Rather than the standard 'I always take RL over the game' speech, I'm going to offer a different perspective on the issue, one that may sound quite familiar to a lot of you. I warn you that it's a bit 'relationshippy'.

I spend a considerably large amount of time playing this game, though I've started to try to regulate it better.
To be specific, I've actually made some changes to my game time because it was affecting my relationship negatively. Basically what happened was that one day (a Monday to be specific) I was about to start a group that had been put in group calendar for numerous days prior, and the other people were almost ready to go also. We were actually having an important discussion about the direction of the guild at the time, as we were having quite a few problems relating to people leaving the guild, and in general the guild management situation.
My partner called me while the discussion was going on and I said I couldn't talk at that time. She got quite upset at me. I thought it was because she was being anti-WoW and I was equally annoyed at her because at the time I thought she didn't want me to do anything that didn't involve her. One of those relationship misconceptions that can only be helped through talking. :P
We later had a talk about it and she had something she wanted to talk to me about that was completely unrelated (it was positive), but she didn't say anything on the phone. I told her that I couldn't read her mind, and it would have been easier if she had have said that the phone conversation was important to her when she called.
It was through this happening that I decided I didn't like setting so many days in the week for group/raid times, and that I would rather drop out of a group altogether than upset her again.
Since then the guild I was in disbanded, and I've told the officers of the new guild I'm in that I will only be available for raids two days of the week (which are all but set in stone) when my partner is most likely to be busy.
I actually enjoy the game more now. I don't feel a great deal of pressure to be on every night so the guild progresses, and she knows when I'll be busy so she doesn't give me a hard time about being harder to contact on those days. She's also a lot more understanding about how much I enjoy and value the time I spend playing WoW because we talked about it (also in part to the fact that she's now a semi-regular player of the game too, entirely of her own volition), and knowing that I'm not so tied up during the week has been good for both of us.

Long post :P

Reply