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Breaking a WoW addiction

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Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#101

Post by [deleted] »

JanezStupar wrote: post #92
scotty79 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are leveling in real life sometimes you wake up and see emptiness of this all. Sure, what you achieved in life provides comfort for your body but body is relatively easy to comfort if mind is happy. If you are playing game all the time there is not much time you have to be "awake" and you may even never be fully "awake" to notice and appreciate your handicapped life. People can have handicapped life even when…

Indeed - human mind is capable of creating many elaborate delusions. Nihilism being the worst of them all. One has to recognize that indeed, there are no supreme values, that there is no guaranteed path to salvation . And that in spite of this terrible truth one must form his own set of values that guide him on a journey that doesn't really lead anywhere specific, but one must travel the journey else he becomes damne…

[deleted]

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#102

Post by praeclarum »

stcredzero wrote: post #99
cletus wrote: post #65

I'll add my perspective to this as someone who was addicted to a similar game. I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server…

Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc). Basically, MMOGs are all like resort casinos. There's some spectacle and entertainment. The driving mechanic is the addictive variable schedule of reward. I'd like to make a game where true exploration is the base mechanic. There would be no storyline, just exploration. All content wo…

Such a "game" has been tried - Secondlife. And it's boring boring boring. Best give up these game things and find some real world hobby/job with a variable reward system. :-)

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#103

Post by ditojim »

semipermeable wrote: post #24
slyn wrote: post #14

eeeeehhh. As a very avid WoW player of some years now, I would say WoW is something that can easily be something that holds your "life progress" or whatever you want to call it back, but it can also just as easily be played at a successful level (define that however you like) without that effect as well. In the guild I'm in now and a guild I was in in the past I see both: players who are quite literally on welfare or…

You discuss how WoW either hold back life progress or doesn't. Have you (or anyone you know) encountered a case where WoW has helped someone?

-leading a guild in wow actually helped prepare me to manage people in real life.

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#104

Post by stcredzero »

dasil003 wrote: post #80
forensic wrote: post #5

Caveat: it's very easy to extend the criticism of WoW to life itself. Working all these years to be a paramedic, going to school, going to work, for what? To drive some people to the hospital? They're all just going to die anyway. Life is meaningless! What the author is really saying is: "I find more meaning in the real world than in WoW." But this isn't necessarily true for everyone. Having said all that, I think WO…

It's easy to extend to life at a macro level, but it breaks down pretty quickly. First, it's a bit more akin to life if you were a serf in medieval times where your whole life is a repetitive task to serve the local landowner (ie. Blizzard). More importantly, WoW reduces rewards to regular, metered system which I believe is damaging to self-motivation. There are no experiences in WoW that are unique, there is no unex…

There are no experiences in WoW that are unique, there is no unexplored territory, and no accomplishment you can achieve that wasn't predetermined by a designer.

I propose this: a space game where you are encouraged to write bots. Place the space game in an ungodly huge procedurally generated universe. The base economic activity is based on mining.

Give users a custom scripting language and API to write their own bots. The number of bots and the amount of CPU time they can have is constrained by tokens in the game. (As in StarCraft.) Players can write scripts and license running copies for in-game money.

What will result? Macro-miners. Then pirates who raid the macro-miners. Then fleets of Macro-miner protection drones supervised by highly motivated Chinese professional gamers.

Voila! Emergent user-generated content!

For the coup -- base the procedural generation on interesting mathematics. Perhaps some macro-miner outfit can be motivated to find a pattern in prime numbers or pi!

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#105

Post by JanezStupar »

scotty79 wrote: post #95
JanezStupar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed - human mind is capable of creating many elaborate delusions. Nihilism being the worst of them all. One has to recognize that indeed, there are no supreme values, that there is no guaranteed path to salvation . And that in spite of this terrible truth one must form his own set of values that guide him on a journey that doesn't really lead anywhere specific, but one must travel the journey else he becomes damne…

Why not just accept that is pointless after becoming aware of it but just stay for the ride?

Do you think that Paris Hilton is happy? Do you think that the OP's guild leader is happy?

Man is a creature of creation, to be happy Man has to improve upon himself and the world, to create by definition one needs to have some values. Else we just become decadent and decadence does not breed happiness.

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#106

Post by ryanelkins »

stcredzero wrote: post #99
cletus wrote: post #65

I'll add my perspective to this as someone who was addicted to a similar game. I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server…

Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc). Basically, MMOGs are all like resort casinos. There's some spectacle and entertainment. The driving mechanic is the addictive variable schedule of reward. I'd like to make a game where true exploration is the base mechanic. There would be no storyline, just exploration. All content wo…

The problem is not many people would play that game. Of those that do, not many would play for very long.

These games are formulaic because the formula works. I've thought of numerous things I would like to see done differently, but really the way they are done now are what get people to play them for so long. I've played some really great games, but I've never played any of them for nearly as long as I've played WoW.

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#107

Post by MoreMoschops »

cletus wrote: post #65

I'll add my perspective to this as someone who was addicted to a similar game. I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server…

"Later that year I got laid as in the aftermath of e telc bubble bursting the previous year (it was 2002 by now)."

Not all bad news, then. Was she pretty? :p

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#108

Post by olalonde »

hackerblues wrote: post #47
pmorici wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not of the opinion that video games are inherently evil but to say the social experience you get from playing a video game is some how equivalent to that of meeting people face to face is simply wrong. The key difference being body language. So much of successful human interaction comes from non verbal cues and if you're someone for whom that doesn't come naturally then socializing in WoW is not going to provide…

This is partially true but irrelevant. People don't join a club so they can experience body language. I assume they go so they can form a community and interact with people who share the same interest. If visual contact was essential for forming significant relationships then the blind would be unable to make friends.

> People don't join a club so they can experience body language.

I think they do actually. Otherwise, why would people go through the trouble of meeting physically when they could do it on the Internet? It's not like people who meet in real life don't know about the Internet (I'm thinking of tech conferences, HN meetups, etc.) The physical experience is simply better.

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#109

Post by stcredzero »

praeclarum wrote: post #102
stcredzero wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc). Basically, MMOGs are all like resort casinos. There's some spectacle and entertainment. The driving mechanic is the addictive variable schedule of reward. I'd like to make a game where true exploration is the base mechanic. There would be no storyline, just exploration. All content wo…

Such a "game" has been tried - Secondlife. And it's boring boring boring. Best give up these game things and find some real world hobby/job with a variable reward system. :-)

Better yet, add a bit of structure so that SecondLife resembles a popular MMOG genre. If done correctly, a small company can rake in the profits while the users busily create all the content.

Re: Breaking a WoW addiction

#110

Post by rick888 »

BrandonM wrote: post #75
ramanujan wrote: post #64

What WoW needs to do is start hooking in-game rewards to real-life rewards. For example, a deal with 24 Hour Fitness where you need to attend for 30 days in a row to unlock some kind of sword. The biometric system at 24 Hour is now sophisticated enough to permit this kind of tracking [with your permission of course]. I'm completely serious. This is an inversion of the Zynga model in which real life money is exchanged…

I love the idea, but why does WoW need to do this? Any game could do it. A fitness club is especially well-placed to accomplish it. Hmm... I think it could also work well as a Facebook app. I'm going to mull this over and see what I can come up with. This could really drive society to improve itself in all kinds of ways.

"I'm going to mull this over and see what I can come up with."

This idea is kind of like having a math game: the majority of the population will not bother with it. The reason WOW is so popular is because it allows you to get away from your real life.

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