Why do 10 million people play World Of Warcraft ?

An excellent article on lesessais.com about the issues dealt with people trying to quit this game:

Here. Bear with me. Let me describe an emotional state, and you come up with the cause. First, emptiness. Emptiness like hunger, ravenous hunger; emptiness like the blackness that descends behind closed eyelids at the crepuscule before sleep; emptiness as need; emptiness as blind desire; emptiness visualized as a gaping hole where the heart once held court. Then, regret. Regret for loss, regret that the emptiness exists, regret that the memory of what once filled the hole—the heart, now, the heart, remember—lies dead and dies more each and every passing day; regret that the knowledge of what other people do to fill up their life has been lost along countless missteps and misspent hours trying to find the path on which you once, as a child, so deftly picked your way; regret that something is gone and has left an emptiness as deep as the blackest reaches of outer space. Anger, next. Anger that emptiness is remembered with regret; anger at the witless world that allowed such a gain that could become a loss that could be defined as emptiness with vast regret; anger that you, who once were so strong, so supple, so springboard-ready to bounce back to a mean emotional state, a psychical purpose, can see yourself suffering and maundering over the black heart, its regretful state, and your pointless rage. Despair, finally, that you will ever be another way.

Love, you say? If you did, and I hope you did, then you got it right, at least in purpose and point of origin, for though it smacks of the lovelorn puppy dog ministrations of a mooney-eyed lover, the emotional state I described was of an addict’s absence of soul, of spirit, of the will to experience. Which is to say, they are not all that different.

Unhealthy obsessions, selfish solipsism…the fables and myths that give us succor and teach us morals warn against anything so monomaniacal: it is hardly necessary to think of Narcissus to extend any story’s teleology to death by personal infirmity, moral laxity, or, quite simply, gazing too long at a mirrored self. Love, the quaint excuse for the angst-ridden teen’s outrageous outcries—the union of two souls! Death by dissolution! Not life, no, but bliss!—is seldom more than a mirror made to trick the viewer into seeing a better self. What of other mirrors? Other tricks? What of those that mask the truth but lightly, and in the dancing points of light you can see the fiction, the misdirection, life not lived but carefully avoided, painted in unearthly colors and brighter, happier, than even the most stunted man-child could ever want life to be? We could say that the infirmity is weaker, the morals ignored with more purpose and pain, the waters of immurement approached with more knowledge, dire knowledge, that it is death the soul seeks.

All this is pretty heavy-handed for someone talking of love. Still more for someone speaking of a video game. But there it is. Here. Where love once filled the hours of thousands of men and women who had nothing else to divert their attention away from the painful, plodding progress of life as we know it, we have a game. To be sure, there are other diversions, some do drugs, others take to drink, but for general amusement, for avoiding thinking, there have always been games and activities meant to satisfy other base yearnings—accomplishment, pride, mental facility, physical prowess, social adaptability—but no game quite like this…

Click here for full article and the source

Also ….
PICTURE: What will a World Of Warcraft player look like in the year 2030?

30 Responses to Why do 10 million people play World Of Warcraft ?

  1. Interesting point of view. It was fun to read. I like to think there can be some happy medium where I can play, work, go to school, and still have time for family and friends. (I don’t always sleep much because of this, but it works for me.) ☻

  2. So many people really overthink this, I understand all your points and agree with some but I play the game for fun, grinding for epics is great but requires the kind of long term commitment that most people just don’t have. If you find playing becoming more and more onerous don’t you think you’ve had enough! When I get annoyed about being ganked or parties disintegrating before I get to epics drops I just log off and do something else for a while, it’ll still be there when I come back tomorrow…

  3. to the last poster, wow you totally missed his point. Re-read the article.

  4. ya, i have to agree, you completely missed this chibber. lol. you’re off man. but the article was great, would made for a great psychology project if I was playing WoW when i had a psychology class.

    the first half i already realized, but the clarity in the second have and the end is right on, great read!

  5. I only know that as one of the six million people in the article’s title I pesonally play the game for fun, I agree that some people see Warcraft as a shortcut to success in something but to suggest all six million of us play it as we see it as a shortcut route to success, if only in the virtual sense, whereas real life success is much harder seems fairly baseless. And as for instant gratification – Quote “as long as you pay 15 bucks a month and play 8 hours a day, you’re guaranteed to become a living legend in the world of Azeroth, rich, powerful, adored”. 8 hours a day is bang on what most people work a day on average, I fail to see what is instantaneous about it. Even playing 8 hours a day you still have to group up to get the godly status the article describes, try being a hunter or rogue on the majority of servers, painfully slow and tedious is closer to the mark just to get adequately equipped to apply to an epic raiding guild. But thats just my two cents.

