Too Much Wow

With the help of my wife, I've discovered that I've been playing too much world of warcraft. It's taken a toll on my life by taking away time from other things. I didn't really realize how much I've been playing until my wife bravely pointed it out to me yesterday. I've neglected far too many other things that I should be doing. I'm not going to completely stop playing, but I've designated certain times for playing. The rest of the week I need to be spending more time with my family and taking care of things that need to be taken care of. I got caught up in trying to do too much in the game, and started treating it like a job. The problem with wow is, there's no end to it. The accomplishments in the game are completely meaningless outside of the game. I was getting a little too caught up in trying to be the best Bobmage in the game. This game thrives on one ups, and being better than the guy next to you. I'm a very competetive person at everything I do, and had I kept it casual (playing only when it was really convenient) I couldn't be great. At first when she pointed it out, I got a little defensive, but after that passed I began to really look at how much of my life it was interfereing with. I've spent almost 456 hours playing this game. I have lots of friends that invest far more hours in a week than I do, and I wonder if I didn't have a family would I do the same thing? Would even more of my life be consumed with getting that next piece of epic gear, or that next progression kill, or higher pvp rankings? At the end of the day, all those accomplishments amount to exactly zero if they cost you too much in other areas of your life. My wife had held back a little about how much of a distaste for the time I spent doing it she really had. She tried to bend a little and point out only the times I neglected other things to play and negociate with me. The problem with that was, I didn't really see the problem. Other people spend just as much time watching TV, or maybe even more, but those same people will turn the TV off, or walk away from it if something else needs to be done. I, as a wow player was getting caught up in whatever task I was trying to undertake. If I was in a group for a dungeon run, I wouldn't log off until either 1) The run was complete, or 2) We got to a place that we couldn't get past and we gave up. I would shun everything else, including sleep. That's not healthy, and it's a bad thing. I took that same attitude with almost all the other accomplishments in the game. Prior to reaching lvl 70, I would set a level goal for a particular day, and I wouldn't stop until I got there. If I had dedicated that much time to anything else in my life, I would be great at it. My golf game has suffered tremendously. The time I would normally try to spend at the practice range took a back seat to whatever was going on in wow. Can you imagine how all of this looks to an outsider who's never created a wow account, or spent a second in the game? We try to justify their lack of understanding by saying "if they played it, they would understand". No, they wouldn't. Because they choose other things in their lives over a silly game. At the end of the day, that's all it is. It feels like more because of the false sense of accomplishment that comes with it, and the fact that it is indeed a "World" in which you can do things that make it feel more realistic than other games. When you get that first piece of epic gear, you get borderline ecstatic, feeling like you just conquered a big goal. The reality is, you're playing a game. The reason other games don't consume so much of our time is they have endings, there's a finality to them. If you play Halo 3, once you've completed every mission in the game, it ends with a cut scene and the story is over. With wow, the story is never over, the accomplishments are never ending. I must admit that it's alot of fun playing wow with friends, but there has to be a line. You have to decide in your own mind that it's just a game. You don't owe the people in your group the time you spend trying to clear a dungeon. If something comes up in real life, and you're clearing trash to the last boss of a heroic dungeon, you don't owe the people in the group more than you owe the people in your life. If real life is happening while your stuck in a game, you're playing way too much wow. I didn't truly understand this, until I was forced to. Addiction? I don't think so, as much as immersion. Addiction is defined as being powerless over something. I have the power to determine how much of my time I spend playing wow and my attitude towards playing it. I now take this quite a bit more seriously. If I find myself not satisfied with playing only two days a week, I'll quit all together. No game is worth more than my life outside of that game. If you find yourself in a similiar situation, give all that I've said here some serious thought. Why are you playing the game? Is it still fun? Do you get mad at other people in the game because they aren't "as good" as you are? That's a tell tale sign that you're playing too much, and taking it way too seriously.