WoW and RL in adulthood

[Deleted]

Many of us started playing WoW when we were in our teens. Back then we had virtually no responsibilities and more free time than we knew how to spend. We grew up with this game, it was a big part of our transition to adulthood and maybe helped define our behavior as adults.

Fast forward to today: we have jobs, responsibilities, social obligations, bills to pay. Some of us have families, a girlfriend, a wife, kids.

To get away from all the complaining on this general board I want to talk about something else: how did your WoW gaming habits change when you got older? Do you still try to hold on to how you played as a kid/young adult? Do you still raid Mythic? How do you manage?

It isnt that people dont have time. They do no want have time. Yes even when you are adult you still have plenty of free time. But you want it to spend it by not playing wow. Being adult have nothing to do with having no time. You just choose to spent that time differently.

[Eazy]

Because of the lack of time I became more selective in WoW:
-do raids 1/2 times per week,
-one alt,
-emissary quests twice times a week,
-farm the things I like and I have time for(e.g. PvP set),

I no longer raid with my alts(just with one, and it's 0/1 peer week), I no longer do things in WoW just for the giggles(ganking, pet battles), no lore-master quests, no grinding.

I'd much rather experience the story and content at my own pace and then clear heroic. There are too many other games I want to experience and too many books I want to read in order to sink that much time into one thing. As I got older, I realized that I needed to engage in more varied kinds of entertainment

This is the part that is also true for me.

[Driahtvacahtve]

Seeing as I moved to Japan and work fulltime there, wanting to marry my gf etc, I barely play. I have been looking for raiding guilds with hours that fit, but have had no success, and Japanese working hours are not as lenient as European ones.

I used to multibox as many as 8 accounts with much enjoyment (not pvp mind you). Now often I won't have more than 5-10minutes a day, and several resets I just dont log in at all. It's not that I don't enjoy the game anymore, I just can't play regularly like I used to when I was a highschool/university student.

I've had to massively rethink how I play. I've all but given up on alts entirely. I have yet to level a 2nd char over 101. Usually I'll do LFR when it comes out and then otherwise just once in a blue moon. I don't do weekly things like Mythic+. I plan a little more according to, say, what weekly even is coming. I try to do the 4 dungeons during dungeon week for example, but then I might not touch the game the week before and after. I use the catch-up gear much more than before, and as such prioritize things that assist with that, like using my daily instant WQ for Argunite or whatever its called. I skip difficult things (like the mage tower) when they are current content because it's too much of a time investment.

Basically my game experience has been reduced to an extent where I am just looking forward to the next expansion because the only thing I know I can really enjoy properly is the leveling experience. I don't feel much accomplishment or indeed anything much at all about crawling up one itemlevel at a time without actually using it for anything. It was fun to do the Mage Tower the other day, be it at 935 ilevel or something. Maybe 6 tries. That was a good experience. Id like to see the other class stories but I haven't even completed the Broken Shore or Insurrection quest chains yet so yeah..
I really only keep playing because I enjoy the story of Warcraft and have been part of it for so long. All my friends and guildies are gone for years. I never talk to anyone. I'd be happier if wow was a single player game at this point really.

I enjoyed Starwars Old Republic for that reason actually, but that game really seemed to have nothing at all at max level. These days I often think about how I should go on about my gaming enjoyment. My gf has expressed mild interest in what wow is, mostly because she is interested in giving my hobbies a try (Ive been trying everything from snowboarding to scuba diving since meeting her and she's now coming around to my side a bit in return I guess) but we're talking someone who never owned a computer in her life who is very outgoing, and lives 500km away. Got her into Mario Kart for now (had to actually just lend her my WiiU).

I guess I went a little beyond what you asked in the initial topic, but I suppose what it comes down to is that I am still transitioning into my new life in Japan (for 2 years now), and as such I do not have the stability and unchanging life that is required for a gaming *schedule*. So basically I just play randomly for tiny tiny glimpses of time, whatever catches my fancy. In that regard I find WoW to be borderline frustrating because I do feel I am falling behind to an extent where I wonder why I keep playing. New content comes out too quickly and I basically don't wanna spend my 10 minutes on Suramar when there's the newest story and fat new 910 gear waiting on Argus.
The leveling experience is different. I can handle a week of no-lifing where I hit max level and then enjoy the new stuff a bit, and then put the game down to recover. I don't really feel I can justify doing that everytime a new patch comes out, especially with how patches are structured now.
I've had so much fun with wow since the beta came out and blizzard games in general for years before and after starting WoW, but really my priorities are just different now. I'd much rather enjoy stuff with my gf, and when I wanna do my own stuff I feel games like Civilization, Pokemon, or indeed Hearthstone are easier to just pick up and nerd on a bit before coming back to reality. I can only imagine what it'll be like when I hopefully have kids in the near future.