  6. I have never witnessed ‘obsession’as
    displayed by WOW gamers, my marriage is just about over, due to selfish 19 hr sessions, just to receive some ‘reward’……..jeez

  7. I like the article. I like the first part very well, it’s also why i’m on the edge of stopping tonight, i kind of feel that whenever i manage something in WoW, it wont matter in the end of my life at all.

    About the success part, i can recognize that too. I chose my class my watching pvp movies where someone owned really bad, and i thought hey, Hunter = power, i’ll play a hunter. But it doesnt stay that way. i have 2 chars at 60 and another 2 at 50, and now i’m getting really tired of chasing nothing. The only reason i’m still playing is because i’m having fun with friends who live a bit away from me, through WoW we can do something together every day. Without them in the game, i wouldn’t play WoW.

    The first half of the article is probably what really tips me. I want to go do something that matters to me later on. Thanks for writing it!

  8. Wow! He got it right on. I always thought of it like that but never in such detail, great read.

  9. World of Warcraft is only a waste of life if you view it that way. What do you do in your free time, eh? I play WoW. I play 2—3 hours aday and its not a waste of my time. I find it a great stress relief.
    I don’t have to listen to or see other people. There are some people who are shyly social and make up for it by having friends they don’t see in real life but live across the world.
    Also by playing world of warcraft I’ve learned Spanish, Some Korean, Some Japanese, and some Brazilian. That is not a waste of my time. Also I’ve learned what its like in 25+ countries by talking to my various friends.
    There are also others who wished they lived in a fantasy World with Questing, and saving people, and working together with 100+ people to slay a mighty dragon.
    I will admit 60% of the people that play WoW are messed up in some way. Such as being perverted, annoying, egotistical, Ect. But 70% of the world is corrupted.
    Thats also one more thing World of Warcraft is fantasy world where people have a chance to stop corruption or mishaps because if they tried it in this world there would be 4 corrupting people to cover up what that one good person did.

    P.S. sorry if my grammar sounds off or my sentences are bad. Im writing while I have bronchitis and a synous headache.

  10. Oh btw Peter it sounds like you got powerful characters but do you have great items to back them up. Seriously if you have that many high level characters and you only play for 5-10 hours aday you have to be really good or have really rich friends to achieve the kinds of items that make you TeH Pwner’r like you saw in the movies. Im not that strong but playing for a couple hours a day, learning about diffirent countries, and learning diffirent languages makes me feel pretty successful.

    Also if your all wondering how i learned the langauges, I have ventrilo so I can vocally chat with people.

  11. Doesn’t anyone think this is a bit gendered? Like most of gaming situations people think that it is all male-based, hetrosexual, testosterone fueled gameplay. This quote especially: “epic equipment in WOW are to guys as jewelry and namebrand shoes are to girls – neither gender understands why the other values it so much.” For people who posts that he “gets it” and that others don’t- do you really get that this is an overgeneralized point of view. It’s fine to say that you don’t want to play a game because you want to play “real life” instead, but then understand that real life is more than just a masculine reality.

  12. hmmm… Scott.. im sorry about brazilian is not a language

  13. Well, it’s a partial answer. I’m personally rather anti-social, so it’s not that I’m doing a lot of other things, it’s just WoW is so completely boring to me. It looks like the “fun” in WoW is to be social on the internet, but if that’s what I want, why don’t I just do that in real life and reap the better rewards? So I guess it makes sense why I’m not big on a social life in the real world and yet also hate WoW. It’s not that I don’t have any time, I do, but I don’t get the enjoyment out of this.

    I have to disagree with the jewelry comment. A lot of girls play this game, I’m certain that if you looked at the player base by sex you’d see a healthy representation of girls. I actually would be rather surprised if women do not outnumber men in this game.

    To me, it was just to level to 60 and get some gear because I’m a completionist. But this game is so terrible I might just leave it, I’m at 54 now, but I’d honestly rather do school work now rather than play this game. In that regard, WoW is great, I had prior to this point never had a game put that urge into me, and as a result I generally don’t do school work. Thanks Blizzard, I wish I had found you when I was 15, things would probably be different now.

