The Psychology of Playing MMOs

[Kanatatsu]

I've yet to hear one about an MMO truly enriching someone's life.

OK... here's one... WoW allowed me to chat to people in an environment which I was comfortable with, and learn how to converse better, without the threat of messing up relationships I care about. If you're thinking of stuff to say it's nowhere near as noticeable online, and if you accidentally irritate someone, often there's a lot less consequences.
Also helped me get through some of the difficult times at uni, as I had somewhere to go, with people who understand wtf I was on about. There weren't so many "weird folk" on my course, despite it being computer science ><. Was OK in the first year, but second year was hard as most of my friends were doing cybernetics (or something completely different) so it made it hard to meet up and things.

I'm sorry but this is now the third person who has responded to my post with some vague "it helped me be better with people and not be so shy" stuff, and I can't help but this this is generally a bunch of tripe.

I can't imagine how the WoW environment makes anyone a more confident or successful person in terms of real life relationships with non-WoW people.

I get that it's a nice escape (I played it for 2 years, never obsessively), but whatever inclusion one might feel in the game is not going to translate to the real world, imho.

 

[Kanatatsu]

I've heard a lot of stories about MMOs ruining lives.

I've yet to hear one about an MMO truly enriching someone's life.

To sort of counter that, my wife and I play MMOs together. Enrichment...is kind of an odd way to put it, but we get time together, some stuff to talk about, and it can feel like we're hanging out if I have to travel for work. Basically, we're generally happier as a couple when we are sharing a game experience together and we hang out with some other couples online who do the same. We play other games cooperatively but being able to meet other coop players and having a "long term" experience with the game seems to be more fun. In general, people I meet in MMOs are my best game partners and I end up playing other games with them too.

That said, I've had my period of negative MMO effects.

I identify with the article more for Everquest, less for WoW, I played Everquest like a job, and when I was offline, I felt like someone else was getting ahead of me.

In WoW, the ability to catch back up if you didn't play for a while was too great for me to have this guilt trip about playing and feel like I was "wasting my game time" by playing something else. I generally played an expansion for the first set of raids then cancelled my account until the next expansion. I actually read the quest storylines, chuckled at the Blizzard puns and enjoyed crawling through dungeons with friends I already had. I made a deal with myself where if I started to find myself pushing too hard for progression and in job mode I would take a step back.

That step back could be a deep breath and refocusing on why I enjoy the game to begin with, could be logging for the day, could be cancelling my account until some new content came out.

Self-awareness about how much I was *not* having fun with some parts of an MMO allowed me to enjoy WoW in a way that was better for me.

I think this is totally doable and the probably more common way people play MMOs, it just doesn't get as much press as it's not as sensational.

I was expecting someone to come on with "WoW is how I met my wife" or "my wife and I play and enjoy it together".

Seems to me that truly positive relationship building is the massive exception rather than the norm. I know far, far more people who have ruined personal relationships over MMOs than those who have enriched them (meaningfully).

 

[LadyMint]

My friend, I agree with you so much right now. Especially when it came to your point about breaking away from WoW.

I didn't start when WoW started; I tried it out the next year's Christmas as a present to myself for doing so well in college. Still managed to graduate college with honors, but was definitely devoting a good chunk of my free time to WoW by graduation day. Years into it, I had that "second job" feeling from the game that many people talk about. I went to work, came home, then almost immediately logged into WoW to handle as many of my virtual obligations as I could in a day's time. And good lord, if you are in an active raiding guild, you have SO many obligations.

Finances are what helped me break the bondage WoW had me in. I went for several years without a decent-paying job and had to shift that $15 a month into more important things (y'know, like food). Of course I pined for it--had withdrawal symptoms. But eventually my personal struggles with staying afloat financially prettymuch dissolved any concentration towards games that I didn't already have for free or because I had already purchased them a while ago.

