Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Forked Thread: "The Death of the Imagination" re: World of Warcraft
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Foundry of Decay" data-source="post: 4367132" data-attributes="member: 846"><p>I'll weigh in here with my personal experience.</p><p></p><p>Now, keep in mind, this is just what both myself and a friend had noticed after roughly 2 or more years of playing warcraft. We weren't quite hard-core, but we definitely played the living daylights out of the game compared to any other activity.</p><p></p><p>In our case, it had a detrimental effect on two things: Our imagination, and to a lesser extent, our ability to focus on the creative process.</p><p></p><p>I'll speak mostly from my case though.</p><p></p><p>Before I had gotten deeply into WoW I was a pretty prolific artist in the commissions circle. I also ran several D&D games and while I hardly count myself as one of the most clever DM's/writers out there, I was pretty good at tossing various interesting challenges at my players. I thought about various characters quite a bit even while working, drew a ton of fantasy genre artwork in my off hours, and even planned to do a large amount of 'cardboard furniture' for the gaming mat (Something along the lines of WorldWorks products but in a much smaller production scale).</p><p></p><p>However, I had started to become hooked on Warcraft. I'm not one of those who blames the game for all evils in the world, I'm an adult, I made my decision.</p><p></p><p>However I hadn't realized that the more I played, the less interested I became in doing anything D&D related. In fact, I had a hard time even focusing on getting a storyline down, or thinking up the next interesting villain. After a while, I dropped plans to do the cardboard furniture thing, my campaigns invariably fell apart because I just couldn't come up with a storyline.. I mean REALLY couldn't think one up. It was like 2 years of writers block.</p><p></p><p>I found most of my thoughts to start shifting over to strategy in WoW. In fact I started to have those dreams where you close your eyes and your playing the game again. This became more severe over time in fact, however I found that I just accepted it and adjusted to having those dreams and daydreams as part of a normal process. Soon, everything else became a flicker of thought here, or a brief idea there.</p><p></p><p>When I and my friend quit playing about six months ago, it took about 2 weeks to 'detox'. I'd still get those dreams, I'd still daydream about running in raids and whatnot, or worse, it would just be images of me randomly running my 'toon' around killing critters.. Utterly mindless stuff.</p><p></p><p>About.. I'd say a month later, I started becoming interested in reading again.. I hadn't fully read a book in those 2+ years. I started to get these little inklings in my head of fantasy characters and storylines again. </p><p></p><p>In time I actually started to create again. My imagination quite literally went into overdrive and I started churning out storylines and artwork like mad. I seem to be back on a regular path again. I can come up with intriguing NPC's that aren't just the 'I run up and smack him' variety. I've been really going loopy on interesting settings for things and started to write out in detail a floating city of industry that I'd had hovering in my mind again.</p><p></p><p>Moreover I find that I can actually focus for more than a fleeting moment on a single story idea or character idea again. I can actually sit and read again which is something I literally couldn't do after playing 6+ hours of WoW a day (Raids were longer, of course).</p><p></p><p>So in <em>my case</em> (emphasized) I really did become an unimaginative blob because of the constant point and click play of Warcraft. My mind became too used to the repetitive tasks and soon started to just shut down anything but basic functions when it came to the creative centers. There seemingly was some psychological shut down that occurred over my time playing online.</p><p></p><p>So that's my take. Again, its just what I've gone through. Every person will have different experiences and probably will have minds that multi-task better than mine could.</p><p></p><p>Warcraft is definitely a cool game. It definitely has a big expansive world. However in the actual game itself, there is very, very little true storyline (You have to read the books or online lore for any deep storyline). Its literally just a series of fetch quests strung together with killing bigger things in bigger raids, and even the raids aren't really much of a deep story.. You all learn tactics and soon the boss becomes trivial. He's just a giant cash machine full of bits of database numbers that make you slightly more powerful than before.</p><p></p><p>That's my toss of the copper though.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Foundry of Decay, post: 4367132, member: 846"] I'll weigh in here with my personal experience. Now, keep in mind, this is just what both myself and a friend had noticed after roughly 2 or more years of playing warcraft. We weren't quite hard-core, but we definitely played the living daylights out of the game compared to any other activity. In our case, it had a detrimental effect on two things: Our imagination, and to a lesser extent, our ability to focus on the creative process. I'll speak mostly from my case though. Before I had gotten deeply into WoW I was a pretty prolific artist in the commissions circle. I also ran several D&D games and while I hardly count myself as one of the most clever DM's/writers out there, I was pretty good at tossing various interesting challenges at my players. I thought about various characters quite a bit even while working, drew a ton of fantasy genre artwork in my off hours, and even planned to do a large amount of 'cardboard furniture' for the gaming mat (Something along the lines of WorldWorks products but in a much smaller production scale). However, I had started to become hooked on Warcraft. I'm not one of those who blames the game for all evils in the world, I'm an adult, I made my decision. However I hadn't realized that the more I played, the less interested I became in doing anything D&D related. In fact, I had a hard time even focusing on getting a storyline down, or thinking up the next interesting villain. After a while, I dropped plans to do the cardboard furniture thing, my campaigns invariably fell apart because I just couldn't come up with a storyline.. I mean REALLY couldn't think one up. It was like 2 years of writers block. I found most of my thoughts to start shifting over to strategy in WoW. In fact I started to have those dreams where you close your eyes and your playing the game again. This became more severe over time in fact, however I found that I just accepted it and adjusted to having those dreams and daydreams as part of a normal process. Soon, everything else became a flicker of thought here, or a brief idea there. When I and my friend quit playing about six months ago, it took about 2 weeks to 'detox'. I'd still get those dreams, I'd still daydream about running in raids and whatnot, or worse, it would just be images of me randomly running my 'toon' around killing critters.. Utterly mindless stuff. About.. I'd say a month later, I started becoming interested in reading again.. I hadn't fully read a book in those 2+ years. I started to get these little inklings in my head of fantasy characters and storylines again. In time I actually started to create again. My imagination quite literally went into overdrive and I started churning out storylines and artwork like mad. I seem to be back on a regular path again. I can come up with intriguing NPC's that aren't just the 'I run up and smack him' variety. I've been really going loopy on interesting settings for things and started to write out in detail a floating city of industry that I'd had hovering in my mind again. Moreover I find that I can actually focus for more than a fleeting moment on a single story idea or character idea again. I can actually sit and read again which is something I literally couldn't do after playing 6+ hours of WoW a day (Raids were longer, of course). So in [I]my case[/I] (emphasized) I really did become an unimaginative blob because of the constant point and click play of Warcraft. My mind became too used to the repetitive tasks and soon started to just shut down anything but basic functions when it came to the creative centers. There seemingly was some psychological shut down that occurred over my time playing online. So that's my take. Again, its just what I've gone through. Every person will have different experiences and probably will have minds that multi-task better than mine could. Warcraft is definitely a cool game. It definitely has a big expansive world. However in the actual game itself, there is very, very little true storyline (You have to read the books or online lore for any deep storyline). Its literally just a series of fetch quests strung together with killing bigger things in bigger raids, and even the raids aren't really much of a deep story.. You all learn tactics and soon the boss becomes trivial. He's just a giant cash machine full of bits of database numbers that make you slightly more powerful than before. That's my toss of the copper though. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Forked Thread: "The Death of the Imagination" re: World of Warcraft
Top