This really is directed towards the married or family gamers out there.
Let me ask you if this sounds familiar, my friends.
You get up, get ready and head to work.
You bust your butt all day, maybe get in some blog reading time or writing time or simply email or feedreading time, check some webcomics, troll a forum or two, but mostly, you work.
You get off of work, you head on home. You come in the door, greet your family warmly, and figure out what the plan is for the night. Who’s making dinner, what’s it going to be, do we have anything special going on. Are we going to the gym, friends coming over, lawn needs mowed, etc?
You hop into WoW for 15 to 20 minutes to flip through your characters, check to see if you have mail from anyone, check AH results, maybe throw up some new stuff in the AH, check for that rare item or recipe.
During this time you say hi to your guildies online… and then feel rushed because they want to do stuff or want to know when you’re gonna be available to do stuff, but you still have dinner to get ready and things to do.
You log off, do the dinner, spend some nice time with your family. Watch a TV show, play with your kids, hit the gym, clean the living room, stare forlornly at the closet you need to tear apart to prepare for the remodeling project this weekend. Whatever.
Your son wants to play video games, your daughter wants to watch Miley Cyrus lead a double life, and you can now log into the game to do something with your friends.
You log in. It’s 7:15 PM… and you’ve been wanting to run an instance, but you really need to log off no later than 9 PM to start getting your kids ready for bed, you really should be in bed no later than 10 PM yourself to get some sleep before work, and you are now faced with trying to organise an instance run with a group with only 1 hour and 45 minutes to run it.
Anything challenging is now right out the window… and even if you get started building a team immediately, and everyone is willing to go, the chances that you will make it to the last boss before bedtime for your family is somewhere between slim to none.
So… pop quiz, hotshot. Do you make the attempt at an instance run anyway, or do you say “Heck with it” and do dailies or farm Primals or run a low level friend through a quick instance in Deadmines?
What do you do?
Me, I’m falling more and more on the “Maybe we’ll find time later this week” side of the tracks.
And I’m sure someone is going to assume I’m whining about not having time to play, which, hello, I’m not. I play plenty as it is, and I could stand to cut down on my playtime quite a bit.
I just seem to log in at night feeling that I should be able to fit in an instance run, I think that it won’t be that big a deal, but when the time actually comes that I sit down, log into Vent, fire up the WoW and start looking for folks that want to run… it’s already damn near too late.
I’m wondering if, in my own situation, it would be better just to plan right up front that, except for special occasions, I just figure on not doing any serious group activities except on weekends.
I left a raiding guild because I didn’t have time to raid, and although I seem to be on a lot anyway, the truth is that I leave my desk very often to go spend time with my son, to see what he’s up to, to make sure that the video game he’s playing is okay… and a lot of the time, he’s actually playing with me, farming the ore node for me or playing legos on my desk with me… I may seem ‘present’, but I sure as heck ain’t ‘raid ready’. My attention is very definitely split. Which is fine solo, but unacceptable when grouping.
How about you? Do you even try to do an instance after work in the evenings? And if someone does ask you to run an instance, do you feel torn between wanting to do something with your friends, and wanting to get some rest and family time like an adult?
One thing that has helped me is a static night set aside for instancing. Currently, that night is Tuesday with my Pox group. I, like you, have found that it’s fairly easy to play WoW and pay attention to what’s going on around me if I’m farming or leveling.
Where the rub comes in is when you have to be glued to the screen because others are depending on you. At that point, you no longer can interact with the real people around you and have isolated yourself to playing with your online friends.
More to the point…lol, perhaps what you can do is set up a night (Thursday, plz plz plz) that is set aside for running an instance. That way everyone knows that if they want to run an instance, they can lobby for it through the forums to be run on Thursday.
After setting that up, run it like a raid. Whoever signed up on the forums needs to be instance ready, at the stone, and good to go on time. Then, you don’t have to worry about getting the group together and wasting time. Pull the first mob at 7 pm server (Central), and you can easily be done in two hours.
Looking back at this post, I suppose I should have just emailed you..lol.
Dax
My playtime is quite fixed, arranged around bedtimes, food time and TV. So I always take the dailies/farming/messing around option when I know I just can’t commit the time. Things so often go wrong in instances needing extra time and while my guildies are ok with regular sudden AFKs, I want to see the end of that instance just as much as my party members and I reckon I’d frustrate myself not being able to finish up.
