The Realization That Everything You Do In World of Warcraft Is Crap

In my opinion, there are stark differences between playing an MMORPG and running a big website. Both of these pursuits can be considered hobbies. It is true that Hellforge takes up a good amount of my time every day, but unlike playing World of Warcraft, this enterprise is not one that leaves me feeling drained. Hellforge exists as a venue for my creativity, a place to express my words and share my views with others, and I try to make sure that everyone who belongs to the community also feels the same way and gets as much out of it as I do.

I have a lot of time to play video games, watch movies, or spend a good chunk of my day at the coffee shop in the company of a good book (or friends, if they're around), and I can write whatever I want in the slip book that I carry with me wherever I go.

When I played World of Warcraft, I couldn't do any of these things. It was my experience that although it only involved sitting down in front of a computer and playing a game, the problem with WOW, at least to me, was that it felt like a job.

When I played it, I spent much of my time grinding during the day and raiding during the night. Though I wasn't a member of a hardcore raiding guild, raiding three times a week for 4 hours at a time was still far too much for me, especially given the preparations I had to go through each time we raided.

It's a game that left me feeling too tired to do anything else. After raiding, I'd immediately head to bed, because it is certainly not a game that put me in the mood to do anything else but play even more. I suppose you could say that I was addicted. It's true that not everyone feels this way, but World of Warcraft certainly had an adverse effect on me. There are only three things on the mind of an addicted World of Warcraft player, and that is playing WOW, eating and sleeping. Everything else is a distraction.

For the few months that I played it, I'd given up reading (my favorite hobby) and even Hellgate Guru, my website at the time, went into a state of neglect as I cared more about getting my character equipment and gear than managing the website. Although I did not abandon the website, it certainly suffered in my absence.

The reason MMOs like World of Warcraft feel so draining to me isn't simply because they require a ridiculous amount of time investment. When you're as dedicated to a game as I am, these games feel like more of a job than any sort of way to past the time. World of Warcraft felt to me like an emotional investment in addition to being a time-consuming behemoth. Guild drama and server drama were a big part of the game for me, and for most of the guild members with whom I played. Just as I wrote in one of my articles on MMOs, the social aspect of WOW is a hook that keeps many people from leaving, and I'm ashamed to admit that I was one of those who felt so tied up by the game that there was scarcely anything else I could think about in the time that I felt addicted to it. The peer pressure kept me playing and encouraged me to contribute as much as I could.

While this same peer pressure can be said to apply to any number of other social endeavors, playing an MMO did not reward me in any way. I did not truly find it challenging, nor did any aspect of it take much of my skill. It was not an endeavour that allowed me to express my creativity or even blow off steam. I felt better playing thirty minutes of Call of Duty 4 than I did in a full day of playing World of Warcraft. 

Every aspect of the game felt like a chore to me, and leveling up was simply another term for drudgery, at least in my view. I felt like a dishwasher, or the plongeur as described in George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, this useless drudgery becomes a source of pride for me, and a number of the guild mates with whom I played. We became boastful about spending more time in the game than the next person, of grinding more often or gaining more levels.

It is ridiculous to think about this now, but it is what happens to many players in an MMO. The only respite I had was when the server went down for maintenance and I would feel drunk with the excitement that no one else was playing the game or gaining levels while I was away from it. It is at these times when all players, those who are level 40, 60, or 80, felt equal to me; and when everything I ever accomplished in the game was rendered meaningless. It is why I stopped playing World of Warcraft.