The WoW Dilemma

I wonder if I have something in common with heroin addicts. You have to think that some, if not many, of the worlds heroin users really enjoy their heroin. When confronted about it, they probably say things like “you know, in its pure form heroin isn’t addictive at all” or “it was originally created as a medicine!”, which is all a bunch of crap to non-heroin users who all probably share the same condescending attitude toward the justifications of an addict.

But, my opinion of the product itself aside, I think it’s safe to assume that at some point, some where in the world, a heroin addict has looked at a good friend (and non-heroin user) and said “you really should try this – it’s awesome.”

So, today at lunch I’m taking a friend from work to pick up a copy of World of Warcraft, and I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t parallels that can be drawn.

Now don’t get me wrong. I LOVE my Warcraft. When asked, I will regurgitate a litany of reasons why it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I have saved thousands of dollars by having an alternative to spending my leisure time at the bar. I have met hundreds of interesting people from all over the world, made some good friends, learned things about myself, and experienced real joy and feelings of accomplishment. I have something to do and a place to go at almost all times of every day, meaning I never want for entertainment. And, much like my experiences with marijuana in high school, my WoW addiction has broken down interpersonal barriers with all sorts of people who I normally wouldn’t have had anything in common with. When I first started my current job, for instance, there was a pretty well defined clique of veteran employees that I, as a rookie member of the team, naturally wanted to be a part of. When I learned that one of these veteran members was also a WoWer, I had an immediate in.

But there have been excesses. In fact, to say that “there have been excesses” indicates that those excesses were isolated incidents punctuated by long periods of responsible usage. That’s really not the case, I’m afraid. Truth be told, it’s probably more accurate to describe my entire WoW career as one long, never ending excess. More than once have their been back to back to back 18 hour a day sessions. Then there was the day that four guild mates and I spent the 10 straight hours between 10:00pm and 8:00am in Stratholme trying to get me a new chest-piece (and before you newbies laugh, remember that I’ve been playing this game A LOT longer than you – back in the day Stratholme was a 40 man raid instance, but in order to complete the quests in there you needed to 5 man it. Hide your snickers behind the idea that what we did was the equivalent of 5 manning the Black Temple).

For most people, those numbers may not mean anything. Maybe this will help you to understand what I mean when I say that I may play the game a bit too much: since I purchased the game on January 5^th of 2005, I have logged just over 7000 hours of game play. That’s more than 291 full days. From January 5^th of 2005 until the time of this writing, exactly 1,165 days have passed (for those who plan on doing the math along with me, that’s 27960 hours). That means of every 4 minutes that have existed since I bought this game, 1 of them has been spent playing WoW. If you assume 8 hours a day for sleep and another 8 for work, that means of the 9320 hours that I had to myself, only 2320 weren’t spent playing WoW.

Now, that isn’t totally accurate, because I don’t work on weekends and I did spend a short portion of that time unemployed, but you get the point. I play a lot of goddamned WoW.

I can be argued that the time I’ve enjoyed in Azeroth could have been more productively used in finding a girlfriend, writing the screenplay I’ve had in my head, going to school to get a degree in something that matters, or, you know, just not playing WoW.

So now I have to wonder, is encouraging my friend to pick up this game really an ethical move? Or am I the heroin addict saying “dude, you should really get in to this!” I know that she’ll love this game. From one perspective, I’m giving her hours and hours of joy. But I guess what I don’t know is: at what cost? Somewhere in the future, an event probably exists where she could be at a bar and meet the man she’s destined to fall in love with. She could be on her way to or from a concert and stop for gas and decide “oh what the hell” and buy the winning lottery ticket. Hell, she may even, presumably, plan on seeing the sun sometime in the next 3 years. All that is now gone. Those futures no longer exist. They have been taken from her by this short car ride up to Target.

So what do I do? Do I ignore these doubts and toss her the needle?

I think we all know the answer.