I've had a good job for a while now (even managed to get promoted recently. Woo!), which has allowed me to start rebuilding my gaming library. It kinda thinned as money became tighter around the homestead. And like an old crack dealer who hears that you've got some disposable income, Blizzard started sending me those "try WoW again for 7 days free" emails. I resisted the first three but eventually I decided to give one a try; after all, I was curious about what some of my friends/guildies were doing at this point in the game.

Loading up that free trial was like hopping on a bicycle after not having one for a few years. I was shakey at first, but soon everything went to muscle memory. I stopped playing soon after Cataclysm came out so I wasn't completely unfamiliar with all the new concepts in the game. But two days into my free sample of Wowcrack, I started to realize how I was subconsciously prioritizing the game in my life yet again. I had a "free trial," and I was starting to treat it like I was paying a monthly fee--it was time that I didn't want to waste, and I had a lot of catching up to do on collecting pets and achievements and seeing in-game cinema scenes and waving to NPCs that didn't actually wave back and--and--and--

It was a real eye-opener to me at just how addicted I am to MMOs like WoW. Which is funny because I've had a lifetime sub to Champions Online since its doors opened and I've been comfortably playing it on and off since. But WoW has a different type of pull to it, and because of that I opted not to re-subscribe after the free trial was over. I didn't even play all that time I had on it, once that realization dawned on me. So with that in mind, I probably won't invest in SW:TOR. Not if it's going to give me that same feeling of Second Job obligation.

 

[Greg Tito]

"I put nearly 500 hours into playing World of Warcraft"

Does not add up. I assume you're missing a "0" off the end of "500" after seven years of WoW?

Nope, you were right. I meant to say 500 days.

 

[Maze1125]

City of Heroes started earlier and lasted longer thanks to altaholism, but after thoroughly exploring every powerset and every mission up to issue 16, I took one look at "powerset proliferation", and promptly canceled my subscription.

I'm not sure I quite understand.

Did you quit because you were getting bored anyway, and you found the powerset proliferation too lacklustre to justify your continued subscription, or did you find something about powerset proliferation itself to be a bad thing and so directly cause you to quit? If that latter, what was it?

Either way, CoH is free to play now, your old account should still be there and you'll automatically be a premium member thanks to your past subscription. You might want to give it another try.

 

[2xDouble]

Bold Added. Why would you pay a subscription for something like Netflix or Hulu? Its because it offers you a compelling content that you want on a regular basis, you know that your unlikely to ever run out of content. Consider most single player games, you play them, you explore, you have a good time and then in general your done, maybe you come back for some DLC but in general once your done with a single player, once you've experienced as much as you want to experience your done. Without endgame compelling endgame content an MMO becomes just another single player game, fun to experiment with and explore for a while but then your done. Thats why most MMOs fall apart after launch, they have decent leveling content, a neat idea here and there but nothing to actually make them worth the subscription.

I'd also suggest that the bolded line above is a false dichotomy in raiding progression is part of the experience. That little race between you and another rival guild on the server, if you are on good terms with them the little needling, the trying to figure out how far they are on some fight is part of what makes raiding so much fun. The sitting around chatting trying to figure how to tackle a hard boss. The stories from shared experiences and most of all that feeling when a hard boss dies when you and 24 other people are screaming and cheering because you did it.

That's not true, and I'll tell you why.

With Hulu and Netflix, there is literally infinite content to experience, or at least more than you could ever experience in a typical lifetime, added daily by hundreds of contributors from any one of a dozen different companies (no single game developer can compare with all of television, that would be like a single movie studio against the entire music industry.). Most importantly, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do to keep experiencing it, other than pay the fees. (that's actually the whole point of Hulu and Netflix, is paying to not have to do things like watch commercials.) If Netflix worked like World of Warcraft, it would occasionally force you to watch Human Centipede in order to get to the next episode of whatever TV program you were watching. And your friends over XBox Live or whatever would talk to you about how far they were into the Human Centipede and how long it would take them to get to the next show so you could start having fun again. Then you would come on the internet and talk about how totally awesome and good that shit movie was because your friends congratulated you on your 37th time seeing it, and then Netflix lights up a little button that says "watched Human Centipede 37 times". (That's what Totalbiscuit was talking about, by the way. Watch the video.)

