when I was:

1. Going to raids even when I had other things I NEEDED to do, and even when I didn't WANT to go, because my guild needed me.

2. Not playing any other games because I felt like if I wasn't progressing my character then I was doing something wrong.

WoW is a game that once you start playing it, you can't just play for 15 minutes and stop. Just about anything you do takes a good long while. I like being able to play games these days whenever I want, regardless of how much time I have. If I've got 15 minutes to do whatever I want, I'll play some D2 or whatever, and I can just stop whenever I want.