T w e n t y S i d e d
We’ve done a lot of talking this week about mental health. I’m pretty sure everyone who contributes here has issues they can share and talk about, and thankfully we live in an era where that’s the norm instead of something unusual. I’ve been working on my own problems for a few years now, ever since my family finally convinced me to seek therapy in dealing with what turned out to be a decades-long battle with severe depression. After developing the tools that help me observe and detect my own problematic and triggering behaviors, I learned that it was very important to avoid any sequence of actions that, over the course of a few weeks, could lead to me engaging in repetitive actions and activities day after day. “Getting stuck in a rut,” as most of us would say. Months ago I had fenced off certain activities that might be problematic, one of those, as is pertinent to this story, being MMORPGs.
However…a few months later I find myself dealing with a different set of difficulties. A major contributor to my depression is a driving desire to be accomplishing something. A lack of productive activity wears on my nerves until I essentially “lash out” and try to do whatever I perceive as the most beneficial thing that I can do RIGHT NOW…whether it’s actually useful or not. After a recent exercise in futility fueled by this manner of desperation, one of my kids pointed out that “accomplishing something” can mean a lot of things, like watching a television show you’ve been meaning to watch. To be fair, this is a point my spouse has tried to make many times, but for some reason it clicked this time. I started getting caught up on Star Trek. Years ago I quit watching during the Deep Space Nine era…something about the show just never jived with me. But I’ve always wanted to watch Voyager, and even Enterprise. While I’m still not too sure about Picard, Discovery seems fascinating…all the hate initially directed toward the show actually caused me to shun it for a while. Strange New Worlds has piqued my interest since it was announced. And most importantly, I was convince to try Lower Decks, and I absolutely love it. I just finished Series One. And as soon as I can find it, since Paramount Plus dropped it, I want to watch Prodigy.
These are comfort TV shows, even considering I’m watching new content. I know Trek. I love Trek. And the older I get, all the little things about what’s canon and what’s best…it just doesn’t seem nearly as important. (NOTE: does not include the Kelvin timeline, regardless of what I like {Karl Urban} and don’t like {J.J. Abrams is a bad movie maker don’t @ me}. And Star Wars is a different matter entirely.)
But apparently getting my comfort TV show itch scratched opened up a few doors, and a desire to play my favorite comfort video game rushed to the surface within a day or two:
Mental Health is a path, not a town. Some people might like the “journey/destination” analogy better…”path/town” is what works for me. Likewise, World of Warcraft can be about the destination (completing current End Game content) or the journey (all the grinding, collectibles, interactions, in-game games, things to explore, etc.) I initially started playing right before the Cataclysm expansion came out, but I doubt I logged in more than a couple of times before the update from 3.3.5. Honestly, I found the game a bit slow and tedious, although I liked the story and a lot of the gameplay elements. The most enduring thing I discovered (other than a love for WoW lore and music) was that my favorite class, although technically never my main, was Warlock. I never really played far enough into the game to develop a specialization preference…my Warlock kind of ground to a halt going through Burning Crusade, so I created a Human Warrior named Chayarcy. Chayarcy would become my what-most-people-call-their “main”. Chayarcy would make it to Burning Crusade and on to Northrend, and somewhere in here is when Mists of Pandaria came out. I couldn’t tell you what all went into the mechanics changes, but I know they changed, and my level 80-ish Protection Warrior started dominating.
I never grouped, so when I reached the end of what I could do solo in Mists, I dabbled in learning professions finally, and looking into collectibles…grinding mounts and such. I also started leveling alts so I could explore all the content available. It was during this era that I learned that the *rhythm* of World of Warcraft sat in just the right place in my mind…it was comfortable. All of this extra stuff, that was the REAL game to me. Sure, I went back and soloed earlier End-Game content just to see the story parts, but I really didn’t care about BEING at the current End-Game. I also changed my Troll Warlock to a Shadow Priest, then transferred her to a different server…although I don’t remember why, honestly. Had to change her name, too; her original name was already taken on the new server. This was also when I developed the love for my favorite faction: The Forsaken. This came about from a blogging project, actually. I had given up my WoW subscription during a period of lean money. When they released Free Play to level 20, I started a blog series creating a new character for EVERY RACE, EVERY CLASS, and EVERY SPECIALIZATION. EVERY COMBINATION.
