Is it possible to play WoW casually?

[MemoryDump]

I've tried time after time to get into WoW. I've bought one months subscription here, and one there, but I've never kept the subscription running for more than two months.

I give up after two days of intensive playing almost every time I buy a month and start to play. WoW is simply to demanding on my time, because I find that if I only log on for an hour or two I get little or nothing done in game. I usually need to put in a good 4 hour stretch to really see some difference on my XP bar, and to get to experience something new and exiting, like a unique quest or area.

Am I doing something wrong?

Are there some of you out there that find WoW to be enjoyable in small doses?

If so, how do you do it?

if you aren't in an active guild then the game can get to be a drag.. but as many others have said in this post already.. it's not worth it.. it's way too addictive.. and quite honestly.. too much work once you reach level 70.. raiding is work.. it's not really fun.. people get stressed like mad.. I speak of experience.. I was GuildMaster of 2 successful raiding guilds and it nearly cost me my health and my sanity. I had to quit as GM.. and I'm glad I did.. now after taking about 5 months off I'm re-rolling (started a new character) and only play a few hours a week (if that even) when I have absolutely nothing else to do! It's all about moderation.. if you can master that then your set

[NightwishFan]

I have not found a good MMORPG yet. WOW isnt even a good game to begin with... A nice open source Linux one would be nice.

[forrestcupp]

If you play the single player version of WoW, you can play it casually.

[Sammi]

Gloomy stuff guys.

I had to quit as GM.. and I'm glad I did.. now after taking about 5 months off I'm re-rolling (started a new character) and only play a few hours a week (if that even) when I have absolutely nothing else to do! It's all about moderation.. if you can master that then your set

Yeah, but what fun stuff is there to do, when you don't have the time to invest that a guild requires, and thus aren't really able to play with other people? What's the point of playing a memorpeger then?

[Caldur06]

It took me about two months to hit level 30 in WoW. It was the only MMO, ever, that I didn't get addicted to. As far as MMOs go, I didn't think it was very good.

Of course it's possible to play it casually. Just limit yourself to an hour a day or something.

[Swarms]

Yes you can, but you can't keep up with most guilds etc.. If you are fine strolling around not doing much, go for it, though I would suggest you other genres.

[Dark Severance]

Yes WoW can be enjoyed in small doses. WoW is a social game and if you aren't doing it with friends, it makes things seem like they take forever. We have people that log on to raid and we have people that do a couple quests and chat with others in vent and guild chat. But most of us are families, married couples, boyfriend/girlfriends playing together, a few parents mixed in with group of players who have been playing and hanging out for years.

What do you do for you relaxing time? Do you sit in front of the TV watching a movie? Go out to the movies? Go to game shop and spend money?

The way my wife and I look at it (we have 2 children). For us to go to the movies together it is $18.00 and that is if we don't buy popcorn and drinks. If we brought the children we're looking at easily over $25.00. That is just for a couple hours of enjoying a movie. We pay $30 for 2 accounts so as long as we spend more than 4 hours a month playing, we get our money's worth.

Like anything sure it can be addicting but if you can't pry yourself away from a game to eat, spend time with the family or do other things then there are entirely other social issues that need to be addressed that have nothing to do with WoW.

Our children get home from school, we spend some time with them, make sure they do homework. After that is done we get on and play from anywhere from 1-3 hours. We either do a few quests, run an instance or help some of friends. Then we have dinner, spend time with the children, put them to bed and spend time together. That is a normal evening. We don't play every night though, some weeks we get in 5 nights and other weeks maybe 2, just depends on what we have going on. Our guild does raiding on Friday nights and we go to that but since they are 10 man raids, we can't always go which is fine. We do other things.

That is the one thing I've liked about WoW. I can log in, do a few quests and turn them in about 40 minutes and log out. Granted I play on a PvE server. I do have PvP server characters for when I want to PvP but if you want to play the game then the PvE is where to do it casually. Don't have to worry about working on a quest and having some high level kill you. It's fun when you have high levels to return the favor but if you aren't playing with a lot of friends it eats up a lot of time.

Unlike EQ where you had to have a group to do anything. You waited around for 30 minutes trying to get people in a group and then spent time to get down into a dungeon to grind out exp. Or there is Lineage 2 where you are grinding exp and anyone can just kill you, possibly lose an item. WoW is the casual game. I don't have to talk to others if I don't want. I can level faster by doing quests than actually grinding. If you get to 70 you can do raids with the right guilds. Karazhan is only a 3 hour run but you don't have to stay for the whole thing, fight some bosses and get swapped out.

