WoW for the first time.


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Funny, it still shows just 50 on xfire's website.

Because it just updated after we posted, duh :)

And honestly, I don't want to start and argument but just the fact the computer has been running WoW

8 hours a day on average for an entire week at your house, make any point you try to make about taking it with moderation

pretty moot, in my book. Even with the occasional away time, that still leaves 5-6 hours a day.

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Since I edited my post after you made yours, I'll restate it here. XFire logs the time that wow.exe is loaded, regardless if you are logged in or not. It does not distinguish the difference between time played and time that application is active. Therefore, the hours are not as reliable as you may think them to be.

My point is still valid. Take things in moderation. I try to live like that now due to health issues, but that is a personal matter and won't be brought up again.

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I like how you say you're disappointed and you've barely even scratched the surface of what the game has to offer. It's most amusing. :laugh:

Did you read his post? He was disappointed that the retail code didn't work for him. He didn't say he was disappointed in the WoW gaming experience.

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I was going to say the same exact thing. Easily the best MMO that ever existed, but honestly you're better off not playing at all. This game is never-ending and you'll always find a reason to play even though you have work to do or family to spend time with. After all is said and done and you have every piece of gear that you could possibly want what do you really have? Do yourself a favor and use that time for homework or spending face to face time with friends.

Funny I played WoW for a few months back in early 2009 and found no reason to come back. I only bought it because my friends where always talking about it when we talked over Skype so one day I went with them to the city and got WoW + 2 expansions. I used the friends program of WoW with one of my friends so we got 3x EXP for everything we did together. Still with every EX point tripled it took us about 3 months till I finally reached level 71 because I wasn't hooked to it. It was fun to play with my friends but that's about it. After I hit Level 71 with my Draenai Paladin I stopped playing because imho Northend sucks, I don't really like the atmosphere there at all. I always hated it to go into instances with random people, in fact I didn't really liked to go into instances at all, mostly only when I pulled the twinks of my friends. So the fun in WoW for me solely came from exploring the world with my friends, discovering Winter Spring, Nagrand and that Volcano while casually questing through it, now that was the fun for me. After I hit 71 I explored everything I wanted to explore and the fun was gone for me.

I was never a fan of competitive gameplay because for me it was always more fun to play with others instead of against others, that's also why I never did PvP in WoW yet I still had fun.

What I want to say with that post, different people have different play styles and different things they enjoy of a game, that's why not everyone gets addicted to WoW and finds a reason to come back^^ :laugh:

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And it's kind of funny, there's so many people preaching on about how WoW is "so not addictive" and they manage to balance

it with their personal life just fine, they sure spend a lot of time with the game for any of their preaching to sound valid.

As opposed to civil rights activists and legal reform proponents that spend a lot of time preaching about how most black people aren't criminals?

It is a time demanding game and it is a game that speaks to the addictive nature of people and that's just a fact.

Why people need to constantly defend against that fact and constantly sound like they are on the moral high horse just gets to me.

Given the number of players, you'd expect to see roughly 10x more cases of 'addiction' (or any other form of self-destructive behaviour) than you do with something like Counterstrike.

If you're going to assert facts, can you please post links to studies that compare hours played of warcraft to hours played against other games?

Something that establishes a difference between playing 1 game for 4 hours vs 2 games for 2 hours, or 8 games for 30 minutes each would be interesting.

Studies that show demographic differences between a typical warcraft player and a typical Counterstrike player would be illuminating.

Do you have any statistics on incidents of addiction - something that shows a causation effect would be particularly enlightening. Even if we accept all your assertions without evidence, we're still lacking a reason. Does warcraft (or some other game) attract those with an addictive personality, or do otherwise 'typical' people become addicts after playing? I'd suspect, like many other "societal ills" (pornography, gambling, drugs, etc.) the addictive tendencies already existed and some have selected a video game instead of the craps table as their outlet.