I didn’t finish. I think I did around twenty – thirty? Anyway, the important part is that I got a lot of good characters from that experiment to keep in my pocket. The best one was a Forsaken Destruction Warlock named Cinderlynn (see what I did there?):
That’s the current incarnation of Cinderlynn. “Current” because, as I said, I just “went back” to World of Warcraft. I had previously made the decision to forgo all MMORPGs as a danger to my mental health…AFTER testing whether this was the right decision I thought it was. After a long period of inactivity, I loaded up every MMORPG I had played and tried them out. Some of them, such as WoW, hadn’t been played in so long that I was immediately confronted with having to rebuild the characters because of game updates and free gifts…and so I just deleted everything. WoW, in particular, I knew had added a new starting area as part of the revamps for Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. I tried a few characters in the new starting area, then after a few weeks and no desire to return, I deleted those characters, recreated them in the classic starting zones, and tried leveling. Once again, after a few weeks, I quit. Deleted all my characters, deleted the game (again), and moved on from playing MMORPGs.
But my recent bouts with Mental Health have led me back, feeling like I’m in a much better place…and actually WANTING to play. Specifically, World of Warcraft. I did a little research before I re-installed the game (again), and watched a few videos about how “time-walking” works now. “Time-walking, ” under various names, has actually been a part of World of Warcraft for years, but part of the revamped leveling experience has made time-walking an important (optional) component of the game. For those who don’t know, WoW leveling originally worked like this:
- Original Game release: 1-60
- Burning Crusade: 60-70
- Wrath of the Lich King: 70-80
- Cataclysm: 80-85
- Mists of Pandaria: 85-90
- Warlords of Draenor: 90-100
- Legion: 100-110
- Battle for Azeroth: 110-120
For Shadowlands, the expansion that followed Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard introduced a level squish: if you were a level 120 character that had completed Battle for Azeroth, you were reduced to level 50, then leveled to 60 over the course of Shadowlands. As far as I understand it currently, if you create a NEW character at this point, you level from 1-60 in any of the 1-8 listed above, or Shadowlands, and once you hit 60 (technically, as soon as level 48) You can go to the newest expansion, Dragonflight. I’ll be sure to update everyone once I get there…right now I’m still playing around in the free level 1-20 grind.
Generally speaking, at least for me, you level your character to ten in whatever manner you wish. This doesn’t take long. At level ten, travel to the Alliance capital city of Stormwind or the Horde’s capital city of Orgrimmar; whichever is appropriate. Find Chromie, the gnome avatar of Chronormu, Emissary from the Bronze Dragonflight (the dragons that do time-related stuff):
She will be sitting on a large hourglass. Talk to her and, basically, switch to whichever expansion you want to level in. You’ll be given the quest that kicks off that expansion…depending on the expansion travel requirements, you’ll be asked if you want all current quests in your quest log removed first. Then you follow the quest prompts and level from 10-60 in whichever expansion you want. I currently have Cinderlynn in Hellfire Peninsula in Outland, doing Burning Crusade content. Well, technically, I hit level twenty on the free account, and so I’m setting up alts in the free account before I try subscribing again. At this moment, I actually have a Draenei Arms Warrior in Northrend, doing Wrath of the Lich King leveling. I *intended* to re-create my former main, Chayarcy…but in tapping through character creation the auto-generation gave me a Draenei design that was irresistible. She is at level 17, so as soon as I ding 20 I’ll move on to creating a new alt…I’ve always had bad luck with Worgen, despite the Gilnean’s being one of my favorite factions. I’ve also never had a good Rogue, so maybe I can throw all the bad luck into one pot.
