Today the WOW blogosphere loses one of its favorite voices: Daniel Howell of BigRedKitty.net is going to spend more time with the family. I wish him well- family and the offline world is more important than a video game.
Balancing WOW and real life is not easy. I suppose I shouldn’t call it real life, because what you do in game and on the internet can effect real people. Case in point: BRK’s blog. Balancing offline life and online life is not easy.
Here are some steps I’ve taken in my own life to ensure that my wife doesn’t delete my account in my sleep :)
- I ask for her help in deciding how large of a slice of my time is appropriate to spend on WOW.
- I set expectations and stick to them. If I say I raid 3 nights a week and never past 11, I am off by 11 and don’t join anything I’m not scheduled for.
- I make a point of periodically declining a raid invite and surprising the missus with a rented movie or something (as much as I can while maintaining 80% attendance).
- I try to spend all non scheduled warcraft time while she’s asleep or occupied.
I’m lucky I’ve been able to keep it together so far- hopefully I’ll be able to keep that up. It’s weird how this game which requires so similar of an investment of time as a job can keep our attention…
It sounds like you have a good arrangement with the wife – it isn’t easy to be a hard core gamer when the significant other is completely disinterested. Best of luck maintaining a healthy ratio of WoW-to-everything else.
Thanks, I think I have it down. The way I see it, as long as I have half an hour before work on weekdays, I’ll have enough time to continue feeding my ridiculous hobby of making ridiculous amounts of fake money. The raiding hunter bit is the only part that’s at risk :)
WoW has taken over my life… well Video Games in general at least! ;-)