taking wow (and mmo's) too far

Pagy, one thing i will agree with you on is that WoW is a social game that involves alot of talking on ventrillo. in fact the game pretty much depends on the whole TS/Ventrillo experience. but this just leads me to believe that most WoW players are just normal people, who enjoy being social. in fact, the only reason why i was playing for the last 25 days or so that i played, was pretty much for the friends i made, pvping for fun.

i'm not trying to make it sound like i think introversion is extremely uncommon, i said i thought probably 10%. this is judging from my own personal experience. maybe 20% makes more sense (aka 1 in 5 people are introverted?), to be honest i dont know, you're supposed to be the expert on this, not me.

and to be honest i still go by the belief that humans are social, and if you put me in a room with an introverted person i WILL get them to talk to me, regardless if it makes them wet their pants or not.
 
after re-reading this thread and the article

i'm with Bud, despite the random flame battles that acame after his initial argument. But his point he is trying to get across is right, he sometimes just gets lost in the flame wars you all are throwing more logs into.

The game is meant for everything to take long, all MMO's are. The game is meant for you to constantly work for new items, yet you can never be done. Like someone said, it's "end game" in a game that never ends.

WoW (and most MMO's of course) are just pipe dreams. You're just a fat kid on a treadmill and blizzard is dangling a twinky in front of you, you want it so bad and you'll keep doing the same thing over and over again for it, but in the end you'll never be able to get off the treadmill and eat it.
 
Slobax said:
MMO's are designed to be time sinks. It's rather genius on a marketing outlook actually.
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all games are time sinks

fps cames like CS have been popular for years, very little has changed with them and they don't force you to play

mmo's can be fun without forcing you to play
 
again, take what you will from the article (for those that read or re-read it).

for me it was the whole 'turn a blind eye' thing. working for progression with a group of people that you dont really care about, i call that work or a job (a lousy one at that). in wow (a mmo game), where you're supposed to group, guild, and raid with others for hours on end, week after week, month after month, and not develop friendships or care about eachother's welfare? that's just sad.
 
Surge said:
all games are time sinks

fps cames like CS have been popular for years, very little has changed with them and they don't force you to play

mmo's can be fun without forcing you to play
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i don't know any FPS games that are time sinks

I think your definition of time sinks is just skewed though. Time sink, in relation to gaming, means you have to at least have a good couple hours to give up to the game if you intend on getting anything accomplished.

You can hop in CS, bust some caps in a 10 minute round and then /quit and go about your day. Thus, not a time sink.

I just meant MMO's(most) are time sinks in that they purposely make every little task that you have to do, longer than it really has to be. Take travel time, crafting time, dungeon reset timers, how you don't get a mount till 40+, how you have to wait for 10 minute gryphon rides, etc.

That's one thing guild wars did right. eliminated the useless time sink aspects of MMO's. Albeit, that game is pretty damn boring imo.
 
I have this problem where I can see where everyone is coming from. :(

That being said, after reading that article I cancelled my subscription. It wasn't just the article, I had been thinking about it for a while. To be honest I'm not great at managing my time. I think MMOs are almost like weed (I'm not a pot head or anything, just know people that do it and I hear things). That sounds stupid and/or extreme, but hear me out. Some people can handle it and can put off doing it when they need to, others can't. I think the major of people can't handle it and have to do it all the time (many times to get the Sword of 1000 Truths). I think most people that play it are introverted and enjoy their time playing, but I'm not sure that's the key point.

I think the point of that article and that some others were making is the fact that even if they're enjoying the game, many people just do it way too much. The way I see it is we get 16 hours a day awake assuming you're sleeping. Assume you play 3 hours a day (which I'd assume is an average, some people play an hour, some play 8, whatever). That's 13 hours left in your day to do whatever you want, but we have a lot of prior engagements that must always be handled.

I'm not here to judge, people can do whatever they want and if it makes them happy, that's cool. I just want to say this. Don't let the game pull you in too much that you forget important things. Don't let the game become a job. I did that, then again I played a paladin. :-F If you come home from whatever you do and think "oh shit, I have to raid...", then it best suits you to find something else. Otherwise, rock on I guess.
 
I don't have a job right now that is why I started up my WoW account, I played for a month and I cancled on the weekend (I missed my day to cancel and will be playing a bit for the next month). I just wanted to play it hard for a bit to see if it is any different from other MMORPGs that I played, it isn't.

You have all the same drama in WoW as other games, you have the same time of crap going when somebody moves to another guild and everyone is supposed to hate them because they are no longer in your guild. People talking about secret meetings and bribes being exchanged so that person joins the other guild.

I just stay out of all that crap, I am in a guild with my characters, I help people out whenever I can, even if they aren't in the guild, go to instances but I am not in there trying to make friends and devolop relationships ingame.

One thing that really got to me in the first few weeks was when I teamed with another character who was having trouble doing a quest on her own, we played for a bit and chatted while we played. She has a boyfriend that plays and isn't serious about it, but seemed like she was playing because he wanted her to play with him. Now afterawhile we both ended up dying and she said "Well I guess this a good time for me to take a break and make lunch for my kids." All I was thinking was, if she didn't get killed at that point how long was she going to wait to feed her kids? She was a casual gamer that was already pulled into the game enough to wait for something to happen to give her a reason to feed her kids.