[ls-]

I raided M quite casually w/ my guild, but I quit before NY because I didn't feel like pushing for 11/11, I'm content w/ current 9/11 and pre-NY crunch at work was exhausting enough, so instead of raiding Antorus I used to raid my bed Legion is prob over for me at this point.

I'm no longer married, but I have a gf, work and hobbies, I honestly don't feel that playing games prevents me from doing other things.

But yeah, I don't play as much as when I was 16 and Vanilla launched, but there's other reasons than not having time for it, I have plenty.

[Deleted]

My own story (feels like a club for addicts ):

Started when I was 17 in Vanilla. Played a lot the next few years since I managed to get through university at minimum effort. All of my 13 years playing the game I've been raiding, and raiding the highest difficulty. There's no other aspect of the game that grabs my attention.

After getting my second Masters degree I was adamant that I could manage my WoW hobby next to my job and other hobbies. It didn't work out obviously. I couldn't continue raiding 4 days per week, with alt raids on off-days. I tried to scale back and just play casually, clear heroic and not care about Mythic.
That never worked out for me. I always had this nagging feeling that I could raid Mythic as well, that I should be able to take on the challenge. Heroic was too easy, cleared in the first reset and then what?

This year I found a great 2-night raiding guild, Wednesdays and Sundays, decent hours. It doesn't conflict with my work schedule at all and there's plenty of room to do other stuff. I could raidlog for those 2 nights and do perfectly fine to clear content before a next tier releases.

That's still not how I play though. I try to be an active participant in guild events (normal and heroic raids), I try to maintain one or more alts, I try to do some M+ and I try to do my emissaries, Argus invasions and world quests, etc. I've cut back on just about everything else that was fun (old raids, casual pvp, achievements, transmog farming, etc).

It's not sustainable. It means in reality I play just about every day of the week and only on Monday and Friday do I have a day where there isn't a scheduled raid. It means I neglect going to the gym unless I'm hyper efficient when it comes to planning my day (and take my gym bag to work so I can go to the gym at the train station right after work).
It also irks me that I can't keep up with the rest of my guild. Most players are students, or unemployed or in between jobs, and have a ton of time to play. I kind of feel guilty that I can't keep up with them. I know it's something I force on myself, but it's still the case.

So now I'm either looking at quitting, probably definitively, or trying to cut down my playtime and being efficient at what I do every day (both in RL/Ingame). It's got me thinking about how other adults approach the game, how their habits evolved, whether they're also still trying to make it all work.

Whatever it is, I'm still having a hell of a lot of fun.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I raid mythic and still get it done. But it is mostly because my guild and I have grown up together. We don't raid for position anymore (once upon a time we REALLY focused on top 200 US, but those days have been long past). We just raid to get it done before the next raid comes out now. So we put in 3 nights a week 3 hours. With all that being said though this is our last expansion. Raiding has just gotten to boring, in our opinion, to continue to be honest and most of us have been doing it just because "it felt like what you should do" in the game. Our guild will continue but something like Mythic+ just works so much better for people our age. We can just show up and randomly make groups. We can have our teams that also run together. All in all it is just show up when you can and do it. If one or two people can't make it then it is easy enough to fill. I have no doubt we will still have something like a normal at first then heroic clear out of raids on the weekends when enough people are around to make pugging the holes bearable but that will be it for raiding. Mythic has just lost its charm to us. Just a lot of pounding your head against the wall for minimal rewards and having to deal with a lot of whining and complaining about it.

[Dawon]

Raided hardcore Vanilla, TBC and most of Wrath.... after that i got a steady gf (now wife) and went casual... In legion I raid (only HC clears) 2 times a week, 3hrs a pop.. and pretty much a maximum of 30mins the other days... Have wife, work, 2 kids.. it's pushing it already to raid twice a week... Dunno if I can keep it up in next exp... and other games? hahaha,, nope.. no.. nada time...

[LonestarHero]

With the wife, two kids, a full time job, and night school I just grind out emissary quests and play the market like it's Eve Online with hopes of playing for free.

I took a four-year break from WoW and returned around Thanksgiving. I'm loving the Legion content.

[Theoris]

The usual for people who work a 9-to-5 job. The days got shorter, ergo I got less time (and desire, since it took a back seat to everything else) to play. If I wasn't at work, I'd hang out with friends.

I'm currently on disability, though. And everyone I used to hang out with has moved to other provinces or countries. So I have more time now than I did as a teenager.

