I am struggling so much with my husband. I am at the end of my rope because of the aggression, lying, and excessive playing my husband does. I feel like an idiot because he told me the game ruined prior relationships, but he had stopped playing, so I had no idea how bad it could be. His family even warned me, but I loved him and thought he was on a healthy path. He wasn't. A few months after we started dating, he started playing again. His habits kept getting worse and worse. He argued even about eating dinner together or greeting me when I got home from work. He would tell me to wait a minute before he greeted me then 45 mins to an hour would pass. He never wants to do anything but the game now. Every time I ask him to go out and do something he acts like I'm intruding into his life. I'm a third wheel to his computer. Every time I talk about the gaming, he gets defensive and says it's not the problem. I recorded his hours for a bit so that I could show him how much he plays. 3-6 hours on weeknights and over 16 hours on the weekend, and that was only during the time I was awake. He didn't care. He only said I shouldn't depend on him so much and that I shouldn't be needy. Meanwhile, I have a million hobbies and travel and work a lot. I spend at least one or two days of the week out of the house with friends- he's always invited, but rarely goes. I have no ground to stand on in this relationship. I fight for every minute we spend together. I fight to eat dinner together. I fight to work out together. He constantly lies about the gaming and says he will play less then it only lasts a few days because he gets back into it. He's started to be emotionally abusive when I get more and more upset about it. No he tells me to "shut the fuck up!" And "fuck off!" When I try to communicate my needs. I started going to marriege counceling alone since he agreed to go and never did, and I've been trying to work on myself if not for this relationship, for myself. I don't know if my marriege can be made right because he promised he would cut down to two days a week last night then this morning changed it to 2-3 days a week. Not even 12 hours have passed, and he already changed the terms. I know it's gotten super unhealthy. I even had to call into work one day because I was starting a new job and I wanted us to go to bed at the same time since I had been sleeping alone while he plays in the night. He said ok, then was super anxious to get back to the game so much so that I ended up giving up and telling him to go ahead and play. I was so sad about it that I was up the whole night and when I woke up I had a migraine. It hits me in waves of grief. I cry a lot like he died because the person I knew is gone. I keep trying to come to terms with reality, but it's hard. I don't want him to be unhappy, but I don't make him happy. Only the game does. I know no one would blame me if I left, but I still find it hard. I know I can't do this much longer, and I hope he wakes up. I asked him several times to release me from this marriage if he doesn't want to take an active part in it, but he always says he wants to change. I've read a million articles, watched a million videos, and I've even found other people who got divorced because of gaming who agreed to talk with him(he said no), but none of helped. It seems like everything I do or ask for makes it worse. I don't think he really wants to quit. He wants me to be here but live my life alone, and that's what I have been doing for two years. Have any of you experienced this? I don't know what will help. I dont know if it's hopeless, or if I'm an idiot for wasting my time. I have two husbands, the one I fell in love with, and the one that only cares about about World of Warcraft. I started to talk with family and friends about it. I was quiet about it for a long time because I was so ashamed to say that my husband would rather game than spend time with me. It made me feel so lame, but I'm embracing how I feel now. I feel terrible. I feel alone. I feel hopeless about the marriage. I feel stupid for getting into it in the first place. I feel very vunerable to even hope that he's telling the truth this time. He said a few minutes ago that I was trying to control his life... That's what I get when I ask for us to spend time together without a screen. 😞

I'm not trying to judge anyone. I want to hear your insight on this.

Look. I know what I'm about to write has been written a thousand times and I also understand that the advice I'll be given will be to delete my account and enjoy life, but I wanted to write it anyway, maybe for me.

So my story begins in 2004 on the release date, my friends all were geared up to play and I couldn't afford it. I was a young father to unplanned baby and I was miserable. I come home from work to find a copy on my doorstep. He was always a cool guy.

It hooked me right away, and like many, I mean hooked. We would ignore EVERYTHING for this game. I would think about it all day at work, we would come home and play until we couldn't, get up early to play before work and then play all weekend. How our girlfriends put up with this I'll never know. We loved it so much, all our friends did, but me and this one friend... man we were inseparable. If we didn't play we'd talk about it. We'd have meetings discussing raid strats and loot drops. Our goals. It was insane, if I put this much planning into anything I could have build a rocket to Mars with the energy we had.

I played so much, I didn't care, honestly. I felt the happiest I'd ever in my life. If I look back now, I can't say I feel anything but love for that time. I don't know why, something clicked with me and these "fake" memories are some of the best I've had in my life.

Something snapped right after TBC. I remember I grinded out all this gear, then TBC came and reset my progress so I did all again, then something in me just said "seriously... why? It's just going to reset again?" So I sold my account (for a LOT!) and quit. My guild of awesome friends had fallen apart so who cares. My best friend left overseas, so that was that.

I wish that was the end and now I'm writing you from my awesome life, but sadly, I started a new account within a few months I think when my friends came back. Then we ran Kara and it was like old times. We moved on to WOTLK together and again, awesome times were had, but I always felt "the grind" still. I played as much as ever.

All my friends and guild hated Cata and so really it was just me for that one. I quit again late cata when I found out about Pandas, that felt "too much".

It worked out well I guess, around this time my now very patient wife had had enough of waiting for me to finish on games, and I promised to make all gaming much less of a priority. I apologized for being a shit partner and promised I would do better.

From here, I did come back for Mists, and I did enjoy it and we even enjoyed a brief guild resurgence at the start of WoD, but here's where things got bad for me.

With WoD you could make a LOT of money with alt armies, like silly amounts. So I did. I made millions, I'd always been WoW wealthy, not because I was a goblin, but because I didn't buy anything and played a lot. But now I was making gold hand over fist and all I had to do was log in and send off 50 characters worth of missions every 4 hours.

So I did this for as long as WoD was out. My guild died again, so it was just me, logging in every four hours to send missions. I did this every day, birthdays, dinners, but I was very careful to do so in a way that didn't get in the way of real life, but in a way that was *very* stressful for me.

I did this same behavior right through Legion, same thing, except now I had artifact power and legos. I was playing 12+ characters every day and the anxiety of sending missions and doing the daily tasks while being a dad and working a busy job. This was hell for me. I remember telling a friend I couldn't do it anymore, I was seriously borderline suicidal.

Around this time I was also playing another game alongside WoW (often at the same time because I couldn't not do my emissaries!!!). This game shut down and I lost everything and I though. Holy shit all those hours, just down the drain for nothing, yet for some reason, to me, this would never happen with WoW. This game would last forever. My achievements here meant something!

BFA came and mission tables were garbage, but I still ground out a ton of stuff. Miserable the WHOLE time. No fun, great.. here are Visions and I have to do like 10 of them a week. Fuck my life. I leveled more alts because that was the only thing that didn't reset. I collected collectables, because they didn't reset. Hah! I beat the system, until Shadowlands and all my characters were reset to 50. More hours reset and lost. All that time.

For nothing.

I suppose here is where I talk about my non WoW life. During these what? 15 years, I've managed to do well at work, I was initially promoted a LOT, but then I've stagnated. I've been in the same role for years, which is a good one. Lots of PTO and flex for playing, but I've not advanced my career at all. The problem was I was probably one of the most successful of my peers. Some are doing better now, but that's life.

