How Joining a Hard-Core Raiding Guild Saved my Life

I've heard it time and time again. The story about the guy who got so addicted to WoW, or World of Warcraft, in the incredibly unlikely case someone who doesn't play reads this, that his life fell apart. He lost his job, his family, his kids, his girlfriend. He had to go into therapy, stop playing altogether, and now he haunts 12-step programs and hangs around Dunkin' Donuts all night telling everybody just how fucking happy he is in that shrill, vindictive tone that tells the world he knows he isn't fooling anyone.

So yeah, maybe I play WoW a bit too much. Maybe I play it a lot too much. But what are the alternatives?

1. Watch TV 5 hours a night while drinking enough beer to make a grizzly bear comatose. Well, this has obvious downsides, and besides, there ain't a damned thing on. Plus, it costs a lot of money if you like good beer.

2. Develop internet porn habit. This gets expensive once you start paying for it, it causes marital stress in many cases, and if you have kids you are definitely going to get in trouble when your 6 year old daughter asks Mom if she likes double chocolate DP and if it is good with jimmies. And then there is the issue of just how much one person can masturbate, and whether you want to find out...

3. Have an affair. Okay, let's get this out of the way. It really isn't for me. My life is complicated enough with one woman in it. The last thing I need is another one. In this scenario, everyone is unhappy and it costs you a lot of money.(Besides, I actually love my wife. And she isn't make-believe, or inflatable.)

4. Get into politics. That's right. If I wasn't worried about getting the daily done or watching the timer on Wintergrasp, I might start paying attention to how badly the Democrats are screwing up everything they touch, and then I'd have to get involved. Don't make me write a letter.

So, having discussed at least some of the more obvious alternatives, let's conclude that playing WoW isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that the issue is how much time you spend playing it.

For many people, they feel compelled to play constantly because they don't want to miss anything. Even long after they have done their dailies, worked the Auction House, and run a few battlegrounds, they stay on because they are afraid that a raid might come up and that could drop the best-in-slot Hammer of Ura Pente, which would make them the most uber-est of pallys in all of pally-land.

Basically, they are in a crappy guild, and can't run any decent raids, so they play constantly in hopes that they will find a pug(pick-up group) of people they can raid with. Only it doesn't happen because almost everyone in a pug is hoping that you will carry them so that they can get the Hammer of Fucking Uber. Do you see where this is going?

So enter the Hard-Core Raiding Guild. Ostensibly, this is a group of assholes and jerks who are so good that they treat everyone like crap and are no fun to be around, and none of them actually enjoy playing WoW because they are focused on 'progession'. At least, this is what all the scrubs, M&S, or whatever other term for loser you prefer, say. This is the standard mythology that the majority of WoW players buy into in order to justify why they aren't running end-game content and HC guilds are. The alternative is to admit that they suck. Or at least, that the majority of the people in their guild suck.

Let's be clear about this. WoW is a fun, and incredibly complex, game. You can spend hundreds, even thousands, of hours playing and never do all the things that can be done.

And yet...

In order to become one of the highest ranked players on my realm, I press, on average, 6 buttons repeatedly. Yes, I have read extensively on my class, and have built my character around the most powerful configuration possible. But all of the information is available on-line, none of it is more complicated than you want it to be, and once set up, 6 buttons.

In my old guild, I was a good player, and I did my job, and we wiped all the time. I was a top-dps player. In my new guild, I do my job, and I am average dps. The difference isn't anything I do, but that everyone else I play with is that much better. I am doing the best I can as a warlock, and am roughly in line with the other locks, taking gear and experience into account. But all the other players are also doing their best with their class, and they simply do more dps than warlocks.

But back to my point. Playing WoW constantly is, I think, a function of not getting to do the things that you want to do. For me it was. Now that I am in a top-ranked guild on my server, I raid the nights that raids are scheduled, and the other nights I can play or not play, do what I want, and enjoy the game.

The key thing is that I know that on raid nights, I will be running content that is sufficiently challenging and rewarding that it is worth the time and effort, and I don't need to waste my time looking for something more.