[Deleted]

To get away from all the complaining on this general board I want to talk about something else: how did your WoW gaming habits change when you got older? Do you still try to hold on to how you played as a kid/young adult? Do you still raid Mythic? How do you manage?

I was in my thirties when Vanilla came out, we had just had our first kid - my "carefree" days were spent much earlier than that - in MUDs and EQ.
I've always been a raider and I've been attracted by the "challenge" of defeating bosses in a co-operative group. I didn't think raiding was a problem - the nights were scheduled and it was relatively easy to plan real-life around it - just like any other hobby. You could play the game fairly casually, chipping away at dailies for an hour every night - spend one day farming consumables and making sure you were prepped for raids that week and then you'd spend 3 nights with the group raiding. It's not hard to fit in family, work and other hobbies into that equation - you didn't even have to log on every night if you didn't feel like it. I did all 25 man heroics and later on all mythics up until Nighthold - we finished them in server top 3 most of the time (EU 500-ish) , we were not "super hardcore" but a 3-night guild can't be. it was "good enough" and we didn't really have ambition to drive progression into the top 100.

With Legion all of that changed - they raised the bar when it comes to your downtime. The grind was pretty grueling and especially the repeated M+ clears in search to legendaries and TF were really hard to slot in. I felt compelled to log in every night and I felt compelled to play several hours per night.

It started dawning on me that WoW was not a game for me anymore - it was for people who didn't have other hobbies or commitments. I soldiered on until mid-NH progression, but at that point i was totally burned out and super salty about the state of the game - so I figured I had to stop.

And that's it - it took ~13 years - it's a pretty good run, but WoW is really not a game for me anymore. Judging by normal replies on these boards there's plenty of people who really like that repetative "must grind" feeling for random stuff - and more power to them. I'd rather play other games and put the extra time into other hobbies - but if WoW is your jam.. go for it.

[Deleted]

or ill just post it here:

EU - HORDE
.
Efficiency = Getting the most while spending the least time on the game to experience WoW to the fullest while not compromising Family time, Studies, Work, and Quality time with friends and Significant other which are far more valuable than anything wow can offer - Sacrificing any of the mentioned above will take you to a dark place sooner rather than later and you will not be able to gain what wow is there to offer - Fun.
.
.
Target: Complete our goals with ONE mandatory raiding day a week + 1 optional for those who want.
Goals: Raiding breezly through normal into late heroic through skill alone, and steadly into mid mythic + doing all lesser scaled contents (M+, leveling) without being dependant fully on strangers

.
.
Principles:
1 NO GUILDS - they are INEFFICIENT for out target and goal
With playing 1-2 days a week for 2-3 hours the entrance to guilds which can fulfill our Goals (hardcore guilds) is blocked and by joining the more casual guilds, even semi hardcore we -always- end up carry alot of bad players which will prevent us being efficient.
2 Our Efficient movement will be based on Battle.net friendship and our discord channel - your server (for time being, up to heroic content) will not prevent you from being a core member.
3 Core members will fill out parts of the critical roles which we wouldnt want to entrust on strangers - tanks, healers mostly, dps are ofcourse needed and welcome.
Eventually a guild can be formed so we can step into mythic content
4 We will fill out our missing ranks by the LFG tool using Warcraftlogs.com to inv only players which parase above 55% and are shown to have cleared already the content we do - LOGIC here is to capture mythic raiders which their guild do not run heroics but they must pug it on their own or exceptional players who , are partially pugging.
Warcraftlogs is single handedly the most powerful tool a puggin raid leader has and personally i have lead pugs my AOTC on almost every raid release on the 1st week or two.


5 the Efficient player will
Learn to play his class by reading the guides on his Class Discord channel )Discord)
Will chose his gear based on his sim results on (raidbots) + using the add0n
Will check his performance on Warcraftlogs and aim to parase 55%+
Will Read online about the tactics of all bosses and see multiple videos
Will use the Addons: DBM and WeakAuras to optimize his gameplay
Wil compromise into having -1 main- and investing all the little wow time you have into it
.
.
6 Personal consistency
Thats one of the biggest upside guilds have which often are shadowed by their general guild-only rooster raids - we must play with each other, while communication, because we are Efficient players who share Target and Goal and anyone who isnt will not be among us.


.
WHY?
Im a medical student, a husband, soon to be a father, and this is the one and only way i can experience the game to its fullest without making ANY compromises.
.
.


HOW TO TAKE PART
discord : kJy5KRN - Join this discord channel so we could have a chat and get to know each other and see if you can be a part of this. Requirments:
Target mentioned above is accepted by you
Goal mention above is accepted by you
The principles of the efficient player will be ment by you.
Good will to make the most of your personal life while not throwing wow away - THIS ORGANIZATION/GUILD IS MOSTLY ABOUT INCREASING THE QUALITY OF YOUR REAL LIFE.