I've got my marriage back on track. Sort of? I romance my wife. I'm available when she needs me, too much I think. I drop what I'm playing no matter what and do whatever she wants. I think I'm a good father, I go to all my kids events, I play with them, read to them, I'm hands on at home, I clean a lot, I take care of my health. I go to the gym and watch what I eat, but behind ALL of it, almost EVERY SINGLE THING I DO in my whole life is a checklist to get out of the way so I can get back to WoW. I would seriously do up to 14 hours of "checklists" of things I had to do, just so I could then relax and play WoW for an hour.

I have done nothing else. Nothing creative. I haven't learn anything new, played any other games. I have a backlog of games, TV and movies that would take me years to clear. Yet still I rush to play WoW at every free moment. Lunch breaks I play, if I was sick and I mean really sick I would be so happy because I could have the day to "rest" which means I could play WoW. I would vomit in a bucket from the flu and laugh because I'm getting the free time I wanted. This has gotten out of control.

Christmas eve I was grinding Torghast before I went to bed so I didn't miss out on Ash, and I was doing the callings because I knew I couldn't do them for several days. I don't raid, but I'm an altoholic, so I have to do this on SIX!!!!! max level characters, it was taking forever and I was totally miserable.

So. This brings me to today. My daughter is playing a game, not WoW, she hates it, but I was asking her to do something and she did it as quick as possible then ran back to the computer and I'm angry. Why did you do such a shitty job, just do it properly then go back to the computer, like I do. But I see.

For the first time I see and it's a mirror of my own life in front of me. She's learned this from me.

On paper I have everything together. My family seem happy, my wife loves me and talks about how lucky she is to have an attentive husband. My kids all love me, they secretly call me "the favorite" because I listen to them and show them things, yet under the surface I'm riddled with mental health issues from living "two lives" and trying to juggle what has essentially been two full time jobs and a family for nearly 15 years.

So as of now. I've stopped playing for a week and it's a breath of fresh air. I'm scared. I don't know who I am without WoW. I don't miss it, but the FOMO is there. I haven't done my callings, I haven't been doing my missions, I'm not making gold, but I'm WoW wealthy, I could play for free for the rest of my life at current token prices.

I'm also lucky. My wife called me out, my kids don't feel neglected, I was lucky she gave me the warning shot I needed, but I'm also lost. I don't find anything fun at all. What do I do while she watches real housewives? I try to play single player games and they just seem empty and soulless.

In saying that, many of my decade plus of bad habits have worn off on the family. My wife is on her phone a LOT, I ask her if she wants to do something, play a board game, but she doesn't. My kids love their tablets and phones so much I have to pry them away from them to go to the park, I set boundaries limiting their time, but they hate me for it. Is this irreparable?

It's my lunchbreak and I just go for a walk. I'm bored, but also joyless. I have no goals or purpose and I can't seem to be bothered to do anything. It's like "my thing" has been taken away from me.

Has anyone else felt like this? Like you'll never experience joy again? Obviously this is addiction talking, but I'm wondering if my brain is broken or even capable of making dopamine again. It wasn't like it was something I've enjoyed for a long time, just something I did because I felt I had to. I was compelled. Addicted.

Signing off and hopefully forever. Wish me luck.

I used to love my boyfriend very much. Then Wow classic happened and he has been glued to the screen and his seat ever since. Covid made it worse. He plays everyday. He talks about the Burning Crusade often.

We once left a getaway trip early because he had to prepare for a raid. His ex gf warned me about this, that she never dates gamers again because she refuses to be second to a virtual reality.

But I thought I could handle it. It’s a better hobby than most.. I thought. And I knew most guys were gamers. I had dated others before who played games, but not this intensely and it never came between us.

He even takes off time from work to play wow when there are major events in the game.

Now I look at his back turned towards me with contempt and disgust. I don’t want to be with him in any capacity. Barely want to see him, let alone touch him. It’s an incredibly lonely and isolating feeling to live in the same four walls with someone who spends most of the day with his back towards you talking to other people on the internet.

The pandemic doesn’t help. I became even more depressed. Couples have fun and spend time together. We weren’t really doing much to try to connect.

So I left, it’s been 7 weeks and I don’t miss him at all. We haven’t broken up but it’s definitely on the table. This is a long term relationship, where I thought I was going to marry this man.. I can’t tell you how devastating it is to mourn the loss of a future together when it was once something I wanted so deeply.

It would be much more manageable if this wasn’t an everyday thing. I would never ask anyone to quit a hobby they enjoyed so much. But there is something called moderation and balance.

I used to look at him and think I am a lucky woman. I used to give him bjs, make yummy food like sandwiches, get him water, back rubs, try to make him feel special and like a king... I really loved him. I treated him well. Now I don’t do any of these things and I wish I left him much sooner.

Please don’t let a game come in between you and your partner. Wouldn’t it hurt a lot more to lose a person than to miss out on some gear or a few hours a week of game time?

This game is dumb. You do all this stuff to get better gear.. then there's a time gate. You run dungeons, raids... You get one piece of gear if you are lucky... Your ilvl goes up 2 points... Horray.... What a waste of time.

By the end of the patch... Your ilvl is instantly nullified and the cycle begins again.

I'm done with it. I'd rather play a single player game or something stimulating that doesn't feel like a job or rat maze.

Think about what else you could do rather than chase the dragon over and over with this game. You only get a certain amount of time on the earth in IRL.... Use it for new experiences... Not these endless rehashes of the same gameplay with tiny atoms of story here and there.

Peace

You're probably addicted to WoW because your brain fucking loves those dopamine hits of getting that thing you've been chasing. Oooo 65 hours of repetitive grinding, making zero memories for that lovely new armored tiger mount that literally no one other than yourself gives a fuck about, you know 5.2 million other people have that mount, don't you? You know you'll get 20 minutes of enjoyment from riding it around on Orgrimar rooftop before chasing the next thing right? 23 max level alts, cool man please tell me how many memories and life skills you built in those 392 days played time to make them. In that time I've took thousands of baby steps, each one giving me those same dopamine hits and drive to build myself an amazing career and real relationships, I've created more memories and life lessons in 6 months than I did in 6 years of playing World of Warcraft.

It's so much easier to have that virtual goal of getting this next piece of gear or seeing your XP bar rise with clear progress than to step into the real world, full of uncertainty and struggles, I know it can seem crippling. We have unlimited resources now to learn skills outside of college, youtube is gods gift. I learnt all of my skills from home and I'm a successful tattoo artist now. I use Habitica now which is a task management program where when you complete real-life tasks you get gold and armor to upgrade your avatar, it's a little way of keeping that fantasy-loving part of me satisfied.

