Breakfast Topic: The charity friend
by Amanda Miller 
Nov 9th 2007 at 8:05AM
Much as I love gaming, I have an eerie habit of choosing games that involve guilt. From my Harvest Moon days ("no, I can't come to dinner yet; my chickens are angry!") to my time in World of Warcraft, thar be guilt-trips afoot. In fact, I have a friend who fell asleep once while tanking, because it can be difficult to say no. Many players even report feeling obligated to do their dailies, and guilty for skipping them, even though they hate them; and after all, who exactly would we be offending if we skipped them once in awhile?Enter the charity friend. This is often a person that you coerced into playing in the first place, and is likely to be a close friend or, if you're lucky, romantic partner. Unfortunately, you spend about four times this person's /played each week, and they've fallen behind you, even though you started an alt specifically to rendezvous with your bud. It happens; you enjoyed the character and you just had to participate in Brewfest, and one time you saw an LFM on LFG that was tempting and you switched over....
When your charity friend actually comes online for some play-time, you feel obligated to drop whatever you were doing, and go play too. You may also be struck with the urge to help finance this player's endeavors, run this player through content for gear, teach this player some tricks, and let the loot fall to them, whether they need it or not. Every mount that you have saved up for may have been delayed because of your desire to help and accompany this person.
As a fellow sufferer of the charity friend phenomenon, I recommend some /time spent IRL. You just mailed them those BOE epic bracers (ahem; or maybe that was me). The least they could do is buy you a coffee! Alternatively, if they happen to be your wife/boyfriend/etc, I submit that they owe you more than caffeine.
Do you ever feel guilt-ridden by, or obligated to, something, or someone, in WoW? Do you ever find cause to laugh at yourself when you realize that just what it is you're feeling guilty over? Do you have trouble saying no, even in the virtual world?
Filed under: Guilds, Breakfast Topics, Quests, Leveling
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chriasas Nov 9th 2007 8:18AM
I only feel guilty in WoW for two reasons. 1. Having to drop from a raid I signed up for due to unforeseen circumstances. 2. Having to drop from an instance due to unforeseen circumstances. RL happens, but, like RL, if I make a commitment in WoW, I perfer to keep it, if at all possible.
Rathe Nov 9th 2007 8:26AM
Like the previous poster I have felt guilty during raid times. There have instances in which I didn't ask to raid, but the guild didn't quite have enough without me so I joined just so the other 24 wouldn't suffer as much. But I eventually left that environment, because in a guild that raids 20 hours a week it happened far too often.
Zumwalah Nov 9th 2007 8:30AM
only time i feel guilty is when i have to leave a raid before its over.. usually cause im falling asleep
Amalgham Nov 9th 2007 8:32AM
Have to agree with #1. Friend, guildie, lover, if I commit to a group, be it a pug or whatever, I will honor my commitment. Now if the pug is turning out to be a really crappy one then yeah, I may bail on it. However, it has to be a really really crappy pug. I often stuck with a pug that's wiped countless times on certain runs that were usually considered easy.
Easterling Nov 9th 2007 8:35AM
I am rapidly turning into my charity friends charity friend, and he's getting his own new charity friend too.
Erika Nov 9th 2007 8:45AM
My charity friend just buys me food.
alex Nov 9th 2007 9:02AM
lol i have gone as far as logging my brothers character and running a full clear of karazhan on it even though I didnt even lvl the character up. I boost him in arena 2v2 so he can collect his points on a weekly basis. He does return the favour by crafting me pots if I send him the mats and sometimes will send me a stack of adept's elixer or a couple of flasks of pure death to help with expense of raiding 4 nights a week minimum :P Still i was level 70 when he started playing and now my shammy is lvl 68 which I started just to play with him even though he still dinged 70 at least 3months ago and has a fair bit of epic gear thanks to someone =D
Lios Nov 9th 2007 9:07AM
I feel guilty towards a guildmember that has done a lot for me (ingame). I don't like the direction the guild is taking and have troubles with some of the officers, but have a hard time leaving because of this guilt :-/
Vestras Nov 9th 2007 9:11AM
I've run the spectrum here. I was guilted into playing CoX when a friend bought me an account. After a while I let it lapse out of lack of intrest outside the character creator. I guilted several friends into coming to EVE for a while, although I was the 2nd to leave after forced pvp cost me 4 months work. I at least had the charity to donate all my spare funds (after an attemted refit) to those that were still playing.
I played wow with my SO, but she got kinda ticked at times, wanting her own alone time in game. But then things were not going well there, so it didn't matter.
