Ugh, swamped

I think all that is keeping me sane now is knowing I can log in and play my DK. This weekend was pretty good as far as not playing much. I was working all saturday, didn't even log in. Friday was our usual 3 man run, this time to ZF. I think this is what I look forward to every week, in game orr out. Sunday, was pretty busy until late afternoon and evening, and I got to play my DK and help guildies out. I am trying to get cooking up to make fish feast, so i can sell it on AH for hopes ofa profit. This may be a forlorn hope.

I ran HOL for the GL's new warrior tank. I organized and ran a gnaked gnome race from start area to booty bay to crossroads. Only 5 people showed up, but i think everyone had fun. I made sure that people didn't get horribly lost or frustrated, and handed out a bunch of nice rewards.

I woke up in the middle of the night. Nowadays when i'm up it takes several hours to go back to sleep. What else to do but play my DK! I dinged 70 at 5am, after about 40 hours played. The leveling from 60 to 70 is just insanely fast now. I did most of the hellfire quests, most of the terrokar quests, and maybe half of the nagard quests, and I was 68. Go over to borean tundra, i've maybe done half (probaly a third), and gained two levels. However, the leveling time is now doubled (from 69 to 70 its 750k xp, from 70 to 71 its 1500k xp). So, its going to take a while, but maybe just 5 hours per level. Need to work on getting an epic mount now!

My goal this week is to login at 9pm for an hour or two of fun, otherwise i am going to go insane.

Blogroll update

Updated my blogroll, almost all links were removed due to the blogger quiting. Bre, Phaelia, BRK, many many others, you are missed. But in the impermanent nature of things, life goes on. I added a bunch of WoW econ blogs (there are now quite a few), maybe i'll find the next BRK and link him/her here.

Day 21

Hah, 3 weeks and i'm off the bandwagon. Wife and I decided to not do too much this weekend, so that left alot of wow time. However, i did manage to spend most of the daylight hours doing non-WoW stuff (tons of yard work to do, studying, etc) Spent all of Fri, Sat, Sun evenings WoWing though. Did a bunch to help the guild out, but as far as progression didn't seem like much. We did Uldaman, the 3 of us (jen, jim, me), on Fri night, that was tons of fun. Almost feels like we have a cohesive group. We just blew through Uldaman, it was pretty funny. Jim would AOE concencrate, jen and I would AOE dps, and they drop like flys. Drink, rinse, repeat. We blew through in a bit over an hour.

Sat night was supposed to be the naked gnome run, only had like 2 ppl online and ready to do it, so we postponed it. I spent a few hours preping for it and transfered alliance pets over (the profit margin as expected is extremely low). Spent most of sat afternoon running through BC instances (underbog and SP) on the hunter, to get skins to make mining bags (for the gnome race and also my DK).

Sun early morn, Tsu helped me do a few group quests in dragonblight on my accursed warlock. Sun evening I spent alot of time on, playing the DK, then running guildies through sunken temple. God that place is long! Took about 3 hours i think. Not sure. However its good for level 50, our small group should be level 52 I think, at least. There are a ton of quests in there too. Hopefully we can move on to zulfarak next weekend or two. Druid is now41 or 42, DK is now 66. DK is still insanely fun, and the BOA shoulders now give 10% exp for both quests and monsters, so that makes leveling even faster (i kinda don't like leveling) Probably this week i'll be busy studying and the like, so not much time for WoW. But yeah probably spent 20 hours total last week playing. Oh well. Next weekend i imagine we'll be doing other stuff instead.

Day 14

Settling into a rythm. Played more wow last week, probably 10 hrs. This weekend I played both Fri (day off - played 5 hrs), and Sat night/Sun night, 2 hrs each. Weekend was just insanely busy, with helping friend move for 10 hours, gardening/house work on Sunday, Mon 5am drive friend to airport, today i have class...I am guessing i wont play tonight, wed is iffy, thur is unlikely. Fri hopefully. Sat is the gnaked gnome race. I don't feel like the game is taking over my life like i once did; thats positive. We're eating proper dinners once again, and taking walks and the like. Hopefully we'll get into a 'nightly at 9pm' routine. I'd be happy with that.

Day 10ish

I lost count, actually. I don't add well.

Its been a hard two weeks. I'm still glad i'm not playing as much, and am hanging with the wife more in the evenings. Monday, i broke down and played. I felt really bad. Tue, Wed, nothing. This morning at 5am my wife wakes me up, and i couldn't get back to sleep. I went to play my DK. Forgot how fun he is, DKs are so insanely easy. Gained a level at 72 in two hours. Blizz really nerfed the crap out of outlands. It's all good, now its just one long grind. Funny how i'm totally stuck at 38 on my druid; i think mostly due to gear.