Yes there will be times your exp will feel like it doesn't move. The good thing about not being logged in, always log in a town or Inn so you gain rested bonus. That means every kill gives 200% exp as opposed to the 100%. So maybe your exp bar moves 2 bars as you finished up 6 quests. Then you go turn them and you've gained half a level another day or just walking to town and doing your turn in. Now that I know which quest areas to hit, what quests to do, I could log on for 2-4 hours a night and in a month easily get a character to 70, especially now with increase exp between level 20-60 and more quest exp. Unlike most MMO's where if you spent the same amount of time you'd be lucky to get half that.

The time killers are instances. That is where you will eat up all your time, especially in a PUG (pick up group). I hate them and won't group with people unless I join them, that is why being with a guild helps. 1 hour instance can easily turn into 4 hours. I don't bother with instances until 60+ because leveling just goes by too fast for me to spend farming items that I'll be taking off in a week.

When you want to take a break from leveling there are battlegrounds. My wife really likes doing those. PvP but with the way they are set up now, they go for about 5-60 minutes. The faster ones are Warsong, Arathi Basin and Eye of Storm. AV is usually 15-30 mins but can go to 60 mins if someone is turtling. So you get some pvp in, gain some marks, save up honor for your level 70 gear or if you wanted you could buy some of pvp gear. It has decent stats but honestly unless you are pvping or doing raiding, your gear won't matter much until you are 70.

[Ferrat]

casually with friends often work ok within 2 scenarioes

1. You play chars from lvl 1 up to 70 but doesn't play any end game stuff really and only enjoy PvP, problem with WoW PvE (aswell as PvP) is that it's build around a very simple system of reward carrots in the form of gear and nothing else, everything in WoW is gear / items and you can't get the best items in PvE if you ain't doing end game stuff with active players and therefor only PvP remains which with Arena acctually has given the casual player atleast a way of getting items.

2. You've done all the end game stuff and either just PvP of casually just gather random stuff doing quests and stuff for fun with mates since you got every piece of good gear there is and now you're farming Scarlet crusade set from SM instances or other useless sets just for fun looks.

[Dark Severance]

if you aren't in an active guild then the game can get to be a drag.. but as many others have said in this post already.. it's not worth it.. it's way too addictive.. and quite honestly.. too much work once you reach level 70.. raiding is work.. it's not really fun.. people get stressed like mad.. I speak of experience.. I was GuildMaster of 2 successful raiding guilds and it nearly cost me my health and my sanity. I had to quit as GM.. and I'm glad I did.. now after taking about 5 months off I'm re-rolling (started a new character) and only play a few hours a week (if that even) when I have absolutely nothing else to do! It's all about moderation.. if you can master that then your set

Before my wife and I had children we were avid raiders back in EQ. Now there was hard core raiding. There was no ghost form to walk back to your body or no penalty for death but paying for armor repairs. You had to run there and if a rogue or necromancer wasn't there for corpse runs and mobs popped, you had to clear them without your gear. Your gear was on your dead body so you always had a backup set in the bank and you lost exp for every death. Raids weren't 3-5 hours, they were 8-10 hour raid days.

Now we have children, we have responsibilities. After all if we don't work, I can't make money to play games. We both love to play computer games and old school table top miniature games like Battletech, Warhammer 40K.

We only play with our friends and people we've known online for years or real life friends and family. The rule of the guild is if you don't know someone for at least a year, not a real life friend of someone in the guild who can vouch for you then you can't get in. That keeps the drama to a minimum and the stress to a low level. I don't have to worry about people stealing things. I don't have to worry about someone rolling on an item to sell it, they'll pass if they don't need it as an upgrade. If someone gets out of hand I know who to talk to, who can smack them in real life.

Granted there are still fights here and there but what friends don't have disagreements. People cool down and it is back to gaming and good times.

[liquidfunk]

Both I and my Girlfriend love it. Granted I do play it a fair amount some days, but those are on my days off when I have nothing planned but being a slob. Normally I will play for 2 hours or so, more If I do an instance.

I find it a lot more fun just to hang about and chat to people, I tend to do around 2-3 quests a day, sometimes only even 1. The great thing about WoW is that you can spend 6 months getting to 60 (which I did) , and it doesn't matter, theres no time limit. Theres also no worry of your friends bragging about how fast they completed a game (which annoys me, because I take my time with games).

I wouldn't say I'm addicted, but I will say it's my favourite game. Just because it has awesome game mechanics, and you can have unlimited characters, talk to people from all over Europe (from the UK), and spend more time having fun that sitting on MSN waiting for someone to come online, or continuously refreshing Facebook in the hope that someone has replied to the comment you sent 3 weeks ago.

You can play WoW casually, sometimes I do go on just to chat to people in the guild, or the friends I have picked up on the way. Or even just wander around the cities looking at the high levels' armour!

Those are my thoughts.