I do however have an arranged night “off” as it were, when I am free to sign up to a raid or arrange a 5 man, so thankfully I get to do some of this stuff too.
I tend to fall into the “instance when I can, but usually not today” category. Especially since I generally go not have any focused time to do so until 9p as it is. I do not have a problem staying up a little later, but 11p is basically my cutoff.
So… two hours to find/get to/run an instance per night. Assuming I start right away. Yep… looks like I will get it tomorrow, then!
Alternate Fridays, however, are dedicated focus nights starting at 7:30p. Generally, those have been my Horde ZA runs, but as Sidhe and Barrhona grows, I can see those being instance/Kara runs instead.
Scheduling ahead of time does tend to help me, as I can more easily con some additional time out of the wife (i.e. “I have something planned” as opposed to “I am just messing around”). But as we know, scheduling those runs and making them happen is a bit difficult.
Since the late 60’s on my pally I’ve been running instances with an enhance shammy. He is the leader of another guild and it just seems whatever group we put together is golden and we breeze through instances often without a single wipe. Instances that normally take 1.5 hrs to run we are doing in 45mins to an hour.
This presents a similar problem since we generally run later at night in that after the first run I’m so pumped up and it went so fast I feel I have time to run a second one… often I don’t have time but make the run anyway. I feel it really draining and it comes down to nights like tonight where I feel I need to take the night off to spend with my family.
I usually get home from work before my wife and hop on for a bit to do dailies, farm a bit or whatever and then try and get off. I log on around 9pm or so and its so tempting to get a quick group together and be off. (I love tanking on my pally so much more then tanking on my druid atleast for 5 mans)
So I have found the time to do the runs… its just later then I would like to make them.
Time being limited (your nights sound somewhat like mine), the difficulty I have is getting into a good group in a reasonable time. BM can take 1 hr, but you might allow 1.5 for distractions and silliness. Longer runs might take 2.5 hours, maybe 3. That means I pretty much only instance on weekends, which makes progression slower.
I don’t like it, but I like the non-wow things that keep me away from keyboard more. family, life, mates, etc are the cross that my wow toons just have to bear. I feel your pain though.
To resolve I try to plan ahead and let everyone know that I’ll be “nerding it up” tonight.
I usually don’t honestly.
Raid nights are Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 6:00p-10:00p server.. aside from that I typically don’t play wow.
Sucks on 2 counts, 1 no dailies, no incoming cash and no “play” time (aka work work work during raids.) And 2 if I do manage to squeeze in a login on an off night.. i then feel like i have to squeeze in as much time as i can and it’s like getting your hand caught in the cookie jar.. if you would just have taken one cookie you’d been fine but nooo you gotta go back.. gotta get another cookie.. Hey honey look i got one of my alts to 46.. what what do you mean the babys walking.. son of a’
The main problem with wow and family is theres no pause.. sure a “hey baby fell off the roof brb” is good now n again but keep that up, and your gunna get flagged as “that gnome with a kid and he’ll be afk the whole instance” (and no my boy cant get on the roof yet.. and i was there for his first steps :P but i digress.)
Family likes it better when i play Console games. (read *pause*)
Wife wants alone time.
Kids want attention.
Guild wants to down new bosses.
Cats want a lap.
Work wants their tps reports.
Somethings gotta give.. and in the end its my wife.
She watches the kids for raids, she lets me play on the occasional off night, she hates wow but understands it via proximity. (she did get a hunter to 36, but just quit.. QUIT how the hell??)
But ya back to the point, i used to schedule a non raid play night with friends but that has since fallen by the wayside.. currently i do my playing on the weekends in the AM. and some days its all morning and others i gotta get that baby off the roof.. but still thats “me” time the rest of my time goes to family and raiding, and some may say raiding is me time.. to that i reply Bah you dont know the meaning of team.
B, I think you need to go back and read the SD Charter. :) There shouldn’t be torn feelings because SD is about real life first, game second or third or wherever else it may end up on a person’s list.
We’re big kids (except Dax..he’s such a baby…). We can make instance runs ourselves. :) Would we like you and Cassie to come along? Of course! But as all Sidhe Devils know, family and RL take priority. We all understood that when we asked to join up. We all knew what we were getting into.