One day you'll be out for a walk filled with tears at how beautiful the real world can be, present in nature full of pride for yourself for coming so far, right now I bet you walk and probably feel like an orc, troll or goblin in real life, it's likely you smell like one and even your mum has regrets. If you ever judge a meth addict just know you're just as addicted to something that's just as life consuming and pointless. That last dungeon you completed or piece of PVP gear you bought, not one single person gives a fuck. You're probably stubborn and talk down on others thinking you're better than them when deep down you know you're a mess, stop living in denial, I promise in 2 weeks time you'll have forgotten about your sweet female night elfs rack, trust me they are much better in person.

Peace and love

It's 2:30 a.m. as I write this and just sold every item I owned, gave away all my gold, and deleted my characters I spent years on. It was hard. But I knew the best time was now.

I noticed WoW was affecting my family life in ways my future self would look back at with shame. I shouldn't be rushing to put my kid to sleep so I can get on and play, I should be reading her books and living in the moment with her. I just feel so ashamed because I realized I should've been creating memories irl and not on a stupid game that was engineered to be time-wasting and addictive. I fell for it. Hard.

I just wish my little girl, her mom, and my family can forgive me as I move forward in my new life.

My husband never played wow when we were dating or engaged but he started playing when classic came back around and the amount of time spent playing is getting outrageous. We have had numerous conversations about his time spent playing and how it affects our relationship and our family (we have a 4 year old and 1.5 year old) and he promises to lessen his time playing but nothing changes. I am at a loss on what to do to convey to him how much it is affecting things. I literally told him the other day that if he played like this when we met/were dating we would never have gotten married because I wouldn’t have put up with it and it’s like that didn’t even mean anything since nothing changed. Any advice?

Mine is a sad story. For me, its a horror story. Be warned, you'll want to move on unless you've got the stomach to hear some gut-wrenching sad shit.

First, I created this account to share this story, that I dont want friends and family to know. Only one person knows it. But I think people that play wow or are trying to quit wow should hear it. Part of my quit is to evangelize my experience, at least once and try to reach people. So let me tell you my story.

Almost nothing could get me to quit. I played since vanilla, wow was a part of me. I was a streamer, mythic 20s, our team had been together for years. Even the moments where I knew I was addicted, I would bury that deep inside. The moments I knew wow was hurting my family, I would explain it away and bury it. But when my sister called and told me that my father was dying of cancer, I did what a good son would do and I took sabbatical from work and flew out to California to "help" take care of him in his final months. I brought my laptop with me, but told myself I shouldn't play wow. My father and I were close a long time ago. And it hurt to see him this way, as I setup my laptop next to his deathbed. My father was dying the most painful way, throat cancer that had metasticized into his spine. Constant pain, choking on the blood draining in his throat. Caretaking was hard work, so I decided playing wow would be a good stress relief. It didn't take long before I started drifting away. I would break away to clean the blood out of his trach and feed him sometimes, and help reposition him to ease his back pain. Administer his meds sometimes. All between things I was doing in wow. My mother would do most of the work those 3 months. And on the night, that I will never forget, it was late maybe 3am, I was running a mythic sitting next to my father. As he died. While the life left his body I was running a mythic right next to him. When my mother came down to check on him and gave the most horrible blood curdling scream, thats when I realized what I had become. My father died right in front of me, while I was playing wow, completely oblivious. What was he going through in his final moments? Was he calling out to me? Was there something I could have done? What kind of fucking monster son had I become? I'm crying just typing this. He was always going to die but maybe there was nothing I could have done. But I'll never know. I will never ever know. I didnt say all the things I wanted to say. He died alone without me and I was right beside him. When I gave my eulogy a week later, it was the best speech I'd ever given to a crowd of people that loved him and cared about him. They praised me all day. I was such a wonderful son to have written such a long, poetic and heartfelt speech. But they'll never know the guilt I had standing up there, that the speech I gave was inspired by the guilt I will hold forever. I was not the son they cheered me to be that day. Each pat on the back and glowing smile they gave, stung me. That is how I quit wow. I knew sharing this story was going to be hard. Only my mother and I know this happened. It took a long time to forgive myself, but I was addicted and if it took that moment to break the addiction then so be it. I have never played again.

So why did I share this? I'm sure there some asshole this going to post and claim I am karama whoring. Check my account, this is a throwaway. I'm sharing this because my story is the extreme side of the same coin. Wow is addiction and its hurting you and your loved ones. Realizing it, really realizing it, is a hard moment to reach. I'd quit a few short times, but never fully understood what I'd walked away from. Realizing it meant I realized that my life had become nothing. Ghost walking through time. I was a drug addict, addicted to a drug that wouldn't kill me, so it would keep me in a constant addicted state that never deteriorated me enough to force me to stop. Even though I was more than a potato in a computer chair to the people that loved me and once knew me, I offered them nothing in return for their love. This addiction its not the kind that drains my bank account and drives me to crime. But the same in every other aspect. Ruined my body, distracted my mind, it stole the most valuable thing from my life and my family's lives. Our time together.

We are social beings, we need to interact and live life, if not for ourselves, for those that care about us and need us. Its unhealthy to those around you. Your life is meaningless if you don't live it. I was a high rated druid healer, mythic 20s, had a regular team of serious players. We were elitist assholes, but top raider.io ratings, streamers with an audience. But did any of my friends actually "know me"? Would they come to my funeral if I died? Would they even know I died? We knew almost nothing about each other, and when I quit the game I'm sure they missed my healing, but they certainly didn't miss that person they never knew. And if I died would people say "here lies a fucking amazing druid healer?". No, it would only be close family there. I lost all my 'real life' friends years ago. Who knows what my family would say, but they would be thinking here lies someone we once knew, but left us a long time ago. Because he was always playing that fucking game. Will I go down in history, would the history books talk about my gaming? No, because theres nothing special about this game. Theres thousands of people like me, I'm not special. Blizzard will turn off the servers one day and there will be no trace of anyones accomplishments, because why would it be any other way? This game was just a vehicle for making money, and the only thing going down in history will be how much money Blizzard was able to get people to pay and how rich they became. There will be no fanfare for the players. They were worth dollars to someone else, and thats it.

"What is this fucking addiction?" I asked myself. The game is so innocent seeming. Its social, so you see other people playing it. Most of those people seem normal. So it creates this world where you feel like what you're doing is just harmless fun. Its designed that way for a reason. The harmless carrot on a stick, that when they run out of carrots, or peoples stomaches are full, they release a major patch or an expo and it starts over again. All the power you have gets reset and you are faced with grinding out the same content in different colors to get back only to where you were. Leveling up, doing your professions, running higher content, getting stuck on a boss, grinding to get past it, finally reaching most of your goals only to have it start all over again. Its a maze, that leads to another maze that leads to another. All put in place to keep you paying your monthly fee. Just like a drug, some people can try it and not get addicted. But most will become addicted, many to the point where they're hurting themselves and others through absence. And when we get bored or a expo is aging out, we will level new classes or find other ways to become satisfied within the addiction. You might be aware that its the matrix, you're a battery and your body and life is becoming worthless. But its innocent seeming and so you lie to yourself about your addiction. Just as a drug addict will do.

