Our guest author Benedikt Plass-Fleßenkämper was addicted to World of Warcraft during the times of the addons “Wrath of the Lich King” and “Cataclysm” – and wants to return to Azeroth as a casual player in WoW Classic. How does that fit together? Read his personal WoW story!
When you work as a game journalist, it’s inevitable that you come into contact with various games almost daily. You develop a professional distance to most games you test, review or otherwise write about.
It’s just a job. But even the most seasoned game journalist can occasionally be extremely enthusiastic about certain titles. For me, that was the case with World of Warcraft.
This is my very personal WoW story. I wanted to write it down much earlier, but I kept postponing the project. I guess I had to digest what had happened for a few years. Because WoW was more than a hobby for me.
No, we were an inseparable pair. Or in other words: For a period of time, I was damn addicted to the online role-playing game. Just to be clear: I wasn’t so addicted that I became sick or unemployed and destroyed my entire existence.
I somehow managed to balance work and personal commitments, and fortunately I stayed healthy despite my very unhealthy lifestyle back then. But I was so fixated on the game that it completely consumed me for over two years, and I turned away from the truly important things in life.
That is fortunately long over now. Still, I am really looking forward to the Classic servers going live, because then I will be back at the start – as a casual player who logs in for a few hours a week. An ex-WoW junkie relapsing? As a casual? With the time-consuming WoW Classic? How does that fit together?!
Today, the multiple father, volunteer football coach, and passionate hobby runner finds many things more important than server-first kills and epic loot. With WoW Classic, he wants to return as a casual player – and writes for MeinMMO about his experiences as a “casual”.
Online role-playing games? Nerd stuff!
Time jump to February 2005: I had heard and seen a lot about WoW before its European release. A mass-appeal online role-playing game from Warcraft developer Blizzard?
No game journalist could resist that back then! Although I had always had a penchant for single-player role-playing games, MMORPGs had not been my genre until that point. I considered them to be pointless time-wasters, nerd stuff.
I associated such games with an ex-colleague who fit all gamer stereotypes: a young guy, overweight, with thick glasses. He played Ultima Online for hours every night, chatting with people from England while stuffing his face with pizza, chips, and sweets.
I found the game incredibly boring to watch. MMORPGs? Not for me, a dynamic, sporty entrepreneur in my late 20s, fully engaged in life! How mistaken one can be.
Online role-playing games? Actually quite cool!
When a review copy landed on my desk in that fateful February 2005 and I installed WoW on my PC out of professional curiosity in the late afternoon, the unexpected happened: I created a night elf druid, started the first quest… and suddenly awoke in the middle of the night as if from a deep stupor.
Wow, WoW! Without realizing it, the game had fully captivated me, engaging me with simple “Kill this” and “Collect that” tasks, initial level-ups, a simple combat system, and above all, its atmospheric game world.
The social interaction with other players was also a completely new experience for me: questing together in a group significantly facilitated progress and was also incredibly entertaining thanks to in-game chat. Lo and behold: I was suddenly captivated by the fascination of an online role-playing game.
What followed was a slow but continuous process toward addiction. While many were already enjoying their level-60 heroes in the raid instances Molten Core and Co. during vanilla times, I was still comfortably questing, playing maybe once or twice a week, but also taking longer breaks when everyday life didn’t allow time for WoW.
I could understand the hype around the game and found it fabulous, but I had my consumption completely under control.
Accordingly, I only reached the maximum level with my druid shortly before the first addon “The Burning Crusade”. I had only scant knowledge of specializations, ability rotations, and other WoW-specific tricks.
I also didn’t join a guild because I didn’t want to face any social obligations. WoW was my personal escapism, my relaxation from the stressful everyday life.
Moreover, back then my band, with which I was touring all over Germany, took up all my free time.
In “The Burning Crusade” I was even less active; I only reached the new maximum level with great difficulty. In short: I played WoW somewhat regularly in the first years after its release, but in my own pace.
Rushed into item spiral with WOTLK
Then in November 2008, “Wrath of the Lich King” (“WOTLK”), the second WoW addon, was released. I found the Nordic scenario very well done, but I played almost no WoW anymore.