I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it man. I think Dax has a good point though. If you want to run stuff, schedule runs. Make certain nights instance runs and let people show up, sign up, sell their soul, whatever works for them. Much to yours and Cassie’s credit, the Devils have grown to where there are a decent amount of people on and many are up and coming fast. We have multiple healers, multiples tanks, and everything in between. Hell, last night alone..on a weeknight no less..you almost had enough to start a Kara run. I think that’s something to be damn proud of.
The bottom line is, it’ll all work out however it works out. The Devils are about real life first and not feeling bad about putting it first. So don’t feel bad! :)
I’ve negotiated a scheme with my family. This means that I’ll participate in 25 man raids to times a week at a decent time (around 7.30 and onwards).
Two evenings a week I won’t touch the computer, not even for checking mail or anything, just giving my family my full attention.
The remaining three nights I’ll play, but no earlier than 10pm, which is when my kids and husband usually are preparing to sleep. I stay up alone for a couple of hours. Sometimes I’ll do dailies and farm, sometimes I’ll run an instance with guildies, there are a few others with late habits because of job or family.
My playing scheme means that I’ll sacrifice a bit of my sleep, which I’m aware of isn’t healthy in the long run.
I can’t say my family is altogether happy with the scheme, they think two times a week of raiding is too much, since they know it takes my whole attention for several hours. However, it’s a compromise that we can live with right now.
Usually I simply don’t.
If it do it’s usually late. My wife and I both get up for work at 3 am. My oldest daughter needs picked up from work at 9:45. If everyone else is in bed by about 8pm or so I hop on and try to build a quick group, however it pugs often don’t want to hear about the 15 minute afk I will need 3/4 way through the run to go get her and guildies are usually already doing something. So I end up doing dailies or working on alts.
If I do get something together, and do get them to agree on my afk (easier with the priest than the hunter) I still end up not getting to bed till 11 or so, sometimes later.
Everything has a price. I try not to take time from family to play, I pay with lost sleep.
Well, that sounds pretty much like me, except for the fact that if the missus and I get to play any wow at all, it’s more like 1-2 hours on the weekend, playing on low-level alts so that it’s not such a big deal if we have to stop suddenly.
We have a daughter who will be 1 year old next month, and once she was born, it ended most of our wow playing.
I was never much of a Raider to begin with – at one time, I was in a guild that I ran ZG and UBRS with, oh, maybe a total of 6 times together… and then I transferred servers to play with my fiancé, joined her guild, which never really seemed to have time for us to join their instance runs, and then it eventually fell apart, and now all of our characters are in a guild we started just to have all of our characters in, and share a guild bank.
The only thing that I’m disappointed in is the fact that I never get to see any instances now – there’s never any time to play long enough to run one, especially not a PUG. Since we’ve made it to Outland, and I’ve been trying to follow all the lore, everywhere I look there’s some boss encounter, or some quest that takes place in an instance that sounds really interesting, but I know I’ll never get to see it. I’ve completed Ramparts on two different characters, and I think Skethekk Halls with my main a long time ago. We also used to do all the Sunwell Dailies, but then there became too many of them, and we couldn’t get them all done in the short time we had to play, and stopped trying altogether.
As our daughter has gotten older, she requires more and more attention, which means that it’s looking like it won’t be too long before we get to play an hour a month, instead of a week. But if one thing is going to be cut, it will be wow, since it’s not that important in the grand scheme of things. I’ve sort of mentally conditioned myself to play with ‘blinders’ on, whenever I do get a chance to play, automatically abandoning quests that require entering an instance, reading about events and bosses and instance/raid content on WoWWiki, because I know that I will not get to see any of that content, at least not for a very, very long time – maybe someday the little one will help her dad clear Karazhan on level 150 characters.
Me and Wulfa schedule in advance and take turns. On nights where she wants to run an Instance with someone…then me and the Orclette go play in another room and she gets no around 6:30pm and stays up until aboue 10:30pm giving her a nice solid 4 hour block.
On nights where we want to both play we plan on staying up to crazy ungodly hours(like say 11pm) and we simply wait for the Orclette to hit bedtime(~8pm).
Of course we’re living in a really small town where we don’t really know anyone so our evenings mostly consist of get home, eat, decide on who gets to read/play tonight and play with orclette.