Today, my life is so much more rewarding. I am spending time with my wife, my family and hers, we are doing outdoor activities together and loving it. My body seems to have recovered, I'm in better shape, and not needing blood pressure meds anymore. I've studied and gained some certifications in my field, got a pay raise, my career is on a great track. I have some new hobbies, they're not as addicting but they're rewardig when things are done. Its a great feeling and others can appreciate my hobby, because my achievements aren't invisible locked into some game.

Anyways, I just wanted to share my experience and my thoughts because I know what you're going through and you're going to need all the motivation you can get. Keep it up, and go live your life to the fullest.

Edit: formatting

I just stumbled upon this thread cause I did go back and play classic wow and boy do I regret it.. here's my post from someone's thread I need to share...

DO NOT PLAY.... please take my advice. I bought a classic sub. last week. I boosted my account May 18th as soon as I could. I got gold, I leveled to 60. After the first day playing it became a chore. I don't like generalizing but I felt EVERYONE was scheduling there play time to maximize efficiency for TBC release. Here are the reasons I already quit:

1. 12hrs a day for 2 days - addictive/compulsion- was starting to min/max myself

2. TOXIC COMMUNITY- people were /spitting on me for boosting, so many elitist gate keepers'

3. GDKP raids (new players/ low geared are carried through raids and bid on items) There were no pug raids, only GDKP spams

4. mage boosting meta- all you see in trade chat are boost spams to power level people through dungeon.. (example 1-60 takes 200hrs legit... people mage boosted 1-60 in 2 days)

5. Min/max... was everywhere

6. Add ons make the game ridiculously easy. ( yea I could not use them, but when you have to google every quest vs have an arrow show you were to go through an addon.. tough decision)

7. *** bothered me the most*** GOLD SELLING MARKET... the economy is ruined in classic. You can spend 1 hour farming 50g-100g as an average player or buy 1000g for 30-35$. Now back to point 3 about GDKP. People are buying gold, bidding high on items in raids to gear faster. No legitimate player who spent hours grinding gold would bid nearly as much as these players on raid items.

8. Lastly I am struggling.... I played for a few days and have to start the quitting part ALL over. I feel like shit but powering through it.

Wish someone told me this last week. I never had a reddit account so I Just made one to respond to this. All I could think about were the GREAT moments I had when I was younger. Tanking a hard boss, people messaging me to play, getting that high arena rating. WHAT I FORGOT was the amount time I wasted to get there. Right now I'm struggling to put this mistake behind me. I'm lucky to have such a supportive wife.

Again don't play- its not the same game you remember

TLDR: I quit World of Warcraft yesterday... cold turkey. I didn't just cancel my sub, I deleted all of my 12 characters and permanently removed by battle.net account.

WoW was consuming my life and impacting my relationships. I started playing in Wotlk and Cata, but luckily due to my inability to afford a good computer/internet I stopped playing until BFA. When the pandemic hit, I (like all of us) was incredibly bored and wanted a pass time. I stumbled upon WoW once again, but this time I had a superior computer and was able to play the game. And boy did I ever play.

I played so much that I slowly found myself leaving social/work events early so I could rush home and make sure I did my daily chores on all of my 6 max-level/geared characters. I would even block off Tuesday afternoons as a "personal day" due to the weekly reset. It was consuming my life.

The turning point for me was realizing that I was becoming a severe altoholic. I would fantasize on making a new race/class spec. Ie: 'Oh I have a Troll Hunter, but why not a Vulpera? Undead Hunters look cool as well.' I started paying ample amounts of real money to perform multiple race changes on the same toon. The thing is I was never satisfied with the race/class combo. Also, I found myself never happy or satisfied with the gaming experience. I would log-in and do my chores, and when they were done on my other toons, I would sometimes just randomly create another character and mindlessly, without fun, level or play that toon.

Yesterday, after sitting in Orgrimmar for 2 hours staring blankly at my screen, I said enough is enough. I researched the best way to quit and found that permanently deleting the character was the best thing to do to prevent relapse. After 3 hours of trying to overcome my brain "rationalizing" to not delete the game, I deleted my main. BUT HE HAD MAIL AND I COULDN'T! (nice one Blizzard.) I logged-in, deleted the mail, logged-out. And had another 30min fight with myself on whether I should type "DELETE" into the text box.

Eventually I deleted my main, and then deleted the rest. I had momentum, so I deleted my battle.net account.

Today is the first day in several years that I did not log-on first thing in the morning to check my auction house mail, to perform my chores, or to do my adventure table. I woke up and actually had time to chat with my wife, make breakfast, and watch some funny Youtube videos. It's only been a day but it already feels liberating.

Anyways... story over. I hope anyone who is reading this that may be contemplating quitting to just quit. I farmed mounts for years. I farmed transmogs for years. They are sunk costs. Eventually WoW will not exist. The earlier you quit the easier it is.

Love you all.

Games changed, company's awful, needed to quit. Just sold my pc, addiction gone. I've lost friends, I ruined my entire school life, didn't goto college, or university, had entry level jobs since turning 16, lost countless girlfriends, ruined my marriage...

But I've found the girl of my dreams now, I'm not letting a bad game ran by bad people ruin it. Peace out blizzard you rapist shit cunts 🖕

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Officially done. I have had moments of temporary clarity before when deleting but around 5-6 times I have gone back and reversed the deletion process due to my addiction and sunken cost fallacy and I remember always feeling dissapointed in myself after doing so but no chance of it happening this time. I once even wrote a post on here only to go back and reverse the process later on. If you truly want to quit and delete this game, there's no point in uninstalling or deleting characters as this can easily be reversed, you have to go the full hog. Cold turkey. https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/2659. Your future self will thank you. You only get 1 life.

I was introduced to the game by an online friend in 2005 and oh boy I wish he didn't. I was never attracted to games like this and thought they were ''nerdy'' but I was 16 with a good pc and thought why not. Like everyone at that time, playing a game like this with such a vast and unexplored open world and first walking in to Stormwind with that music rolling was awe inspiring and a feeling we'll never get back which obviously plays a part in the addiction. Chasing the dragon.

Ruined relationships, education opportunites, made me overweight, miserable and all this through my 20's and early 30's. I can't get that time back, but I won't let WoW consume any more of my time going forward.

I pathetically booked 2 weeks off work for the DF launch with lots of junk food and soda which is even worse when you consider WoW (and my self-discipline of course) made me about 35 kilos overweight in the years playing. Had little hype (more addicted hope) that this expansion was going to be great after the crapfest and staleness of the last few but as soon as I hit 70 BAM world quests. Boring. Tedious. Repetitive. For what? Oh a gated renown system again how cool I can't until they add more levels to it in future patches. Dragonriding novelty soon wore off and they only gave you this at the start to appease you after The Maw farce. They will do stuff like that again no doubt, I mean, in the first week they already tried to change bi-weekly quests to daily rofl until they backed down after the communitys reaction which in the end makes people believe ''Oh great they listened GG Blizz''. They only choose to listen and react to what they want and is only feasible to them (a business). Remember covenants? They had it rammed to them at the start and before SL but never did a thing until everybody and their dog started quitting. They are always working and thinking of ways to keep dangling a carrot in front of you and that will never change. Obviously we don't know for certain, but I guarantee they will have legit business meetings in regards to metrics and conjuring ways to make people feel the need (not wanting) to log on. I mean at the top of my head look at what they've done to professions in DF. There will always be something like this to make you play more.

