Those who have read my blog know that I was addicted to WoW and that my wife had left me in October 2008 due to my inability to get my act together and realize what was important. After I quit for good last September she decided to come home and we started repairing our relationship.

Today, July 22, our daughter was born. A beautiful girl we named Samantha Irene.

If I had not quit WoW, she would have never been born. Instead of celebrating her birth I would be running around completing some stupid daily quest or running a heroic instance for a badge or something. It makes you think.

Would you trade the birth of your child for WoW? Would you let WoW stop that from ever happening? Something to think about.

So I've been reading WoWDetox from time to time and have been thinking of some of the reasons people give for not quitting. It seems as though the social aspect comes up a lot and that made me think a bit. People don't want to quit because they would miss their friends. But, who are these people you think of as your in-game friends?

Friends are usually people you trust, people who will stand by you through hard times, people you have grown to know well. Friends care for you, accept you for who you are and don't judge you. Friends share interests with you and will respect your ideas and beliefs even if they disagree with you. Friends are more than just acquaintances after all.

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Higher Purpose posted this in the comments of my 25 Signs of Addiction post. I liked it so much I figured I would post it for others to see. I kinda wish I'd done this with my toon, but at the time I was focusing on getting stuff donated and deleted so I didn't think much about the video camera.

If you play WoW a lot, maybe more than you really think you should, and if you have some of the symptoms below, there's a pretty good chance that you are addicted to the game and need to take steps to get things under control before the problems start, get worse, or spiral out of control.

1. You play WoW as much as you can whenever you can get in front of your computer.
2. You avoid your real life responsibilities because you are constantly playing WoW.
3. You think about WoW constantly when you aren't playing.
4. You can't wait to get home so you can play again, even if you are out doing something you usually enjoy.
5. You get agitated on Tuesdays when Blizzard does maintenance and check the server status list regularly to see if your realm is up.
6. You avoid doing things with friends, family, your kids, your spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend so that you can play WoW.
7. You have called in sick at work multiple times so you can play WoW.
8. You get furious if your Internet connection drops because your play time is interrupted and you refuse to do anything else until it is fixed.
9. You get irritable or angry with others if they interrupt you while you are playing.
10. You try to get your spouse or significant other to play WoW and hope that they will like the game and stop getting angry with you.

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This is the story of my addiction to World of Warcraft, an online role playing game I played between July 2005 and September 2009. During those 4 years the game defined my existence and controlled my life. It caused me endless problems and yet offered little in return except an escape from real life that ended up as an addiction. This is the story of how it began, how it took over, and how it ended.

A Hunter's Tale

Prologue: Somewhat Damaged

Part 1: I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally

Part 2: The Day the World Went Away

Part 3: Just Like You Imagined

Part 4: The Mark Has Been Made

Part 5: Even Deeper

Part 6: Into the Void

Part 7: The Fragile

Part 8: The Way Out is Through

Epilogue: And All That Could Have Been

Addendum: How To Quit the World of Warcraft

Thanks to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails for the song titles from his album 'The Fragile' that became the titles of each section (except the last one of course).

So, in the end, I had to delete everything. It was the only way. You don't really take a break from WoW, the game just goes on pause until you return a few months later. You have to quit or else you'll be back over and over, maybe taking a few months off here and there, but always back in the end.

At the time I deleted my toons I was probably around 210 days /played in-game across all my characters. Let's think about that. 210 days, 24 hours a day equals 5,040 hours or around 7 months of time (24 hours a day) spent playing WoW. Between July 2005 and September 2009 I didn't play for a total of about 12 months (my "breaks" from WoW), so I actually played over 3 years of real life time.

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Between February and June of 2009 I spent most of my time just trying to get through each day. I tried to improve my relationship with my family and friends, worked on doing better at my job, and tried (without much luck) to make things right with my wife. Things were getting better but the loneliness and boredom kept gnawing at me and in June I decided to get back in-game to see what was new.

I quickly got myself back up to speed, and ended up in a raiding guild named Lost Requiem. Their goal was to see the end game and beat it. Heroic mode, hard mode, whatever. I got a spot in their main raiding group, and my Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights became a routine of Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum, and Naxxramas. Soon enough came Ulduar and my raiding nights were spent doing full clears within a few weeks. On my off nights I would work on dailies, reputation, and achievements. I had switched to a Survival built for raiding, so my Spirit Beast pet ended up on the back burner in favor of a wolf, but since I was dual spec I could still switch back to Beast Mastery for solo work.

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By January 2009 things in my life were pretty low. My wife had left me and my life basically consisted of work, sleep, and WoW. When I wasn't playing WoW I was thinking about it. I would read various websites on my lunch break, print out patch notes to read during my commute, mess around with spreadsheets to maximize my DPS, and all sorts of other stuff. It was all I would think about, probably because it was all I had left.

When I hit level 80 I once again arrived at a place that was becoming all too familiar. Do dailies, get gold, get better gear, grind reputation, finish questlines, and on and on and on. It was the same thing I'd done at level 70, the same thing I'd done at level 60, and each time was less fun that the time before. I don't know why I kept playing, I suppose because I didn't know what else to do. The game had become such a huge part of my life that I didn't really know how to live without it I guess.

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And so, as November 2008 rolled around, I was totally alone. My wife had moved out after putting up with my WoW addiction for 3 years and was living in a condo she owned in the city. I was out in the suburbs, me, the dog, and WoW. I had mixed feelings because I was so depressed that she was gone and I really hated being alone, but at the same time I kept thinking that now I didn't have anyone around to interfere with me playing WoW. It sounds terrible to say that, but the reality is that it was true at the time.

I think all WoW addicts have that thought somewhere in the back of their minds. The one that says "if only I was alone, I would have the freedom to play WoW as much as I wanted to". Let me tell you from experience, that isn't really the sort of freedom you want, and playing WoW all the time really isn't as much fun as you might think it would be. In order to deal with the depression I played the game all the time. My life was basically, get up, work, come home, eat, play WoW, sleep, repeat.

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I should say something about why I transferred servers. The guild I had been with on Skywall had gone through a lot of changes and there was a good amount of drama over loot, class roles, etc. Being in a 40 man guild wasn't easy sometimes and to be honest I was getting pretty burned out. With the change to 25 man content in the expansion it looked like the guild was going to fall apart anyway, so I figured it was as good a time as any to move on.

The Burning Crusade expansion was released on January 16, 2007. On the morning of the 16th I dropped my wife off at the bus stop and then headed to WalMart to pick up a copy of the game. I had arranged to take a couple of days off to play, and I was home and installing in no time. I quickly made my way to Outland to start my journey to level 70.

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