How Warcraft Doesn't Have To Wreck Lives

robustyoungsoul writes "From the same guild leadership as the fellow who started an internet storm with his post about his experience in WoW comes a different point of view: it doesn't have to consume your life." From the article: "I got a Masters degree in policy from one of the most difficult schools in the country while at the same time playing WoW and working a part time job. I would come home from a busy day and think about how to use what I learned to make the guild work better. It was a way for me to practice what I was learning and to discover what was involved with leading people (mostly getting all the blame and no thanks, it seems :P). I've learned the lessons of clear communication, sacrifice, compassion, tough love ... and balance. I plan to use these skills in my professional life. So in short, I play the game because I get something tangible out of it."

Agreement

[mseeger]

Hi,

i can much agree with the positive impression, but for different reasons. I have 50+ hour work life and i'm happily married. My goal in WoW is not to complete the T2 set ASAP (it is bound to happen anyway some day) or to learn management (better: herding of cats), but to recreate. It's a great tool (and just a tool) for that. No more, but no less...

Regards, Martin

naysayer

[Anonymous Coward]

I see this as more of a "I'm not a loser!"/"I didn't waste my time!" reaction, and a defense written only for himself. It's obvious he's just offended by the public opinion which was stirred and strengthened that WoW players lack a strong social/outside life.

And it's true. You cannot have as strong of a social/outside life when you play a video game for 8 hours a day, unless you live on a planet that has 32 hour days.

If I didn't see it ruin so many people personally, I wouldn't feel so strongly about it. No one said it wuld automatically make you do bad in school. If you have little to no social life, you have plenty of room for your schoolwork and WoW.
He's simply in denial.

MMOs lead to grinding, grinding leads to suffering

[CharAznable]

I hear WoW is a lot better than Evercrack in this respect, but a problem I find is that the things that are considered top achievements in WoW are not doable without insane amounts of mindless, repetitive activites. For instance, you want High Warlord or Grand Marshall, you have to PVP 14 hours a day for 6 months. The expansion is supposed to alleviate some of these issues, but I'd still say that you'll enjoy WoW a lot more if you don't feel the urge to top everybody else's achievements. There's a lot of people with no life out there, and if you want to top them, you'll have to give up your life too.

Re:All it takes is

[Fozzyuw]

Indeed. The original article is "popular" or "important" because it's to introduce people to the knowledge that there is a phenominon in the game culture that can extend outside the actual game (talk about virtual reality, hehe). Not that, "gaming in moderation" can be good for you.

What is interesting, however, is the fact that these online games (having a virtual social and economic society) can actually be used to find the effects of 'real' world social and economic theories theories. I be interested in reading an article written about using WoW to try and munipulate market prices through supply and demand in an online economy (one which has limitless but rare materials) or other economic and social theories to see how they hold true in todays popular virtual worlds.

How about running guilds in a communist, democratic, and socialist way and compare the differences in impact? Do online gamers have inherent social beliefs based on their real world counterpart (depending where you live), or would a person living in a real-world democracy actually favor an opposing view point?

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:The easiest way. . .

[SatanicPuppy]

Meh. If you become fitness obsessed, your charisma drops again because you become an annoying bastard. I get tired of the fitness nazi's looking down on me because I don't obsess over every little aspect of my appearance/weight.

Everything is about priorities. If WoW is enjoyable, do it! But even enjoyable things should be done in moderation. It's possible to find a quality raiding guild that doesn't require you to run three nights a week...May take a little while, but that's the way it goes. Takes just as long to get in a hardcore raiding guild, with the whole interview/trial period bs.

Re:You do not know about addiction

[Anonymous Coward]

you obvioulsy don't smoke or you would know that nicotine is a singular obsesion and compulsion when you do not have it.

So I guess by that logic, your attempt to insult has failed. I guess I should tell the mods not to mod you flamebait, and simply attribute your stupid comment to ignorance rather then malice.

Re:MMOs lead to grinding, grinding leads to suffer

[nege]

How do you kill that which has no life?

Sorry, I had to!!

But seriously, its true. They show this in the southpark episode. The only way to compete with the uber-griefer was to become even bigger losers than he was! It is completely possible to just not care about being the most-uber and just play the game to have fun. I play about 5 hours a week. I am not level 60, and wont be for a while, but it doesnt matter because I get to enjoy some wow with my life, not have it BE my life.

That is what I like about wow. With rest, and shorter 5 man instances you can still get to 60 with 2-5 hour sessions of your chosing.

Mod -5 Self Righteous Spewing

[Anonymous Coward]

The real issue is people have different ways of coping with the fact that the world is a shitty place. Some drink, some overeat, some play video games to excess, some take drugs, some go onto slashdot and spew self-righteous crap. This doesn't make people "grown up children" with no self control. Everyone finds some way to make him/herself feel better.

Personally, I prefer people who find ways of making themselves feel better other than shitting on other people. I tend to go outside and do a little yard work which leaves me (and my neighbours) something tangible to appreciate and gives my muscles a workout but I can appreciate the odd hour of a video game on my PS2.

I'm surprised at the self-righteous crap spewing on Slashdot lately in response to everything... maybe it's only one vocal person, but someone out there thinks everything that's wrong in the world is due to people not living up to that person's standards of "maturity". When I look around and see so many people working, paying taxes, raising kids, maintaining cars and homes, etc. I have no clue what this person's talking about. Sure we all get tunnel vision sometimes with our own priorities, but objectifying people as "grown up children" does nothing to help a community.

what is with these guys?

[sgant]

The first guy made the weird statement that he was in one of the oldest guilds in the games...but since the game is only 2 years old there are literally hundreds if not thousands of guilds that are just as old as many were started on day one. Since that article didn't elaborate on if he meant the guild was playing on other games, one can only assume.

Now this guy is claiming to have a "Masters degree in policy from one of the most difficult schools in the country".

Is there a hyperbole filter here on Slashdot or what?

South Park had a nice episode about WoW

[thue]

I don't play WoW myself, but I liked the South Park episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBBbM2iFQ1g [youtube.com]

Re:Simple

[NaugaHunter]

Correct. And the blizzard guys have made this so. I was one of those people who wanted to hop on or hop off. Play solo, or do small quests with small groups of friends that would only take 30 minutes, 1 hour, or max 2 hours at a time.

But blizzard doesnt produce content like that, so a lot of the people like me, including me, stopped playing. The game is remarkably good at this type of content from levels 1-40. However, the developers seem to focus more on 20, 40, 60 man raid dungeons, and not single player quests. You cant really be functional and play WOW at high levels, unfortunately. High level WOW play requires 8 hour raids. It requires constantly running dungeons and PVP for items. And that sucks for me, but some people love it (the so called 'addicts'), and thats what they pay for.

And you're full of crap. It would be much better for Blizzard to have people who only played 10 hours a month and paid $15 than having everyone play a lot increase their server loads, bandwidth, and lag complaints. In fact they are specifically designing the new dungeons in The Burning Crusade to be smaller and easier to complete, as well as making other grinds (reputation and pvp honor) easier.

You're right, people have been leaving over this. But all indications are that they have listened and learned.