Levelled to 70 in DF as mentioned even though I did this in the retail version of the game in 2008 LOL. Some progress eh guys? When you start thinking like this and have that rationale, it does make it easier to quit once you realise what they're doing and what has been said on this forum many times. LOL @ when I levelled lots of alts to level 120 only for Blizz to knock them back down to level 50 along with heirloom upgrades but of course it didn't bother me at the time.

Just look at M+ now. How many times have we seen Karazhan? 3 times? Only 4 new M+ dungeons in season 1 with 4 old ones you've ran many times in the past for ''content''. Season 4 raids in SL that was erm, from season 1, 2 and 3. This is the direction the game is going. Rehashed material but players won't care because Blizzard just pressed a button which ups the ilvl of the gear that drops from there. Running M+ so you can run more M+ just so you can run even more M+ for gear that will soon be obsolete as you start the process again in the next season. Great stuff. Like a rat on a wheel and your life is passing you by and for what? Purple pixels that GENUINELY nobody else cares about in a 2D 20 year old game engine that Blizzard could take away from you in a second if they wanted to. You don't own it. You never have or will. Look how easy they can manipulate these pixels. Feldrake? $3000 on ebay? Here fam have one for free for trying to make our game look a lot more popular than it actually is during the fourth quarter so we can impress our shareholders.

I got my Feldrake Twitch drop. Big woop. In you go with the collection of mounts I will never use and forget about in the next few seconds after mounting it once right after I received it.

As mentioned at the start, the Bnet account deleation process went through. Complete. In the past they have sent an email in between after a few days with capital letters and colours in the email like ''WARNING!! This process will delete everything and make all game progress unrecoverable. If you want to stop this, follow this link now!'' And yep, it has got me before. They know what they're doing to you psychologically and when you look at it in a rationale sense they truly are disgusting. Funnily enough I didn't get this email for this process that went through. Maybe they realised how unethical and immoral it was and pulled the plug from when they were under investgations from 1 of the many lawsuits filed against them when trying to clean inhouse. Who knows.

The first 2 days when I had my clarity moment I kept getting an error message on the website when at the final stage to start the deletion process (everything else was working fine) and it wouldn't suprise me if this was another ploy of theirs to stop you from doing it. Eventually I managed to start the process. First couple of days I was strong as I just generally didn't enjoy playing the game anyway but knew I was addicted and needed to quit regardless. Around day 4 boom. Sunken cost fallacy started creeping in. All those years. Unobtainable mounts, items, 36k acheev points, 20m gold made from my AH character on AH mount on a second account, 40+ max level alts before the expansion, letting raid team down (these people don't care about you btw, they really don't). I was bargaining to myself. ''What if I study for an hour then play the game, I will make a log of it'' but I've done this before and it never happens for someone like me or someone addicted to this game. When I read a story about a dude going to prison for life, I even thought along the lines of ''Well he's in jail his whole life now so if I play WoW all my life then it ain't so bad is it?''. I seen that as a win. Neglecting my real life and not progressing. How pathetic is that bargaining?

I was SO close to stopping the process because of sunken cost fallacy and it being close to the raid release (yeh I couldn't have picked a worse time to quit xD) but I held strong. If you're going through the same, PLEASE fight the urge and remember why you started the deletion process of your account in the first place. Addiction is so scary and real. I didn't want these thoughts in my brain because before it I had the rationale sense and clarity to quit, but they just happen. What is weird though is that it felt like a switch. Once these feelings passed and I resisted, they didn't happen again. It was like that side of my brain gave up.

Apologies for the long post and thanks for reading if you got this far. This forum was/is a god send. I for sure could have written a lot more justfying as to why this game is a piece of trash for what it can do to you if they get you. It still feels a bit weird that everything is actually gone but it's true what people have said, you definately feel a sense of relief and I truly believe this is one of the best things I could have ever done for myself, no doubt. Peace.

Hi all, so I just hit my 1-year mark on having Blizzard delete my WoW account and I figured I'd share my experience on what it's been like. This might be a long post, so I do apologize in advance. Hopefully this can help someone that may be struggling or just looking to see someone else's perspective of what it's like to have a long-time account deleted. I played for 13 years, a lot of achievements/titles, time, and memories from WoW I'll always cherish. Here is my original post from right before I did it. Need Help Quitting.. : nowow (reddit.com)

So I made a post 3 months after me quitting the game, I was still feeling anxious about having everything being gone, permanently, but I knew it was for the best, and I haven't posted an update since, so I figured it was about time.

At about month 6, I found myself continuing to watch twitch streams of my favorite wow streamers and youtube content creators, I could NOT let the game go from my life. I missed the game so much. So yes, I caved in, I created a new blizzard account, and purchased WoW again. I leveled over the course of about a little over a month and hit max level. But the game was never the same. Everything I had was fresh, all my mounts were gone, no achievements/titles, all my characters, transmogs, nothing. The only thing I had was that fresh lvl 60 I just leveled.

It didn't take me long to remember why I quit the game, it started to feel like a chore already to log in and do dailies, grind out mounts and mythic+ for gear, reputation, all of it. It already started to feel like a job I didn't want to do and that wasn't fun, which is why I wanted to quit in the first place. My addiction still held onto me. But after doing all this, I finally did it, I remembered why I did all this from the beginning. Then one night I knew this was it, I logged into the game, went to one of my favorite places, said goodbye to the guild, and logged out for the last time, and I haven't touched it since. It's been 6 months now since I've touched the game.

I feel great, I didn't quit gaming, I just play a variety of games now, and enjoying it. Sometimes I still get nostalgic memories from the game if I happen to come across a youtube video of wow, or if I listen to songs that I discovered through WoW vids back in the day. But overall, I just let the nostalgia hit, remember the good times, but yet keep moving forward. If anyone out there is struggling with their addiction, and are afraid about deleting their account as an option, I actually highly recommend doing it. I was scared to death at first too, then once I finally did it, I knew it was my only chance of letting go of the game. So thank you to everyone that helped convince me of that option a year ago, it is much appreciated!

Sorry this was so long, but hopefully it can help someone, even if it's just a little bit, in overcoming WoW addiction, because I know it's hard, and can be a very real issue. If you have any questions or anything, definitely leave a comment or dm me, I wish you all the best of luck in finding happiness again in a life without WoW!

After journeying with my guild all the way from the southern jungles of the Eastern Kingdoms to the desolate doorstep of Blackrock Mountain, it was finally time to craft the legendary hammer: Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. We marched through the imposing Dark Iron gates into the giant spherical cavern carved into the mountain. We continued up and around the circular ramp of stone along the cavern’s edge that separated us from the molten lake below. The faces of three colossal Dwarf statues carved into the walls were illuminated by the lake’s eerie crimson glow.

