quit world of warcraft

I have played World of Warcraft countless hours over the last summer break. Now, I have experienced withdrawal symptoms during the past month. It is literally the first thing I think about when I wake up, and I fall asleep thinking about it. I’m a college student, and the repetitively mundane personal college life experience make easier for me to think of the “good times” spent over the summer. They made it so easy to get back in the game: all I need is to enter my credit card information. My goal is to really quit WoW.

After spending two years with this game, 12-20 hours per week, I finally quit. First of all realize that there will be set backs. Then realize that it will a difficult process to dissapoint your online friends, but they will understand. Trust me, everyone playing as much as you do – understands the needs to quit. However, they will not be supportive.
1. Never RAID. Tell your GM that you can’t RAID anymore, and if that means you get kicked then that is o.k. This is the most important step in quiting. Cancel any invites and tell anyone that invites you to a RAID or dungeon that you don’t have the time right now.
2. Did I mention never RAID?
3. Slowly lower the hours your are playing, and remove the social aspect of the game. I did this by starting a new character on a new realm. This way you are playing the game, but you can’t get pulled into instances that take hours to complete.
4. Never talk in vent, say you mike it broken if you have too. Again, this will reduce the amount of time you waste in game just socializing.
5. Once you have you game play down to a few hours a week, just stop.

Draw up an action plan that will slowly reduce the number of hours you play and stick to it. Eventually as you remove the social interaction from the game, you will find it’s easier to stop.

Yes, if you are thinking about it—it’s worth it. The people you think will miss you? They won’t. The people you believe consider you irreplaceable? They don’t.

The people in your life begging you to quit? Listen to them. The people telling you that you play too much? They’re right. That nagging sensation of depression, discontent, unhappiness, desperation, loneliness, or whatever it is? It’s trying to tell you something.

So here is what I did:

1. Did not pre-plan, but hit a tremendous low where I knew I couldn’t log back into the game or I would never stop playing. No goodbyes to anyone, no grand giveaway of my pixelated junk.

2. Decided to not log back in for any reason. Uninstalled game, destroyed discs. Did not visit guild or game forums.

3. Sought help at http://olganon.org

4. Went through withdrawal—yeah it’s a bad sign when stopping a computer game causes physical withdrawal symptoms, but it’s also a humbling sign that I needed to stop.

5. When I had inclination to do any activity, even small inclination, I didn’t question it.

6. Had a friend delete my characters for me.

7. Begin picking up real life activities. Keep adding new ones. This includes things like housekeeping, work, social activities with friends.

The biggest piece of this is first wanting to quit. Then it’s not logging back into the game. If you are sincerely an addict the “don’t log back in” is very, very hard to do. Anyone in that category (and I was one of those) should seek some help from friends, a counselor, or http://olganon.org. Also sites like http://exgamer.net and http://wowdetox.com are helpful too.

Is it worth it? Absolutely! I have a life again, and I’m a better employee, parent, friend, even a better neighbor.

It’s important to keep some focus on why we game in the first place—I found http://olganon.org helped me with that, and now I’m learning how to do other things when life gets stressful, or even when it’s good.

There’s a new expansion coming out and it looks like its going to mess the game up. They’re streamlining stats (dropping block value, spell power and so on) and the landscape is going to change. I don’t wanna keep up. It’s pointless at this point to go back and I was using it to run away from feeling like a lonely loser anyways. I’m going to go have a real beer now :-)

It takes every1 different amounts of time but eventually every1 comes to the same conclusion….this game is time wasted away while life slips past us…w/o us knowing the better.

Sadly it took me almost 5 yrs of “off and on” playing to realize that its got to stop. Just deleted my toons and put in a random password and made a random igewiouwhogfiuahgf@aol.com email. Only way i can go back is to buy game again. THANK GOD

If your going to do it….do it right

ive played for since pre BC then i met this girl and she changed my life i heard her past relationships were ruined by the game so i uninstalled the game and asked her if she wanted to help me destroy wow so we went out and shot at all my discs… i also had my friend log on my account and change my password to and told him to ask a friend so i wouldnt know who had the account password

It was a bit extreme but i had to do it this way,i have been playing for 3 years, i had alot of so called friends in the game(pixels).Anyway i started off by going into my guild forums and abusing everyone and getting very personal.Basically hurting there feelings so bad they would hate me.After i did that i harrased them on there ventrillo,after that i went on the forums on world of warcraft and made fun of the server i was on and the guild i was currently in and everyone in it.I then logged back into the game De’d all of my gear and gave it up to the first person that did a /emote about something nasty to me idk if i can curse on here so i choose not to, but anyway i deleted my characters then logged off cancelled my subscription and then uninstalled the game.The hole point of this is online gaming is very addictive, the game itself really isint at a point its the friends you meet that makes it so hard to leave , if you break your ties with these people, your so called friends(pixels)It will be 100 times easier to stop playing.At least for me i had todo it like that.Hope i was helpful.
Chow Chow Dean

More cravings gaaaaaah!!!!!!! Sangk God I dont have a computer anymore. I’ve been going out more and it helps… alot… talking to real people-Good.

Im still off of WOW and have been getting “cravings”. I wont get back on until I can manage my life and until I have other things going for me. I felt like the world was passing me by and all I had to show for it was an endless amount of grinding for levels and quests.

I’ve had enough of this game. It’s like running in a hamster wheel. You do the same thing over and over, and in the end never really get anything tangible for it. A weapon. Some armor. Pixels on a screen.

I have an addictive personality (runs in my family) so when I started playing this, I soon played it more and more until it filled way too much time.

I have 2 level 80 characters, lots of “alts,” tons of honorable kills, titles, achievements, mounts, vanity pets, and 20,000 in-game gold. So what? I could have read some books instead, gone outside and enjoyed the arrival of Spring, started working on my marathon training now that my knee is finally better—that partly contributed to my descent into WoW, imo, that I was immobile for a while there.

It’s the attitude of the players that has lead me to finally feeling motivated to quit. I was playing just a few hours ago and a player “ninjaed” an item that was rightfully mine. I confronted him about it and then he berated me in terms not fit for a sailor’s mouth. Being talked to like he was talking to me is so common in-game that I have become desensitized to being called things that no woman should accept from a man (or boy, as some of the players are pretty young, at least from my perspective; they tend to be 1/2 my age). I felt ashamed of myself. I turned off the game right after that incident and do not want to not turn it back on ever again!

I have heard cold turkey is the way to go, so bring on that chilly poultry.