Some Thoughts After a World of Warcraft Binge4 min read

The winter was rude, harsh, depressing. We had moved to a shit hole of a new apartment. Excuses, excuses excuses…

Shortly after christmas I caved in and used that 60 day World of Warcraft game card, that had been sitting in my desk tempting me for all this time. After more than a year of not playing it was amazing how quickly I was completely absorbed again. Worrying. A game like World of Warcraft is dangerous for someone like me, long term unemployed, depressed, bored… There is always something to do in Azeroth, the days fly by farming, grinding, building rep, dungeons, pvp, raids, etc, etc, etc, there’s always something to do. Daily quests. The never ending story.

I had started playing WoW back in 2005, shortly before Xmas, and pretty much played non-stop until August 2010, only missing a few months here and there. With these recent two months that adds up to close to five years playing a game, and that includes several hardcore phases, like going for High Warlord with my hunter and hardcore raiding with my holy paladin during WotLK. Five years. I feel ashamed for wasting all this time. But yes I had fun. And mostly I had “something to do”, or at least the illusion that I did.

I named it a binge in the title, and of course this implies alcohol or drug addiction. At times it did feel like a binge, but never unsafe. The time frame was set in rock. I had these 60 days, not more. They were winter days, when my other main project, urban farming, is mostly on hold anyway. At the end of the 60 days we would move house again, leave that shit hole of an apartment, live again. Spring would start soon with vegetables to be grown, chickens to be raised, revolutions to be started…

It may well have been a binge. But is it an addiction? Since i stopped playing, I didn’t think about the game much at all. It was actually more like a relief to stop playing. Towards the end of that period most game play aspects had started to annoy me again. And of course it helps, that I am not a very talented player and never got to see any of the high end challenging content… We also went to Berlin for a week in there and I didn’t miss the game for a second.

But I do miss some of the people I hung out with, guild mates and others. That aspect of the game has always been the most fascinating to me, the social part, the people you meet and “befriend” from all around Europe. Yes, these are not necessarily real friendships, but they can turn into that. Many people have met playing and become real life friends, lovers. The social interaction is the healthiest part of this game.

I always tried to look at the game with some perspective, while playing I always tried to analyze it as well. I think I could name quite a few of the psychological and group dynamic tricks, that Blizzard is employing to get people hooked into the game. A lot of it is comparable to drug dealers, providing the players with always higher and more intense “doses” of the buzz. Most of it is subtle psychological trickery, building up competition among the players, random drops creating rat like looting behavior. These tricks should be quite easy to see through, yet still I kept falling for them, again and again. What a shame. And what a weakness. I felt guilty a lot. But the sickest part of the game again lies in the social aspect of the game. There is always another player, who has it worth than you. Yes, you are playing too much, but this other guy, he really has it bad… Instead of telling him to slow down, you prefer to use him as your justification for playing more.

And of course then there was the fox. I don’t know how many foxes i killed in Tol Barad. Many. Hundreds. Finally, I looted the pet companion the day before my game card ran out. After killing hundreds of foxes I got the small companion fox. In real life I hate hunters and especially fox hunters. World of Warcraft turned me into one. And of course, the joy after the pet dropped lasted a few moments and then was forgotten…

World of Warcraft Binge on Youtube