I’m feeling lucky. And happy…watching Star Trek and playing WoW now that I’m enjoying it again has done a lot for my happiness and contentment. It *IS* important to point out, at this juncture, that a major design element of all successful MMORPG’s is triggering a regular release of dopamine. Literally, creating an addiction to playing the game. However, keep in mind this is also the same mechanism that creates the feeling of *ENJOYING* playing a game in general. If you have an addictive personality, and I do, you should certainly try to keep one detached eye on your behavior. Keep your time in-game limited and make sure you have some kind of outside reality check. Family members that can provide input on your behavior and notes that help you keep track of what is most important are good steps. I’ve only reached a harmful level of video game addiction once; for me this was paying money into a popular free-to-play MOBA-like game. It’s always better to recognize this before it gets started, rather than regretting the decisions you’ve made when you’re in the middle of it. Understanding your own behavior and questioning your decisions to make sure you understand why you chose to do what you did is, to me, the most fundamental part of managing your mental health and relationships.
Back on happy thoughts, this all brought up another content idea to float…there’s been some interest in the Arkham Asylum longplay, and of course I mentioned re-visiting some of the other Batman games, as well as getting started on something like Dragon Quest from the beginning. But playing WoW reminded me of Shamus’ series of articles commenting on that time he played World of Warcraft: The adventures of THE MIGHTY DEATHBRINGER-ER and his summoned Imp. The series was originally published at The Escapist in 2011, and on Twenty Sided in 2016. The game is…very different now, in many ways; although it’s best if you ignore that most of those starting quests Shamus did in this partial play-through are STILL part of the original human starting zone. So it occurs to me maybe that would be a lot of fun…start a new WoW character purely for the narrative content for Twenty Sided readers.
Anybody have thoughts or suggestions? I’m actually, for the first time ever, considering finding a guild to join…purely to FINALLY get my heirloom equipment. Yes…I’ve been playing the game off and on, including End-Game-ish content repeatedly, since 2010 and have NEVER obtained heirlooms. It’s easier than ever now, except some of it is still locked in the guild hall.
So let me know what y’all think about all this. And remember: Dark Lady Watch Over You.
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I’d say go for it, if this is something that you feel like doing we won’t know how well it works until you try.
With MMOs I keep oscillating between the pleasant stability of sitting down to one and having that satisfcation of “achieving something” that you mention without facing the analysis paralysis of “what to play” and the realisation of how much of my gaming time they take when I could be playing something else.
The second issue is that there are just too many that I enjoy, I’ve been on and off with Destiny 2 since the Forsaken expansion because I like the lore and the moment-to-moment gameplay of it but the individual seasons tend to focus on one or two very repetitive activities and not having the ambition for endgame raiding I don’t much care for hyperoptimizing my drops, Warframe in additon to atmospheric lore has a very strong “gotta catch’em all” vibe for me, the DDO reincarnation system with its tiny stacking bonuses is definitely something I could sink into, FFXIV has the JRPG goodness and there are a lot of people that I at least somewhat know that are playing it… And those are just some of the big ones.
Man, I get where you’re coming from. In some ways I feel blessed by “purge” of MMOs, and glad that dipping my toes in the water afterward confirmed that I could easily leave them behind. I’m being very cautious with my Warcraft playtime to keep from getting into a “I *HAVE* to play this game” mindset. That’s another key symptom I left out that I should have mentioned.
I’ve been running private WoW server for me and few friends couple years now. I have tweaked exp/gold rate in server settings so I can play solo and not spend all my time on it. Mostly I have been playing it few weeks every month or two as open world RPG.
Excellent thing to do; I’ve got a private server running on LAN at home, too. We typically play in bursts. The idea originally was to play until the end of Wrath of the Lich King, 3.3.5; then export the database, install a Cataclysm server, and move on in the new Azeroth through the following expansions. Then something went screwy with the database, I shut it down for a year, and only recently rebuilt it and got it running again.
I’d be interested, and am finding trying to do write-ups of games is a fun new method of engagement. Not sure how easy a Narrative run would be, but would be fun to see Cinderlynn’s quest to find a prince like that Ella brat pulled off.
A combination of bad internet and not liking people means I’ve played very few MMORPGs, but you know which one I have played, that Shamus never covered and is still running? Kingdom of Loathing: An Adventurer Is You.
I…have honestly never heard of this game. I will check it out ASAP.
And that’s a very interesting storytelling idea to try to shoehorn into a WoW Let’s Play. Off the top of my head, I can’t figure out if there are enough viable interactions to be able to support a story like that in-game, but that’s not *necessarily* a requirement.
