I’ve seen good things said about games and mental health, and I’ve seen bad things. Which one do you trust? I think it is good because lots of depressed ppl stuck around for WoW instead of the do suicide, as seen on threads here.
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obviously, too much of any video game is bad for your mental health, WoW included.
it’s a healthy distraction from stress for others
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Life is all about a balance. WoW is a good place to relax, but enjoy life too.
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It depends entirely on the person, their habits, how much time they spend on it, how much they take things to heart…
Basically, there’s an absolute ton of factors and there’s no real definitive answer.
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Wow has one purpose, to keep you addicted and to keep you subbed. The have pushed addiction gameplay with wow to the limit, titanforgimg, mythic plus always trying to roll higher push further. Its very bad for your mental health. WoW is the Mcdonalds of the video game world. I unsubbed 1 month into bfa as I can see the full force of addiction they are trying to push even tho I had a 6 month sub.
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Careful dear, you might hurt yourself stretching that far.
only if you keep taking the blue pill
If ANY thing causes you to neglect other important aspects of your life and thus makes you unhappy? You need to step away from that obsession and figure out how to keep things where you need them to be to be happy.
Video games can be bad for you, yeah. But almost anything can be bad for you.
Honestly, I am starting to feel like my cell phone is bad for me. I need to work on putting that thing down. For me it isn’t social stuff, it’s information. I am interested in almost everything and having a tool available that lets me read and watch videos on all kinds of topics is just addictive for me. Just today I have read about three sports, several video games, cooking with miso, politics, various kinds of scarves, how people are having less sex in Japan, and the music Cat Stevens made before he was Cat Stevens. Plus I watched videos on cooking and dog breeds.
Anyway, that’s me. But each of us has to decide how much is too much and whether we are doing right by ourselves and others.
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I’m more surprised that you remembered all those things that you read today.
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Sad commentary on life:
Thanksgiving morning, my friend and I were in one of the horde cities cooking seasonal food for the 5 dailies in hope of getting that puny looking chicken battle pet.
While we were waiting for the cooking window to create-all cranberries or pumpkin pies, I noticed a couple of characters sitting in the chairs at the “turkey chair” or “stuffing chair” etc.
I got a very real wave of sadness wash over me. I told my friend on the phone “Some people actually go out and cook Thanksgiving meals for the less fortunate, we’re sitting here in a game cooking food trying to get a puny chicken pet, and look at those poor people sitting at a table passing ‘food’ around when they should be at the real table with their family and friends…”
My friend and I got a moment of silence then pretty much said a symbolic “oh well” and continued cooking.
Happy ending alert: I got the puny chicken battle pet in one of the reward boxes so I no longer have to cook seasonal food!
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We can’t outright say this one game is definitely bad or good for you. People will do what they will with this kind of entertainment. Some people will sit and play for hours and hours until they crap their own pants or faint from lack of food, others will drop in every day, play for 30 minutes, and be done – but they do so for years and years.
In general, I find WoW to be a nice relaxing reprieve. Sometimes I’ll just fly around dragonblight because I find it beautiful.
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This.
I think it really depends on the person. Weak willed, no ambition or desires or maybe predisposed to depression, any game like WoW can be bad.
For me, it’s good. I’ve had a VERY stressful week at my job and WoW has been my escape.
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I keep my kids away as long as I can. It’s not good for them. Anything electronic is anti social and unhealthy for people growing up. Example, Facebook is completely useless and has done far more harm to humanity then good.
Now as far as adults go, that’s completely different. Imagine our poor military guys deployed to crappy countries or out on ships months at a time if they didn’t have these worlds to disappear into at the end of the day. I’ve done it, it sucks.
There’s a ton of other jobs it helps too. I’m a truck driver currently on a 2.5 month trip away from home. You can bet your *** Azeroth is keeping me sane every day after a 13 hour workday.
(Honorable mention, Netflix)
This game is an MMO, with a wide array of things to lose yourself in, it’s brought out a lot of the ‘‘addictive’’ side of people that simple stay playing for the sake of it. Everything in moderation I believe. It’s an escape, a place to pretend your someone else for the time you play.
There is good and bad ,as well as ugly ,in everything in the world and in gaming.For people with mental issues this is a challenge ,since wow is a MMO it will bring with it the same issues from real life into it because people bring there ideas of how the game should be.Some use it to relax in ,others use it to as excitement,yet there are those that create chaos ,these are all forms of entertainment wither we like them or not.
With that a depressed person can handle some of these entertainment of others while others the stress can be overwhelming so they would either quite or go off the deep end.We can only hope that when they do play an MMO that they do realize what they are getting into and have support when they do run into a situation that would trigger that reaction.
…As weirdly worded as the topic is, I will say that WoW gave me a lot of friendships and experiences I probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. I think that’s what makes it special, it being more than just an enjoyable gameplay experience.
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Hello! I have a variously diagnosed mood disorder that, whatever it actually is, strongly features an aspect of clinical depression.
I don’t think one can generalize about a game’s mental health effects. Too much depends upon the individual, their general state, circumstances outside the game, experience in-game and so on ad infinooty.
I definitely have escapist tendencies. I also have a tendency to care way too much about random things. For me, getting into a game scene can be good in some ways, bad in others. When I am getting actual moments of irrational rage or anxiety over a game, I have learned to step away.
I can’t say I have ever had suicidal thoughts over WoW, but neither has it ever been my life-line. That has been real-life relationships, from family and friends to even something as banal as “but who would feed the cat?”
In any case, I think casting blame or setting unreasonable expectations on games or gaming for mental health is a bad idea. Games are entertainment, and can help or hinder, regardless.
And what about the people that spend hours and hours every weekend watching sporting events like football games? Those people could be considered “addicted” as well. Not to online gaming. But sports. And what about the ones that do so called fantasy football?
Talk about not being in reality when the players are rooting to see how their “team” does.
I came back to wow “hardcore” in WoD after playing on and off since vanilla. Came back to disctract myself while getting clean from alcohol. WoW did work wonders in filling the void, but, has become another addiction in and of itself. I call it harm reduction, and in that regard wow has worked wonders for me. However, there have always been, and now currently more than ever they have doubled down upon the Skinner behaviorism, which is tremendously dangerous for an addictive personality.
Is that my fault? Is that blizz fault? Gaming as a whole? Whos to say… But it is present and shouldnt be down played as much as it is.
BFA is garbage in my opinion. SO FAR, the worst expansion by an incredible margin. But im still here. Its not because i like it. I think that is the case for many people who make “im quitting” threads. They genuinely want to but cant bring themselves to out of addiction. I’ve made many a quitting thread, only to hit cancel before posting because i knew i wouldn’t and i knew how the community would react to it.
On a positive note, the “culture” seems to be waking up to all this gambling nonsense that is literally everywhere in gaming right now.
It’s a great timewaster, and i’m still able to get things done in the real world. It’s not affecting school, and rarely affects my social life.