To be honest, it’s become increasingly difficult to balance progression raiding with the rest of what’s going on in my life, and I’m not sure it’d work at all if I had a family. I work the typical 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM job, take care of most of the cooking, cleaning and shopping in my apartment and still somehow log on every night to raid from 10 PM – 1:30 AM EST, sometimes earlier for farming/dicking around purposes.
A few things make this sort of lifestyle possible:
1) I don’t have kids.
2) My significant other is also my tanking partner-in-crime, and we spend much of our online time together.
3) For a long time I was out of work and could take care of just about everything going on in the apartment. My new schedule coupled with raiding necessitates the boyfriend pitching in a LOT more.
4) We don’t have cable.
5) A lot of major “chores” (i.e. me cleaning everything, being OCD, etc.) goes on during the weekends, and that’s also when our friends are available for hang-outs as well.
6) Raiding every night occupies a very set schedule that, after awhile, becomes habit. We also raid unusually late for EST folks, which allows for a lot more evening time than most.
It’s still tiring. If you’re not someone who can function on plus or minus 5 hours of sleep a night, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m constantly weighing the “cost” of raiding against what I really get out of it. For now though, I still mostly enjoy it, especially since the boy and I occupy MT/OT positions.
Dailies and alt work during the week. Kara early on Saturday and Sunday morning. And I try to fit in SSC/Mag/ZA in the afternoon…on weekends.
My alt Rogue hasn’t done an instance yet…it’s really kind of pointless. I can get her into our Kara group as soon as she’s 68 for some upgrades.
I am lucky in that most things are scheduled pretty late for me since I am on a west coast server and raids/etc. don’t start until 6p server which is 9p my time.
My family goes to bed before 9pm (usually) and so I am free to do whatever I want after that. I don’t wake up all that early so going until midnight or 1am isn’t such a big deal during the week and later on the weekends. If you ask certain people, I’m completely nuts and I don’t disagree. I find time to do the other things I want to do in my life on the weekends or before 9pm.
My girlfriend thinks I’m playing too much WoW as it is, so I tend to stick to questing with a friend for two short hours a couple days a week. No raiding, no instancing (as I can never be sure, the lady decides I really need to pay attention to something other than the screen..)
Not complaining either, but sometimes I’m a touch jealous of folks who can do instances. Then again, I wouldn’t trade running instances to cuddling up, so…
Let’s just say I’m impressed you are able to way more than just spend time with the one loved one and still play the odd instance =)
I’ve discovered it is best not to play in the evenings. I cook dinner, hang out with my four year old outside, watch some light tv with my husband. Sometimes he plays, sometimes not. It is nice to concentrate on my son on the nights I’m getting him ready for bed — last night we sat down to go through a kid’s magazine together. The tail end of that process is when raid invites go out, so I’m usually alternating between teeth brushing and final hugs with checking on how things are going. My son usually falls asleep just as the raid begins, also at 9 p.m. (3 hrs, Sun-Thur). And my husband has his own routine — treadmill, reading, junk tv. I miss instances with my friends, but I sometimes catch an afternoon run, and fortunately have the time in the day for leveling/farming/ah/getting together raid materials/etc. And some of my close friends have moved on to Conan anyway. I consciously don’t ask for more guild responsibilities, I depend on only being needed during scheduled times. That is also why I’m dps. The scheduled nature of raiding has actually worked out better for me because I don’t linger in the game longer hoping something fun comes up.
I have one day of the week set for gaming, be it wow, EVE or another game. That is the day if fit instancing. With wife & kids there is little time else except the odd hour you get now and then.
like most here, I would suggest a dedicated day to run isntances, if not weekends. My own schedule is 9pm Est-11:30 or so. I start after the sproglings go to sleep, and midnight is my cut-off if I want to feel rested in the AM for work.
Welcome to casual WoWing! :) You are most definitely not alone!
I haven’t run an instance in… months. With a 3-year-old my play time can be pretty much interrupted at any time. I know there’s some people who don’t have a problem going AFK in a group, but I don’t want to subject someone else who likely has limited playtime as well to that.
I’ve pretty much resigned myself to soloing either doing dailies, leveling an alt or running battlegrounds. For some reason I don’t feel nearly as bad abandoning a BG team if I have to.
I used to play into the night, but anymore I’d frequently rather get some sleep around 10 or 11. Must be getting old.