Same here,
I’d be fascinated to read a narrative approach to a WOW campaign but i’ve heard of kingdom of loathing for so long that if someone were to write about it….well ‘id be all over that :)
BTW, thank you guys for the amazing amount (and quality) of content you are bringing to the website. It really feels like a nice place to visit and it’s a pleasure to read your prose (each of you has a different voice but they are all interesting!)
kincajou, you can’t possibly know how much that means to us. ALL of us. Despite the occassional accusation, all of us here were and are family, literally. We loved Shamus and respected his content, flaws and all. Twenty Sided, as anyone can see, was a labor of love for Shamus, and it is for the people running and contributing to it now.
I am also glad you guys are keeping the bonfire lit. The website is definitely very different from Shamus’ days, which does jolt me into missing him a bit more every now and then, but that also has its own bitter sweet kind of charm I guess.
This comment has been removed for violating community guidelines.
I don’t know much, but I’m close to 100% sure that Shamus would have banned you in a second for this comment.
The other percent is if it’s secretly Patrick.
Secret Patrick was always funnier than that though.
Personally, I loved Legion, and recommend you to play through that. BfA wasn’t my cup of tea. Didn’t play shadowlands and Dragonflight.
Something in the mechanics that Blizzard changed in the pre-release of Legion damaged my playing experience. Can’t remember what it was, specifically…probably a collection of small things. I mentioned in the article how likely overpowered my Protection Warrior was by the time I played Mists of Pandaria, and that only increased in Warlords of Draenor. Then that seemed to collapse overnight in the run-up to Legion. Which was really disappointing, because I was really looking forward to a lot of the content of Legion. I almost went back for Battle for Azeroth, but my only real interest was in the story…it looked like Blizzard was seriously advancing the overall narrative of the game. Though, being a devoted servant of Sylvanas, I was a bit worried she would be the latest Warchief to be “killed” off.
AND I STILL DON’T KNOW HOW THAT ENDED AND WHAT THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IS. I saw a post somewhere that said Undercity wasn’t in the game anymore. Which is like hearing the aliens just took out Paris and all that’s left is the Gare de Lyon.
… I can’t remember if the BFA opening scenerio is still in the game.
The Horde destroyed Teldrassil in the BFA pre-patch, and undercity was destroyed in retailation in the original BFA opening scenerio. I think they may have kept the Alliance side in, while the Horde gets a prison break. Then again, they may have just pushed the Alliance to the Tol Dagoe scenerio after getting a recap of the Horde one.
BFA’s war campaign deals with Sylvanas, and leads into Shadowlands.
I had generally heard echoes of all that, EXCEPT that Undercity was destroyed.
One of my favorite places. Be interesting to reach that state in the game and see the new lay of the land.
Sorry for the delayed post, I’m catching up on my feed.
For what it’s worth, more recent quests have the Forsaken starting to reclaim the city. They’ve done a lot of interesting little quests at the end of Shadowlands and throughout Dragonflight to continue to advance their story. A big part of it is them figuring out who they are now that Sylvanus no longer leads them.
That is very good to hear. Hopefully I will be reaching those story elements before too long, but I’m taking my time exploring things. It is certainly a shame to lose Sylvanas, but it has been clear Blizzard was going that way for a while.
I’d read it.
I have a similar need to balance playing some sort of game, watching some sort of show, and reading some sort of book at all times. If I try to do all three at once, I’m stretched too thin. If I go too long on just one, I fall into a rut where I stop enjoying it and have to crawl back out. Thus, I can throw myself into something to feel better or escape. . . and end up making things worse in the end if I don’t monitor and then deliberately jump back out once the original goal is accomplished.
I wonder if some of this has to do with the serialized nature of much content. Being trained from an early age to expect new stuff on a weekly (if not daily) basis means if you can’t maintain that content drip, something is wrong. MMOs and “live service” games try to apply this to games, while things like fanfics, web novels, or indeed blogs do so for reading. If you can find a sufficient example of each that you like, there’s always got some new content coming down the pipe. . . until it ends, or if you just binge the whole thing.
I’ve got Deep Rock Galactic for action/bit of weekly checklist, Pokemon for ridiculous long-term projects I can tinker on forever, this blog and a fanfic that’s going strong for reading, and the (pretty terrible) Wheel of Time show and various current and backlog anime for watching.