Raw stats

a warcraft player tends to most of their game-time playing warcraft (console gamers spread their time out). A typical warcraft gamer plays approximately 11 hours per week (which is about 50% more than what Blizzard claimed in their court case against Glider) both are reasonably consistent with the amount of time a Redwings fan would spend watching hockey (typical games are about 2.5-3 hours with about 3 games per week).

This one tells us that the average warcraft player is demographically no different from any other gamer: most are mid-20s to mid-30s with average household income. Surpsingly, warcraft players are substantially more likely to be female than male (compared to most other games).

For studies

PubMed has a few articles (which I can't read, ironically because I'm at home for reading week). The abstracts generally indicate positive outcomes for typical warcraft players.

See: Player guild dynamics and evolution in massively multiplayer online games. Chen CH, Sun CT, Hsieh J. and The effect of social support derived from World of Warcraft on negative psychological symptoms Longman. H, O'Connor E, Obst P.

That contrasts to studies involving first person shooters where studies indicate that even good players experience increased anxiety while playing and increasing hostility with play time.

see: The psychophysiology of James Bond: phasic emotional responses to violent video game events.

Ravaja N, Turpeinen M, Saari T, Puttonen S, Keltikangas-Järvinen L.

Longer you play, the more hostile you feel: examination of first person shooter video games and aggression during video game play.

Barlett CP, Harris RJ, Baldassaro R.

So the above s the source of my skepticism about your claims. Can you offer contrary evidence? I'm prepared to accept your claims but I'd like to see support.

After all is said and done and you have every piece of gear that you could possibly want what do you really have?

About the same as I have from playing chess in the park or watching a hockey game. A few hours of entertainment, something to talk about with likeminded people, and about $20/month less in my pocket (either for a premium sports channel or a couple of lattés to drink).

On the other end of the spectrum: my summer hobby is racing motorcycles. At the end of a month I've got about $4,000 worth of expenses (tires, fuel, insurance, track fees, and a motorcycle amortized over 4 summers) a very high risk of death or serious injury (indeed I have the scar to prove), something to talk about with likeminded people, and a few hours of entertainment. Strangely; nobody has ever warned me about the potential dangers of addiction, nobody has urged me to quit despite substantial yearly costs and a very good chance that I will die or become disfigured as a direct result of my actions. Why aren't you busy picketing race tracks and skydive schools?

The idea that absolutely everything in my life has to be about my family, friends, education, helping the poor, or job is ridiculous. Sometimes I just want to have fun: maybe by killing internet dragons, having sex with my girlfriend, eating sunday dinner at my parent's house, by reading a work of fiction, or by rocketing around a concrete track at 250 km/h. There's nothing wrong with any of that.

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WoW is addictive, but its just like any other pass time. No matter what you are doing as a time waister there is probably something else you can be more productive in doing.

Some people take it to a whole new level of addiction. But I think that most people can play WoW and live well balanced lives.

For me, I quit playing WoW a few months ago. Not because I was addicted and needed to go into rehab. I was just sick of playing it. Sadly, the only thing that has really filled the few hours a day I used to play WoW in is television. I think I was better off and more balanced when I was spending those hours playing WoW.

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I've never played. Don't have much interest in this type of gaming. The addiction stories are amazing for WoW. Its really sad to see. What is it now, 12 million people world wide playing this. Have fun but don't loose touch with reality and your priorities. My guess is out of those 12 million there are allot of miserable people who avoid real life. Maybe Blizzard needs to limit the amount of hours a person can play daily, weekly, or yearly. I just don't like to read stories about broken relationships, people loosing jobs and even suicide due to this game. You read about it everyday with gamblers, alcoholics, and on and on. Any addiction can become deadly. Use to say the same thing about guys playing Dungeons and Dragons who are probably in their mid/late 30's now, did they quit or are they still playing. Scary stuff but it must be pretty fun. I just don't get it.