Each colossal Dwarf held a Dark Iron chain that served to suspend a hollowed-out chunk of earth high above the center of the lake: the heart of the mountain. Using one massive chain as a bridge we climbed across together, careful not to slip and fall to a sure death. Once inside the heart I took from my inventory the Sulfuron Hammer and the Eye of Ragnaros and called upon the Elements to fuse them together and create the legendary hammer, Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. I had done it—after countless hours of work, I was finally the wielder of Sulfuras! Thunderous cheers and applause erupted both in-game and on Discord from my guild—the online family I had grown to love and without whom I could have never crafted my mighty new hammer. I was elated to say the least.

After a night of enjoying my new treasure, I said goodnight to my guildies and signed off World of Warcraft. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock: 3:15am. Nothing new. I took off my headphones and began to feel the quiet of the night creeping in. The blue glow of my computer screen illuminated the dishes on my desk and further still the dishes on my floor. I closed my computer, moved the pile of week-old unfolded laundry from my bed to my chair, and laid in bed for another hour or so, mind restless before I finally submitted to sleep.

I awoke at 12:30pm and struggled to find the will. The will to get out of bed. The will to do the dishes, to fold and put away the laundry, to make a decent meal. To get my shit together and finally do something with my life. Overwhelmed and already exhausted, I closed my eyes and just wished everything was easier. I hated this feeling. And I hated that I hated that I felt this way. Eventually, my stomach was persistent enough to get me out of bed to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cup of coffee, but that was about it. Another aimless day. I took my meager breakfast to my desk, opened my computer, and proceeded to add another dish to the pile.

Why couldn’t I seem to work as hard or for as long in real life as I did in the games I played? It was by no means easy to spend so many hours grinding gold and materials to craft Sulfuras, and yet I did so willingly. So why, then, couldn’t I seem to apply the same discipline to my real life? I mean, I would try and—while, sure, I might get to the gym or apply to jobs for a week or two, without fail that new habit would fade away. And that would only happen after slowly growing the motivation for months or being struck by a rare bolt of inspiration.

Gaming has been a struggle for me for a long time. I love video games. I love the friends I’ve made and maintained through them, the greater communities I’ve become a part of, and the memories that I’ll always cherish. But video games haven’t always helped me love myself. I remember as a kid I never felt guilt or shame when I would play games. It was always something I wanted to do—it was always fun! But as time pressed onward and more often than not people asked me, “so what do you want to do with your life?” I would retreat into what was comfortable, unsure of what direction to walk in, and afraid of what would happen if I failed. At least you could always restart a game if you fail. Life didn’t seem so generous. And the more I began to hide my self in the games I played, the more I hid my playing of them from family and friends.

I was ashamed to admit how much I would play. Hours and hours on end, always with another tab open to hide what I was doing if someone saw my screen. I would bury myself in noise: I’d have music or youtube videos on in the background while playing WoW. Sometimes both. As soon as a period of downtime started I would tab out to Reddit and start scrolling. Anything to keep the stimulation of distraction rolling and the existential dread out.

It wasn’t until months after crafting Sulfuras that I knew I had to quit once again. Thankfully burnout, while not ideal, finally got to me. I’m not sure how many times I’d quit WoW only to reluctantly return eventually. To my fortune, however, I did something different this time: I gave away everything I owned in-game to my guild. It took hours of organizing inventory and bouncing in-game mail between characters but eventually I said goodbye to my guildies, canceled my subscription, and uninstalled without a single gold piece between all my toons.

In all honesty, I probably would have come back to WoW without anything to fill the void for long enough. But fortune took a turn in my favor this time. While all of this was happening, an old friend of mine reached out to me and recommended that I read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I already knew that, “good habits are good for you,” but reading this book changed everything for me. It was, appropriately, clear in its message and 100% actionable. It didn’t spend 90% of its page length to convince me of what I already knew, all the while dangling a nugget of wisdom at the end. It was, quite simply, a how-to create healthy, robust habits that last.

Throughout the book, Clear invokes the wisdom of the Stoics—ancient philosophers that sought to resolve the tension between life and death by embracing the inevitability of the latter and cultivating habitual virtue. Marcus Aurelius, who Clear often references, was a brilliant Stoic and the Emperor of Rome during the Golden Age of its Empire. In his Meditations, Aurelius says, “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Reading Atomic Habits helped me focus on what I could change. It reminded me of my Liberal Arts background and inspired me to explore other Stoics such as Epictetus and Seneca. The Stoics helped me understand why habits are so powerful while Clear showed me how to use them.

Since quitting WoW I have finally instated habits that are changing my life. I’m eating better and more consistently than ever. I do yoga and go biking every day and I love it. I'm reading books I never had the time to get to and spending more time with my friends and family. I even started reading Plato with my younger brother and taking a business class. I'm rediscovering long-forgotten interests like bouldering and piano and I feel like my presence adds to the world instead of detracting from it. My biggest issue habitually right now is that I have so much new energy that I have trouble falling asleep! I’m now exploring meditation as a sedative. And, perhaps most importantly, gaming is now a part of my life instead of a substitute for it. I play for fun and to socialize. I play when I want, for as long as I want. I no longer feel compelled to play games for the sake of numbing or distraction. It's just like gaming as a kid again! With admittedly more min-maxing.

One great thing I’ve learned is that one good habit maintained inspires 1000 others, just as a single seed grows a tree with 1000 branches. It took me almost a decade of internal strife to finally carve a path that works for me in all my idiosyncrasies, but now I am! Even amidst all of the external geopolitical crises that we face as species, I have more hope than ever.

I know you can do it too. You, reading this, who have spent so many nights like me awake when everyone else is asleep. You, who can’t say how many times you’ve asked, “what am I doing with my life?” You, who feel exhausted and overwhelmed such that even simple chores become a burden. You, who feel paralyzed by your own choices. You, who want to help yourself but don’t know how. You, who know that, ultimately, no one can save you but yourself. And you, who just don’t know if you have it in you.

Well, I’m going to tell you right now, without a doubt, that you absolutely can change yourself. You can find the determination, the motivation, and the will to take your life into your own hands, even on the days you feel like absolute shit. You can find purpose and meaning in your life. You can have a dream and you can achieve it. It is not easy. But I’ve seen for myself that it is possible. And if I can do it, you can too. Yes you can, yes you can, YES YOU CAN! If you believe that you can and if you TRUST IN THE PROCESS, the rest will follow. I believe in you, just as I believe in myself. We are all human and we all have the same potential for personal greatness.

If you have been looking for a reason to finally take your life into your own hands then I suggest you look in a mirror. You are the reason. Yes, you are good enough and yes, you are worth it. The permission to believe in yourself is the greatest gift you can give yourself right now. My hope is that you take courage and begin to delve inward—to Dare Greatly as Brené Brown suggests in her book of the same name. You will be vulnerable and you may not like what you see, but if you stick with it you will be amazed at what you can do, where you can go, and you will be all the better for it.

I will leave you with two quotes. The first is from Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, and one of the greatest people to ever live. He, too, struggled magnificently in his life. As a boy he had severe, crippling asthma that all but completely debilitated him. But despite the world seeing him as effectively disabled, he persevered against all odds and eventually overcame his asthma entirely through strenuous, habitual growth. Brown begins Daring Greatly with this quote by him and I think you’ll see why:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

The second quote, and the one I look to daily, is from Steven Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People—one of the greatest and most effective self-development books that practically begin the genre back when it was first published back in 1989. It is still regarded as one of the most influential books on self-development ever written. Covey says, “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character reap a destiny.”