Of course some of the Pokemon is actually another category of game tinkering, but the point is not getting stuck on just one.
Pretty interesting thoughts on why MMO’s (and most other AAA titles now) work with constantly dribbling a little more content out. I’ve thought about it in other terms, before; but I like how you stated it.
MMOs vex me. By all standards, I’ve got the kind of personality type that can be really easily dragged into them to never escape again, but perhaps fortunately, 99% of the time I just bounce off their intended dopamine production systems and either leave quickly, or I find some weird obscure thing they never intended for people to obsess over and glom on to that. Working my way to some specific MTX-only item using the ingame methods, say specific colors for painting/dying/another local equivalent, or a specific piece of equipment/mount/ship/etc, can be about 100 times more compelling than the intended “spend money and time, get big numbers, spend more, get bigger numbers” setup.
The few I am weak enough to that they actually manage to drag some time and money out of me are also the ones with the most breadth of customization- and usually, sheer time that’s been put into developing them for a humongous backlog of stuff I can then take care of once I’ve scratched whatever itch I was questing towards. Warframe is so much better as a blinged out neon Octavia that could drop you from brightness alone while jamming out to homebrew dubstep. Star Trek Online hits so different when you’re in a ship that means something to you, be it a kitbash with one of their bespoke classes or your favorite obscure design from canon (New Orleans-class, my beloved…) and it makes playing through the story missions so much better- all mechanical boons aside, getting to experience the story as captain of your ship and stick to it the whole way through is powerful. Guild Wars 2 drags me back in from time to time for its story and characters more than its mechanics- though I can feel some real polish in them on display in some of the later-game story missions- and it helps that it’s not too hard to bling yourself out with your favorite colors. ESO dragged me in pretty much until I unlocked the colors I wanted, got my Khajiit looking drip as heck, and finished playing through the whole of Vvardenfell; the rest of the game just…isn’t as appealing as questing around for Vivec and enjoying my old childhood stomping grounds in the glowup the game provides.
I played the original Guild Wars for years, even after GW2 came out, purely to collect dyes. That was like, the entire game for me. Grinding gold, dealing for dyes. I have a ranger in Red, White, and Green wooden armor that looks FABULOUS.
I’m really enjoying Guild Wars 2 (GW2). For whatever reason the story really grabbed me (after core, I still enjoyed the core Zhaitan story but in comparison to the later stuff it’s very meh) and the wide range of different content (eg WvW, exploring different maps and map metas, fractals, even raids recently) means there is always something fun to do depending on my mood.
I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but when I scrolled down and saw the world of warcraft logo alarm bells set off.
You have me on the edge of my seat lol.
This keeps failing to post under duplicate post message… but I don’t think it made it through even once. I am going to press the post button one last time to see if adding this prelude will fool the algorithm that thinks I am duplicating myself.
And it looks like your experience is similar to my own. In the late 90’s I was “demoralized” lets say, by grad school, and I was having a very difficult time bringing myself to write my damn thesis. Basically, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after I handed it in, and playing Everquest… was so much easier.
I think I wasted a good year and a half that way. It was a horrible downward spiral. I knew I needed to write, but playing everquest was so much easier than writing (and searching for jobs) and I kept logging in and feeling guilty instead. For the other 51 years of my life (the ones I did not spend playing everquest instead of writing…) I have had a very even disposition. No real highs, but no real lows either. This makes it difficult for me to understand what people go through when they describe mental illness, but I *think* that the feeling I felt every time I played EQ instead of getting shit done was really close to depression, if not the thing itself.
Anyway, I pulled out of it and graduated, and then got a job I really like (and still have). With great trepidation I tried Everquest again 3-4 years later, and it was fine. My new job put me in a life work balance that allowed me to play MMO’s without spiraling out of control, which was a huge relief. Sounds like it is at least somewhat similar to your path.
Yup! This is the first iteration of this comment I’ve seen, you’re all good. I’ll clean up the troubleshooting real quick, and yank the troll while I’m at it. That’s actually their second offence.
