to play World of Warcraft?

[SunOverStars]

DP thinks I'm very unreasonable

I don't play to the point of neglecting DC but would gladly neglect my own needs to have a go. Getting tricky now as we are doing very well in raids and getting more regimented, and I want to get better gear, etc.

Does anyone else play on here? How do you fend off your pissed off well meaning DP?

What realm are you on? Would love to know some 'real' people on there

My Brother lived with me for just over a year. He because completely addicted to WOW. He would play as soon as he woke up until 11-12 at night. Everything revolved around WOW. Drove me mad because he would sit at the PC all day clicking away!
On a positive note, he met a Girl in Sweden on there and has gone to live with her! Since he left she has had internet problems and he hasn't been on WOW for about 2 months. I hope he doesn't get back into it because he had moment of not being a nice person especially if WOW was down or PC/internet wouldn't work. It made him so grumpy.

They're escapism, they can take over your life if you let them - but they can also just be your unwind at the end of a day. By and large the developers (at least of the game I play which isn't WoW) have listened to player demand and removed a lot of the extended activities in favour of shorter, sharper ones - and made much more content that you can dip in and out of. Like I say - I alpha/beta tested the new Final Fantasy online one and they'd really really gone to try to push the short bursts of content thing - which was one of the major criticisms of their prior online game - that it required huge chunks of time in blocks to progress.

For every addict living in their parents' basement to use the US stereotype - there are also those who DO play alongside a full-time job, and function normally within society. The social stigma means that lots of them don't dare admit to playing though - I know there was an article in the Daily Mail the other day proclaiming only the second couple in the UK to meet and marry after meeting in an online game - I know for a fact they're not the second couple only - just most of the others kept it semi-quiet.

I've got some cracking friends I've made from my game, friendships that have endured long after they've moved on to other things. I can't see me playing much longer just in terms of having other things I need to do with my life now - but I don't regret playing it, and it has probably saved me a fortune in things I would have bought and chucked in within five minutes instead.

As for the PC specs thing - my vice is an older game that doesn't require massively overpowered PCs - runs perfectly fine on even my geriatric laptop.

Actually had a beta key for Cataclysm - I just can't get into WoW at all - tried before and failed.

Yes, i think at the last count Blizzard had 9 million ppl playing Warcraft, not all can be totally addicted.

Like all things in life, its about balance. In my experience, people who are most susceptible of becoming addicted are lacking something in their real life.

So for example if they are unhappy with their work, family or social standing then those are the ones who are the most easily seduced by the positive reinforcement in the virtual world.

One thing I like about my guild is that we're all adults with lives, it's pretty much a requirement! We don't ever commit to anything in game, if we do something it's because someone said in /g does anyone want to help me do something? Then we see what numbers we have. If we do something big, no one checks your gear, we're doing it for fun.

Our IRL friends used to be ruled by the guild (the one we all left together) and couldn't go out on certain days (we have a Monday gaming night at my house but that was raid night so a couple of them weren't able to come because they were needed in Kara - going back a bit lol) eventually they realised what it was doing to their lives, that it was spilling out of the game and we created a new guild. Now on a Monday night, or any other night they wish, they go out. One of them has moved in with a woman (new convert of course) with two teen girls and he does things with his new family whilst maintaining his character because he can now.

Anyone on ER wants to join a fun guild with no pressure, just let me know because we're happy to take new people, whatever your spec/ gear/ class/ faction (we have two guilds!)

Confuddled I might move my Druid over there as all my mates seem to have either migrated or moved to top-end raiding guilds!

DH and I used to play together. I am a bit impatient though, love the early stages, get bored later on things take too long for me. I have a load of characters up to about level 20 which is where I grind to a halt

Anyway that was then, these days I MN and DH plays football manager or something. No idea why, he doens't really like football, but there you have it

I stopped playing when my son was born (21 months ago). I kept the account open for a while to play casually, eg maybe once a week or so. Once my son was moving around and active, though, I realised it was time for me to stop playing.

I literally JUST re-activated my account yesterday, using a 7-day free pass they emailed me. I did this because I wanted to see the rending of the world (okay there's a comment which will only make sense to people who play!) and I'm glad I did. I played for an hour yesterday and chatted with some old friends.

I keep in touch with several players on MSN, so honestly, I haven't missed the game much. If I decide to play again (which I probably will, at least to experience some of the expansion) it will be on an extremely casual basis.

In vanilla WoW, I was a serious raider, and one of the only females in our hardcore guild. I actually don't regret that time- for various reasons (serious health issues I won't go into here) we were a bit homebound during that time period, and I enjoyed the game. My guild and one other were both rather serious, yet silly, and we spent a lot of time riling each other up at world boss kills etc. I had all the gear everyone wanted, and had people logging over from the other faction just to tell me how awesome it was.