Your quest begins here and now: jump headlong into the arena and take hold of your destiny. I hope you’ll accept it. Great things are coming to you.

A couple of weeks I did what I thought would be impossible, I deleted my Battle.net account. I had been playing WoW since vanilla when I was 12 years old. But I won't lie, the first few years were awesome and I have no regrets from playing at that time, mostly because all of my friends and a big chunk of people from my school also played, so the community was huge, and we had a lot of fun playing together and talking about the game in school (at the expense of good grades, of course).

But some time after the release of Cataclysm people started dropping out of the game. That together with me changing school, there weren't many people left playing. This was when I should have quit too, but I didn't, I kept playing by my lonesome, and it became a full blown, reality-escaping excuse not to care about myself.

From then, up until now, I have struggled back and forth with depression, unhealthy living and with general carelessness, mostly because I would rather run Mythic+ all day instead of focusing on the things that actually matter to me in life. I had for example a brief period of enlightenment when I spent half a year studying web development, which landed me a fantastic dev job in the capital of Sweden. At this time I wasn't playing WoW, and life was actually good for once. But as people often say "once a WoW player, always a WoW player", and once again the cycle began: I started playing, got addicted, quit my job and moved back to my home city. This was during Legion.

I got lucky, when I moved back I got introduced to a couple of friend circles and actually started having a social life, something I thought was impossible since most of my childhood friends had moved away; that is where I am now. Disclaimer, I do not have an addictive personality. I've done a lot of addictive stuff: nicotine, alcohol, some harder substances, playing other addictive games, and none of them has stuck with me. But WoW, god damn WoW, it has had such a hard grip on me from the start, and it has no business being a part of my life anymore. At 15, yeah it had a wonderful effect on me. But now, no.

I've been lurking on this subreddit for a long time now, which has briefly offered me some incentive to quit, but removing the client is not good enough, reinstalling is too easy. But then I found this link: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/2659 from a post here, which you can use to permanently delete your Battle.net account. And what a godsend this freaking feature is; it finally offered me a way out.

I received the email today that my account is deleted, forever; the wave of relief that washed over me was divine. Over 25000 achievement points, over 1000 days played, The Insane title, a trove of rare and now unobtainable mounts, all gone. At first I thought that I wanted to keep all of that as a memento of what I achieved in the game. But upon realising that there is absolutely no one except for me that would look upon it with any value or admiration, I lost all feeling of affection that I previously had towards those accomplishments. And in the end, I still have the memories of what I did, which is good enough.

It is crazy that I have now gained at least eight hours of more time everyday to do things that will actually improve my life, I just need to figure out what, which will probably take a little while, but at least now I have the possibility.

If you, like me are struggling with quitting completely, please consider deleting your account. It is really damn hard, but it is worth it.

Thanks for reading.

I relate to many of the stories said over here. Reading them helped me take this step, as all you may know this is not an easy thing to do. All those achievements, mounts, gone.

I did enjoy the game but it's got to a point that I realize it sucked the life out of me.

It's the only way.

Each and every time I wanted to quit WoW I failed, I would just uninstall the game and re-install it later on.

Got the confirmation e-mail. Now there's no turning back and I'm actually a bit relieved.

Just wanted to put it out there.

Thank you.

Hope you guys have a great day. :)

So a month and a half ago wow ruined my irl life so i made the choice to quit, ive not turned my computer on since

I installed discord to get in touch with my old arena partner and explain to him why i left, during this i also caught up with my guild and well it made me so happy

In the last 1.5 months ive made new friends, spent many nights seeing people i havent in years and been messaging girls and even got myself a new place to live, whereas after catching up with my guild theyve only managed to down 5 bosses since i left and gained 10ilvls.. and i just thought.. theyve played 3-8 hours a day for the last month for that? Thats awful look how much ive managed to gain in the real world which theyve missed out on

Hi everyone,

Just started browsing this forum and reading everyone's stories and thought I would share mine.

I started playing in high school with my friends, and after resisting at first, logged in to see what all the fuss was about.

Immediately, I was hooked. From then, every single lunchtime was spent with my friends at school raving about wow and what we had done the previous night.

Needless to say, my grades slipped, but I managed to continue to get by through graduation. I got into my chosen Uni degree, stopped playing wow and made new friends.

It's been basically off an on between then. Usually years apart. I did my most intense gaming with wow in the earlier days during BC, Wrath, and MoP.

I moved to LA from Australia to learn to grow up and be a man, got a job as a personal trainer at a gym in Hollywood, and proceeded to spend most of my downtime watching streamers like Swifty, playing Madden, and doing PVP.

I wasted a lot of time I could have been using to create amazing memories in a new land, and I did, but I could have done it a bit better!

Anyway, I've quit so many times and come back, this is just one of my breaking points, but my roommate was running out to get groceries and I needed some too, but he was leaving like right now.

I was doing PVP and not doing well. Got mad, and basically, it was an awkward car ride.

I realized then and there that I have to quit again.

The rest of my 12 months in the US was great, and I moved to Canada after as my Visa was running out.

Fortunately, I didn't get back into wow at the time because I needed all the money I could get having just moved to another new country.

After 6 months or so, I started playing again at night after work.

Luckily though I met my now wife shortly after (been together almost 7 years now) and so I immediately quit and instead spent all my time with her which was WAY better lol.

Aaaaanyway, I have continued to watch the odd streamer now and then over the years, getting drawn in and out.

I re-subbed again in the last few months, leveled a lock from 1 to about 53 and then unsubbed because i observed that basically every waking moment I was thinking about wow and when I get play it.

She'd take a nap? OK gotta play.

She out with friends? OK gotta play.

Time is limited right? She will be back/awake soon so I have to cram as much in as I can!

Basically, as much as I like to think I can play "casually", I can't. And I 100% accept that now.

As mentioned, I have unsubbed and uninstalled the game.

My wife is pregnant now and I don't want any part of me when I am playing with my kid to even think about wanting to play. I just want to be 100% present with my son/daughter and my family and help grow them into strong, positive individuals.

At the end of the day, of course I find the game incredibly fun still doing PVP (basically all I do), it just doesn't work for me.

The concept of having to progress a character is all consuming.

This never happens when I play a game like Madden or NBA2k where I can just log on and play a quick 30 min and not care about what team I use.

Anyway -I've definitely given up potentially years of my life to this game

I feel like I can truly see the evil in it, and as much as I have wonderful memories, at the end of the day I know my life would have been better if Wow never existed.

It hijacks your emotions from day one.

It is a dopamine drug. An addiction to the crazy highs and lows of Azeroth.

Thanks for reading everyone if you made it this far - I tried to keep it easily readable.

This post was so I could process how this game affects me. I appreciate you reading.

what a STUPID ASS way to waste your fucking life away..

