Anyone ever been obsessed with World of Warcraft?

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I'm not sure how I'd handle it with a 14 year old. My instinct would be to do what we do with our 9 year old with his bed time; we warn him that bed time is coming up in 15 minutes, and again at the five minute mark. That generally avoids the meltdown.

Perhaps you could warn him that he's spending too much time on the game and that you need to limit his time on the game through the WoW site like Etular said and give him some time to get used to it. As suggested by Rakshasa72, if he's in a raiding guild, find out what nights they're raiding, and possibly restrict him to those nights + maybe a couple of hours extra during the week for "character maintenance".

The problem is that the game is designed to suck up as much of your time as it can, and depends whether he's levelling a character (or several), or if he's got a level 80 character, and is in a raiding guild. Raiding guilds are often hardcore players, and spend incredible amounts of time doing all of the multiple things you need to do to be at the top of the game.

Restricting his time if he's a levelling/casual player might not cause a huge meltdown, but if he's in a raiding guild, and is doing the high-end instance raiding, if you suddenly cut him off from that, you'll be taking away a chunk of his identity; you could also be taking a core team member away from the guild, and they would most likely do anything to keep him. If he is a core guild member, he'll know that, and the meltdown will most likely be epic (no pun intended).

Part of the problem here is that you'll really need to try and understand where he fits within the WoW community because that might give you an indicator of how hard it will be to get him to cut down his time.

There's a WoW website called wowarmory which you can put in his character names and if you know which server he's playing, most WoW players could tell you if he's raiding and at what level he's playing by viewing the public information about his characters.

Feel free to PM me if you'd like to ask more questions.

i'm not but my little brother ( NT) he plays this every got dang day. i tried to play but i just couldn't get into it.

Also do yourself and him a favor, buy an Authenticator. It costs only $6 and, enhances account security 99.9%. There are many people out there that will steal WoW accounts. It can be quite the traumatic experience. Also the Authenticator can be used to manage his account use because he cann't log on without it.

I'd suggest that you offer him a real fun activity instead. I have been quite obsessed too, now it's a hobby. The reason I got obsessed in the first place was that the alternative was utter boredom. So when I did have a great day out once I didn't mind not playing WoW, simply because I had fun. There's also a chance his obsession fades somewhat out over time. That has happened to me. Once I wasn't entirely new to the game anymore it became more and more of a hobby and less of an obsession.

The alternative activity for your son must be really worth it for him (that's just my humble thought) because otherwise he'll be terribly bored and have his spare time ruined. Now, that can piss someone off.

Good luck.

I was completely addicted and obsessed with Wow. I got my hubby to start playing with me finally after 3 yrs of playing. Then I just had to force myself to quit. I was on ALL the time. Everything was getting neglected so I cancelled my subscription. Now my hubby is addicted. After I quit WOW I went and started playing the Sims. So I had to force myself to quit that. It's always something that I'm a little obsessed with on the internet. Now it's gathering info on AS and reading this forum. *sigh

I played it for a while. It was very addictive for a while, but then I got bored with it as I realized it was just kill kill kill, collect so and so items to gain more gold and items, in a never ending journey...

I played it a lot, but I wasn't obsessed or addicted. Too much interaction required for the late game and the stupid raid to get better gear to raid to get better gear to raid to get better gear to raid to get better gear and pvp to get better gear and pvp to get better gear to pvp to get better gear to pvp to get better gear to pvp to get better gear cycles don't interest me.

Mind, I am tempted to resubscribe for the new expansion, even though I deliberately gave away my copy of WoW to stop myself doing so...

Get a bit more familiar with the WoW account system.
Buy an authenticator and make your e-mail adress the account's e-mail.
You can also manage the "parental control" for his account.
Getting an authenticator code would be by calling you and asking for a code, so you always know when he logs in.

With this you're at least in control of his account. Good luck.

Hope this helps.

Thank you to everyone for the suggestions. I know that the guild my son is in is an important social outlet and as long as school is in session (2 more days) he will not be on the game ALL DAY. But this summer we have few actvities to fill his day and I fear that he will try to stay on for the entire day. I know its part of his identity and he has been bullied for his entire middle school years, so I won't eliminate his account unless there is some overriding reason. I just am now realizing that I have not planned ahead very well for this. I wanted to get the perspectives of WoW gamers to help me be as fair as I can. My husband and I disagree on this area--he thinks I let him play it too much now. But he's too cheap to spend the necessary $$ to put him in some decent summer camps. So I will get trouble no matter what I do.

The standard WoW interface does include controls to either show a timer (so you can actually see how much time you've been spending running around someone else's imaginary world) or limit the time allowed per login. If you use the limiter, I'd actually recommend disabling it if he's raiding - a lot of raiding groups want to make sure that they have only the people they need for the raid, and if he's, say, the party healer, yanking him out of the middle of a raid won't be real great for either his self-esteem or the regard others have for him. (Oddly, even though a great many players are underage, most still assume that if you dump out of a raid, it's because you wanted to quit, not because the folks shut you down.)

