MMOs are Good for you.

[Rofl-Mic-Lofl]

2) You're not actually interacting with anybody in WoW.

Do you consider the telephone interaction?

 

[finalgt]

Well, I think phones are the worst invention ever (if you include cell phones in that grouping) so...no. I don't.

 

[Bob002]

And I'm aware of that, but the implication in your message is that, as far as hobbies go, WoW is inexpensive, at least when it comes to capital expenditure. Which is true, there are a good plenty hobbies that are more expensive than WoW. So, I've got two problems:

1) Since when is money the only factor? There are plenty of more expensive hobbies, true, but they exist because there are people with enough disposable income to enjoy them. I enjoy snowboarding, but my board setup cost me $900, plus the average $50 a day I have to pay for lift tickets whenever I do go snowboarding. And yet, I won't lay out the $15 a month for WoW...personal preference, of course.
2) You're not actually interacting with anybody in WoW. You're living in a pretend world, where you pretend a bunch of people you've never met and probably never will meet (except in rare circumstances, in which the two people in question are usually desperate for human contact in the first place) are your friends. I'm an antisocial geek, but I don't need to pretend to be hot stuff in a videogame to boost my self-esteem. (This is the part where you can turn my argument on me and say that just because something is true for me doesn't make it true for everybody, which underlines the disparity in our viewpoints and reinforces the idea that nobody ever argued an idea so well on the internet that the other camp just up and agreed with them)

To answer your first point, the $15 dollars a month WoW costs me is generally a major point between people that don't play it more than the from the people that do play it. That is probably the number 1 argument from people that *don't* play it "OMG It's 15 DOLLARS A MONTH!!!!oneoneone". Yes, it is that much. But, the gameplay options are quite a bit more than your average game. Yes, there are some games that do provide hundreds of hours of gameplay for a single run through, but they are few and far between.

As far as your second point, I disagree majorly. Just because I'm not physically interacting with someone doesn't mean I'm not interacting at all with them.

 

[Daleon]

I've been online gaming since around 92, with BBS's and muds to just about every type of multiplayer game and MMO to hit the market. I built friendships with the people when I first started playing and we've now known each other for more than half our lives at this point. I consider them family. I've never had anywhere near the same kind of relationships with any of the MMO's. This coming from 4 years of EQ, a year of AO, a year of FFXI, a year of AC, 2 years of DaoC, a year of PS, a year of CoH, 2 years of WoW, so forth and so forth. Much of this even playing with many of the same people for long periods of time, always chatting on TS, etc etc.

Why do you think? I think its just easier to build friendships at younger ages, especially life long ones. Once your into adulthood, your so much more consumed with work, life, and a little more jaded and closed off than you are when you are younger. Also with the explosion of the net its no longer a local community feeling, atleast not here in the US because were so spread out. I can't get together with all my friends and enemies, I loved meeting my enemies in RL. There was always tons to talk about. This is where smaller countries like Korea or Japan I think really have a huge social advantage on us. I do miss the old dial-up days and really think developers need to look at bringing back this aspect many of us adult gamers grew up on so future generations have the same chances we had.

Going out, meeting people, getting to know them for real is what makes a friendship great. If its always over the wire, its impossible to really get to know someone. You may think you do, but really you don't. Not as well as someone who hangs out with them once or twice a week for years. Thats a real friendship, and life just really sucks without real life long friendships. They mean everything to me, and I can't imagine how bad life would be without them. So for anyone who is ignoring RL friends to hang out all the time in a game need to get back into the game of life some. For those that don't have those RL friendships yet, do whatever you have to but start making some.

 

[arentol]

That's like saying every nerd who ever spent 20 hours a day on IRC isn't antisocial.

Umm... They aren't antisocial. I said it, and I stand by it.

You know, when I was in middle school and high school I played a lot of D&D and other roleplaying games. Many people considered me and my friends antisocial because we spent so much time playing these games. You know, these games that involved 4 to 8 people sitting around a table talking constantly to each other, as much about RL stuff as game stuff, for 8 to 16 hours a day all summer long (when we weren't outside playing b-ball, or softball on a church team, or otherwise being normal active youths).

We got FAR more social activity in than 99% of the non-gaming kids our age, and we also did it without getting drunk off our asses or spending hours in a car cruising main street (or doing both at once).

Socializing is socializing. If you are interacting and communicating with others then you ARE socializing. That's just the way it works.

 

[Bob002]

Socializing is socializing. If you are interacting and communicating with others then you ARE socializing. That's just the way it works.

Bingo.

And think of it this way. Do you every really know the people that you interact with face to face? Once again, you might think you do, but you never really know.

Hell, look at serial killers. "He was such a quiet neighbor, I never really had any problems with him". Go look it up for any serial killer in recent history. It's never "OMG HE WAS A FUCKING RAVING NUT PSYCHO SUMBITCH THAT LIKED TO HAVE SECKS WITH NON-SPADE AND/OR NEUTERED CATS". Never really knew him then, did ya?

 

[nam207]

It's all about self-control. I was pretty damaged by Diablo II LOD and WoW, but I still believe MMO causes no harm if you can control yourself. And like others have said, everything has to be balance, not just playing games. If you go to club excessively, it won't do you any good either. So while I believe playing WoW 20 hours a day is crazy, 2 or 3 hours is okay, and I know a lot of WoW players do.

I play WoW up and down for a year, then off, then play for 2 months, then off. I never got into 60, the highest is 55 pally though I play 5-6 hours a day, never got into any guild because I didn't have much time to run instance and at my lvd, I can't raid. I enjoy buy high sell low in Auction house and make thousand of gold from it. My concept is all about fun, and even if just selling or buying on the game is fun, I wouldn't mind playing. I finally stopped playing even though I wasn't even a hard core player, after gaining 20 pounds and having a gf .

My point is, some of you criticize heavily on MMO players, such as "no life", remember that not everyone is a hard core player. And I also disagree on those who play the game all day and think it's good, but again, it's their life and if it's make them happy, I wouldn't have anything against it.

I'm building a new computer and will play WoW again, but this time, I will play only 1-2 hours a day, that's good enough for me.

 

[speculative]

In WoW if you steal a drop from a high-end raid, you will be kicked out of your guild, and you will not be accepted into another one in that server more than likely. MMOs are all about teamwork, you miss out on most of the game unless you are in a good guild, which requires helping people and giving some drops/gold to the guild bank.

People that choose to be into the teamwork aspect do operate like that, but I ran into so many level 60's that were not of that mindset it wasn't funny, and I played on an RP server at that. The stronger the teamwork system, the more one would gain from exploiting it?