How do those of you employed, married, and with children make time for WoW?
I’d love to play more WoW, but clearly I have higher priorities.
Any tips to slip in WoW time without sacrificing the other aspects of your life?
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Strict schedule. I balance everything I have going on with my kids and wife and set aside a few nights during the week where I can play guilt free. My wife and I enjoy doing our own things so we make sure we schedule that at the same time, so we have days available to spend together. On the weekends I tend to be an early riser so I play until around noon on Saturday and get every second Sunday to play all day if I choose. Communication is key, and the willingness to be flexible if needed.
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Having a guild or at least group of people to schedule stuff with. You’re looking to do a key or two at 8 o’clock, not get on at 8 then float around for 30 minutes before you even find a key.
Or battlegrounds. Or arenas. Anything, really. Having stuff figured out ahead of time helps.
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That’s life, my friend. But I commend you for doing it right.
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Man, I can manage to play being employed and married, but I can’t imagine myself being a good parent if I spent my time playing wow. If I had kids I think I’d have to give it up to focus on their proper upbringing.
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I don’t even have kids but I’ve cut back a ton on WoW since I switched job industries after the pandemic. As much as I love WoW, I feel like it is way harder to stay up to par on gear and push current content without the 12 hours a day grinding ability. lol
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One thing I really like about WOW is that if you are questing or working on one of the professions and something comes up you can get out of WOW pretty quickly.
Concentrate on the things you do solo and you can grab time here and there. It’s only a problem if you are working in teams and you have to decide if what ever the distraction is, it’s important enough to leave and let your team down.
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Prioritize what you want to do in the game since you already realized you won’t have the time to do everything and then slowly chip away at it until you achieve and then move onto the next.
Think of it as a saved game that is constantly being updated that you can just pick back up whenever you have some free time and it makes things considered easier imo.
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I find that that much like the things that need to get done, the fun things I’d like to do, never get done if I don’t schedule them in. Otherwise the free parts of the day inevitably and most quickly get eaten up by phone scrolling, netflix and just vegging out…
So throughout our week here in our family we have blocks of time dedicated to chores/maintenence/housework/paperwork and what have you, but also for family time/daddy’s alone time/daddy and son time and whatnot. I play WoW when my husband is playing with our son. He play’s Bayonetta when it’s my turn to spend time with him. And some days we all hang out as a family and go to the park or whatever. It works for us. 
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My dad plays wow, and has ever since his youngest (me) was 9 (in 2009). I think I can explain how he makes it work:
First of all, kids need their own dang hobbies lol. Usually what happened was, my dad would work, come home and make dinner, and then for the rest of the night, either play wow or watch a show with my mom and/or the rest of us. He made sure that he spent enough days doing the latter, rather than always playing wow till he went to bed.
Now, to be fair, this man does not run mythics or raids. He is a completely casual player.
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You should have qualified your question with being a “good” parent and spouse.
There’s folks I knew in past years that were married and had young kids and they dwarfed my play time as an unmarried person without kids. I can’t imagine that the marriage or the parenting is five star quality.
At least not over the long haul when someone is putting in routinely, 8 to 10 hour play sessions daily.
Finally aside from that you don’t need kids or a marriage to have to monitor your time.
I’m busier than many people with kids , why? They don’t care how they blow their time. Work. Study. Exercise. Cleaning. Checking in on ailing parents. Cooking. Then relax. Then decide if I want to play an hour or so each night. That’s my daily treadmill, except on weekends.
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Oh gods, that reminded me of a guild I was in like 10 years ago where this lady kept yelling at her two very young daughters to Shut up every 5 minutes on voice chat and she spent more time on the game than I did at the time. (I was 24 and working full time). I always felt bad for those two kids. But then again she wasn’t a good person in general either. god help anyone if they mentioned how uncomfotable it made them, she would yell them down and give them the “youre not a parent so you dont know what its like!” spiel
I can’t really give advice to the OP though, ive always struggled to form lasting relationships so no kids either. but hell, 34, full time job working from home, my own apartment and my cat. I can’t say im unhappy, gives me all the free time I need. Would be nice to share some good times with someone though but that can always change at any time.
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Play when your kids go to bed.
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From the people that I know, that seems to be the general way to do it. That or they just stop gaming altogether haha
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Yeah. It sux but such is life with so much responsibility lol. Eventually the kids get older and you can do whatever you want.
You’ll have to arrange something with your wife. Work out some sort of deal where from, just using this as an example, from 8pm to midnight on Saturday is your WoW time where she will have to watch the kids and before that you’ll watch the kids so she can go do something fun.
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I tend to avoid content which require significant time commitments for a specific block of time (raiding beyond LFR, Mythic+, etc).
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My partner plays with me, and we do it after the kids go to bed. Easy peasy, but we ain’t playing 30+ hours a week or anything.
Just create a mental priority list and don’t guilt yourself for wanting to enjoy some game/relax time. I tend to get very moody and frustrated when I do too much of one thing. So once I get some game time, along with throwing in some music or youtube videos, I naturally start to want to switch over to work. If IRL stuff comes up (e.g. babysitting, chores, social life) then I always prioritize that over WoW, and of course work commitments > game as well.
I think a part of it is delayed gratification. The game isn’t going anywhere, so focus on your life first.
Having kids is almost giving up your life.
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