  14. Its all Point of View.

  15. consider these somments:

    1. a lot of women play WOW
    2. a lot of women who play WOW are mums, LOL
    3. a lot of families play WOW together and separately, and by doing so the game helps them bond, without taking away from their real life

  16. er, pls correct my spelling, LOL

  17. ignoring a common cause
    hasty generalization
    composition
    biased sample
    spotlight

    and probably bandwagon

    This actually sounds more like a personal anecdote from an ex-wow addict. Just because you have a problem with something, doesn’t mean everyone else does. Even if there are people who feel the same as you.

    You need to realize that not everyone seeks the same gains out of life. Not everyone cares to look like Brad Pitt or X super model, and not everyone cares to be rich, and not everyone cares to be a popular social butterfly. Furthermore, this so-called American dream you speak of is as misleading as telling a child about Santa Cluas.

    And so now I’ll answer the question to why 6 million people play WOW correctly.

    Because they feel like it.

  18. If Blizzard Cut this Off I think there would be a mass suicide by at least a hundred thousand players.
    which is nothing compared to the amount of people who pretty much are dedicated to this game.

  19. www thousand bucks aday com

  20. I played wow for to long, got a level 70 hunter (full pvp epic), level 60 preist as well, and i owned a lot of the time. When the last patch came out I quit. at the end of the day it is a pointless, meaningless waste of time. Basicly it is addictive. Yes ‘My name is Paul and I’m a war-crack addict.’ I could not even say way i wasted so much time on it. The game play is very poor. Oh well, my advice to anyone still playing, is to quit and enjoy your real life. At the end of the day are you really having fun when you play the game? If you are fair enough that is you choice, but if your playing for the wrong reasons like I was, quit 🙂 Real life is better.

  21. …mmmh after reading the article, and quite frankly it is indeed quite entertaining, I came to this realization:
    the responses to the article are the true depiction of why this game is so addictive! I have played WoW for 3 hours…free trial and it just didn’t do it for me. In fact I can’t even finish a game that I like because I get bored. I bought Final Fantasy 7 in 1997 and I finished the game in 2002…with 120 hours played and I thought that was epic.
    lol
    gaming CAN potentially be an addiction but it comes down to this:

    is it destructive to yourself as an individual

    yes/no

    if no, does it adversely affect someone else in your life?try not being so selfish in that regard, take responsibility.

    if you like the game and you have everything in your life in order…then go ahead and play as much as you like, but pretending that it is not a problem and finding excuses to justify 8 hours in front of a computer…would be sad. Think about it for a while, you’ll see that watching paint dry would have the same effect…you accomplish nothing…THE QUESTION IS NOT TO ACCOMPLISH OR NOT TO ACCOMPLISH

    it is ….DO YOU WANT to? Well if yes ,stop playing.

    we could argue all day about this, in the end we all die, so life is pointless.Not necessarily, if you enjoyed it, then life did it’s job.

    this is about you, and not what other people expect to be normal behavior.Frankly, going to the bar and drinking or pointless socializing doesn’t make someones life great or more rewarding…

    ALL IS RELATIVE

  22. wow kicks sooo much ass. Im 11 and i have a lvl 50 tarun hunter. I Cant stop playing that game. i have stayed up all day and night without sleep, (since its summer i can play a hole lot more) But yes it is a non-stopplaying game. Its soooooo dam hard 2 stop playin that game! The new 1 thats comin out is gonna be………. A HUGE ASS HIT! “The Lich King” is what its called

  23. Man, get some sleep, i play only on weekends and i got to lvl 63 in 3 month
    Toon Name:Goldbird
    Realm Name:Thrall

  24. thefallofmankindandwomankind

    oh god here come another title expansion for u to walk upon the wow game. but dude seriously man get some sleep and go do somthing that is usefull man, just think as this way 14 bux a month and where u get that kind money to pay for those gameplay anyway. r u work so hard for money and spent on this game hehe….well yes i do admit that i have play wow but his lvl only 10 and i stop playin. and his name is huus i think it been long i cant remember so yah. if u into this game then go for it it ur life and ur decision. and dont be like this guy name nymp or something he got the interview in http://www.mmo-champion.com he got to lvl 80 within in one night hehe and i was like damn. gl to ya peace out

  25. You all will join the dark side become a death knight and kill with me. We will take over the world, ha ha. And if you don’t join me you all will fear my wrath. So join me. If you join now you get a pet dragon.

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