I only do instances on guild-nights, when there isn’t enough people for kara, that’s 8pm-midnight, wednesday/sunday, other nights, if the missus allows(she doesn’t understand my gaming at all, won’t even try to play herself) I play after the kids are in bed, which is usually around 8pm, or 9 if it’s not a schoolnight, I can then play for about 3-4 hours, and be ready to at any time leave the computer if the kids wake up, therefore, no instances.
You hit this one on the head. I’ve been married almost 9 years, playing wow for almost 3 years, have 2 70’s and a crapton of alts ranging from lvl 6 all the way into the 50s. It gets one step worse for me, I’m now playing on multiple servers, trying to stay in touch with guildies on horde side, alliance side, and not get the two confused as to run into the opposite factions towns, sheesh. If I was a raider right now, I’d kill myself, and reroll a rogue or something, cause I couldn’t handle it all!
Trying to balance real life, with wow time is a tough call. I usually end up running instances on the weekends, and occationally on weeknights, if they are scheduled in advance. For me to log in, run an instance, and still have family time is tough on most nights. This is why you will never hear me called a “Hardcore” wow player. I’m definatly somewhere on the softer/casual-core end of the spectrum. Anywho, back to the work.
Even if work=epic fail.
~Sy a.k.a. Alg the Sidhe Devil
Hubby and I are in the same raiding guild. Raid time is after the kids go to bed, so we are lucky there. They don’t end until very late though, so I’ve started cutting back on raid nights. It’s hard to do, because we’ve progressed very quickly over the past few weeks, and it’s so exciting to be there for the first kill of a boss.. not to mention the extra dkp award :) But when I’m sleeping through my alarm by a good hour because I was up too late too many nights in a row, it’s time to cut back. So I’m trying to cut down to three nights a week right now, and possibly down to two later. On off nights I either don’t play, or I play a bit on a low-level alt that’s not in the guild so I don’t get cajoled into going. It’s a hard hard habit to break.
This is precisely the reason that I plan to quit WoW when Squirrelz & I start a family. No, I’m not saying you should quit WoW, or that parents who play WoW are horrible parents. But, especially being new to the whole thing, I don’t like the idea of having to divide my attention like that. Might I someday come back on a much more casual basis? Possibly. But I find it much more likely that I’ll find another hobby that doesn’t require such focused attention and can be dropped in an instant when needed (not, okay have to say goodbye to guildies and find a safe spot to camp).
More to the issue at hand, I agree with everyone who’s said that scheduling runs is probably the best way to go. When you were raiding, you knew that in those particular blocks of time, you had 9 or 24 other people counting on you, and had to pay a bit more attention than just farming motes. In this case, it’s only 4 other people, and they’ll probably be a bit more understanding if you have to take a quick AFK. (For example, on Pox nights, we’ve come to expect that Wara’s going to take a break in the middle to say goodnight to his wife when it’s time for her to go to bed – that’s fine!)
Also, I might suggest that the hard stuff (Kara, MgT, tougher Heroics) wait until the weekend, and if there’s going to be runs during the week, make it a quick Team Sneaky run, or regular instancing to help people gear up or get rep. Stuff like that (as evidenced by some of our tactics on Sunday morning tackling SH and Slabs) tends to be a lot more fun than “have to take it seriously” harder stuff. Sure, the challenge of those places is a different kind of fun, but maybe not what you need when you’re squeezing a run between a long day at work and dinner and saying goodnight to your son and getting to bed at a decent time yourself.
Like all the adults here, I have the same struggle with RL and WoW time. Or, I should say, as much time as I’d like to devote to WoW. I don’t have kids, my husband games too (he’s waiting for Spore), so I have quite a bit of evening time, but find it difficult to impossible to run instances during the week.
Funny, this is quite timely; I’m finding myself quite overwhelmed by the number of Steamvault runs I will need for Earthwarden (hit 70 like 3 weeks ago). “Serious Druid tanks need Earthwarden.” Am I that serious? Isn’t my guild casual? Do I really give a crap what other players think of me outside my guild? *Sigh* I don’t know. Last night I was the only player on in the guild, and I found it to be a huge relief. Just putzed around doing the fishing daily, grinding some Kurenai rep, trolling the AH. It was so relaxing!
Well, I work retail, so my schedule is always random and a lot of times I’m working really late at night, so as it is I do miss a lot of raids and instances.