The thing about raiding/dungeons is, other people are depending on you to perform. That's why I solo whenever possible - I have two kids, and sometimes I have to be able to just jump up and run to take care of something, and this way I don't leave anyone else hanging. (That's what I like about Outlands, too, now that I have a character who can go there - flying mounts can hover in midair, and in Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh at least there's nothing to attack you up there.)

Overall, if he actually comes to meals after finishing a raid or mission, rather than moving on to the next mission in the chain, and if he's on for, say, less than four hours at a stretch, I wouldn't worry too much about addictions.

(In case anyone's curious, in Outlands on Fenris server, watch for a draenei Death Knight named Dancassidy, which is a joke no one gets.)

Yes! I would probably rage (and I'm 33, not 14).

Can you up it to 4 hours? That would give him enough time to actually find and complete a raid (dungeon). Another option would be to have a way he could earn extra time by doing chores or social things that help him push his social boundaries.

The reason I suggest this is: If you only think about one thing all day, EVERY DAY, and you have just enough time to log in, hope really hard you get a group, finally get one, then have to log out... it would be very frustrating. This game is one of those "hurry up a wait" type things. You can't just get on and go do what you need to. It takes other people, and everyone is on different schedules.

And just as food for though... Playing video games is full engagement of both side of the brain. It's like running a mental marathon compared to things like reading or watching TV. His brain is still developing. A few hours a day of both sides of his brain working together at full speed is a good thing IMO.

To be completely honest, I say let him play however long he wants this summer. But as someone else already suggested, make him pay for the subscription. The job will keep him rooted in reality, at least enough to not completely lose himself in the obsession, if that's an actual danger.

I don't know your son so I can't say what will or will not work for him, but try to restrict your restrictions when it comes to activities he enjoys. You wouldn't prevent him from playing in the school's basketball team (example) simply because he practices a lot.

Yes. What eventually killed the addiction for me was guilds. I kept running into the same social problems in guild that have plagued me in real life. Once it was no longer a 'safe', controllable environment, I lost the addiction completely.

Serious social problems only arose for me once I started raiding hard core (5 nights a week). I was an officer in the guild, responsible for dkp etc. It entailed constant social contact in whispers and vent. It got as overwhelming as social contact in real life. I quit guild and raiding completely. Decided to take an almost complete break till cataclysm. Come Cataclysm, I might go back to pugging raids but unless it's an aspie friendly guild, I'm done with guilds and hard core.

Thanks for all the advice. I can see that my son enjoys the game and gets very involved in the raids, and that its a place he can go to after a crappy day at the crappy middle school we sent him to (where he gets bullied and called "fat boy" on a regular basis). If it were totally up to me (e.g., if I were a single mom), I would let him play with only minimal limits. But there are 2 big problems-- 1. He is 5'10" and 220 pounds. He is obese. I have to get him some aerobic, calorie-burning activities this summer or he will end up diabetic. He gained a lot of weight when puberty hit this past year, so the onus is on me to help him find something over the summer to burn the calories.

My second problem is his dad. We have a crappy relationship. And he barely hides his anger/anxiety about the AS anyway, and is a control freak when it comes to how the kids spend their summer (we also have a 9 year old, who is NT). He has money to put into camps but second-guesses me about them, thinking I spend too much money as it is. He also pathologizes Aspergers, which really pisses me off, as I am AS!. Anyway, he criticizes our son's time on WoW, blaming me for letting him play instead of forcing him to "socialize."

So I think at this point, I will press for more fun outside activities to fill the hours now taken up ith school, and then leave my son alone on WoW.

I feel for your son, and you too. Yes, I know I'm not supposed to with my AS, but apparently I can have empathy. I can imagine that the situation you describe pulls him even more into World of Warcraft. That being said, weight loss might get him to be more confident and able to enjoy life outside WoW more as he is not being judged or laughed at right on sight.

I wonder what your husband thinks is a good idea to get him ot of the house more and ''socialize''. It seems unreasonable to me to expect him to go out, approach people and ''socialize'' while having crappy confidence, AS, and, even worse, being bullied. He can't go to summer camp, so what is left to do? Right. Playing World of Warcraft.

Again, good luck with this. Maybe you can control the playing time by offering it as a reward for exercise? If he goes biking for an hour you reward him by giving play time? Motivate him to lose weight or make the weight loss activity fun?

The point about wow for me was that it was a controllable form of socialization. I would retreat into it to deal with real life situations that were beyond me. I can't deal with normal social situations, camp would be a living hell. Doing it to please a parent would make me deeply resent the parent. Wow I could control up to a point, and, up to that point, it taught me a lot about how to socialize. Your ex is wrong, he is hurting his son, and you, with his inability to come to a basic understanding of AS.