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I've never played. Don't have much interest in this type of gaming. The addiction stories are amazing for WoW. Its really sad to see. What is it now, 12 million people world wide playing this. Have fun but don't loose touch with reality and your priorities. My guess is out of those 12 million there are allot of miserable people who avoid real life. Maybe Blizzard needs to limit the amount of hours a person can play daily, weekly, or yearly. I just don't like to read stories about broken relationships, people loosing jobs and even suicide due to this game. You read about it everyday with gamblers, alcoholics, and on and on. Any addiction can become deadly. Use to say the same thing about guys playing Dungeons and Dragons who are probably in their mid/late 30's now, did they quit or are they still playing. Scary stuff but it must be pretty fun. I just don't get it.

I believe addiction is a personal choice. People can play WoW, gamble, drink alcohol, and so on without ever becoming an addict. Others don't have that level of self controlled.

Maybe Blizzard should limit the amount of hour a person can play daily... when it gets to 8+ hours in a day, thats just ridiculous. IDK, I don't like corporations telling me what I can and can't do.... but at the same time if someone is playing 8+ hours a day, then they probably have a problem outside of their control.

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I believe addiction is a personal choice. People can play WoW, gamble, drink alcohol, and so on without ever becoming an addict. Others don't have that level of self controlled.

Now the question is: do people choose to consciously become addicted to substances (alcohol, caffine, morphine, etc) or behaviours (gambling, self-mutilation, etc) or are those the way a certain mental disorder manifests itself. No doubt people consciously choose to use alcohol but asserting that some subset of those users choose to become addicted is a pretty big step in reasoning. It would be equivalent to saying "All people who walk on the sidewalk are choosing to be mowed down by a drunk driver".

This is a fairly common field of study in psychology and sociology and the studies tend toward a mental disorder leading to behaviour. Depending on which model of addiction you apply (and it should be obvious that I'm partial to the disease model in many circumstances) it may well be that warcraft addicts have no more choice in the matter than schizophrenics, dyslexics, or sociopaths do.

The distinction is important because it leads to a number of consequences for how society deals with unacceptable behaviour:

  • If the behaviour is a choice (ie: an anti-government revolutionary chooses to blow up a building in order to affect change in 'the system') with the full mental capacity to understand and control their actions then we typically treat them harshly.
  • If the behaviour is the result of a neurological disorder (ie; a paranoid schizophrenic attempts to blow up a builder to 'make the voices stop') we say they were lacking the mental capacity to control their behaviour and so treat them (relatively) compassionately.

One of the consequences of this is that a video game addiction can't be treated by simply "not allowing" a person to play video games: you either have to treat the source of addictive behaviour (for example: if it's an attempt to flee from social interaction - you need to resolve the fear of those social interactions). Treating the symptoms is pointless. That's probably why I object to the way self-righteous folks intervene. They want 'victims' to stop playing video games but never stop to consider why a person would become addicted to them in the first place. I find it difficult to find their intentions altruistic when the only criteria for their help is "I think what you're doing is bad".

Maybe Blizzard should limit the amount of hour a person can play daily... when it gets to 8+ hours in a day, thats just ridiculous. IDK, I don't like corporations telling me what I can and can't do.... but at the same time if someone is playing 8+ hours a day, then they probably have a problem outside of their control.

Why not 7 hours a day? Or 4? Given that heart disease is a leading cause of death and health issues - why not limit the number of times somebody can eat at a fast-food restaurant in a month: mandatory physical exercise twice a day too. Asprin is the most lethal drug for sale in the US (in terms of deaths due to use): should we restrict the number of headaches people are allowed?

Television has lead to a reduction of reading - maybe limit the number of hours you can spend cheering on your favourite baseball team?

But even if you could impose such restrictions, how do you enforce them. If Johnny Q. PoorAbusiveFamily buys a second account so he can play 12 hours a day - what sort of punishment do you have? If this is a legitimate addiction as many are proposing then you'll have to realize that manatory life sentences in states with three-strikes laws have done relatively little to curb drug use. If your goal is to prevent people from losing their friends/family/health/job: locking them up in a prison for 10 years seems like a poor way to go about it.

When you start interfering with people's live's "for their own good" you're walking the path to totalitarianism.