When I was 10 years old my cousin (whom I looked up to) introduced me to World of Warcraft. TBC. I loved it. Seriously it was too much stimulation for my tiny brain to handle. Even at school I would think about it. My relationships suffered. I became even more socially awkward and didn’t know how to talk to people. When someone said “world” my mine would immediately complete it with “of Warcraft.” I think you get it. I had a problem.

My grades were suffering, my relationship with my family was awful and finally I decided I had to quit, after 6 years and wrist pain as a 16 year old. I deleted all my items, all my characters, changed my password, changed my account email to a randomly generated one. I then slept for 2 days. I had been so sleep deprived from this game.

And now, after all these years I tried shadowlands. And by try I mean play for the last 2 weeks, 4-6 hours a day. Waiting for my girlfriend to go to work so I can play in peace. But now, one thing is different.

This game isn’t AMAZING AND EPIC like it used to be as a kid with a developing brain. It’s grindy, frustrating and a waste of time.

You don’t want to be on your death bed, wishing you did something else with your life rather than play WoW. It’s not too late. Do it for yourself. Do it for your family. Do it for this earth. Time needs to be invested to make good men and women, time that WoW takes away. I believe in you stranger!

WotLK Classic. Just gave all my gold and items away, deleted my 79 priest main, uninstalled and cancelled sub. I know you've been there maybe multiple times like me. It's on my mind and I'm feeling sad and grieving somewhat. So came here.

Wow addiction is an overwhelming need for characters to level up, gain new skills and become more powerful. It's addictive because in our minds these accomplishments mirror what we could be doing in real life and if you play often enough the line between game and life gets blurry. You cannot play this game casually and get far. Everything is a time sink. For what? There is no real achievments aside from the annoying achievement announcements. Blizzard must have utilized Mind Control for that one.

I deleted the character I've played for years and there is no consequence apart from in my head. You only get one life guys (as far as we know for sure). Don't get to the end and ask yourself what you achieved. 10 level 80's? Woop de doo. I know we used WoW to get away from how stressful, tedious and boring real life can be. But that time sink is for nothing with nothing to show for it except a momentary satisfaction at obtaining the epic loot you wanted. Real life has real challenges that is why we came here to develp ourselves and learn how to be better humans.

My last advice is to myself. Get self disciplined. Get up in the morning with a plan and make myself follow it even if I start small like have a shower, take my supplements, eat healthy, go outside and look at the horizon, work out and say I love you to someone important. That's a lot more progression than shifting pixels on a computer screen.

This afternoon I put in a request to delete my Blizzard account for good. I tried it a few weeks ago and chickened out of it.

When I play this game (Classic Wow) I get sucked into a false sense of security. My character represents me and my efforts of progression, but it's all fake and it doesn't benefit me. So all of those lost hours are put into the grind, and it saddens me that I'd rather sit on my computer most of the day than study, read, spend time with my mum or do something nice. It sucks me in and makes me obsessed over what lies ahead for my character. I don't like that I'm losing control of myself over a game. When I think rationally I realise I'm being brainwashed into committing many hours of my day into a game. It is consumerism at its worst.

Twitch has also had a hand in keeping me immersed in the world. Streamers' personalities and enthusiasm makes my gaming sessions fun while I listen to them and play. The reality is that I'm a lurker who feels like I'm part of a streamers' community, and it makes me feel less alone while I sit at the computer.

Sometimes I see it all differently. I say that the future will be dominated with platforms like Twitch for entertainment, and that MMO gaming is how friendships are made across the globe. I say to myself that playing wow a few hours a day (often more) is fun and makes me happy. But then something toxic or negative happens in the game and I experience a mix of emotions and think, what am I doing? Wasting away my 20s playing wow. Why should something as 'harmless' as a game make me feel so upset when I think about quitting? It's because I'm attached and addicted to it, and that disgusts me. It's clearly not healthy for me then, and that's where I stand today.

It's going to be hard to ignore that TBC is coming out this year. That was my favourite expansion and I know there will be strong urges to return for that. I can feel the pull to reverse my account deletion already. I've played it before, so I should leave it as a distant nostalgic memory. Even reliving classic wasn't that good, and I have tried to quit many times last year. Surely that is enough of a sign for me to stop for good. If I was at peace with playing wow then I wouldn't experience these conflicting emotions.

I'm sorry for the negativity here, but I wanted to capture the rational thoughts and feelings I have about this game. If I can stay strong and abstain, my account will disappear and the thought of starting over will put me off. I definitely wear rose-coloured glasses with wow, and my day-to-day life (during the pandemic, at least) is spent trying to get my irl studies out of the way so that I can log in. I don't want to live my life as a consumer who's brain is attracted to the dopamine fix that is wow - everything in real life suffers as a result.

I won’t bother giving a history of my relationship with World of Warcraft as it’s irrelevant, just note that I’ve played on and off for a very long time and my journey began when I was a little kid. Since shadowlands has released I have been deeply embroiled in pushing my raider.io score and arena rating; Just this week I was on a family Christmas vacation. What am I doing when I could be spending time with my wife and young daughter? Sitting in discord discussing strats and watching streamers on my phone. To top it off, last night something terrifying happened, I woke up in the middle of a panic attack that was possibly triggered by my anxiety of not choosing the “BiS” covenant, it was intense and chest is still tight and sore almost a day later. I need to quit now, clearly WoW was filling some kind of void in my life and COVID isolation only exacerbated this. I’m equal parts feeling guilty and terrified. I never thought of myself as an addict, just a guy with a hobby right? Wrong. I talked it over with my wife and she suggested limiting my play time, as I was putting in 16-20 hours a week. However I realized that WoW isn’t designed to be taken in moderation. Blizzard/Activision probably hire people with letters after their name to consult and advise on how to make their games as addictive as possible, in order to keep subs up and quarterly reports looking nice. God I feel like Charlie in the Pepe Silvia meme. Honestly though, I know what I need to do and why but it’s hard taking the leap.

Hello everyone,

I have been playing WoW since high school with on and off and I decided this morning to delete my battle net account.
I feel so much lighter and I urge anyone struggling with gaming addictions to do the same.

Blizzard knows exactly how to retain its player base and the only reliable and durable solution is to delete progression altogether.

I will be 29 years old in 20 days and my career greatly suffered from gaming addictions, alltough I'm thankful to have found stability in all others aspects of my life.

I'm glad to have found this reddit community.
Wishing you all a wonderful day :)

After spending three years learning to become a BMW service technician, my son became addicted to World of Warcraft, playing it all night long, and losing his friends because of their exclusion from his life. He became chronically tardy at work, and inattentive. He was fired from his job in Baton Rouge, but managed to get another position with a BMW dealership in Tucson. Same behavioral problem, and fired again. I forced him into addiction treatment at the Hazleden Institute, which he strenuously resisted. He managed to get another job in an auto shop in Phoenix, and lasted 14 months before he was fired again. He never tried to find work again, and became a total social isolate, communicating only with his WoW "friends". He certainly had underlying problems of mental illness and substance abuse. But I'm convinced that WoW was a significant contributor to his death. He died of a self inflicted shotgun wound to the head on October 14, 2013, after he had run out of his savings and was facing eviction from his $350 per month apartment.