But as luck would have it, my band broke up about six months after the WOTLK release at the height of their success. Additionally, a grueling move was on the horizon because an important client had drastically reduced fees.
When my wife also announced that she was pregnant, which would further enlarge our already four-member patchwork family, it all became too much for me – and WoW proved to be the perfect stress relief!
Together with a friend who had started WoW with “WOTLK”, I got to know the MMORPG in its entirety, familiarizing myself with the various classes, group play, and specializations for my druid.
Above all, tanking with my druid bear was a lot of fun, but I was also a decent damage dealer when necessary. Additionally, the areas and quest lines of “WOTLK” were a dream, allowing my druid to reach the new maximum level in an uncharacteristically fast time for me.
Now, for the first time in my WoW career, I had reached the “endgame”. PvP had never particularly interested me, but the PvE content of WOTLK was exactly my thing.
And suddenly I got caught in the typical item spiral, gradually completing everything that advanced my PvE equipment: running heroic instances in a rush, optimizing glyphs, enchantments, and gems, farming reputation with the various factions (did someone say “The Sons of Hodir”?), and so on.
I studied WoW guides online and bought MMO magazines, diving deeper into the subject and remained passionately engaged even when my friend left the game because it became too time-consuming for him.
“You are crazy to play so much WoW,” he said to me during one of our increasingly rare meetings. I couldn’t argue with him. My wife had of course also noticed that I was spending more and more time at the computer, crawling into bed late at night.
Although I had always been a night owl, which is why she didn’t pay too much attention to this circumstance. Moreover, she was busy preparing for the baby and was always very tired, so she didn’t even realize what was going on with me.
The great desire to raid
Quickly, my services as a tank became very much sought after on my server. Since I was still guildless, I joined spontaneous random raid groups to get to know the raid instances of WOTLK, where the best loot could ultimately be obtained.
After my first successful raid – the battle against the dragon Sartharion in the Obsidian Sanctum – it was decided for me: I loved WoW’s boss mechanics and the feeling of conquering an epic challenge together with other players.
In the following period, I threw myself into every raid group that would take me, and continuously improved my character’s equipment in the Northrend remake of the Naxxramas raid. When the skill of the random groups was no longer enough for me, I joined an ambitious night raid guild where I could raid undisturbed after 10 PM when my wife – finally! – was sleeping.
That my dark circles grew commensurate with my increasing item level, that I gained a pound or two, and that my significant other was giving me increasingly worried looks, I blissfully ignored.
I dodged questions like “Is it still normal for you to play this much?” by claiming that I had to play WoW for work. Which was, of course, a lie.
That I managed to keep my job reasonably well despite my often lasting until the early morning hours WoW consumption and the resulting constant tiredness is, in hindsight, a small miracle. But hey, that’s what coffee and energy drinks are for!
WoW as a full-time job
In the game itself, things were going swimmingly for me: My druid not only wore fabulous tank gear, but I had also risen to become the guild and raid leader because the founders had quarrelled and left the guild.
“Someone has to do the job!” I told myself. And I had a lot of fun organizing and leading a community of 200 players, mainly consisting of shift workers, cooks, and students, along with a DKP point system for loot distribution.
This meant I now spent even more time in WoW to properly meet my new obligations. Not to mention preparing and following up on the three to four night raids that took place weekly, for which I had to know the boss abilities inside and out as the “explanation guy”.
It was clear that all of this was great fun because now I was a focal point of a large social structure. I now had – even if only via Teamspeak or phone – regular contact with the other guild members.
On the side, I even built a nice website for the guild, professionalizing it further by actively searching for reinforcements for the raid team through trade chat and WoW forums.
I could be a really arrogant jerk in the “job interviews” – a trait I hadn’t known I possessed before.
“You can only raid twice a week? And your dual-spec is not fully epic yet? Sorry, that’s not enough for us, you need to find something else,” was still the polite form of a rejection when a player didn’t fit into my profile aimed at maximum raid success.
Let’s face it – by that time I was hopelessly addicted. I still completed the tedious obligatory tasks in work, everyday life, and family, but my otherwise important music, sports activities, or meetings with friends almost completely vanished from my life.