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Now the question is: do people choose to consciously become addicted to substances (alcohol, caffine, morphine, etc) or behaviours (gambling, self-mutilation, etc) or are those the way a certain mental disorder manifests itself. No doubt people consciously choose to use alcohol but asserting that some subset of those users choose to become addicted is a pretty big step in reasoning. It would be equivalent to saying "All people who walk on the sidewalk are choosing to be mowed down by a drunk driver".

This is a fairly common field of study in psychology and sociology and the studies tend toward a mental disorder leading to behaviour. Depending on which model of addiction you apply (and it should be obvious that I'm partial to the disease model in many circumstances) it may well be that warcraft addicts have no more choice in the matter than schizophrenics, dyslexics, or sociopaths do.

The distinction is important because it leads to a number of consequences for how society deals with unacceptable behaviour:

  • If the behaviour is a choice (ie: an anti-government revolutionary chooses to blow up a building in order to affect change in 'the system') with the full mental capacity to understand and control their actions then we typically treat them harshly.
  • If the behaviour is the result of a neurological disorder (ie; a paranoid schizophrenic attempts to blow up a builder to 'make the voices stop') we say they were lacking the mental capacity to control their behaviour and so treat them (relatively) compassionately.

One of the consequences of this is that a video game addiction can't be treated by simply "not allowing" a person to play video games: you either have to treat the source of addictive behaviour (for example: if it's an attempt to flee from social interaction - you need to resolve the fear of those social interactions). Treating the symptoms is pointless. That's probably why I object to the way self-righteous folks intervene. They want 'victims' to stop playing video games but never stop to consider why a person would become addicted to them in the first place. I find it difficult to find their intentions altruistic when the only criteria for their help is "I think what you're doing is bad".

Why not 7 hours a day? Or 4? Given that heart disease is a leading cause of death and health issues - why not limit the number of times somebody can eat at a fast-food restaurant in a month: mandatory physical exercise twice a day too. Asprin is the most lethal drug for sale in the US (in terms of deaths due to use): should we restrict the number of headaches people are allowed?

Television has lead to a reduction of reading - maybe limit the number of hours you can spend cheering on your favourite baseball team?

But even if you could impose such restrictions, how do you enforce them. If Johnny Q. PoorAbusiveFamily buys a second account so he can play 12 hours a day - what sort of punishment do you have? If this is a legitimate addiction as many are proposing then you'll have to realize that manatory life sentences in states with three-strikes laws have done relatively little to curb drug use. If your goal is to prevent people from losing their friends/family/health/job: locking them up in a prison for 10 years seems like a poor way to go about it.

When you start interfering with people's live's "for their own good" you're walking the path to totalitarianism.

I agree! I would rather have a society where some people are addicts, than a society of totalitarianism! For sure.

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WoW is definately not geared towards the casual player. Unless casual is defined as a person that plays 10 hours a week for 12 weeks, then none for 18.

Or unless you've reached the highest level, got every achievement and piece of gear you can get. Then yeah, it's casual.

And i'm a casual player too.

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WoW is definately not geared towards the casual player. Unless casual is defined as a person that plays 10 hours a week for 12 weeks, then none for 18.

What? You really believe that?

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WoW is definately not geared towards the casual player. Unless casual is defined as a person that plays 10 hours a week for 12 weeks, then none for 18.

i play maybe 5 hours a week, i enjoy it.

for some reason people seem to think that when the expansions come out you have to get to max level asap and start getting all your epic gear, etc. why can't you just play 'casually' and get to max level a little before the next expansion, work on your other things, professions, a few new pieces of gear, run a few instances. then the next expansion comes and away you go again. blizzard leaves more then enough time between expansions to get ready for the next one in a casual manner.

like i said i only play 5 hours a week... maybe, sometimes none a week. my guy is only lvl 76, i should get close or hit 80 before cataclysm. maybe get a few extras before hand. i dunno, to me that makes more sense then spending 100's of hours on things that become worthless come expansion time. explain how thats not geared towards casual. maybe i wont see a lot of the raid stuff, but that doesnt bother me.

i think its just the guys who play all the time and run out of stuff to do that complain its made for casual players.

also im not picking on you Raa, just using your quote to make a point.

