Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: Why won't they play?
by Carol Lai 
Sep 13th 2010 at 8:00AM
Gaming is a social activity ... Well, it always has been for me. I've always played games (from TCG to pen-and-paper RPGs, from the arcade to home consoles) with other people. Any game I enjoyed, I shared with my friends. So when I finally joined my boyfriend in World of Warcraft, I tried getting a few other friends into the game. It was a good way for all of us to stay connected while we were at different schools, as well as replace our D&D and Mutants and Mastermind campaigns until the summer.
A few of my friends joined my boyfriend and me in Azeroth. Some stayed, some didn't -- but the majority didn't even want to give WoW a first or (for some) second chance on a trial account. When I asked them why, I was given these reasons:
- "I don't need four nights of raiding a week."
- "I don't need to play a game that's gonna act as a second job."
- "I don't like paying more than once to play a game."
- "It's too addictive."
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Parknet Sep 13th 2010 9:14AM
n/a
Parknet Sep 13th 2010 12:38PM
Horay.. My 1st vote down. I was hoping I would get that. if you didn't understand n/a means Not Applicable. I don't have any real world friends who I would ask to play. All my friends are in my guild. The few people I do know out here in RL.. Well, let's just say I wouldn't look forward to them knowing how much I really do play.
Jed Sep 13th 2010 9:16AM
I dont feel any of those reason were in valid.. if not a bit naive maybe. All of them could apply if you allowed them to haha. I thought wow was rather boring the first time i saw it at a friends.. didnt help that i didnt have a computer at the time to even play it so i just went on with life. Oh how i sometimes wish i had just went on with life =D
Nagalord Sep 13th 2010 9:20AM
Regarding monthly cost:
How much gaming can you get for $200/yr outside of WoW? Depends. For me, tons. Buy Minecraft ($13) and be similarly addicted to that. I bought the entire id Software + Bethesda collection off Steam for $70 (Morrowind, Fallout, Dooms, Quakes, Oblivion, etc). I bought GTA IV for $19 (and the new FPS mod is incredible). Easily a year's worth of excellent games for almost -half- of a WoW subscription.
Don't kid yourself. WoW is okay if that's what you're committed to and want to keep justifying it. But on PC alone, you can still have a much more diverse and entertaining game life for "$15 a month."
Just to be clear, I'm not anti-WoW. I've been playing since Day 1 retail and I've done just about everything (finally just got a Wintersaber last weekend, though). But I've been taking 1-2 month breaks to play other games and to get away from the mind-numbing repetition.
Still looking forward to Cataclysm, but most of my RL WoW friends (and in-game friends) haven't been back in a year.
JR Sep 13th 2010 10:33AM
Do these other games keep adding free new content periodically (i.e. wow patches)? If not, I don't think that's a fair comparison.
FC Sep 13th 2010 4:12PM
@JR:
The periodically added content in WoW is not really free. You are already paying $15 a month, and the content is usually only for the newest expansion you have to buy every couple years.
Zinn Sep 13th 2010 9:26AM
I love it that some of my friends/relatives call it a "waste of time" and then spend 5 hours watching TV a day ^^ I at least am somewhat social.
Zinn Sep 13th 2010 9:29AM
Oh forgot to say, one friend of mine who plays alot of games said he had tried it but didn't like it because it was too hard core. He fel that the possibility to play the game the way he wanted was ruined by leet-people who didn't accept anything but the perfect spec, gear and play style, even way beyond end-game where it might matter.
I even wrote a post about it -> http://jinxedthought.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-wow-hardcore-or-nothing.html
Pat Sep 13th 2010 9:37AM
So damn true!
Or my favourite "Get a life" and it's like "So because i'm not going out this weekend to get smashed and thrown out of multiple clubs I need a life?" Iunno.
And those people who build models or have some kind of hobby like that and they think it's superior to gaming of any kind. It's the same in my mind ;s You build small boats, I crush egos online.
xenothaulus Sep 13th 2010 9:26AM
None of my friends are gamers of any sort, except maybe iphone games to pass the time on their commute. We argue constantly about what computers should be used for. (I had a sticker on my tower that said For Entertainment Purposes Only for the longest time.) I've gotten used to their snide comments and ignorance of gaming news over the years, but only just. I retaliate by making fun of them when they're getting their geek on and talking in perl or whatever moon language they're using that particular day.
Pat Sep 13th 2010 9:27AM
Well back in the day before I got into WoW my friends would harass me into playing it with them and I would always just tell them and myself "I'll get addicted! and I don't have time for another addiction".
People I've tried to recruit though always give me that "It costs too much" I have managed to lure people in with the trial but they never last. WoW actually worked out to be the cheaper option for myself though. I was spending atleast $100 a month on console games and with WoW I might buy a game every few months. You could probly even add on the cost of alcohol I was drinking every time I would go out, which was quite a bit before I got WoW.
