[whatcd]

playing World of Warcraft can cost you dearly

[muse900]

Can’t see that as a valid argument. Doing anything in life can cost you dearly.

Personally wow curved me around 2004-2007 as a person. Helped me find my passion about development in general.

I didn’t feel like I’ve lost something playing wow, actually I have fond memories of it. Only thing I would change if I could go back was just to spend a bit less time on it, but again I’d play it with passion.

[granos]

I wouldn't say that playing WoW costs your dearly or is detrimental or toxic to people. I will say that all of the people I've known who played games to their own detriment or in a way that was toxic to their lives were playing WoW. It is attractive to people who want to escape from their problems and not solve them. Because of this, it has somehow come to be seen as a cause of that escapism. It definitely becomes part of a vicious circle -- I play too much WoW because I'm stressed -- I'm not more stressed because I play too much WoW -- but that's the fault of the player, not the game.

[LMYahooTFY]

They did say "can" cost you dearly, and didn't preclude other endeavors from costing you...

The ills of over indulging on anything seem fairly obvious.

[minimaxir]

Nowadays (EDIT: anecdotally, sourced from myself, friends, and forums/Reddit), there's been a player exodus in WoW, as the latest expansion (Battle for Azeroth) has an unrewarding and mandantory grindy endgame, in addition to other player-unfriendly changes which the playerbase suspects is to pad out time-played metrics.

[vbezhenar]

I'm not sure if this is a proper place to discuss WoW, but as a long standing player I can say that BfA is much better in terms of grinding than previous expansion Legion. You don't really need to grind anything, exactly because that grind is unrewarding and you was obliged to grind in Legion exactly because that grind was giving too much power. Again, according to my experience I'm not seeing big player exodus, most of those who started playing in my guild are continue to play, but that's only a personal anecdote, of course. Legion was much better in terms of perceived development cost: new gameplay systems, loads of new art and content, while BfA feels like cheap addon to build upon Legion investment, but that doesn't really makes it bad, it's just feels that they could do better.

[vlunkr]

Even if that's true, the game has had incredible longevity. That expansion came out 14 years(!) after the original release of the game. I'm sure the player base isn't what it used to be, but that has to be some kind of record.

[EpicEng]

Loud critics make up a tiny percentage of the player base. You have no idea what the numbers are and won't until blizz releases them.

[IMcD23]

Source? Even though Battle for Azeroth had a rocky start, WoW still has a massive player base.

[guildan]

I know you're probably saying this in terms of money, but I had to stop because it was an addiction to play Wow... This game is so addictive to me (I'm sure not just me)! I can't watch streams because it will give me the urge to play.

I hope one day I'll be able to play it normally, but I'm not sure. So yeah definitely it can "cost" a lot to play.

[dmos62]

Can you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested.

I seem to have addictive tendencies, but there's a whole multi-dimensional spectrum, as far as I can tell. In my case, when I'm working overtime, I'll jump into a game every few hours for 30-60min just to let some of the stress off. It's quite effective, but I end up popping figurative gaming-pills instead of learning to deal with stress in a constructive way. I'll also do something like that after a tiring day. It's not good, because it's grown into an urge that I get when it's time to relax, so I neglect other parts of life to which I'd ideally dedicate that free time.

[whatcd]

Actually I agree with you, it's not about the money but addiction.