MMOs and your SOsFollow

I actually started playing because my husband got me hooked.

I don't think either of us would have changed anything. I play MMO's now more than he does but he plays a lot of other video games in their place.

It definitely saved us a ton of money while I was laid off for 5 months looking for work and he being a student was not employed either.

It is kinda weird to think about what we did before MMO's, we started playing less than a year after we were married and have been playing MMO's for about 2 years now. So the majority of our married life we were hooked, it'd be hard to go back to not playing and not seeing our friends online. (harder for me than him)

And then some.

#12 x1,000,000

There's this thing called sex. No it's not that question on your driver's license.

My wife refers to all my online correspondence as "cyber people"

"You coming to bed? or are you still playing with your little cyber friends"...

It was real bad when I was into the mmorpg. I would run right from the truck to the computer to play and give a sh[b][/b]it for not much else.

The great time sink that is ffxi had me by the balls. I still miss aspects of the game.

Now I post on a few forums here and there, and jerk around on Ogame form time to time. As a direct result, my sex life has improved 110%!

I wouldn't change my hubby getting me hooked. We've had so many good times, good laughs, made so many good friends playing these games together that it really did bring us closer together. It's even possible that if I didn't play, we would have split up, since he was playing so much.

Ahh, the memories of exping in Grup's room just us two. (him chanter, monk, cleric and me druid, war) Or discovering that Kaesora was one frickin heavenly exp spot and going through a pain level with only Revive in there. Doing Hate with 8! I better shut up before I start to miss EQ too much.

I'm a long-time gamer. When I first started dating my wife, she didn't let me know that she actually tried playing Ultima Online before we met. I don't think it was something she was fanatical about like my addiction to EQ at the time.

As we dated, I tried to get her into EQ and Dark Ages of Camelot - She didn't get into them very much - it was Neverwinter Nights that we really had the best gaming experiences. Then we moved onto City of Heroes and it was fun for a bit, but she was at the time, notoriously shy so we usually were a 2-person team (group).

It was when I had fired up my beta version of World of Warcraft and my wife was looking over my shoulder. I think it took all of 30 seconds before she asked, nay, DEMANDED that I download the beta for her computer. We've been having a blast ever since. In fact, she's probably more addicted to WoW than I have to any game, even Everquest (or perhaps I was just oblivious of the depths of my EQ addiction way back when).

In WoW, my wife got over her shyness and made some online friends. We joined a guild with the friends we made. We got our characters up to level 60. She's been raiding non-stop. I honestly have to be thankful for WoW helping her get over her shyness. She's more gregarious in real life as well as in-game.

After I hit 60, I got the old burnout for gaming. I took about 2 months off, reading and watching tv. I eased myself back into gaming with the X-box games that I have too many of (I still haven't played at least 4 or 5 on the shelf to this day). My wife played WoW during this whole time.

Then while she has been happily raiding in Molten Core in WoW, I slowly worked my way back to pc gaming with EQ2, a brief revisit to EQ, and then now after being over the burnout, back into WoW and every now and then in EQ2.

Yes, there have been some moments when we've had some arguments when she would put the game before real life (if I was disturbed by it, it HAD to be bad, trust me!) in regards to family commitments (hers and mine) or her most frequent offense, staying up WAY too late on work nights.

So we've set aside a night or two for watching movies, reading books, going out with family or friends when possible. We're really far from our family and friends, so we're not out socially as much for the time being. When we move back to San Francisco or closer to Washington DC, whichever works out, we'll be out socially much, much more than we are now.

But for now, my renewed fun in WoW and her continued fun in WoW have made for good times in our home. We've been making a concerted effort to get to bed at a decent hour on work nights and making sure we make the time to do other things (movies, books, DYI house stuff). Overall, I would not change how things have worked out.

Don't sweat the burnout - I've been through it a number of times during EQ and now WoW. There is nothing you can do but to ride through it and find something else to occupy your time.

If you enjoy gaming, you will find the siren's call beckoning you back. I think what really did it for me was the creation of our Asylumites guild in WoW. The great folks from here who have joined and good times we've already shared have been awesome. Most of us are still in our late level 20s/early 30s so there is much, much more to experience together. The only downside is my wife still plays on our old server so while we have some low level alts to play together on my current server, we're both on our primary characters on different servers most of the time.

While I know the level 60 burnout could loom again - I have a new thing to look forward to at that point if raiding sucks - We'll start a Horde guild and I'll get a chance to play on the Horde side all the way to 60 again, which I have never done.

My wife is not at all interested in games and I think I'm glad.