The World of Warcraft expansion pack arrived today to a great deal of fanfare.  What was my reaction?

*yawn*

To give everyone some background, I started playing World of Warcraft just about two weeks after it came out.  I was drawn to the game for a variety of reasons:  Peer pressure, curiousity, a love of fantasy worlds loosely based on Tolkein, etc.  To the RPG neophyte, the game is tremendous fun.  The world is vividly painted, the gameplay is smooth and easy to master, and the developers did an excellent job of drawing players into their universe with an epic story arc and rewarding character development.

If this were all the game was, I would say that it is one of the finest RPGs ever created.  Unfortunately, the game is designed from the ground up to capture people.  The desire for one more character level, one more piece of equipment, or one more enhancement to character stats can become overwhelming.  When this is coupled with a decent in-game social structure, such as a guild of over-achievers, the game becomes compelling in a way that real life rarely is. 

I had the misfortune to lead a guild in the game for nearly a year.  We tried to define ourselves as casual, holding to the idea that the friends we had made over the course of our respective journeys to level sixty were the reason we played the game.  However, end-game content loomed on all of our horizons.  The desire to push forward for epic loot, to be the best in the game, began to push the casual players out.  Squabbles over item (loot) suitability, attendance, and scheduling began to dominate discussions on our guild forums.  We had gone from a group of friends to a pack of self-serving hyenas…and still we played.  We had developed a nasty little self-perpetuating cycle where we needed the other people to obtain the things we wanted in-game.  Despite rising tempers, despite grinding the same content over and over again so that everyone in our forty man group was geared equally well, we still played.  We put up with things in-game that we would never have tolerated in real life, because the group meant security.  The group was a meal-ticket toward prestige.  The group was a way in which players could be decked out in the best gear, only to stand in Ironforge (the capital of the Alliance, and populated with nearly one thousand players at any given time) to be admired by those who were not able to complete the end-game content.  In retrospect, it reminds me of a group of rats in a maze, all cooperating so that each rat can take turns getting the cheese at the end.  It was petty and demeaning, but at the time, I hungered for the next sword that would boost my damage, or the next shield that would mitigate another five percent damage.

By design, the game preys on those who have escapist tendencies.  You could aruge with some vigor about whether or not the game is addictive (the counter argument is that some people have addictive personalities), but it cannot be denied that the game is designed so that there is always another horizon.  There is always just a little bit more that you haven’t done.  In talking with several of guild mates, I quickly became aware that their in-game existence was more real to them than their real-life existence.  The same happened to me.  I began to schedule the activities of my real-life around my game time.  I remember thinking at one time, when our guild was raiding four nights a week, that I only had three free nights in which to do chores, hang out with my wife and dog, and try do something other than WoW.  It had taken over.

Through a series of unrelated events, I ended up being away from the game for nearly two weeks straight.  As I pondered my new-found freedom, I realized most of what I’ve written above.  I had managed to break the cycle, and move on to things that are both more imporant and more productive.  I’ve been WoW-free since April of 2006.

At last, we come to the title of this article.  Of all the people I knew from my WoW days, the majority still played long after I left.  Those that quit in the intervening time have renewed their subscriptions and purchased the expansion pack.  I have had (at last count) eleven separate personal invititations from people I knew within the game to return.  I choose to stay out of the loop this time.  I will not run off the cliff.  I will not meekly follow the shepherd or swim behind the mother duck.  The things that made the game fun were only enjoyable within the context of an entertainment experience that didn’t seek to dominate your life.  I will retain the four good friends that I made along the way, knowing that the finder’s fee for their friendship was 1400 hours of my life over a year and and half. 

This isn’t an article about WoW addiction.  Labels of addiction already abound.  The last people who want to hear about addiction are those deeply within its grasp or those in denial.  This is more of a plea for those still playing to remember the seductive nature of the game.  Realize that true friends are rare indeed; recognize that the convenience of using people in-game for your own ends doesn’t fall under the category of friendship.

Don’t be a lemming.