Risking Serious Addiction

[toddfx]

I played Everquest heavily from 1999 - 2004, which was through my late middle-school and into highschool years. I was so obsessed it was literally what my life revolved around for a good year or two at least. It's all that my friends and I talked about, and it's all I wanted to do after school and on the weekends. I recall many days I'd wake up at 5 AM to score the best camp, and wouldn't log out till midnight at least. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner served at the computer desk, with no care in the world outside of good old Norrath. No doubt this is probably a common story around here.

Today i'm 23 years old and out of college, great career, great girlfriend, and what have I gone and done? Got myself addicted to Everquest again. I don't know what I was expecting to happen when I started, I guess I thought I could play here and there and be able to put it out of my mind. Well i'm only level 8, and already feel myself pushing other things aside to make more EQ time! Leaving the house is becoming a regrettable experience, and I'm constantly counting down the days/hours till my next session. I know better than to let it take over my life completely, but it is getting more difficult to keep it out of my mind as I get more involved!

But anyway, I am just curious about other peoples experiences with Evercrack addiction/obsession and how they manage to cope through their daily lives...

[Cowboy]

I cope by being unemployed and worthless.

[grindle]

Its not so bad for me anymore , but i used to be exactly the same way . When i realized i had missed two parties on a weekend just to be by the computer in case a mob spawned in for a guild raid . I realized that i was addicted , after that i wrote a small timer program that i launched EQ with that counted down 2hours then shut my computer down to force me to realize how much time had passed. It helped alot now even tho i love this server i am older and my addiction doesn't seem to affect me the same way. Just try to remember it is only a game and not a substitute for real life. Use post it notes or timer programs or the built in timer to remind yourself of this fact and i think you will be OK 8-)

[Droxx]

Find things to commit to outside of EQ. Stuff that you wouldn't blow off to play EQ.

[Deathrydar]

I am going to get a little personal now so if you don't like that sort of thing, then I apologize in advance!

Well, when I first found EQ, me and my daughter's mother were "on the outs" so I wound up having a lot of time to myself. Staying up with nothing to do, and no job, eleven years ago, I stumbled across Everquest. Saying that I was hooked would be an understatement. At the time I wasn't working, so I would literally stay up for DAYS STRAIGHT until I couldn't stay up anymore, then roll over to my bed, which was five feet from my computer at the time, fall asleep (I wouldn't log out, I would just go AFK) and then the minute I woke up, I would start the process again.

Friends in real life no longer mattered. My friends were the avatars I was looking at on my monitor for days and days straight! They were my family!
It was really, really bad! With the exception of my daughter, Everquest came before everything else!

In 2004, the game became a shell of itself and I quit! The scary thing is, I didn't quit because I was wanted to, I quit because the game was no longer fun!

So six years pass by and then I hear about this server. I was already heavily involved in the community of another private classic server that is still being developed and I was chomping at the bit to play classic EQ again, so I came to this when it was in beta. I am sure some of the devs remember sitting in zones for hours upon hours with me, into the late hours of the morning while we fixed pathing and other things that I had knowledge of.

But anyway, the server launched, and that was it! Within a couple days I wanted to do nothing but play again!

But there was a problem with that!

I now have a very good job, and I am an important person there. I have a house and I am getting married July.

All of that started to suffer; My performance at work, my relationship with my fiancee.......it got sour and it got sour FAST! So the server launched on Oct 2, 2009 and by the middle of October, I was faced with a choice......

My normal life or my life in Norrath.

I chose my normal life. I completely put everything that had to do with Everquest behind me as quickly as possible and it really was like quitting an addiction cold turkey. I honestly thought that I need to stay away from everything Everquest in order to lead a "normal" life. When I caught myself thinking about it, I would shake it out of my mind and think of something else.

Time went by.....

I came back to the server this past weekend, and I am hoping to have a balance with this whole thing. My fiancee told me that she would give me some space, but I also told her to tell me the minute I start to show signs of falling off the wagon again.

All in all, this game is called Evercrack for a reason!
The bottom line is I SEVERELY underestimated the addiction-based power of this game and I nearly paid the price for it!

I think this time, I do have a balance, but I will be ever wary of falling deep into the hole of Everquest-addiction again!

So far....so good.....

[mgellan]

Yup, I have a similar story - I had my own company in 1999-2001 when I got addicted, and basically EQ was a contributing factor to losing it. Not the only factor, since the IT biz tanked at the same time, but without EQ I think I could have pulled it out of the nosedive. I didn't care all that much, just to get that EQ fix. After I shut the company down, I sold the customer base and went to work for another company. Because the post-Y2K economy was flat I had little to do, was working from a home office, so I boxed EQ for a year til I had to in all good conscience get a job where I wasn't getting paid for nothing. I quit EQ til the Progression Servers, and spent a lot of time there but managed to keep the addiction relatively benign.

With P1999, I've been keeping my play time to 2 hour sessions max using the timer. This has been working well, and if I treat myself to an occasional raid or long session at night after everyone has gone to bed, not a big deal. But, I have lots of other stuff going on, and getting that 2 hrs in more than a few times a week has been challenging, which is a good thing - it means other stuff takes priority, and thats a good thing.

So, my advice is limit your sessions to a set time, and get some outside interests that require your presence on a regular schedule and don't miss them. Don't try to keep up with people who can afford to devote many of their waking hours to EQ!

Regards,
Mg

[Rogean]

Oh boy, do we need to start worrying about law suites related to the addictive nature of our server, or even worse... suicides =x

[Jeebus]

Originally Posted by Droxx [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Find things to commit to outside of EQ. Stuff that you wouldn't blow off to play EQ.

This ^

I make plans that I know will get me away from the computer

[Deathrydar]

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Oh boy, do we need to start worrying about law suites related to the addictive nature of our server, or even worse... suicides =x

I would never do anything like that. And now that you say something like that, it makes me feel that I am not so bad because there are people out there that actually do kill themselves over this.

Thanks for making me feel better, Rogean!

[Oldschooler]

Just dont get married or have any children and youre set for life [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Imo you shouldnt really have gotten a wife, kids or a demanding career job, if a game like everquest is able to lurk you into the shadows.

You ought to know what youre getting into to and when to stop otherwise.

To me the only thing that matters is the family i have, friends will come and go and eventually we all die alone.

Im just here to have fun and this project is like the best of the best, you could do alot worse then staying classic.