One addiction to rule them all? :)
pinteresque Sep 13th 2010 9:29AM
More often than not, the friends I have who I try to talk into WoW are people who've already played and quit for various reasons, real life responsibilities and LK burnout being the two major reasons they don't play anymore.
Outside that circle, I don't really talk about WoW with people. It's a hobby, one that I probably should spend less time at, but a hobby with its own lexicon and learning curve; it'd be like going out for a beer with your friends and talking animatedly about stamp collecting: their eyes would glaze over and they would desperately look for some way to change the topic of conversation.
There's also the fact that I don't especially feel the need to bring my real-life friends into the game - not to put too fine a point on it, but WoW is the thing I do to get away from real life for a bit after work. I invited a work-friend into our guild once and, while we were old-school enough gamers to RECOGNIZE the divide between online and RL personalities/identities, it was always there, lurking in the background. I didn't think of him as his character, I thought of him as this guy I worked with, and it shot my immersion in the foot.
So while I'm sure there are people who would play if they gave it a chance, for my own sake I'd rather they didn't. But maybe that's just me.
Ysonia Sep 13th 2010 9:33AM
I have a couple friends that do the eye glaze thing, but my husband and I still talk about WoW around them. They pretty much know all the lingo and a lot of the ins and outs of the game just from hearing about it, even though they've never played and have no interest in starting.
Ysonia Sep 13th 2010 9:31AM
One of my best friends refuses to play it, saying that she doesn't have time, because she has too many other interests that she already doesn't have enough hours in the day to enjoy. I did get her to try it out one tipsy New Year's Eve, and she got a night elf druid to about level 4 before deciding she was done with it.
She's not really a gamer, so I can see that she'd have to be gentled into it if it were to ever work, but at this point it's been 4 or 5 years, and I'm pretty sure she's not going to ever play it.
remember.Jeremiah29V11 Sep 14th 2010 12:09AM
Think my case is epic win.
"It's too expensive"
And they play games like Maplestory.... and spend over.... $50..... (about twice the cost of subscription in my country) a month... saying.
They just think paying the subscription = more than paying $10 (Maplestory A-cash cards) per... say week more expensive.
No logic ? I know !
Frank Sep 13th 2010 9:55AM
"i don't PLAY video games" *rolls eyes*
i mean, seriously -- who doesn't play video games these days?
Casterdps Sep 13th 2010 10:55AM
Honestly? Quite a lot of people. A lot of people that I know, certainly. For them, gaming just isn't part of the entertainment spectrum, pure and simple. *shrugs*
Frank Sep 13th 2010 11:29AM
i believe it's how you define "video games" -- to some, bejeweled and farmville don't count, but i think they do. if you count the likes of those...
Aaron Sep 13th 2010 9:56AM
The guy that got me into it doesn't play anymore. The few people that I've formed friendships with have move on, or *gasp* faction transferred. :(
I can't get my office mate into the game. He says he doesn't want to play a game where he has to be around other people. I don't even know what that means. lol I've told him that he can play how he wants to play, but he always goes back to the whole doesn't wanna be around people thing. I gave up. ;)
Chetti Sep 13th 2010 10:06AM
I was one of those friends who didn't want to play. The reason I gave was that I'm not good at video games. Which is true, I don't play console games, and when I did it was the "kiddy" type like Mario Land or Spyro the Dragon (the old ps1 games). I was convinced I wouldn't understand it and that because it was complex and I'd be lost that I would instantly hate it.. therefore I wasn't going to pay for something that I wasn't going to like. My friend and her boyfriend were raiders, pvpers, really into their guild and vent and truly enjoyed the game. It just *sounded* hard to understand. I didn't have anything negative to say about gamers or my friend's interest in the game, just that it'd never be for me. The irony, I met said friend on a game site - pogo games- where I always said that these "easy" games were my speed/level of gaming. Fast forward 4 years, another friend, this time a RL friend (well, a friend I knew offline first, as I consider both "real life" friends) discovered the game through her boyfriend and kept bugging me till I downloaded the trial. I did that, and 2 years later I'm still playing. I got a call from the pogo friend, I told her I was playing. She gave me the "told ya soooo!" song for a little while. At the time she was on a wow-break because of work and time and so on, but was planning to come back. Because I was on the Alliance side, where she nearly passed out 'didn' I teach you ANYTHING in your pre-wow days!?' lol, we rolled taurens on a different server. We're just getting into northrend, where for the first time in 70 levels, i'm the 'tour guide' (kinda..) since its content she's never seen but I have (though only once). I still say I'm not "good" at the game as far are good players with 5k+ gear scores that raid 4 times a week go, I'm the casualist of casual players, but it is fun and I do enjoy it. I'm glad I gave it a try. :)