Somehow, though, I typically manage to squeeze a few in every week, as well as alt time (though not as much as I’d like) and farming/dailies time. To be honest I’m not entirely sure how I pull it off; probably by procrastinating stuff I should be doing *glances at overflowing trash can* and by going berserk on my days off and getting my fill of instances for the week…
I should also add, I used to be able to say “Well I play WoW with the boy so we kill two birds with one stone”, but these days he’s playing it less and less and becoming more interested in other things while I’m still as addicted as ever, so… been having to go off-line more and more for significant-other-things… it’s a wonder I’m still sane really!
I just don’t play until my son goes to bed.
Yeah, I miss out on all the raids, since they all run at 7ish and I’m not ready to roll before about 9(bedtime at 8:30, take the dogs out, get a drink, log in, check mail, etc).
If I can pull together a 5-man to run with my wife, great.
If there’s a late-starting Karazahn, great.
If not, I help my wife with quests to get to 70 while earning money for my epic flyer.
I do wish I could find a group to regularly run at 9 central, especially one to do Kara that late, but the real reason I play is to play with my wife.
So it can wait until my kid goes to bed.
This one really hits home with me too.
I’ve been playing WoW pretty much since launch and love it.
I really enjoy the game and the friends I’ve made in it. I like exploring new content and taking on new challenges. I’m enjoy tinkering with my UI and mods. Sure, I have a few gripes, but overall WoW continues to deliver some very tasty cheese .
But I also have a full-time, demanding job that I love and wife and two children I love even more.
I need to be there for my job and I want to be there for my family.
To make it all work for me, I just had to accept some limitations to my gameplay.
- To really get some uninterrupted time, I mainly play late at night after everyone else is asleep. Midnight to 3am is all mine.
- No raiding. My guild whizzes through progression and I’ve been a big supporter of their success, but I’ve never even stepped in Kara yet (despite being attuned). Even back in the day, I only occassionally made into the *BRSs, ZG and AQ20, but since bambino #2, raiding hasn’t be a serious option.
I have to take content in smaller interruptable chunks, so have taken multiple 70s through almost all the quests, most of the rep grinds to exalted, all profs to 375, bgs and arenas, a million dailies, etc., etc. There’s still a ton to do, but I do miss seeing all the cool end-game stuff. Luckily, I’m in a great semi-casual raiding guild that has room for a token non-raider, so I still have a great crowd to talk to and group with for non-raid activities. Someday, though, I want to do Kara and get my druid his Violet Signet…someday… :)
Overall, I’ve come to terms with what I have to do to make playing possible me.
If I had couple wishes (besides another 24 hours in each day), it would be that Blizzard would:
1) Improve its LFG system. I say the current LFG/LFM tool is a failure. I’m on at weird hours and finding guildies to do something isn’t always possible. But trying to put together a group to go pug a quest or instance quick is so hit or miss and often ends up wasting a lot of the time I have available for the night. There’s got a be a better solution. Hey, I’d be happy with a server-wide LFG channel.
2) Make some more repeatable mini 5-man quests/instance runs that can be completed in 30 mins to an hour. Sort of step up from the dailies and a step down from the regular instances. I don’t mind hard, if it’s short, fun and gives something worth doing as a reward (even if it’s only a novelty reward). The best example I can think of the Headless Horseman which had tons of 70s travelling to SM — some for the first time ever — to try for the pumpkin headpiece or a decent ring. It was fun and fast (though not really hard at all). More stuff like that would be fun.
I normally farm, do easy dailies, etc. During the week. Friday-Sunday evenings though, that is my time to have fun with my net pals.
Never play until the kiddos are in bed, at least watching TV. About 9pm every night. Make sure the house is in order beforehand, and Get to bed before midnight (I’m a stay at home mom, so I can sleep a little later).
I don’t have kids myself, but most of my guildies do. We’re on a PST server, and raid 9pm-11pm on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, with “guild pug night” on Monday, usually in the same timeframe. Some of the newer members have said that they joined us specifically because of the late-and-short nature of our scheduled raids – kids can be put to bed before 9pm, and an 11pm end time isn’t sacrificing too much sleep.