You describe loving the community, not the actual content. The community, as described in Greg's article, is the main draw. The community is accessible without the content OR the subscription. In fact, if you can keep in touch with those people over skype or whatever, the experience doesn't change (as Greg noticed). Community is what World of Warcraft has that many other games lack, and why those games fail. Was the raid actually fun, or was it fun because you were hanging out with your friends? or because they would congratulate you for completing the raid, collecting the item, unlocking the achievement, etc.? That is not a false dichotomy. That is literally how the game works. The community is the content in an MMO, and you don't have to pay anyone for that, or grind levels for it.

Incidentally, Go play Skyrim. It disproves pretty much everything you said.

 

[Drunkbot]

I quit playing WoW, then got into the Star Wars beta, and was unimpressed. The number one thing that made me say "meh"? It was still an MMO.

That sounds like a silly point, yet it was true nonetheless. In quitting WoW, I had carefully thought about what it was that made me want to quit and why those reasons affected me the way they did, and decided it was simply the nature of MMOs. The genre had stayed consistent, and I had changed, for the better, I believe.

Unlike the author of this article, I felt no need to play past the beta, and am still enjoying a varied range of titles.

 

[Greg Tito]

Let's see... at $15 a month, if you play for only 15 hours over that month, you're getting about $1/hour of enjoyment. That's a hell of a lot better rate than any strip club will give you.

I judge all endeavors by the Strip Club Standard.

 

[Greg Tito]

I've heard a lot of stories about MMOs ruining lives.

I've yet to hear one about an MMO truly enriching someone's life.

I broke my neck a few years back and was immobile for 3 months, the summer after my freshman year of college. Playing WoW was the only way I could socialize. Most of my "real" friends were out living their lives, and the ones that wanted to visit I didn't want to see me like that. With WoW, I could spend a day hanging out with friends and the fact that my body was broken didn't matter for a while. It kept me sane.

<3 MMOs

 

[antidonkey]

Pretty the exact samething happened with me in regards to WoW. Scratch that.......100% of your article can apply to WoW and myself. I finally cancelled the account a few months ago. I don't regret the time I spent playing and I'm glad I'm done with it but I still miss it. However, I'm not going back. I figured I might in a year or so but that desire has rapidly diminished. ToR has snagged my curiousity but unless they do a free trial, I'll probably avoid it. Even then I'll be wary as I don't want to get sucked back in like that. Now that I've quit I have a back log of games I want to play.......mostly from steam. Hell, I have a few from Gamersgate I paid for a month ago and haven't even downloaded yet. I don't see myself ever getting back into the MMO scene and if I do, I damn sure will stick with the casual route as it will make giving it up that much easier.

 

[Weslebear]

When it comes to subscription fees I avoid them in anything that isn't a damn near necessity. Internet bills that sort of thing etc are fine, but I would never pay to play only a single game more than the standard purchasing price, sure you get a lot of content in sub MMO's but there are hundreds of completely free MMO's which provide a hell of a lot and you could play every single one without cleaning out the bank. Having to pay every month also adds to addiction problems, I played WoW for a few months and felt bad for playing other games because my money was being wasted for every second not playing. I quit after getting that feeling, and after looking back I don't see why I ever paid for that, all of my best MMO times have been on free ones or what I am about to mention below.

Personally I feel they need to go "Freemium" no sub fee, just pay for the game disc and any expansion discs, just like other games. You still get top notch quality paid content but you aren't obligated to constantly get your moneys worth every month and when you are bored you can leave it for a few years. Case in point, I used to play Guild Wars, "freemium" MMO, casually years ago when it released around 2005/6 and I picked up my account again this year and have been playing the shit out of it and loving it. And that is just the perfect business model for MMOs for me.

This also being the reason why I cannot fucking wait for Guild Wars 2 any longer, some fantastic looking content with no fees.

