How World of Warcraft Changed My Life
Addiction is a heavily used word. Being a linguistic conservative, I usually like to go by the dictionary definition. What I was taught in school many years ago is that addiction necessarily implies physical withdrawl, and any similar effect was "psychological dependence." Well, as I often note, the English language is evolving (i.e. disolving), so I will take the popular definition of addiction, which is "persistent compulsive use".
And what does this have to do with World of Warcraft? More than I thought, it turns out. I have been playing WoW for about a year and a half. I played it a lot, but that that is relative. For example, this article has plenty of annectdotes about people who played more than me. And although I may not have played baseball with my son as much as he may have liked, nothing like this ever happened.
For me, "a lot" meant spending almost all of my free time playing. Sure, if I am completely honest with myself, WoW also occasionally cut into non-free time; from time to time I would go to work a little late, or go to bed a little late, or put off the yard work for an extra hour or two. But the point of today's rant is to examine what happened when my "free" time was spent doing the same thing.
I don't watch television. This is another form of addiction that I have been fortunate enough to avoid. That simple fact means that I have about 12 hours a week more free time than most people. What I did with that free time before WoW was: read books, play with my kids, write computer programs, do work that I hadn't finished during the week, and play paper-and-pencil role-playing games with my friends. After I started playing WoW, I cut out reading, programming, and extra work. My RPG time was limited enough that it didn't interfere with WoW, so it didn't really suffer.
And what was the effect of that? Duh. I started fallin behind in my understanding of current affairs. I stopped excelling at work. I got rusty at computer programming. I stopped most of my positive interaction with my kids (they still got yelled at for making too much noise and distracting me from my WoW group responsibilities). Here's one pretty bad thing: I didn't notice any of these things, at least not for a long time. I am not alone in this phenomenon. This cry for help is an example, but even more interesting is the large number of responses at the bottom of that page.
Normally, my family would let me know if I was doing something bad that affected them. For example, the wife and kids ganged up on me to get me to stop smoking. But when it came to WoW, my wife said "you're not missing work, and you need your recreation." But finally, something inside me snapped. I woke up one morning and said "I am going to do an experiment and stop playing WoW for a few weeks and see what happens."
Over the next several posts, I will share my experiences and reflections.
And what does this have to do with World of Warcraft? More than I thought, it turns out. I have been playing WoW for about a year and a half. I played it a lot, but that that is relative. For example, this article has plenty of annectdotes about people who played more than me. And although I may not have played baseball with my son as much as he may have liked, nothing like this ever happened.
For me, "a lot" meant spending almost all of my free time playing. Sure, if I am completely honest with myself, WoW also occasionally cut into non-free time; from time to time I would go to work a little late, or go to bed a little late, or put off the yard work for an extra hour or two. But the point of today's rant is to examine what happened when my "free" time was spent doing the same thing.
I don't watch television. This is another form of addiction that I have been fortunate enough to avoid. That simple fact means that I have about 12 hours a week more free time than most people. What I did with that free time before WoW was: read books, play with my kids, write computer programs, do work that I hadn't finished during the week, and play paper-and-pencil role-playing games with my friends. After I started playing WoW, I cut out reading, programming, and extra work. My RPG time was limited enough that it didn't interfere with WoW, so it didn't really suffer.
And what was the effect of that? Duh. I started fallin behind in my understanding of current affairs. I stopped excelling at work. I got rusty at computer programming. I stopped most of my positive interaction with my kids (they still got yelled at for making too much noise and distracting me from my WoW group responsibilities). Here's one pretty bad thing: I didn't notice any of these things, at least not for a long time. I am not alone in this phenomenon. This cry for help is an example, but even more interesting is the large number of responses at the bottom of that page.
Normally, my family would let me know if I was doing something bad that affected them. For example, the wife and kids ganged up on me to get me to stop smoking. But when it came to WoW, my wife said "you're not missing work, and you need your recreation." But finally, something inside me snapped. I woke up one morning and said "I am going to do an experiment and stop playing WoW for a few weeks and see what happens."
Over the next several posts, I will share my experiences and reflections.
posted by Simuloid | 10:52 AM
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