Comments on: Dysfunctional Patterns of Playing

By: HarbingerZero

HarbingerZero — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 21:07:34 +0000

Thank you for exploring and naming these conditions. I’ve had them both before, now I feel I can put them in their proper place!

By: flosch

flosch — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 20:02:05 +0000

Maybe “dysfunctional” is a bit on the harsh side, because of the connotations, like dysfunctional families where everything goes down the drain. It’s just that in a perfect (virtual) world, I would have something to do, while, at least towards the end of my WoW time, I didn’t really feel like I had. I do remember doing things like farming clouds or the elemental plateau during TBC on off-nights, or running dungeons, but by the time Cata rolled around, that was more or less over.

It just struck me that these days, I sometimes have the opposite problem: I almost need to force myself to have fun. Maybe that’s because I haven’t felt the same pull towards a game like I do with FFXIV (for reasons I can’t pin down myself) in a long time, and my mind got disillusioned in that time, and is trying to convince me that I can’t be having fun. 😉

By: Syl (@Gypsy_Syl)

Syl (@Gypsy_Syl) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 18:44:04 +0000

It’s funny you would call it “dysfunctional”. I did the same a lot in WoW on off-nights (off raiding) and to me it just seemed strong proof of how much of a ‘second home’ this MMO had become – a habit that was a natural part of my daily routine. I guess one can eye that with worry but I don’t really, I had a great time hanging in WoW. 🙂 it was those nights when I got to chat loads with the people I usually only knew from the raidleader’s perspective. it was a different kind of fun.

That said, I do understand the feeling of inaccurate expectations; I can’t log back into WoW nowadays because by now I know better. without my buddies around, it’s just never gonna be the same.