[Deleted]

or ill just post it here:

Great, recruitment spam. Just what I needed.

[Pony Soldier]

I don't play nearly as much as I did back then. I started on November 2006. I was hooked, big time. I'd spend like 8 hours on it on days when I had school and a whole day on it when I was off from school. This meant from the time I woke up to the time I went back to bed. Looking back it was fun of course but man, lots of time wasted. I regret it more these days now that I'm a grown adult and doing other things. Finding different things to spend my time and money on other then video games.

So these days I don't have a subscription anymore I just dump money into WoW time whenever I feel like playing it. I still find the game fun but I don't know it just lost that fire it had. I feel like it started to lose it after WotLK. Now at most I'll spend maybe 4 hours on it before I get fatigued. It usually runs out after a month or so and then it turns into an hour, maybe 2. Then I just lose my interest in it altogether in favor over other games I have on PS4 or Steam and then I get wrapped up in them which is where I'm at now.

I think it's a clear sign that WoW hasn't done much to improve the gameplay over the years to really keep the interest in people who have been playing for a long time except constantly changing the way classes play. Adding/removing abilities and spells which in turn fucks up our rotation forcing us to relearn our class that we've been playing for 10 years. Other than that it's the same collect this, kill that kind of game and after playing the game for 10 years it's gets old and boring. It's like every expansion they just repaint and gloss the game up to look pretty but underneath all those coats of paint and gloss the core game hasn't really changed. I know it's an MMO and you have to have repeatable content but you'd think by now they'd come up with something new and different to keep the game feeling fresh.

[Deleted]

Great, recruitment spam. Just what I needed.

To be fair its not, the guild doesnt even exist, most of the things which are written there can help any adult to make the most out of his wow time while pugging

[Dug]

I'm generally busier and actually have an active social life now so I spend my weekends out and about with friends instead of being cooped up infront of a screen all weekend. I pretty much only play during the week after work and do LFR and some M+.

[Fixxit the Gnome]

I play a lot at the start of an expansion, and then a lot at the end of the expansion. Usually don't play that much in the middle.

Been doing this for every expansion since Cata. Wrath was probably the last one I played for 8 hours each and every day.

Probably going to keep on with this pattern until the day I or WoW dies.

[judgementofantonidas]

Many of us started playing WoW when we were in our teens. Back then we had virtually no responsibilities and more free time than we knew how to spend. We grew up with this game, it was a big part of our transition to adulthood and maybe helped define our behavior as adults.

Fast forward to today: we have jobs, responsibilities, social obligations, bills to pay. Some of us have families, a girlfriend, a wife, kids.

To get away from all the complaining on this general board I want to talk about something else: how did your WoW gaming habits change when you got older? Do you still try to hold on to how you played as a kid/young adult? Do you still raid Mythic? How do you manage?

My only change is scheduling raids after my two kids are in bed for the night. However I started twelve years ago as an adult and am now 52.

[Morae]

My guild on our server is ancient. I'm sure majority of our members, including its leaders, have changed over time. It should be oldest on server and was created somewhere during early vanilla. At any rate, we are full of adults who have work and have families. Yet, somehow, we are atm top3 mythic raiding guild on our server. ToS we cleared everything except KJ, ect.

We kill most if not all mythic bosses of every tier. Even with our people having real lives.

It is just matter of organizing stuff. At least to an extent its myth that you cant have real adult life and do highest end content.

[zlygork]

way back in TBC, I used to raid, these days I've been playing ultra casually, with my end content mostly being about WQs and rolling alts.
Recently, I got into a really nice social/casual/RP guild, and they've been getting me into mythic dungeons, I am in fact preparing to tackle my first successful +5 (I know that's low) this week and super excited about it. I'm really glad that mythic is a thing allowing me to play to a challenge level that matches with my free time (no need to schedule 4-6 hours in a row, and no need to push for harder difficulties than I need to, I'll just progress at my slow pace with my equally noobish guildies)

It helps that I am in the younger spectrum of the guild and playing along with a lot of people that are far older (and thus with far more responsibilities) than myself as a mere university student.

[tumppu]

The amount of time I've spent in wow has been entirely dependant on my employment status, since I started wow when I was 29 and that happened to be while I had a near 2 year hiatus between jobs. I did take up on a couple of shorter job offers during 2005 but most of the time I was on the dole and playing a lot, obviously.

Nowadays I still play pretty steadily, but obviously far less than "back then". Has not stopped me from getting 13 lvl110s though. For the record, I only got 4 classes to 60 during vanilla. Wasn't quite the alt-oholic back then.