129: The Good Ending

[Sean Sands]

The Good Ending

"I vowed to quit, and I would do so in such a melodramatic way that I convinced my editors here at The Escapist that the results would be worth documenting. I wouldn't simply do as so many before me had, click the uninstall button and privately put the whole ordeal behind me.

"I would kill my characters."

Sean Sands quits playing WoW, and goes out with a bang.


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[CarlosYenrac]

This is the second time i've read this and i still love the ending...
I'm not even sure i *want* to know if you pressed enter...

 

[Lara Crigger]

Still great the second time around.

 

[Larenxis]

Brilliant.

 

[SeruK]

I, on the other hand, want to know. Did he or didn't he delete his character?

 

[purple_haze]

That is a good ending. I would sold it at least.

 

[Namisar]

I've gone through similar predicaments with WoW and I'm sad you didn't at least sell your character because if you HAD sold your character than the amount of time you had spent playing the game would have at least made a return. By deleting your character you ensured that it really was a waste of your time.

Time = Money, so if you get money back for your account, you can look at it as getting time back. Not all of course, but some.

Ultimately I came to the conclusion that playing WoW wasn't a "waste of my time" because like you, if it wasn't WoW it would be another game or I'd be playing guitar, or doodling which can all be viewed as equal wastes of time.

I stopped raiding and moved to another server with my alt and started doing nothing but battlegrounds. I didn't have to log on at any specific time and I was never grouping with anyone so I could put it down at a moments notice. One of my biggest complaints about ALL MMOs is that there is no pause button.

Its going to suck in about 2 weeks when you get an itch to multi-shot.... because I can tell from the detail you have in this article that you'll want to play again.

 

[Chimaera]

Even though it is recent, still good to see this one again

 

[Danimal3K]

I stopped reading anything related to WoW like, oh, five years ago. What's left to say after years and years of the same old grind? This article was fresh and original and I enjoyed it immensely. There are way too many other great games out there to play to spend forty days and nights in Asseroth.

 

[Rick Roll]

"She seemed more curious than pleased. 'Really? Don't you like the game anymore?'"

I hate to tell you this, but if your wife doesn't care whether you spend a thousand hours playing video games or not, she's cheating on you.

 

[Inferno_str1ke]

I stopped reading anything related to WoW like, oh, five years ago.

Wow, thats commitment, to stop reading about a game before it actually came out.

I've quite WoW three times now but on no occasion have I deleted my characters, so I always know I'll end up back there one day again. At the moment its just a matter of time and money, should I come across some it will be harder to resist the pull.

 

[Kainti]

Good man.

 

[DoctorXero]

How pointlessly dramatic. You could have sold off your account and bought a month's worth of groceries. Or a new TV. Or a bicycle. This list gets larger depending on the quality of your gear.

 

[shishikyuu]

what will you do now? waste your time on other games? read some books? watch some more telly?
you say you can spend more time with the wife and kids. great. this was impossible while playing the game?

are there really only the options of either playing only wow and nothing else, or no wow at all?

I got over the 100 days /played total mark a week ago or so across all my characters. quite a bit, yes. over 2.5 years though, it's comparable to how much time some other hobbies out there will take.

I don't just play wow, I do plenty of other things. sometimes I play every day a week straight, but then perhaps I get my hands on cool games such as bioschock or portal. and I play those a while and ignore wow altogether for a great length of time. (to great frustration of guild members, but fuck them, they don't own me!)

yes, there have been months that have gone by when I've never even played the game. and that's a shame of the subscription, I know. but why bother? I know I have the possibility to play if I wanted to and that's enough for me.

People going off blaming wow for consuming up all their time really gets me pissed off, and more and more people are getting on that bandwagon.
it's your choice every night to log in, and no one else's. you could've done something else once in a while. don't sign up for raids a week or 2 and have some fun with your wife somewhere, play some other games or have a good time with the kids.

the only reason your drama about "quiting the game" seems to mean anything is because you keep referring to it as an addiction similar to alcohol and cigarettes. it just plain isn't and I consider people like myself proof.
If you are the kind of person that gets sucked in and loses all willpower to do anything else but grind all day long you'll get addicted to anything, even videogames (obviously) and people just keep blaming wow for a problem that is only their own. moderation mate, that's what is lacking.

you keep on pointing out you "wasted" so much of your time, but really all we ever do on this planet is keeping ourselves busy with matters that in hindsight are pretty trifling. can you really say you're a better man after all the tv you've ever watched in your life? try adding up how many hours that is.

you've played the game, came to a point you though you've had enough... fine! good for you. off to the next time-sink. it doesn't mean anything in particular and stop blaming wow and implying/accusing it of being a poison to you and others.

 

[Baron Calico]

Wow... this brings back some hard feelings.

I quit WOW on February 14th, 2007 and not a day goes by when I don't have that sucking desire to log in and kill some mobs.

I quit just after the Burning Crusade came out, and 3 days into my 3-month renewal, but even with all the money spent I had to let it go. And it was one of the three hardest things I've had to do in my 26 years of life.