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WoW is definately not geared towards the casual player. Unless casual is defined as a person that plays 10 hours a week for 12 weeks, then none for 18.

Or unless you've reached the highest level, got every achievement and piece of gear you can get. Then yeah, it's casual.

And i'm a casual player too.

Sorry mate but ive been playing the game on and off for years now, and you can be a casual player.

My latest level 80, a hunter, took me 3 months to get to 80 because i was only playing a couple of hours a night before going to bed.

Im at a stage now where ive got moderate gear, and can log on and either do a raid, a couple of heroics or Wintergrasp. The choice is endless.

I do know someone that when he does the /played comes up with over 400days added across his 3 level 80's, thats a whole year spent on a game in real time. Now that is addiction and i feel sorry for people like that, they genuinely have a problem.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I signed up to neowin thinking i'd be an active member, but actually WoW is quite addictive!..

I did eventually get it all sorted, i sent blizzard photo references of my reciept and serial key and they said it's been in use for some time and that they'll send me a new one, A week later it never came so i continued using the trial and i still didn't get an email back. I got abit annoyed so i just upgraded from battle.net, upgraded within 2 hours, then what do you know. the email comes though with my serial key!. Atleast i have a serial key i can give to a friend though.

Havn't been a hardcore playing it though, i'm only a level 41 ret paladin, i've had plenty of offers to get boosted but since its my first character im just taking my time with it. The only thing that irritates me is STV!, that place is hard!

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I signed up to neowin thinking i'd be an active member, but actually WoW is quite addictive!..

I did eventually get it all sorted, i sent blizzard photo references of my reciept and serial key and they said it's been in use for some time and that they'll send me a new one, A week later it never came so i continued using the trial and i still didn't get an email back. I got abit annoyed so i just upgraded from battle.net, upgraded within 2 hours, then what do you know. the email comes though with my serial key!. Atleast i have a serial key i can give to a friend though.

Havn't been a hardcore playing it though, i'm only a level 41 ret paladin, i've had plenty of offers to get boosted but since its my first character im just taking my time with it. The only thing that irritates me is STV!, that place is hard!

You upgraded the trial account only to a Classic account, right? No TBC or WOTLK expansions? If that's the case, maybe you can provide Blizzard with some info about your upgrade through Battle.Net and ask them if then can give you a TBC key, since you already got the game through Battle.Net before their email arrived to you (and paid for the same thing two times (yea I know its two different accounts, but still... :)).

Who knows, maybe they'll just exchange the key. :)

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WoW is definately not geared towards the casual player. Unless casual is defined as a person that plays 10 hours a week for 12 weeks, then none for 18.

There's really no way anyone who knows anything about WoW could make this statement.

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Havn't been a hardcore playing it though, i'm only a level 41 ret paladin, i've had plenty of offers to get boosted but since its my first character im just taking my time with it. The only thing that irritates me is STV!, that place is hard!

lol, used to be a lot tougher, back when there were more mobs that were elite and required you to actually get a party going to complete those quests. ;)

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lol, used to be a lot tougher, back when there were more mobs that were elite and required you to actually get a party going to complete those quests. ;)

I'm just glad im not on PVP, that would make me radge quit!

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I'm just glad im not on PVP, that would make me radge quit!

lmao, I play on a PvP realm. Honestly, while the issues with leveling are always present, the game just seems lifeless without it. Besides, I like running killing / running people off from the mining nodes I'm farming. :p

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lmao, I play on a PvP realm. Honestly, while the issues with leveling are always present, the game just seems lifeless without it. Besides, I like running killing / running people off from the mining nodes I'm farming. :p

Stealth + Ambush + Mining + Mount = Ore received, low level newbie killed. Job done! :laugh:

(Though this can happen to you too. :p)

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