Anyway. Expansions hit, and I lost interest. Then my son hit :) and I left. I admit, though, that I look forward to having some games I can play with him.

There was talk on a thread ages ago about a MN guild...

There is an MN guild, I'd forgotten! It's called....

"AIBU"!!!

Can't remember what realm though, I think I had a character in it.

Sun, you'd be very welcome. I forgot to say in the last message our GM is an MNer (I sent her this way) with NB twins. There are quite a few women and only one or two I'm not sure whether they have children. I think I'm the baby of the guild and I'll be 30 in a couple of months!

Wow Confuddled - I'll be the nenoate then at 23 Expecting DC1 in a few weeks and just got back into WoW as know I'll be up at silly times of the night.... hehe

DH and I both play. When I was pregnant, we told our parents, then our guildies, then the rest of our family. Our guildies are responsible for my nickname which I carried over to here.

I did stop for a while after DD was born as I just didn't have the time or inclination to play. Now we're back and raiding again, but we still don't spend anywhere near as much time in game as we used to. I found that to be able to get back into raiding again took a fair amount of organisation. I figured out how much time I could put in, slotted that around raid times and RL commitments, and stuck to it.

We're on Runetotem if anyone else is over that way. :)

Sun, that's one of the things I liked, middle of the night feeds and I had something to do.

Love the nickname pallymama! I've stopped playing my pally, since the big changes they made a couple of years ago to the paladin I just can't get my head around it. Then I started playing DK and now I have no idea.

YABU

Lord of the Rings online is a much more mature game and its now free -that free!

www.lotro.com/?lang=en_GB&

Lurve which server do you play on?

Part of me wants to organise raids again but I remember what a thankless task it was. It was like herding cats. It was also a mega time sink.

Boney, that link is imba! Have bookmarked it and posted it on my guild website! Even my GF lol'ed.

AIBU, awesome name for a guild!

No idea about a DK? Just faceroll!

Ok i have never done a raid what exactly is it. Normally i just mill about doing the missions and meeting up with my husband to do the dungeons ( and people say we don't get to go places together with four children hahahaha).

Also is anyone else a priest my main character is a priest and it pisses me off with the mana but she is nearly level 70 now so i cant be bothered starting again!!

I seem to have played the game but totally missed out huge chunks of it !

What's happening at the minute in WOW with the world ending and places been flooded, etc? Has it happened, is it about to?

I've never raided either but have been in Origrammer (sp?) when that has been raided and tried to help defend but at only level 42 was dead in o.5 secs. It was bonkers.

I don't even do dungeons.

But in LOTR they are the Wrong Sort of Orcs.

I'm currently on Saurfang but am beginning to get itchy feet again. I have one of every class at 80 and my guild has pretty much stopped raiding for the time being. I also dip over to Darkmoon Fair at times where DS4 is levelling a warlock, to give him a hand and make glyphs.

I am deeply in love with my Blood Elf paladin, but I'm afraid he's gay.

I used to play, but DH and I cut back when DS was about 4mo.

I've been thinking about rejoining because DS has a regular bedtime now, so I could do some dungeons without having to leave to deal with DS.
The Shattering was yesterday, so it's all changed now. My neighbours said I could go and see it (it's been so long since we've played, the patch was over 5gig, and I can't be arsed waiting)

I'd join the MN guild, as long as it's Horde

Also, Guild Wars is good, but because it's not pay per month there are more little shits children on and it's not fun playing with a bunch of stroppy 10yrs olds saying, "OMGZ N00BZ! U SUXZORS LMAO!!!11!!!!!"

WoW players, on the whole, are a little more mature.

Damnit, I want to play now.

This reminds me- I must reactivate my LOTRO account now that it's free to play.

I used to play a lot of WoW but it just faded into the background when I was pregnant with my DD. Work was getting stressful at the same time and WoW took up too much time.

My DH has just (in the last few weeks) stepped down from a serious WoW raiding guild. It did take up a lot of time, and I hated the fact that he had to be online at DD's bedtime so he was often unable to help with her bath and story. But he did always put me and DD first, and if I ever asked him not to raid he would be fine with that. It helped a lot that I've played as well because I was much more understanding of what it meant to him, and why he couldn't hit 'pause' and help me with something!

I think it's like any hobby, you can get caught up in it and it can have a detrimental effect on other areas of your life, if you let it. If you keep a limit on when you play, and prioritise, then it's fine.

Ok i have never done a raid what exactly is it.