The WoW Treadmill

Community General Discussion
1

So why is this game addictive?

I mean, you grind rep and you grind other things i.e. dailies, you get good gear scores and then a new patch or DLC effectively takes away all your work and makes it easy to get the next level of gear by questing a new area.

Some people have been on this treadmill of repetition for years - but why is that? Do you stop to play other games or is it WoW and nothing else?

Seems that Blizzard has worked out the secret to getting people to play the treadmill, but, as a fairly new player, Iā€™m starting to wonder if itā€™s worth it?

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Right now itā€™s mostly nostalgia, chasing the dragon if you will. Itā€™s the game I played during my teen years in Wotlk with my friends in someoneā€™s basement while the rest of the world enjoyed their summer outside, weā€™d spend all night gaming, quick shower in the pool, some food and back on the computer.

Now they all stopped playing for years, I have family and kids, but still enjoy the odd casual hour in WoW for the old an new content.

I couldnā€™t give poop for rep grinds, high M+ or sweaty arena PvP, I just want to wind down after a day, relax and have some fun.

I mostly play the main story and then hop on some alts, I enjoy levelling and reading quests texts and play zones I havenā€™t played in a long time. Currently my lvl 45 undead rogue is in Howling Fjords and my lvl 19 Blood Elf Hunter in Ghostlands.

Itā€™s great to ā€œre-exploreā€ old stuff I enjoyed in my late teens / early 20s. Nostalgia is, for me, the main motivatior to play the game.

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4

My individual gear progress in a given season or expansion is less important than the fact I simply enjoy playing the game at a moment to moment level. Rewards are simply a byproduct of that.

Pushing Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire is intrinsically fun to me.

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5

Personally, I play mainly wow, as I practicly live in the game, and has done so for many many years. I donā€™t only play wow, will go play other things whenever.

Iā€™ve since long quit the treadmill of farming gear that gets replaced with more gear and once uve got essentially best in slot it gets replaced with new gear. I instead just get good enough gear with as little effort as possible and then just focus on what I enjoy doing in the game, which is collecting and going on spontaneous adventures in the world, keep finding things I never knew existed and so on. I donā€™t rush through anything, and if I canā€™t obtain something either due to fomo. skill or something just being too boring to do, i am not bothered by it. Never treat your hobbies like work, it always ruins the fun.

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Iā€™ve practically fallen off the wagon since MoP tbh. The last meaningful thing I have done was raid CN back in SL.

Nothing feels meaningful anymore. I never liked M+ but I did on the otherhand enjoy Challenge mode in MOP. I donā€™t have time to raid anymore, but event then it was starting to become a chore with how trash packs being harder than bosses in some cases.

I never cared for tmogs, so only did that stuff passively. I used to like collecting mounts, but when you have that many, it becomes meaningless. Achievement farming I used to really enjoy, but I am at a stage now where I either need a group or I farm pvp achieves, which I have no intention of farming 100 wins in TB etc etc. Pet battle achieves I donā€™t care for neither.

I donā€™t play alts. Its my main warrior or nothing pretty much. Now I havenā€™t logged in for almost 2.months (barring picking up the xmas gifts) and I can honestly say that I donā€™t miss itā€¦ At all. And thats a shame because I have played non stop since TBC.

The direction Blizzard are heading with the FOMO the store and I have no doubt player housing will be heavily leaning on the store ad well. I just have no desire for any of that.

The forums are my entertainment atm but my sub runs out any day now. So my posting privileges go along with it.

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im on 6 month sub on wow with 3 months left but i am seriously considering going back to ffxiv to be honest

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8

Why is it addictive?

Itā€™s an immersive, huge well thought out world with history and characters, so provides the addiction of escapism.

It provides the Skinner Box effect of variable rewards which is a known addictive mechanism. You donā€™t run a dungeon to get a guaranteed Sword of Power. You run it because the Sword of Power MIGHT drop. Itā€™s a Fruit Machine or a Roulette Wheel, giving you the constant feeling that you ALMOST hit the jackpot, that you were CLOSE so have one more go.

Itā€™s addictive because the balance between randomness and progression is tuned so that you always get a feeling of some kind of progression. You may not get the Sword of Power but you can grind currencies, tokens etc and still feel you are progressing. Every day you play you can improve something.