 

[Wolfram23]

I guess you're just a sucker.

Seriously, though, cut the cord and never play an MMO again. Well, ok, do whatever you want, but I'm not going to touch them. I had a similar thing with WoW so I just avoid all MMOs. I suppose I'll play Diablo 3, but much like D2, I probably won't play online except specifically with friends.

 

[Dirty Apple]

Besides the occasional trial, the only MMO I ever invested time and money in was SW:Galaxies. At the start it was fresh and fun. Eventually, I even convinced a couple of buddies to join up and we all played together. After awhile the experience started to dilute and I wasn't having as much fun, but I continued playing because I had put a good chunk of my meager funds into the game.

Everything changed the morning I got up before work early so that I could check my factories and top up my harvesters, and found a PM waiting for me. It was from a customer of mine, angrily complaining about the delivery time on product he had ordered. I started to write an apologetic message citing a backlog and minimum time requirements, when I realized that I was actually working 2 jobs instead of one. I logged out and never looked back.

tl:dr When it turns from a want to a need, it's no longer a game but a compulsion.

 

[loc978]

City of Heroes started earlier and lasted longer thanks to altaholism, but after thoroughly exploring every powerset and every mission up to issue 16, I took one look at "powerset proliferation", and promptly canceled my subscription.

I'm not sure I quite understand.

Did you quit because you were getting bored anyway, and you found the powerset proliferation too lacklustre to justify your continued subscription, or did you find something about powerset proliferation itself to be a bad thing and so directly cause you to quit? If that latter, what was it?

Either way, CoH is free to play now, your old account should still be there and you'll automatically be a premium member thanks to your past subscription. You might want to give it another try.

I suppose it was more than just powerset proliferation... the game didn't have much for me aside from trying new character builds, and it was getting ridiculous. I pretty much got tired of doing the same old missions over and over to level my latest experiment in powerset and costume piece combinations. Continuing that cycle with Powerset Proliferation would have gotten silly.

Also, I did reactivate when Freedom hit... but it's sort of lost its charm, what with the extremely limited character slots. I've unlocked 5 of my old toons, but it's hard to choose among the remaining 60 or so.

 

[FunctionZ]

I was the same. It was always about "Your paying monthly for this, why are you wasting time with other games".

I finally quit over a year and half ago but it was the best thing I ever did. WoW was just consuming my gaming life and raiding consistently was taking its toll on me.

I am no longer going to buy another subscription based game or a MMO which I consider to be a grind. I don't want to play for the next set of loot, I want to play for fun.

I love MMOs though, the social aspect is the thing that drew me the most (aside from paying monthly). The only current MMO that has my attention is GW2, and unlike WoW and TOR it will be Buy to Play. No smoothly sub so I can really take my time and play other games around it.

 

[Kanatatsu]

I've heard a lot of stories about MMOs ruining lives.

I've yet to hear one about an MMO truly enriching someone's life.

I broke my neck a few years back and was immobile for 3 months, the summer after my freshman year of college. Playing WoW was the only way I could socialize. Most of my "real" friends were out living their lives, and the ones that wanted to visit I didn't want to see me like that. With WoW, I could spend a day hanging out with friends and the fact that my body was broken didn't matter for a while. It kept me sane.

<3 MMOs

Uh, your case is really not what I was referring to. Highly atypical, obviously.

 

[Necrofudge]

I've had similar problems with MMOs, mostly coming from the pay-to-play ones. I too have felt obligated to play simply because I felt that if I didn't, somehow my money and time already invested in the game were going to be wasted.

Free-to-play MMOs didn't have this problem as much, and they actually ended up pushing me away from the genre entirely. Without the monthly subscription convincing me to get my money's worth, the peer pressure to level up my character with whatever guild I was in became more and more annoying.

The problem with the free-to-play MMOs is that they sort of had a lasting effect on me. When I froze my subscription in a pay-to-play, that was it. I didn't have to go back. The fact that FTP didn't have a subscription meant that I could always return to that virtual world, and it haunted me.