These days, If I am online and not raiding or running something already, I help out anyone who asks me nicely or I already know (guildies or RL friends). I do feel bad when I forget to do my dailies, especially now that I bought epic riding, cause I need that cash, and I need to fun the alts who will soon be needing their own mounts.
I also sometimes feel guilty for neglecting my alts. Sometimes when I am passing through a lowbie area for whatever reason, I stop to farm mats of one kind or another to send on to them. Even though I am not leveling them, I still may want to someday, so I want to be ready. I even once went back to an old server to look at how far I had come. First thing I did was liquidate the assets off my other alts on that server and use the funds to get this guy a respec and some decent equipment! Now he's top of his game for where he is, but I am still prolly not going to play him again.
Julia Nov 9th 2007 9:48AM
I play my main with my bf - and I do feel guilt lots of the time to play with him, since we chose to be leveling partners - and he doesn't get to play sometimes for long periods of time 'cause of his work schedule, so that adds to my guilt. Although, because of this guilt, I've actually leveled a character past 52 (my highest character at the time) and have made it into Outland.
So, I guess the lesson here is guilt helps kill altitis.
Jenks Nov 9th 2007 9:54AM
I am the charity friend. But I make up for it by sending mats to my friends OTHER charity friend, his girlfriend.
Chuddy Nov 9th 2007 10:05AM
Ugh. I got my gf and a friend into wow. The upside to them is they get the game at a ridiculously easy setting considering I can run them through almost anything pre outland. They certainly don't play as much as me so we have a dungeon night aka "taco night" where we do whatever dungeon is in their range. We're near the last leg of the free-ride in BRD so it's a bit sad. But eve's, I feel guilty more for getting them into this addiction than anything else. :-)
Unhappy Nov 9th 2007 4:44PM
This exactly describes my situation in right now. My guild (I am an officer in a small 'family-style' guild in which the GM has been absentee for months now) has completely fallen apart in the past several weeks. The only folks left are myself, and the next closest to me in level are at least 6 levels below me. I am the guild banker and that task takes a great deal of time -- and now for just the very few (read 4 or 5) of us left it just seems pointless. I am in fact, the only officer left.
I originally started playing at all because my husband got me into it, and he has moved on to LOTRO. I feel guilted into sticking with WoW now because of my obligations to a dying guild.
Zach Nov 9th 2007 12:44PM
I got my wife, then my girlfriend, to play WoW. But even though I was the one who got her into the game, I turned out to be her charity friend. She's bought me everything from epic guns for my old hunter to half of the training cost for my second toon's epic flying mount to, most recently, a Blessings Deck. I spend most of my time PvP-ing, and she spends hers making lots of money. So it all works out.
Ashwin Nov 9th 2007 1:28PM
I can certianly identify with this, I sometimes feel compelled to help out friends and ocassionally even NPC's[O-o], even at the expense of my in game and sometimes even RL duties, though the RL duties I can afford to jettison are the minor ones only, but still...
Also I can almost never leave a pug, no matter how inconvinient, though to be honest I'm like that in RL too, going out of my may to help, even to my own detriment.
Incidentially this may be realted to the fact that I can't play evil toons.
I think our RL personalities just tend to transfer over.
Azaghan Nov 9th 2007 1:47PM
@13
Wife, THEN girlfriend? Either you've mastered the game or you forgot to add a few words to that to make it sound right. =P
Anyways, I feel guilty a lot because of friends in my guild. Friends who are always there to help me when I need it, who just spend time with me. Even spending time to find all "growth" abilities and items, using them, then mounting up in IF to just rampage through as giants (yes, we were bored =) ). The reason I feel guilty is because I'm not enjoying being in the guild anymore because I feel the guild has gotten off track from its original goals.
I want to leave the guild to move on to a progressing guild but I feel like I'll be letting my friends down if I leave. Like I'm abandoning them to find something better. I've actually gotten to the point where I haven't played my main in a couple weeks but hide out on an alt so I can still chat with my friends. Playing my alt is getting boring so I find myself playing WoW less and less.
After I left my last guild, for the same reasons, I told myself I wasn't going to get personal with anyone so that way I didn't have an attachment to the guild should an issue ever arise but that never seems to work out.
Juliah Nov 10th 2007 12:36AM
I wish I could find a way to get rid of a charity friend without hurting feelings. In fairness, I'm not the one who brought the person into the game. *sigh*
Unhappy, offer the leadership to one of the remaining members, and suggest that they grow it or leave it. If nobody wants to grow it, consider merging with a larger guild or letting everyone strike out on their own while creating a chat channel to stay in touch.
To everything, there is a season, and all that.