You’re right in that fun is the most important aspect of gameplay. If the game has become so stressful and expanded past where it impacts one’s life without returning that fun, it’s time to reprioritize.

That’s pretty much what I started doing. Unless my wife logs in during the evenings, I usually just wait until after she’s gone to bed before I get on. I relax with her and my kid before he goes off to sleep, then afterward it gives us a little quiet time in the evenings.

Once you can sit down, look forward to, and feel good about being able to play WoW, the better off you’ll be. A lot of us get in the habit of just logging in every spare moment we have – that’s when it’s a problem. WoW’s a an extremely fun and pretty economic form of entertainment as long as you don’t let it interfere with your life.

GL w/ the Greek.

Lol, I know what you mean. Honestly, I don’t know how couples do it when only one of them plays. Most of the men I know have wives or girlfriends that don’t understand, don’t support, or even detest WoW. I’ve seen quite a few of my online friends drop by the wayside over the years due to domestic problems as a result of WoW damaging the relationship.

It’s nice that you can enjoy the game together, but don’t get too caught up with it. It’s easy to let WoW be the answer for your social life and a bulk of your interaction together. Try not to let it get to that point. Trust me.

@ Uchikoma

Yep. You’re definitely having WoW withdrawls. When I first started playing there were log on queues, and often times the log on process could take several minutes or even hours while they were working out technical difficulties. I used to get sooo angry at this. It was weird.

When my wife found her WoW experience to be stifled by her shitty computer at the time, we ended up ordering her a brand new custom built PC that was on par with my own, solely for WoW. Granted she did need a PC upgrade anyway, the primary reason for it was just so that she could enjoy WoW. Waiting for the PC to arrive at our house seemed like an excruciatingly long time.

Honestly, it’s good to take a week or so off now and then, either by going on a trip or just taking care of business or things around the house. Sometimes it can get to the point where you’re not really sure what to do with your time if you can’t play WoW. That is not good. Like ProfBeej states in his posts, try and remember what it was you used to enjoy doing or how you’d spend your time before WoW.

Aside from the responsibilities of RL kicking me in the ass, a few realizations that really caused me to devalue the time I spent playing WoW…

It’s a virtual world that will someday cease to exist, yet the world “we live in” continues to go on. I used to enjoy playing D2 quite a bit. I spent 4+ years having a blast with that game. After about two months of playing WoW I logged into D2 and quickly realized all of my beloved characters had expired. Poof! All gone. All that time I’d spent leveling them and gearing them, and now they were history.

It wasn’t a huge deal, since I had no time for D2 anymore even if I did want to play. But the fact was, that gaming experience ended for me in the blink of an eye, much as WoW will eventually end one day. Then it occurred to me… I don’t want to sit here a few years from now thinking I lost a chunk of my life during that time.

WoW is incredibly fun to play, but unfortunately the grindfest nature of the game causes an addiction. You have to invest so much time in order to advance your character(s) that eventually it becomes like a job. You start feeling like you “have so much to do”. This is when it becomes time to step back and think about things.

Three years ago I would come home from work, log on and start queueing Alterac Valleys for hours on end. I’d do that for weeks. I felt I had to obtain at least rank 10 before I’d be happy. Eventually I did get there, but I was literally exhausted by the end and pretty burned out to tell you the truth. At that point the game had stopped being fun for me and became more of a compulsion.

A common symptom of addiction is when you feel like you’re really missing out on something if you are unable to play. I dealt with those feelings for a few years. My wife would want me to watch TV with her or something, and I would sit there frustrated because I was asked to watch the idiot box instead of being able to do something “meaningful” in the World of Warcraft. Although, watching TV isn’t necessarily a good alternative to playing WoW, spending actual real life time with your significant other is.

I’m not sure if you raid or not, but being part of an active raiding group is a sure fire way to get you in trouble. When you have to start regularly scheduling life around WoW you definitely have a problem. Hardcore raiders are like drug addicts. Either their lives become damaged by the effects of the addiction, they eventually realize what they’re doing and quit, or both. I know that when I disassociated myself from regularly scheduled activities, it made things so much easier for me. I still raid on occasion, but only when it’s convenient for me.

The truth of the matter is you’re not missing anything by not being able to log on. However, there can be a lot that you are missing out on in real life if you’re not careful. The best example of this I can give is BigRedKitty. I saw the writing on the wall months before he quit.

My advice is to use this time off from WoW wisely and reset how you feel about the game. Set small goals for yourself when you do log on and simply log off when they’re complete. When you find yourself dilly dallying around in Dalaran wondering, “well… let’s see… what do I need to do now?”, that’s when it’s time to log off. Remember… too much of a good thing isn’t usually healthy. If you’re more disciplined about your play time and are ensuring that your real life is in balance, then your time in WoW will be much more rewarding.

Not a good sign.