MMORPG Addiction and Reducing the Impact of Quitting Video Games
What are MMORPGs?
MMORPG Stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It is an online game where players interact with each other in online worlds, kill monsters and develop their in-game characters.
MMORPGs are the fastest growing genre of videogames and are also the most profitable one. Millions of players play MMORPGs and World of Warcraft is one of the most infamous ones.
Are Massively Multiplayer Online Games are bigger than life?
Why Quit MMORPGs?
While being fun and good, MMORPGs tend to invade player's lives quite a lot. It can be characterized as video game addiction with very real symptoms.
Usually people complain of:
- Having to spend too much time to grind levels or gear
- Friends quitting MMORPGs leaving a sense of emptiness
- Frustration due to patches making end game gear obsolete
- Long play hours
- Being unable to quit
Outside video game addiction help
Lessen the pain of leaving.
MMORPG addiction makes quitting is hard. I quit several MMORPGs, each after only a few weeks or months and it is an unpleasant experience!
- Ultima Online
- Shadowbane
- Horizons
- EverQuest
- Lineage 2
- World of Warcraft
- Warhammer Online
- Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
These steps kept me from coming back to play:
- Sell or give away in game items. Leave your character naked!
- Delete the character, this makes restoring a naked character a pain
- Inform people in game that you are quitting and ask them to respect your decision
- If maintaining contact with ex-players, ask them to respect your decision to quit.
- Alternatively block all old game contacts - this feels pretty bad!
- Delete the game file and patches - these take a long time to download
- Give away the game (although you are ruining someone else's life!)
- Find something to do in real life before you quit. Otherwise, you will relapse into playing other MMORPGs or other games. This is super important!
Quitting MMORPGs involves cutting out a large chunk of your social network and destroying the product of many days/weeks/years of play. But this has to be done for some people! Try using sensory walks - you've been missing so much in the months you spent playing.
Try playing real life sports like airsoft, paintball or laser tag. This would help you start to reconnect to people in the real life. Players of these games come from a diverse set of backgrounds. Unlike video games, you cannot play the games above every day. This makes them unique and special!
If you feel adventurous, start digging a bunker in your back yard and start preparing to survive 2012 - the end of the world! Think of this as levelling your real life skills and it would be fun :P
