How to Quit World of Warcraft

For some individuals, playing World of Warcraft will be the highlight of their life, though you probably won't be one of them. You are actively seeking a way out of the addiction by reading this, and while it may not happen today or even this month or year, it will happen for these simple reasons: you know there is more to life than a game and you know that you are better than the lesser you who plays it.

You also know that nothing you "achieve" in the game will matter to you or to anyone you know the moment that you stop playing it. It is a great void that sucks time from your life that you will never see again, time that you will deeply, painfully regret having lost. Yet you continue to play because that is later and this is now.

To understand how you are going to quit the game, you must first understand why you play it. The primary motivations for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) players are twofold: to escape and to achieve. They escape by immersing themselves in a rich, imaginative world where seemingly anything is possible, often in contrast to their real lives where they feel stuck in place and bound by the structures of society. They achieve by taking on the challenges of the game, and in doing so, they trick their brain into believing that they are actually achieving something worthy of the dopamine (a chemical in the brain that is associated with euphoric feelings) stimulus that comes from this "achievement". As is standard with any addiction, you need more and more stimulus to achieve those early highs that you remember so fondly, and the only way to reach those plateaus in an MMORPG is to log in more often. This is the foundation for your addiction, and it is as hollow as any other.

So, how do you quit? First, you understand the preceding. Second, you look inside yourself and remember what you wanted from life before you found this void. And third, you go to the World of Warcraft home page, click on "Manage Account", type in your user name and password, scroll down to the bottom of the page where they've hidden the Cancel Account button in plain sight, give any reason you want for quitting when they ask (don't be afraid to lie), and click to cancel your account. In the end, it really is that simple, even if it isn't.

For those who need less abstraction and more pragmatism, here are some tips that may help achieve what was outlined in the previous paragraph:

1. Do something impulsive. Destroy your gold. Delete your best piece of gear. See how it feels. Then evaluate your action rationally.

2. If you've made a friend in game that you think worthy, give them your email address and let them know you are quitting. If they are a friend, they will support your decision. If you are part of a raiding guild, do not let the guild know. You are doing this for you. Floating the idea is just being a drama-queen. Leave or don't leave, there is no dignified middle ground.

3. Turn your life into the 1 to 80. Level 2: Quit WoW permanently. Level 80: Retire with a few million in the bank. Fill in the in-between. You'd be surprised how good achievements can feel in real life: and how extraordinarily better they will feel as you look back on them.

4. Some might say that you should delete your character or uninstall the game from your computer. This is bad advice. Characters can be un-deleted by Blizzard, games can be re-installed. You are looking to change your perspective on life. Something as powerful as an mmorpg addiction isn't going to be stopped by these inconveniences.

With all of its injustices, the real world still has far more opportunities for happiness, achievement, and success. And it comes to this: You will never, ever find what you are looking for in an MMORPG, and if you've taken the time to read this far, you probably know that already, even if it is just a hazily innate sense of it. What it will take from here is the willpower of your rational mind to convince yourself that there are much greater highs worth fighting for in life than the utter insignificance of a fictitious persona in an alternate reality.