Ars Moriendi wrote:So me and my girlfriend stopped playing sometime back in January, a few weeks ago, she get's an email telling her that she's had her account hacked, so I take my authenticator off my account, and put it on hers. Turns out she was hacked MONTHS ago and it was too late for them to restore anything other than her G's.
An hour after taking my authenticator off my account, I got an email saying mine was hacked. Didn't see it until the next day, checked out the battle.net and saw that I had a months game time on my account, went on and made a ticket, got all my stuff back and haven't gone on since.
My girlfriend's started playing regularly again now, and it's literally like the worst thing ever. Having to watch her play, while i'm trying not too play, it's real horrible to go through. Is there any help groups I can go too? I need some help to get me through this tough period of my life.
1 Admit you have a problem. This may be hard, but accepting that Warcraft has taken over your life is the initial step into overcoming your addiction.
2 Consider the following: Imagine the day that you first bought the game. If you knew everything you do now, would you still have bought it? Now the follow up question: Imagine yourself in two years, still playing WoW, looking back on today when you are making the decision to quit or keep playing. How do you feel about your decision to continue?
3 Find out what has caused your addiction. What makes World of Warcraft so appealing to you? Is it the fact that it has different continents that you will never go to? Is it the fighting? Is it your "unique" role as a tank or a mage? Is it the happiness of 'pwning noobs'? Whatever it is, try to minimize this happiness in WoW, and make it a pleasure that you could also get in every day life.
Take a martial arts class. Kick some real butt.Many gamers are very interested in the martial arts, but never study it.
Read. Novels have just as much excitement and adventure as WoW, but you can expand other skills -- such as critical thinking and vocabulary -- in addition to those that interactive storytelling and game play will build. Try to equip gear that increases your reading ability (Such as monocles), this will increase your WPS (Words Per Second).
Play a less time consuming video game with all of the rewarding feelings of WoW.
Do live action RP (LARP), especially if you were from a RP server.
4 Burn yourself out by finding the ways to cheat at World of Warcraft. Find a private server to play on, with ultra fast leveling/gold. Cheating through the entire game in an hour will get you burnt out very, very quickly.
See the Matrix. Set up your own private server just for you, give yourself administrator rights and use them to explore the game. This will remove the fascination of the virtual world by showing you how it is all just a simulation with artificial rules. Returning to official WoW after having played around with admin rights might make you feel like running in a hamster wheel. You might feel like a fool spending hours of time for something that can also be done by simply typing "levelup 1". (Maybe having read and understood these lines already made the whole private server thing obsolete for you.
5 Make it a joint effort. Believe it or not, many people play World of Warcraft simply because their friends play it, and they find it enjoyable to spend time with them in WoW. If this is the case, then convince your friends to stop playing (with these steps, if needed), or even better, find another game to play. Otherwise, explain to your friends and family what you're doing, and ask them to help you stay on track. When you can't trust yourself to keep away from WoW, you have to trust someone else to stop you.
6 Set up parental controls for yourself. Make it so your play-time is limited, and use a complicated password that you are sure to quickly forget. Or, ask a friend or family member to set the parental controls with a password you don't know.
7 Schedule other activities with your free time, so you won't have time to play WoW. One of the most effective way is to get a part time job and book every free time you have to work. Hang out with your friends, play basketball, engage in extra curricular activities at school (such as clubs or sport teams) or volunteer. The important thing is that they keep you outside of your home, away from your computer. You can find that there are many things that are just as exciting as playing WoW. Remember, your "guild" online is no substitute for the company of real friends.
8 Give away your bags and gold (don't mail them to an alt) and delete your character. ... Be aware though that, while it may seem like an alluringly simple solution once you mustered the determination to do it, it might also backfire later, giving you even more drive to start a wholly new character, because this act for itself doesn't cure addiction, but is merely a symptom or consequence of a decision or temporary mood. A tool for losing interest in WoW is having done everything and having everything available, so when you delete your character, there is a reason for playing again, because it's a bit like a reset with everything gone. Having your high-level character fully equipped and available all the time can be a more powerful tool for breaking addiction, because there is so little left in the game that poses any challenge.
9 Sell your account. There are many players and lazy people out there, willing to pay for an existing account. This is a great way to stop playing, because then someone else takes your character, and you won't be able to control it any longer. This is a nice way to quit, but not stop addiction.
10 Learn to detest Blizzard. This might sound funny or weird, but if you develop some standards by simply trying to be treated fairly by game masters all the time, paying attention to bugs and incompleteness in the game and doing some research on the basic business policies of a company like Blizzard, you might start feeling that there are other people deserving your money a lot more.
11 Get a perma ban.