My name is Mojozi and I am a World of Warcraft addict. I am a seven foot tall troll with a red mullet hairdo. Back in the day I was bedecked head-to-toe in tier 10 epics, dripping with jewels and enchants. My heals per second were to die for and I never ran out of mana. Now I'm just a washed up old shaman whose daily highlight is completing the Orgrimmar cooking daily.
If the above makes any sense at all to you then this humble blog may be of some interest. You see, after nearly two years of intense WoW addiction, I had a startling revelation yesterday. I realised that I'm putting a thousand times more energy into improving this imaginary troll than I am into improving my own self. During WotLK this was in some way slightly gratifying because I was at the top of my game and it made me feel good about myself. Cataclysm has mostly made me cross, disillusioned and stressed out, for various reasons which I may blog about at a later stage. But either way getting this sense of self-achievement from a computer game constitutes massive misplaced priorities.
I knew for a long time that playing WoW to the extent I did wasn't healthy. I first got into it when I was unemployed, and it gave me a sense of self worth, aswell as being an easy alternative to looking for work. And now that I work 12 hours days at a soulless job I detest, WoW is, again, the easy option to come home to when I'm tired and demotivated. After a while I forgot who I was. I said to myself "I can't give up WoW, WoW is what defines me, it's who I am". The first step was remembering what used to define me in my previous life. And you know what? There was actually some cool stuff there I'd forgotten about.
It's time to get my life back. Tonight when I get home from work I'm going to email Blizzard and cancel my subscription. I want to remember all the things I used to do before the game consumed me. I want to become more well-read. I want to learn some new skills. Hell, I even want to leave the house once in a while.
This blog is about how I cope over the next few weeks, months, or however long it takes to go WoW Cold Turkey.
Great post, I'm sure you are on the right track by thinking about how you define yourself - if you can find a new identify for yourself that you really like, then this change really will stick.
ReplyDeleteFound this post in a roundabout way by following Phil Davies' random blogspot link listed in a post on WoW Detox.com, and I'm sure Kevin Bacon's connected to this somehow.
ReplyDeleteAnyway...
Gratz on the big QQ. Sorry, couldn't help it.
But seriously, I wish you the best. I quit one time before. Almost two years ago. I had just been promoted to officer within a guild and we had started raiding in Ulduar. I just up and cancelled without telling anyone, and things seemed to get better.
Then Cata came out, and I started to get the itch. The Holidays came and I treated myself to a ten-day trial of Cata, and then I caved. I signed on for a month, but realized the same old patterns were showing up, so earlier tonight I permanently deleted all my characters. Hopefully, if I ever get the itch again, this time the thought of leveling to 85 and getting decked out in epics will force me to ignore it.
Cheers from a fellow former WoW Addict
"My name is Mojozi and I am a World of Warcraft addict."
ReplyDeleteFor a while, I thought your real name is Mojozi lol... anyway, I like the way you write this post, keep writing ok.
Thanks for all your comments so far. @ E I must confess, Phil Davies is my fiance and former WoW buddy. We quit together, him to concentrate more on his writing and me to concentrate on figuring out what I want to do with my life :)
ReplyDelete