Yep. I had a game, it wasn’t WoW, although several MMO’s were contributors, but ONE game that I got obsessed with about the same time my depression hit it’s lowest point (in conjunction with many IRL issues.) I spent real money on that game; thankfully not anywhere near the extent of some of the crazy stories you hear about. But spending the money was just part of the symptom, the overall symptom of why I was so committed to playing that game.
I can’t be doing with these never-ending games for a similar reason of that “accomplishment”. Too many discrete games to complete, with endings that feel like endings rather than having had enough of the content. But I can see the appeal to others, or at least I can see others enjoying it – my gf has 100s of hours on each Animal Crossing (is “AC” Animal Crossing or Assassins Creed, you decide :D ), many dozens of hours in things like Stardew Valley, and can even go back to these games for dozens more. I understand the satisfaction of the game loop, but it’s the sort where eventually I burn out on it a bit, feels like prolonged chores. I need to know that I’m progressing but also working towards something. I am currently in two minds about playing Core Keeper, it’s multiplayer co-op (and already we’ve had arguments about that… I was trying to keep the slimes out, she was trying to build railways, there wasn’t enough communication…) but I can sit there for 4 hours and wonder if it was fun. It was fun when I was exploring. Then she built us a main base and so I instinctively wanted/needed to keep it organised and when I realised our exploration / countryside devastation was allowing slimes and bandits in, to keep it protected and unsullied (the slimes spawn slime-spawning ground cover tiles!) And so coming back to the game after a long hiatus, including a segment where she’d played without me, I came back to what was essentially just chores, and spent 6 hours yesterday feeling like I was doing work rather than having fun – and worse, work that was being undermined either by my co-op partner or by the game itself saying actually enemies can break through these defences lol. Work is fine, but undermined work is not. With that all said the game is quite brilliant really, it’s just a question of how much I actually enjoy it.
Hey, that’s why they make a lot of different games. I’ve had one experience with my wife very much like this: Minecraft. Now, I KNOW you can play Minecraft a bunch of different ways; but the primary gameplay videos are base building/scenario building, reaching highest/hardest/end-est content (almost always in survival mode), or exploiting (think of the videos that F1NN5TER makes). I have tried the game both as a building simulator and playing it as a survival game, and I JUST CANNOT GET INTO IT. I’ve owned it since early days…I’ve had to recover my account a half-dozen times. My wife and kids primarily play it as a building sim, which ostensibily I would really enjoy, but something in the way the game actually “plays” just feels…boring. Tedious. I play it a few hours every year or two.
The frustration with playing a game differently from your partner, regardless of who that is (if they mean anything to you emotionally) is something I went through when I was younger. Some of that, at least in my experience, comes from things that, just lose their importance as you get older. Some of it may actually be from a place that could use some work and better communication, which would be an overall benefit to a relationship. God knows I’m a completely different person than I was just a decade ago. But some of it is just, you know, different people like doing different things…and sometimes it’s just a fact of life.
Hope that didn’t sound preachy. I didn’t mean it that way. Really was just commenting/reminiscing.
EDIT ADDITION: Oh, and meant to add on that scenario-building gameplay: I know a person who builds ideal wildlife stream fishing models in Minecraft. Incredible.
I know what you mean about Minecraft certainly – I think I’m similar. I only really know about the building aspect and I didn’t have any interest in it until I saw someone’s video and realised the scale of what one could build. But in the same way that I’d tire of a huge box of Lego, after a few hours of enthusiastic building of megastructures, I likewise forget about it for a year.
What does fascinate (me and I assume exists in WoW) is that element that seems to take gaming beyond the repetitive even if there is no “end” to the game, the overarching story and I suppose ‘meta’ of things (I think that’s the term people use? It always sounds weird to me and seems to be a flexible term.) Is it EVE Online that is the one where there are whole economies and player factions and insane levels of espionage? I must read about that at some point.
I should have clarified (I hadn’t read to the end of the post) – those were just my musings on game types. In terms of a series about WoW, sounds great – something new to read about with what sounds like all sorts of foibles and politics in the background.
I don’t have an opinion on what you end up doing (I’ve been reading this blog for a decade, and I’m not gonna stop now) but remembering Shamus’ WoW and Champions Online stuff made me smile because it inspired me to do something similar, albeit in Skyrim and Crusader Kings rather than an MMO.