WoWdetox is a volunteer-run web site aimed at people with a gaming addiction to World of Warcraft. Here gamers and ex-gamers can share their testimonies freely and anonymously.
| There is NO FUTURE for you in this game, Quit! Is the best thing you can do, forget about epix, gold, even your toon! They are just pixels! Switch to the real life, you´ll feel much better, doing and acomplish things in RL is the truth! Is real! |
| When you log into to WoW, you log out of reality. it’s the games design. The first day your showered with rewards, you complete many quests and receive many rewards - your body reacts to this as if it is real. For a time, you can complete quests and get rewards every hour. Later it becomes every other hour. Then every 4 hours. Then once a day. Then a couple times a week. You can ignore all irl pains, except if you have to leave your computer. You quickly rush back, go into a trance and forget about your deteriorating life.
At this point, if your life is in a rough spot. You may prefer to play in a world where you can achieve rewards a couple times a week. Maybe you receive very little rewards when you are afk. It may seem all lump and very little rewards. Your life is certainly on a decline if you have made it this far. Your WoW experience is on an incline, if you put time in you get better. A little farther down the road, Your not getting any healthier. Most likely you health has deteriorated/ing. Your financial situation has likely not gotten better. They likely have gotten worse. Your relationships are not as good as they can be. They likely have suffered. Your school work is not as good as it could have been. It may be just barley holding you afloat. Your life has not improved and may have gotten slightly worse or is diving hard. Habit calls you to stay, you have no where important to go to get a reward. Maybe you may be punished by a cruel world. You’ve always sat right here, every night. If you leave the computer you will be bored. You seem to have subconscious impulses stemming from the game when your not playing, addicted to your own adrenaline and euphoria. You look at the monitor, your title, your achievements, your mount. You’ve already chose this game over your life. When your life was better, and when you had less in the game. Now you’re a hotshot, high GS, skilled in PvE or PvP, purple power ranger. Your next achievement is only hours away. When you turn away from the monitor, you look at garbage, your scruffy or zitty face. You’ve gained some pounds. Bills are in the mail and they concern you a little. You sink back into Azeroth, So safe, so cozy. A little farther down the road, The Alarm rings bc RL doesn’t log out. My life was on the verge of bankruptcy. 50, 000 dollars in debt., 400 dollars interest a month, no more credit to borrow from, no money to pay next months rent, not regularly talking to family, 1 year played, 3 years vanished from my memories. Third day of work, night shift, come home exhausted and log onto WoW. I do WSG but don’t have the the mental alertness or care to even cast the right spells - I’m exhausted. I go to my bed and lie down, almost asleep. The phone rings. “The police want to talk to you, can my dad give them the phone number here?” “No”, I reply. About 20 minutes later the phone rings again “it’s the police, talk to them”. I answer the phone - “Your mother was in an accident - If your close to her you might want to visit her at the hospital, we don’t know how long she will be alive.” The last time I talked to my mom was 8 months previous. 2 years since I had a heartfelt/quality conversation. I race half way across the country to her, for a bit longer than a week - I sat by her side and talked to her. She was in a coma. On the eighth day, the doctor tells me that my mom could never expect anything better than being a vegetable. I take her off life support, she chokes to death one hour later. |
| What? Do you really want to play a game where you have to jump through hoops to cancel the game and they nickle and dime you and lure you into spending hundreds of dollars for little ingame extras? Server transfers, character recustomization, faction changes, pets, crap like that.... The money we waste there we can go to the movies with friends, buy new clothes, down payment on a new car even! ANYTHING EXCEPT A STUPID PIXEL!! |
| I've played this game since 2004. In that time I've raised and loved multiple mages and I've gone through all the versions of WoW that have been out there. Classic wow was incredible, it was -truely- an achievement to get things done in that version. Burning crusade was a joy as well, I raised a new mage with my current soon-to-be husband in that game and things were -still- a genuine achievement in that game. Yet with Wrath of the Lich King, the game took a drastic turn for the worst. Epics were no longer epic, achievements had lost their glamour and everything was all a rat race to get the "firsts". The game became a scramble of mindless dailies, a string of endless dungeons and a spam of retardedness in Trade chat. There is no intellectual value in the game at all and with a realization that I am wasting a load of time in a game that is nothing but "mouthbreathers" and stress, I have come to the conculsion that I am much more happy without the game. Instead of wasting my time whining about this class getting buffed or that class getting nerfed or she did this or he said that, instead I'm turning my attention to school and growing myself as a person and an intellectual being. Albeit, I will miss the kill rush and the lovely sounds of Night Elves dying at my feet, draenei falling to my Fireballs and Living Bombs, and Gnome mages bouncing when they die by my hand, but it will be something I can overcome, promise. |
| Why quit when playing the game is so much easier than dealing with your real life problems? Who needs that diploma anyway. It can be hard to farm mats when those pesky kids want your attention. Don't they know that you have a raid tonight? Don't they know that if you stop to help them with home work you'll lose your raid spot?? Doesn't your nagging wife know that you're trying to save up for your motorcycle? "I'm lonely" she says, "I want time with you" she says. She's just being whiny anyway. If this sounds familiar in anyway shape or form, you have a problem. |
| I started playing around 1-2 years ago. I started off playing normal games like xbox and usual things. Then a friend of mine told me about wow, so i started playing. It started off around 2-3 hours a day, then it grew and grew. Eventually it got to 7-9 hours a day. I never really thought it ws a problem seeing as all my friends played, i got told i was an addict but i never thought much of it. i had moments where i didnt play for 1-3 weeks, but then i would get drawn back into it. I rarely play now but i know the feeling of addiction. |
| How boring can it get until one realizes it's time to stop playing? WoW is now a ghostown in all the zones..Even the dungeon finder takes a long time to work..