Itā€™s addictive because the content (exploring zones, doing the campaign, etc) soon gives way to the mechanisms like competition, FOMO, dailies which are all specifically designed against one metric: retaining your subscription. Itā€™s designed to keep you subscribed.

Itā€™s addictive because for many people real life has no narrative structure or sense of progress or doing something meaningful . And because youā€™re constantly presented with an infinite and almost complete jigsaw puzzle that makes you itch to try and complete it, but all the time you get close they add more pieces to the puzzle.

The actual playing is also addictive. When you kill a player, down a boss, or even just press a cool button like a chaos bolt youā€™re getting a dopamine hit with nice animations, colours and sounds.

And lastly, the more time you put in, the more expansions you do, the more invested you are. Your character has defeated the Lich King and the Legion, sorted out the afterlife, beaten Deathwing, explored Pandaria etc etcā€¦ā€¦How on earth do you walk away from that? The more /played you have the harder it is to put it all down.

Thatā€™s why.

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9

To me, WoW isnā€™t addictive in the sense that I need to play it all the time.
Itā€™s more like an old friend that I go back to for fun, and I still enjoy the game.
It was there when I was 15, and itā€™s still here when Iā€™m 33.
Over the years, our relationship has changed from playing 16 hours a day to just a few hours a week.
But I still enjoy seasonal content, and I participate every season not because of FOMO, but because I enjoy the early grind.
Getting KSM, KSH, doing PvP, raiding itā€™s all extremely fun during the first weeks of a season. Itā€™s just sad that Blizzard canā€™t maintain that excitement for longer.

3 Likes
10

A great set of replies and observations, thank you. I like the idea of just playing, without feeling a need to get to a certain point or achieve a certain thing, because potentially, the achievement of a goal or whatever, isnā€™t a celebration, itā€™s replaced by the feeling of a need to do the next thing, and so on.

For me, Iā€™m just going to play when I have time, try to have fun, and log off when that time is up. What I achieve will be a bi-product and bonus.

Happy days.

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I feel like a hatchling now, all Iā€™ve done is defeat Zarkareth, obtain his legendary, defeated the Incarnate, and Queen Ansurek, on top of that, pursued my honorable career, and Iā€™ve just achieved that. :face_in_clouds:

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I still play wow cause i enjoy playing with the friends iā€™ve made in the game. If i didnt have them i would probably stop playing. I dont play for the gear or the grind at all. I play other games aswell, my wow time is not alot.

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If youā€™re asking the question you already know the answer.

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14

Have you considered that it just might be fun to play?

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Thats entirely subjective. What isnā€™t however, is that WoW has changed. For the better or worse, thats for you to decide.

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I like in Retail mostly Roleplay. The Gearing Spiral is mostly just making the game unfun for me as every season it is just the same.
But I really love Classic on Era as on Celebras I have sporadic Roleplay with a Stardew Valley like Community and a finite level curve so I have a light on the end of the tunnel where I can just continue with new char once the current one would be max geared.

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Gearing is incredibly dull, but thereā€™s so much to collect and unlock. Iā€™m a fan of the catalyst system for unlocking the transmog piece you want - I just wish the charges cap was higher or they were accrued more quickly.

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Yes, but why play a game if it isnā€™t fun? The question was ā€œwhy is the game addictiveā€, the answer is because the people addicted to it are having fun.

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You are forgetting FOMO. And that is what this game has become. Its not fun to FOMO. You do it, because you feel you HAVE to. If someone has something you do not, you feel you missed out. People hated the hell out of Blunderstorm ,but they did it anyway, because they felt they HAD to get the rewards. I was one of them. It wonā€™t happen again though. At least not in my case.

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FOMO works only if you are having fun in the game. Why are you collecting things if you are not having fun in the game in the first place?

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So that nobody can say ā€˜I have something you donā€™t haveā€™ thats the whole premise of FOMO. Its there so you stay subbed to some garbage content that you are not even interested in, but you ā€˜haveā€™ to do it, because people think they have to compare each other, when the reality is nobody gives a poop about the other person.

1 Like