How to Play World of Warcraft Without Ruining Your Life

Six steps to enjoying MMOGs again.

There are two kinds of people who piss and moan about World of Warcraft.

First, you've got the hardcore, who've played the game until the wheels fell off. These obsessive compulsive super nerds have greedily wrung every ounce of content out of the game they could and have nothing left to do but grouse on message boards. This is like spending the night in bed with Megan Fox, then complaining that she smells like sweat.

The other kind of World of Warcraft hater hails from the recovering addict camp. Either he or one of his friends found himself inextricably wrapped up in Azeroth, then blamed the game when his life fell to pieces. Assuming you could call whatever he had before a life, but I digress.

The good news is I've discovered, after a long career of playing MMOGs, a way to avoid both pitfalls. It's called "not playing so damn much," but telling a hardcore raider not to grind for epic loot is like telling a rock monster to stop smoking crack. And that's why I'm here to teach you how to play World of Warcraft (or any other MMOG, for that matter) without ruining your life or turning into a message board troll.

STEP ONE: Have friends.

The upside of having friends is that, if they're cool, they'll occasionally want to go see a movie, drink a beer or rob a bank with you. These are all great opportunities to get out of the house and away from World of Warcraft. Don't squander these opportunities, because someday when you're rotting in a retirement home you'll be so bored and lonely that you'll wish you'd gotten high and seen The Love Guru with that pot dealer you met at Subway, Metacritic score be damned!

Another upside of having friends is that some of them might be dorky enough to want to play World of Warcraft with you. Which leads me to ...

STEP TWO: Play in static parties.

Let me tell you a story about Final Fantasy XI - the most hardcore, most punishing and least fun MMOG ever devised. In its early days, Final Fantasy XI's party culture was so strict that it was almost impossible to find people to group with. Players spent hours in the the Valkurm Dunes waiting for a spot in a party, and since grouping was the only way to effectively level, any time you spent waiting was absolutely wasted. Enter the static group, a team of five people who log in and play at the same time very day, constantly keeping their levels in sync for maximum grinding efficiency.

I've developed a working static group system for World of Warcraft that keeps the game fun but also gives you a chance to make it to 70 without spending your stimulus package on a power leveling service.

What is the system?

This technique works great for any game. Imagine how cool it would be to have five guys to quest with in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventure. Gankers wouldn't have a chance. Conversely, imagine how much trouble a static ganking group could cause.

STEP THREE: Make play dates.

If you have kids, you already know about these. It's when parents, now too scared by To Catch a Predator to let their spawn roam the neighborhood, arrange for all their kids to get together and burn off their excess juice box energy in one massive orgy of supervised play. Most of you raiders are already used to blocking out stretches of time for guild responsibilities, only here we're not talking about five-day-a-week schedules. I have two static groups that I play with once a week. Our sessions last only two hours. That's because we ...

STEP FOUR: Think like old fogies.

I'm old. Well into my 30s. Many of my friends have careers, wives and kids. There's not a lot of time in people's busy schedules for playing videogames, so sometimes it helps to use a calendar for reasons other than determining the number of shopping days until Christmas. My groups play on Sunday night and Monday night around 10 p.m., just after the kids have gone to sleep. We only play for two hours - maybe a little longer if the instance is going good.

Some weeks aren't good for everyone, so we skip 'em. The upsides are many. Calling it quits around midnight means we're not totally zonked out when it's time to get up for work in the morning. The slow pace means we're never out of things to do, and by the time my priest finally does ding 70, Wrath of the Lich King will be right around the corner.

STEP FIVE: Don't cheat on your group.

This is key. A big problem with MMOGs is players can't experience the same content unless they're around the same level. The static party system I employ ensures that characters will be no more than one level apart, but players have to resist the temptation to grind on their own or complete dangling quests. When you're only playing for two hours at a time, getting every player up to speed with quests can really cut into that playtime, so it's best if everybody is always on the same page - taking and turning in quests simultaneously. That way the group can enjoy the best parts of World of Warcraft (killing monsters and getting loot) without having to spend 20 minutes sharing quests and checking Thottbot to figure out why one teammate isn't eligible. Which leads us to ...

STEP SIX: Have fun.

This is my favorite part. Only playing a couple hours of week, opting out of the raid grind and staying far, far away from the World of Warcraft forums allows my friends and me to actually have fun playing World of Warcraft. Never do we have to suffer pick-up group retards, and rarely are we ever so wrapped up in the game that we've got a bone to pick with the way the timers on our magical hoozie-whatsit are going off.

This approach may be way more casual than some gamers like, but mark my words: When you get older, you'll begin to see the appeal of maximizing fun and sidestepping drama. Leave the endgame to the hardcore. You may not know, this but the word "noob" comes from Korea. It means "very unlikely to die from a deep vein thrombosis." My friends and I are perfectly happy playing like noobs. You hardcore kids can keep your rare drops and blood clots. We just want to have fun.

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