trying to quit WoW

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I am a bit older than you, 33. Trust me, even if they are just superficial friends (which is what most of aspy friends tend to be anyway) you need to get used to dealing with people your own age. There has to be some college club you are interested in - political stuff, anything at all? When you join a club based on an interest, it gives you something easy to talk about, AND it means the other people are also into it - an easy way to make acquaintances, if not friends.

At worst think of it as practice, or an extra class.

Personally I self-medicated in college by becoming a pothead - it numbed me and slowed me down to the speed of the rest of the world and helped me deal (I am ADHD as well). I made 4 very close friends in college that I am still close with, 10 years later. I do NOT suggest going that route, but you really should try to make the effort to meet some people at college.

What can it hurt to go to a party once in a while? You might actually have fun if you are able to relax - nobody says you have to get drunk or hit the middle of the dance floor... (if nothing else, the drunk people will be less likely to notice any social awkwardness on your part)

Quitting WoW is easy. Trust me, I would know - I've done it like 5 times.

Anyway, if you want to quit, then you only need to really _want_ to quit. I suggest learning about the psychology tricks that the game uses. The only purpose of WoW is to keep you playing as long as possible. It does this by acting as a virtual skinner box or operant conditioning chamber. Notice it doles out rewards on a random schedule - which has proven to be the most effective in generating conditioned behavior.

It's a game where you can meet all of your maslow's hierarchy needs. You can be a part of a group, you can be recognized for helping others, you can fit in and even have close personal relationships with members of the opposite/preferred sex. You can meet all of your needs - in game. As soon as you log out, everything you've worked so hard towards vanishes. Wouldn't it be better if you could put forth the effort to establish that sort of belonging and helpfulness in real life?

I took a break for about 6 months and came back to the game. When I did, all the mechanisms of the game were so obvious to me as I saw through them. I was in a guild raiding BT, but in order to improve my character outside of raid drops I needed to collect something like 300 badges of justice. A Karazhan run that takes 3-4 hours gets me 30. Do I really want to spend 30-40 hours doing something I don't want to do just so I can remain competitive? Do I really enjoy raiding? (My answer is no: I much prefer the freetime.)

I also arena-ed, but it wasn't fun. I only did it for the sake of the rewards. During the actual games I mostly heard my teammates whine about the broken systems allowing point sellers while resigning themselves to defeat. I would have preferred to try my best and to work out what we could have done better, even if we were massively outgeared.

I'm rambled too much. But meh.. The TLDR version of this post is to read WoW detox.

"superficial friends" sounds like an oxymoron... How can you consider someone a friend without trusting them? Sure, I maintain professional relationships with some other students since I have to work with them, but I wouldn't consider them "friends"...

I also commute about 30 miles to college, so I don't usually have time to just stick around at college since I have to both do stuff at my church as well as take care of my LFA brother...



And what if I can't relax? Parties in the traditional sense (both for people my age and older) are assaulting on my brain. The only thing that helps me is if there's some video gaming available... then I can just tune out everything else and focus on the game... part of the reason I didn't go to my own prom (aside from cost) was because my idea to have a halo tourney there was nixed real fast...


You always seem to advocate getting along with people your own age. Sounds like a good plan, if people your own age actually accept you. In my case, throughout my entire life, I was always more accepted by older people (and, more recently, much younger people as well), than I was by my own age... I was constantly bullied in middle school and in high school, although in high school the bullying was more veiled (such as pretending to accept me to take advantage of my aspieness), and I didn't even realize I was still being bullied in high school until after I left it...

So yeah, unless you give me a real good reason to try and engage contact with people my own age again, I would prefer to not be bullied again...