Tomorrow is off, i need to do some real work. However i'm pretty much exhausted, we'll see how it goes.

Relapse

Sorta. I played for 2-3 hours last night. I finally got done everything I could possibly do and was mentally exhausted by the time i got home. So i played my druid, leveled until out of rested (god that was quick), then switched to my alliance druid. Things sure are quiet nowadays! I finally got into a heroic VH run (after 30 min of sitting around dalaran - an eterinity for a healer) , and what do you know, i got an achievement for doing all the bosses in VH.

Then I decided to try and do wintergrasp, and of course alliance won. It was close though, the horde made 3 separate breeches. I ended up with the top healing for the raid group i was in. All i do is spam heals. Managed to get 3 WG dailies done, that's 40g easy.

Finally tried to do naxx, got into a group with the last two bosses left. Okay,fine. The usual sitting around and waiting for the group to form, then one shotted the dragon sarth, what do you know, nobody had frost resist gear. In fact the top dps was 2200, and the next was 1500 dps. Anyway got the 100 club achievement. We tried KT but the pug dps were idiots, and after one wipe I knew it wasn't going to happen. The healers were going OOM, two of us were very well geared, the other not so much.

To add insult to injury, i hearthed back to dalaran to repair (never did the dragonblight quests), asked for a summon, and the screechy girl said something about people being fat and lazy. I called it quits then and there, at 11pm. There were two warlocks in the raid, not to mention the summoning stone. I was one of maybe two or three people who were geared appropriately. So, at least i wasn't up past my bedtime playing wow. I felt really bad about leaving, but the girl just killed the game for me. Oh well. I want to do a naxx clear this week so i may do that on my druid.

Day 7?

I lose track!

Friday: Ran home, went to Sears, got some toys; A tool chest, and a lawnmower, and a grill, at long last!!! They are delivering next saturday, i can't wait. The garage will be clean finally, and we can get to work on the lawn finally.

Was supposed to play with Jim, it was unclear so I didn't log in until late (sorry!). Once i got on the guild was doing a heroic HOL. The tank and healer were undergeared I guess. It was a wipe fest, but hopefully people got something out of it. I enjoyed hanging with my friends, and i guess it doesn't matter if we wipe a zillion times or not. Yeah its frustrating, but what can i say. The tank isn't all that great but she's a good person. Would rather play with a good person but bad tank vs a tank with attitude (20 million of those running around). Spent about 2 hours then finally bailed at midnight!

Weekend was just jam-packed with non-wow stuff. I was at work all saturday, doing some needed experiments. Then ran to our friends house for a 'finale' dinner.

Then home, and finally WoW! Jim was on, so we tore through STV. Thank god, i really think i would have given up on the game if he wasn't there to help me level. Its pretty bad at that level, just takes alot of time and patience, neither of which I have. I think we spent about 2 hrs on sat night, i got a whole level out of it when all said and done.

Sunday, insanely busy. Friends came over, dropped off their cats (they are showing their house alot, which means alot of work to get the cats to a safe place. We stick them in the garage). We went to lunch (Jimmy Johns, which we decided was pretty bland), then Home depot, spent a small fortune on plants (hopefully they will last through the unexpected freeze tomorrow night). Then, hair cut, and grocery store. Got home, put in the plants, raked some more (it's a never ending cycle, but at least all the dead leaves are finally off the oaks out front). Then homework (did this alot over the weekend), wife made cookies, i made soup for lunches, NCIS with dinner, and more homework until 11 and bed. Whew!

Oh, and i totally forgot the bike ride! Sat evening around 6, after repairing the garage door again, and finally getting the front derailor on my wonderful carbon bike fixed, i took it out for a 10 mi ride. The longest in a year! I'm so excited, because I missed the big ride of the season on saturday apparently (i didn't know about it, and was working). Felt really good to be back on the bike, and my muscles are telling me i got a good workout out of it. I rode down the only street with a bike lane in durham (as far as i can tell). Was a major 6 lane road, lots of traffic, but at least a bike lane).

Tonight probably dinner, NCIS, more homework. Tomorrow, class, wed maybe raid? Who knows!

So far this week, about 6 hours spent on WoW. Much better than previous weeks.

12 steps of wow recovery

I think there are two types of people in this world; addicts and non-addicts. For addicts, you can get addicted to just about anything. For me, my drug of choice is WoW. Here is a twelve step program from the Wiki. This twelve step program originally started from Alcoholics Anonymous.