I can't even count the number of times I have heard long time guild members in a game give "I have to leave the game for real life reasons, this is one of the hardest things I have had to do in my life, I will really miss all of you..." I have always found it odd when you have people trying to convince them to stay, "you just need to manage your time better, you don't need to quit." I have always told them "Hey this is just a game, real life should always come first."
 
TseTse said:
No, but you're just trolling now to feel superior (with total disregard for what folks are saying)... so whatever.
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it wasn't trolling at all.

You mentioned you were into certain things in life in a certain age bracket as opposed to being into games... so you're suggesting anyone without your interests when they differ from you are... well you didn't mention it in a positive light now did you?
 
Slobax said:
i don't know any FPS games that are time sinks

I think your definition of time sinks is just skewed though. Time sink, in relation to gaming, means you have to at least have a good couple hours to give up to the game if you intend on getting anything accomplished.

You can hop in CS, bust some caps in a 10 minute round and then /quit and go about your day. Thus, not a time sink.

I just meant MMO's(most) are time sinks in that they purposely make every little task that you have to do, longer than it really has to be. Take travel time, crafting time, dungeon reset timers, how you don't get a mount till 40+, how you have to wait for 10 minute gryphon rides, etc.

That's one thing guild wars did right. eliminated the useless time sink aspects of MMO's. Albeit, that game is pretty damn boring imo.
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You can play WoW for 10 minutes at a time...

You associate spending time on WOW with aiming for the goal of better gear blah blah balh.

Play CS. You wanna be GOOD? You wanna be CAL-I nigga? You gotta play, gotta practice, gotta pub for teh l33t skillz.

You can play WOW in 10 minute intervals, you can play any game at 10 minute intervals, the only difference is if you are aiming for the goal of being good.

True, CS lends itself moreso to joining up with buddies and fucking around for a while, but if you want to excel at it you need to invest the time.
 
True, CS lends itself moreso to joining up with buddies and fucking around for a while, but if you want to excel at it you need to invest the time.
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the ability to play for 6 hours straight and being forced to play for 6 hours straight are 2 different things
 
Pagy said:
it wasn't trolling at all.

You mentioned you were into certain things in life in a certain age bracket as opposed to being into games... so you're suggesting anyone without your interests when they differ from you are... well you didn't mention it in a positive light now did you?
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Again... you miss the point and show lack of sincerity to just admit folks on this thread have a point. All you've done is flame them for talking sincerely on the matter.

Grow up and perhaps look in the mirror, bro.

Yes, i do think it is sad that folks at say... age 17-25 are completely absorbed in video games. Perhaps in your usual mode of not actually READING what you fuckin respond to you didnt notice that i was briefly a mud addict myself at that age, back in 1991 or so. I know the costs on your life when you get absorbed in a game at that age. The price is very steep.

I also worry about folks in my guilds who have obviously had families and were totally ignoring them or pretending that massive time invested in WoW was easily "balanced" with their RL. It's sad. You can flame me for "judging" them but im being honest. It is sad and i'm not alone in being concerned. Many guilds try to mellow out a bit to make sure folks dont have the chance to raid too much, literally. My current guild, for example, has a "cap time" on raiding so that they absolutely will not go later than a certain hour on scheduled raids. Silly little things like that make a difference, as well as having a few mature folks on vent who can perhaps say things like "ok, time to go do real life stuff" and remind everybody that this is just a game.

Most guilds that have been around a long time have negotiated these issues and seen people burn out.

All we are doing here is talking about it honestly. If you cant do that, fine...
 
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Calder said:
You can play WoW for 10 minutes at a time...

You associate spending time on WOW with aiming for the goal of better gear blah blah balh.

Play CS. You wanna be GOOD? You wanna be CAL-I nigga? You gotta play, gotta practice, gotta pub for teh l33t skillz.

You can play WOW in 10 minute intervals, you can play any game at 10 minute intervals, the only difference is if you are aiming for the goal of being good.

True, CS lends itself moreso to joining up with buddies and fucking around for a while, but if you want to excel at it you need to invest the time.
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I respect your point, but the thing is... you cannot play wow in 10 minute intervals at all. Come on...

CS has 3 minute rounds. What you do beyond that is up to you. You have no need to practice whatsoever. That's not relevant at all. The design is not based on persistent world character development and thus there is no implicit need to time sink. Even if you need to practice, you dont have to sit and play 8 hours a day to stay sharp.

The game is like minesweeper in how it sucks you in, as is the case with most games.

Short, repetitive and easy to just relax with. Obviously you can obsess over any game, but the design of a game like CS is particularly strong because it's got that minesweeper 3-minute thing going.

"Just one more game" is the procrastination mechanic. It's easy to say that when the game has short rounds and isnt designed to last mega-hours.

WoW and MMOs are a new breed of game. Different psychology. Different type of absorbtion Different entertainment mechanics than pretty much any human game thus far.

When somebody cant stop playing tetris or minesweeper or tribes... we called that procrastination.

When somebody cant stop playing wow or eq.... we call it addiction.

There's a reason.

In the world of "games" i guess poker and gambling is probably the closest comparison and has its own addiction issues. Poker isnt something you really walk away from and can do to procrastinate. You build up and increase your stakes in it, so it's a decent analogy i suppose. The same obession and focus on achievements are obviously parallels as well. Hmmm...
 
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