I, too, killed a Level 66 mage, a 60 warrior, and a 55 Shaman. I abandoned a collective 65 days of playtime, or about 1560 hours. I grinded epic mobs, fought in the battlegrounds, raided dungeons, and for 6 months led the third largest, and by far the most respected guild (big raiding guilds would frequently borrow our members to fill out raid numbers) on my server. I started playing on April 22nd, 2004 in the second phase of the beta. Right-click equipping from inventory was something I personally suggested to the developers.

I played the game with my girlfriend--while she was away at college, the game was our way of being together in one form or another. She played a lot more than I did. We were both horribly addicted, but it seemed I was the only one to realize that it was a poison. After two and a half years together, I broke up with her in part because of the game. Then I quit the game because I couldn't stomach being there any longer.

I didn't delete my characters, I didn't tell anyone goodbye, I just stopped logging in. And a week later I went to the website and asked to be removed. When that little box came up that asked for a reason why I was kicking the habit, I just put "This game ruined my life. I'm quitting to regain control."

I hit the "Submit" button without any hesitation.

Now a year later, still single, not dating, I'm about to make a gigantic move to a totally different part of the country, and this article reminded me why I initially made the decision to move, and why I still feel I made the right choice.

I miss the game dearly. And I miss my ex-girlfriend dearly. Making the right choice should never be that painful.

 

[TheTakenOne]

I really liked this article. It was very thought-provoking. I've never personally played World of Warcraft(or any other MMORPG, for that matter), but I often get the impression that it is one of those things that demands you sink a lot of time into, and after a while people seem to just keep going back to even once the experience is no longer as satisfying as it was the first time you tried it out.

Or not, I mean, what do I know?

It does seem to me that our newcomer, shishikyuu, completely missed the point of the article. This didn't sound to me like a "WoW has been a waste of my time and money so I'm going to just quit" but rather a thrilling conclusion to a story that's been a long time coming. You live, you grow, you fight, you explore, and then you die. The end. If you enjoyed it from start to end, then you can say you at least took something from it and if that's the case, it really wasn't a waste.

Furthermore, our friendly newcomer here at The Escapist forums, while your rant may not have been as such, you only succeeded in coming off as an addict in denial yourself. If you need to justify the many hours you put into playing World of Warcraft, that's fine, but I don't see any reason to feel threatened by the fact that people are quitting because they no longer enjoy the experience anymore.

Oh, and welcome to The Escapist forums.

 

[Girlysprite]

I think it is somewhat is a misconception that you need sink tons of time into WoW when you;re playing it. Yes, if you want superepic gear and grind raid instances, then it becomes a time sink. But I for myself am just a casual player, not in a guild, often play alone, sometimes with friends. I do some quests, try to get my profession up in a slow rate, and have fun.

Games are a 'waste of time' in the end anyways, almost all games are. You have fun, but you don't do anything that is considered productive by the rest of the world. You dont earn cash, you don't create new things. But that's ok, its about fun after all.

 

[shishikyuu]

It does seem to me that our newcomer, shishikyuu, completely missed the point of the article.

I quote from the article:
"The game had become the bedrock of my pastime. I wasn't sure anymore whether I was playing out of a sense of fun or artificial necessity. Ask the alcoholic if he enjoys drinking or the smoker if his cigarettes taste good, and, if he's at that fine precipice between control and chaos, the answer is equal parts yes and no."

I do believe you, in fact, missed the point of my "rant". whether or not I'm addicted myself is not the issue, the fact hat some people need to play 8 hours a day 7 days a week and blame the game for it is. you say it's great if you can quit the game when it stops being fun, but the article talks about "artificial necessity". that is what I'm talking about.

This man says that he now can finally spend time with his wife...what kind of man is he that he couldn't do so before? I'm saying that I play the game, and I can't imagine why someone would act that way. in fact, I don't think I've logged in more then twice this month alone. I've got other things to worry about at this time.

tl;dr => too many people who are easily addicted to anything blame wow for all their problems. that's what I'm griping about.

 

[LordOmnit]

You are still missing the point in that it isn't him blaming WoW for it. That would be as idiotic as someone blaming alcohol for him being addicted to alcohol; what he is saying is that he developed much too much of an attachment and feeling of need for it that it became an addiction (seriously, all an addiction is is a mental and/or physical need for something that transends conventional means of getting rid of (like cold turkey) without fear of repercusions).
And as for your little thingy about spending time with his wife- I'm sure that he spent time with his wife before, but he was probably highly invested in making sure that his WoW-ness was still going on and good and therefore not spending as much time as he felt he should have. Oh, and if you can't imagine people acting that way, then you seriously need to have your imagination and cognitive skills checked (people go insane for fother mucking anything (yes that was intentional).

 

[teknoarcanist]

Nice article As obscure as it may seem, I went through this with City of Heroes before I finally realized I was just killing bad guys with an imaginary superhero; this was literally a macrocosm of the playing I had done when I was little, but more pathetic because it was with people I didn't know and (honestly) forgot about the minute they left the chatlog.