These are the original Twelve Steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:^[11]

1. We admitted we were powerless over WoW—that our lives had become unmanageable.

What is unmanageable? It means (to me) that your life has been put on hold, relationships and health jeopardized. We are powerless over people, places, and things. That includes the people who play and the game itself. We can't control if others want to spend their lives playing the game, and not participate in the game of life.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Once you realize you have no power over anything but yourself, you realize that if you are going to break the addiction it's up to you. If you believe in a higher power, fine. I don't, not really. I believe in myself though, and I believe I can stop destructive behavior through shear force of will.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

To me, this means that I'm tired of answering to the game. Want to do something in real life? Consult with the guild,make sure it doesn't conflict, or let down the raid team down.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

I think this means recognizing that I have an addictive personality, and with the recognition seeking to do a better job safeguarding myself, so I don't get into something too deep.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I think this means apologizing to the family members and friends who you let down, while being addicted to WoW. That, plus a plan of action to rectify the wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I don't believe higher powers have the capacity of modification. I believe this power must come from you . Regardless, the knowledge that you are an addict is a powerful recognition.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Maybe this means destroying the game and the media (CD/DVD)? I think if you are a serious addict the only way to give it up is to give up your broadband access or your computer. Not sure if most addicts are ready or need this step. I plan to taper off, i'm not sure it can be done. But i'm going to give it a shot.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Pretty self-explainatory.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Pretty self-explainatory.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

I think this means that your road to recovery is never complete and you could relapse at any time.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.

I'm not sure what this means to an atheist. I think focusing on constructive things builds your will-power and self-esteem. So maybe that is the message here.

13. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to WoW addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

You gotta preach it IMO. Its so easy to log in, discover twenty things you 'need' to do, then you're emeshed all over again. You can't blame the company (blizzard) as i've seen many do, its like blaming alcohol manufacturers for alcoholism.

Day 4

Day 4 of not much WoW.

Mon, Tue: Got in fairly late Tue, we made dinner on Mon and Tue and actually sat at the dining room table (2nd and 3rd time we used it). Then watched TV, read, went to sleep. No WoW.

Wed: Made dinner again I think (memory hazy), watched NCIS. After that I did a Naxx raid, showing up 1.25 hrs late (i forgot they moved the time). We did alright, got the last two bosses on spider down. My dps inproved to 2500 on boss fights.

Thur night i got in so late i was eating dinner, watching NCIS, then bed.

Tonight i hope to play with my wife and Jim. If that doesn't happen i probably wont play.

Sat night we're hanging with our friends, should be fun. Sun night, maybe wow, maybe not.

So far just one hour of wow since monday! I'm hoping to spend less than 5 hours a week playing.

WoW Addiction

I wrote about this before on here (somewhere, gotta find). Anyway here is a interesting site about wow addicts after they break the addiction.

So...after Phalea and BRK left the game to spend more time with family, and visiting that site, it was time for a wake-up call. Recently things have been rough; both of us are extremely stressed, but whereas I saw WoW as a stress relief, it actually made my wife more stressed. So...I'm going to try hard to scale down WoW time. That means no more going home, heating up something, and eating in front of the computer. No more playing on weekends all day or during the day at all. I'm going to try to limit my WoW time to 5 hours a week.

Am I an addict? Well, life would be better for us if we didn't play, but it would be hard for me because the only friends I have are online. However I dont sit in front of the computer for 12+ hours a day, I haven't lost anyone (yet) due to playing, haven't lost my job due to playing. Certainly it hasn't helped my career, but my career is of the type where if you are going to get ahead you need to be both talented and willing to invest 60-80 hours a week. 40 hours a week gets you nothing but a paycheck.

I think the game is a symptom but not the problem per se. It's like alcohol, if you are abusing alcohol you are doing so to mask other problems. But I can see it developing into the problem. You can't meet friends because you are online all the time. You can't have normal relationships because that would take up all your wow time. And it doesn't really matter that all your friends (people you know in real life) are WoW addicts. It just means there is more people on the sinking ship.

However, I find myself asking continually what is better? Is it better to go out with buddies and drink instead of get online and play with them? You are still socializing the same amount. Is it better to sit in front of the TV with your spouse instead of playing with them? I think for us the answer is yes because we can have normal conversations and its a limited time frame, whereas when we play we are focused on the game at first and its hard to have real conversations.

People say WoW is cheaper and healthier than drinking. Yeah, but again it's all the missed opportunities in life. You give up healthy meals, working out, and relationships. You miss out on career and life development, for an endless circle of pixel satisfaction, which is completely virtual and lacking.

Anyway i'll attempt to chronicle my recovery here in the hope it helps someone.