Wow has helped me cope with my depression ever sense i’ve been in my teens i am now 28.
A lot of people that play wow / mmos have a hard life, i have came to realize this over the past 18 years of playing mmorpgs.
We all got our problems, and we are here to forget them for a few hours 
^this.
It’s sad to see how many people have ruined their lives over a video game. I don’t know how many “grown” men and women I have met in games that still live at home with their parents and still have a dead end job due to the time they waste on video games. Video games should never be put in front of real life.
Theatre and DnD enthusiast, I am still a nerd to my core, with a tad bit of tea between BBC Startrek episodes and rewatching Ready player One for the 20th time… and anime on Saturdays.
I’d probably be doing everything else I currently do, but more often. I don’t think it would change very much.
I’d probably be an astronaut or a CEO of some company or an entrepreneur.
I’m a life-long game player. I started playing computer games as soon as I had a home computer (in the 1980s). I used to have hundreds of floppy disks with games on them. My children played computer games too. One of my adult children still plays.
Before 2002 my primary hobby was dancing. I got pretty good at the Argentine Tango. Before that I was very good at West Coast Swing. Before that I was good at East Coast Swing. But that is from around 1985 to 2002. Before that I was busy raising two young children and working full-time.
So if WoW stopped, I would keep playing games. I would find other games to play.
If the video game crash in 1983 or whatever killed the medium entirely, forever, I’m sure I’d be a notably different person. Most of my social circle revolves around video games currently. Obviously that wouldn’t be the case if no one had thought about video games in 40 years.
I think there’s 3 options for what might fill that time if it wasn’t video games:
I’d say Programming, but realistically my interest in that was tied to Gaming. Even if I was going for a more generic Computer Science degree because I didn’t want to get corned into specifically some kind of “Game Design” certificate, my interest in programming kind of died when I realized how the video game industry functions. I was going to say I could see myself exploring it as a personal hobby with no career plans, but without gaming being a thing, I seriously doubt I’d have any interest in it.
Dead. Most likely dead.
President of the United States
Insane asylum. 
Honestly, it would be very, very different…
My internet life would have consisted of internet chat rooms mainly, and might not have made as many friends.
To be fair, many of the similar events in my life may still have occurred, as quite a lot of people I been out with I didn’t meet on video games, though ironically one person I met completely separate from WoW did mention that they do in fact like WoW.
I wouldn’t have had some of the most toxic experiences that I had on wow in 2020 during BFA during that year of lockdown…but in fairness, that wouldn’t have then pushed further to FF14, so by the time an old flame came back into my life, I was taking them outside of wow…and then had that more positive experience with the FF14 community. Don’t get me wrong, my wow experience in 9.1 has been somewhat more pleasant, as with different things for people to do in wow, has resulted in lot happier players.
Either dead or perhaps more of a writer / artist if I didn’t have games for an outlet. For video games in general not just wow
I played tabletop wargames against myself before video games were invented. If video games disappeared, I’d go back to the wargames.
Being a Gen Xer, I’ve spent a great deal of time on video games in my life that I certainly could’ve spent more productively. There were some years when I gave up gaming entirely because it was impacting my real life way too negatively. Moderation in hobbies has never been a strong point of mine.
But any theories as to how my life might have turned out differently really hinge on whether (a) I would have spent that saved time and money more productively without video games or (b) I would have just found some other hobby that was equally unproductive. I’d like to hope for the former, but the latter is probably the more likely scenario.
As far as escapist vices go though, video gaming is probably one of more benign ones that a person could choose to pursue.
Id probably be addicted to gardening.
I think honestly a lot of the same experiences in my life may have still occurred, but I would feel a lot differently about things then I do now…
Think of this way, I’ve had some horrible toxic bad experiences with friendships in wow, and I find myself getting verbally attacked and blamed for stuff, but in FF14 I get enough commendations to get the Everybody’s Darling achievement, so when that happens I know the problem isn’t just me, it didn’t help also that last expansion everyone was in lockdown, and was on wow to seek out friendship and company.
Problem was the people around me on wow at the time were irritable and nasty, that was a result of both wow sucking bad at the time and the corona lockdowns…I am so glad those people are gone from my life now. It didn’t help also that in BFA didn’t have guild recruitment addon working, so annoying people were harder to replace with new members and whatnot…
The events of my wow life during corona lockdown did have quite an impact on me, where I really pushed myself to make sure that I would go that extra mile to make sure I only had good lovely people in my life, get that social network going…thinking about it, I might not have been pushed to do that if I didn’t have to deal with the most negative toxic people in wow last year haha,
Wow still sucked for me bad during 9.0, having an old friend come back into my life only to ditch me again back in March, but it was since March this year that new people did come into my life that have been much better for my mental health and well being…
Was part of an old church group where my old pastor was telling me to get off social media for 30 days, as if that was the source of all my problems, but I did the exact opposite for 30 days, I went nuts adding randoms on wow, and on other social sites, which led to me making quite a few real life friends that I wouldn’t have made otherwise, and at least 3/4 people that I know I could turn to for help if I was ever desperate.
Church group would blame social media for not being treated nice, but for me social media like wow is a teacher on how some people in life will treat you, that I know sadly a lot of people will ditch your friendship the moment they get into a relationship, sad but true…and they will look up for reasons to make it your fault while they ditched you, and blame you, but when in reality is it all happens shortly after they start dating someone, a bit sus.
In reality though being social is simply a numbers game, it’s only a matter of time before you meet that nice person that gets you and treats you right…though interestingly, although I might still be somewhat upset about being ditched by some people, because other people came into my life shortly after that are much better for my mental health and well being…
I mean it’s like the Jailer says…every soul has their purpose, and the friends that ditched me and buggered off have fulfilled theirs. Sounds brutal, but this attitude helps me deal with loss and rejection much better.
My life wouldn’t be too much different. I was always interested in electronics alongside gaming, so I’ve tinkered around with them - actually soldering components onto circuit boards, and I’ve been doing this since I was a kid.
I’ve also been interested in animation. I never learned how to draw, but today I’m messing around with Blender, Daz3D, and similar apps for 3D modeling so I can learn to flesh out my OCs in detail.
probably working a 2nd full time job cause where i live cost of living vs how much most people here make is not enough to “make a living” it is a norm here that people work 2-3 jobs
I’d probably dedicate more time to archery. Online learning. I rarely “just” play video games anymore, I’m usually trying to learn something useful on another screen. Food preservation, IT stuff for work, you name it.
I’d probably remember a bit more of it though -_-