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| I played wow for 5 years, and during that time things went on in my life that I was oblivious to. I played through the days when there was still 40 man raids trying to take down Rag. I also played through TBC and WRATH, but I was tired of waking up on weekends and jumping on my toon and not realizing that the day had passed me by. I would look up from my computer and into RL and see that the sun had gone down. During that time i wouldn't think "damn, I wasted the day!" I would think "I better get some rest so I can jump back on tomorrow early." Sad, I know, but this isn't the worst part of the addiction. I have a beautiful daughter who I adore and while playing this game...has robbed her of years with her father. I hate myself for that, and will look back on this with a bitter taste in my mouth. Game addiction is real, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I have lost and hurt people that are close to me just because I had to be in game on time to raid. You do fall off the face of the earth, and it's not easy to come back to it. I remember making my girlfriend cry because I was playing to much, but I didn't see it that way. I kept rationalizing to her, that I could be out doing other things that are far worse like drinking, drugs, and partying. Boy, was I wrong...this addiction is one of the worst ones because it can be down played to others, and made out to be harmless, but anything that robs you and your loved ones of your time together is horrible in essence. Nobody should be made to cry over a damn video game! I can remember trying to have conversations with my loved ones while playing and then think to myself..."what the hell did we just talk about?" So focused on not letting my tank or other members of the guild die. Heal, heal, heal! I swear it was like playing whack-a-mole. This game never ends and if you play it long enough you will see patterns in the game. I pray that you don't play that long, but if you do you will see that your gear is never the best...even if your epiced out, it will only last till the next patch or expansion. You will see mats change but not really ...they have just been replaced by something that looks different but plays the same role at a higher lvl. They say that wow is mostly made up of causal gamers but I say that is a lot of BS! If you expect to get any kind of gold, epics, or legendays in this game be far warned you need to consider wow as your second job. That is until you start calling in sick to your real job to play wow and then wow becomes your one and only job. I pray you never head that way...it's not a path worth seeing. Some will say "oh, I only play once a week, and I'm hella good and I am all epiced out!" That's BS as well...don't play the fool here this game requires a butt load of time in order to get anywhere. This person obviously bought gold and with that gold bought epics on the AH which are lame ass epics. Also for you BGer's out there...you guys are the ones sucked in the most, I know cuz that was also me while not raiding. Telling yourself I better go to sleep...sure right after one more bg! Games are supposed to have an ending and this one doesn't...please make up your own and pick up your RL where you left off. I can tell you that this RL is the greatest adventure of all. I finally quit wow due to my brother coming down with cancer...it finally hit me that wasting away countless hours on that damn game is fruitless and those hours can be better spent with loved ones. Now out here looking back...I wish I had quit long ago...good luck all those who are trying to quit, you are in my prayers! |
| I've been Wow free for 6 months now and I still miss it but thanks to wowdetox and all the fellow gamers, I refrain from subscribing again. I left after realizing that every time I logged on I was furious after 15 minutes due to the gold spammers, little melodramas and the rude/immature players. Over Christmas, I checked out the Wowarmory just to peek who of my friends were still playing and I got depressed when I saw that some of my old best buddies and guildies were still playing regularly, scrambling for gear and wasting their time. Seeing those people in the same old patterns, doing the same old thing just made me feel sorry for them but I felt proud of myself for moving on. Everytime I want to play I tell myself "Nothing lasts forever!" Walking away and moving on is a part of life and I learned how to do it a little bit better when I left Wow. I just returned to college after 5 years and I'm getting great grades so far. I realized that if I put all of the time that I put into Wow into studying I could finally get through college and maybe get a job where I don't have to flip burgers, dig holes or clean bathrooms for the rest of my life. Best of luck to anyone wanting to change their lives! Just remember that it takes patience, discipline and determination. |
| my husband is hooked on WOW and now i don't think i can ever get him back. My kids cry about how daddy is always on the computer and i don't know what to tell them. I'm ready to leave, but yet a part of me feels like that is a silly reason to leave. IS IT REALLY? |