My thoughts revolved only around the next raid and the next boss fight, along with DPS, debuffs, and loot.
“Guys, my son is coming”
How addicted to WoW I was back then is illustrated by the night before my son was born: My wife was now heavily pregnant, and the baby could come at any moment. But instead of spending the last hours before birth with her, I had to go to the Icecrown Citadel with my night raid at exactly 10 PM, which was, for me, the second most beautiful WOTLK raid instance after Ulduar.
After all, the first hard modes were on the agenda, and there was great loot to be had. At some point in the middle of the night, my wife burst into my office and informed me that her water had broken and that we needed to go to the hospital immediately.
I was so perplexed that I told the raid: “Guys, my son is coming. I need to log off now.” My words caused quite a commotion in Teamspeak, as I was the raid leader and main tank. By the way, my son was born healthy and well that night.
But if you think this event would have had a healing effect on me, I must disappoint you: As a new father, I didn’t play quite as much WoW anymore and rarely took on secondary raids with my alts.
However, I couldn’t and didn’t want to do without my main raid. On the contrary: I was so obsessed with WoW and the raids that I used my playtime more efficiently and urged my poor teammates so much that we eventually competed for server-first kills and rose to one of the most successful night raid guilds in Germany.
This highly intense phase in WOTLK, in which I meandered somewhere between work, changing diapers, and wiping on the Lich King in heroic mode, lasted until the middle of the third WoW addon “Cataclysm” – hundreds of hours in raids against tough heroic bosses like Sinestra and Ragnaros included.
The exit: Short and painless
It was only at the birth of my daughter that I was ready to pull the plug of my own accord. That was the long overdue moment when my time management and my body, exhausted from constant sleep deprivation, reached their limits.
I made it short and painless, relinquished all positions in the game, left a rather pathetic farewell post on the guild’s forum, and departed from the guild. I then deleted all WoW characters and canceled my subscription. In the weeks following my exit, I just wanted one thing: to sleep.
Even though I was occasionally forced to keep up with WoW due to my profession and to peek into new addons, the MMORPG no longer played a role in my private life in the following years.
Watching my children grow up and mastering all the small and big problems of a patchwork family was enough task and motivation. For relaxation, there were other MMOs like Destiny, where I could enjoy myself without the time commitment of WoW.
And I could take something positive from my time as a WoW guild leader into real life: The social skills acquired in terms of “staff management” are still useful to me today as the head of my media agency – and I’ve learned from my bossy outbursts in Teamspeak how important respect is in dealing with others.
The newer expansions also did not lead to a relapse into old raid excesses; I never completed more than a few rounds in the raid finder. Let’s be honest: once you’ve raided at a high level, this fast-food version is also hard to endure.
This is why I return to Azeroth with Classic
So, now to the soon-to-be-released WoW Classic. Yes, after careful consideration and honest discussions with my wife, I will return to Azeroth – well planned and with full intent. Why?
Of course, on the one hand for professional reasons. It would be foolish not to use my WoW knowledge in my job. But above all, I want to play WoW again like in 2005: Questing for a few hours once or twice a week, enjoying the wonderfully decelerated game world compared to today’s WoW and recovering from everyday stress.
A round of fishing while listening to my favorite music. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, when my wife and children are out, a dungeon might be included as well.
Escapism per se is a great thing – when done in moderation. Plus, in WoW Classic, the journey is the goal. If I reach level 60 in a year, that’s perfectly fine too.
I don’t fear the danger of relapsing into my old addiction: I have a happy marriage that I wouldn’t risk for anything in the world (note the double meaning of this statement) and my children need me as a reliable father (and chauffeur for various soccer and gymnastics appointments).
In my spare time, I engage in plenty of sports, volunteer as a football coach, and compose indie pop songs that unfortunately no one knows. My calendar is packed and my sleep is now sacred to me. In short: there are many beautiful things that fill my life. WoW Classic will be at most a small part of it.
Moreover, I made a deal with my wife: Raids in Classic are banned until further notice! Better safe than sorry.
Do you want to know how Benedikt fares as a casual in WoW Classic? Then look forward to his next article, which will go online a few days after the Classic release.