It’s obviously working for us – 3/4 TK, 1/6 SSC, and farming Gruul/Mags weekly, with pickup Kara and ZA groups on off-nights and weekends. Real life comes first, always, and if we don’t have enough for a 25-man on a scheduled night (which has happened when a few unusual/emergency situations coincided), we just break up into 10-mans or heroics, or occasionally people sneak off for more sleep. It also has led to some interesting times – my beartank has been asked to heal in the past, for Al’ar of all things, because we had 5 tanks and 5 healers and wanted 4 and 6. (I then tanked the birdie the next week – guild is great about rotating who’s tanking and giving everyone roughly equal chances.)
Good luck, and I hope you work it out – more than half the fun of the game is in instances/raiding/grouping, in my opinion, and it’s a shame if you can’t manage to get some of that in.
What do I do? In short, my sixth alt is currently level 28 and climbing . . .
WoW, or more accurately, time online with my friends, is my equivalent of church. Currently, it’s Monday night, Wednesday night, and all day Saturday for me. That is a happy medium for now. (No children yet, but we have a small one on back order from China.) I can still do some projects around the house on Sundays, and we have Date Night ™ on Fridays. It helps that on those Monday and Wednesday nights, a beautiful redhead brings me something to eat at my desk.
we raid 4 nights per week, 2 of which are required to retain your raider status. Lately I have been getting tired of raiding, but its only because I attend EVERY raid. We always find ourselves with just enough tanks if I am included as a tank. Everyone is aware of the damage I put out in kitty form, but if a Tank is needed, *poof* Burr Form!
I’ve played hooky from the past couple of raids because I have been enjoying playing my now-70 Hunter. Going from tanking to playing a pure DPS class is a refreshing change. I mean, my tank is in Hyjal and Black Temple and my Hunter is lucky if he sees the front gate to Karazhan, but just the idea of knowing that my job is to trap and kill and not really protect 24 other people is like a vacation. LOL
I will continue to raid as I do love doing it and I really do like the people in my guild, but I will also continue to take that vacation.
Lately I log in, pick up the daily quests in Shatt and the two from the island that have you get stuff from the Outlands. Put my self in the LFG for Bot, Mech, UB, and then fly off to Nagrand for the reading quest, fly to the Skettis area, then to the foot of the Black Temple, and then on to other Outland spots for the dailys, all while sitting in the LFG for the 3 dungeons I prefer to run most (easy badges). If I don’t get into a pug for any of the 3 places by 9:30pm, I continue to finish out the dailys on the island… and hope for a better night the day after.
The only exception is on Tuesday, I typically will stay in Shatt to watch the trade channel for a LFM Kara badge run. At least on Cho’gall Tuesday seems to be a good night to do badge run for Kara but I will only try to pay attention till 9:30pm then I pick up the fast quests and get a few coins in my pocket.
If you have a group of people that you TYPICALLY run with, and are okay with them having your email address… set up a email LFG.
What my friends and I do, is if one of us is wanting to run an instance… we email the other people we typically run with. We say, “Hey, anyone up for *insertinstancehere*, I want to go as *insertcharacternamehere*? I’ll be on at 7pm.”
If they say yes, and are typically the people who are on before you are, and you need one or two more people, have them start screening their friends and guildies for the remainder of your party. Maybe you have enough people on email that your group is already made up!
By the time you log in, you have a group ready to go. If you know someone who can check WoW during the day or whatever, you can be alerted to the daily heroic and plan accordingly, etc, etc.
Sometimes I still miss her…
Still happily married. My kids go to be a bit earlier than yours, so I don’t get that interruption. I can do about 4 hours between 8-12 pretty easily. Although I have a heck of a time finding a decent guild on my server that starts raids at 8. Anything earlier and I have to enter negotiations with my wife…
I usually put play time off until everyone is a asleep – kids put to bed, wife put to sleep with a back rub. Which means I don’t log until about 10:00. The singles are often on already and the marrieds may or may not be. As soon as we have enough people, we go for it.
Typically I go to bed around 12:00. Wow is truly evil. As much as I love it, it’s evil. I never get anything good unless I push and play until 1:00.
Basically, I had to quit wow for lack of time. now I get my fix by reading your blog…. Enjoy it for me ;)
What would I do?
I would spend that time with my family.
I say that with ease now, but guarantee that had you asked this same question anywhere from 1-2 years ago, I would have answered differently.
Too many sacrifices added up over time, however, and so I had to make a choice. It wasn’t about anyone getting upset at me doing something I enjoyed or anything like that… it was about the memories I was missing out on, and replacing them with an experience that would mean nothing to me down the road.
So, I changed things up a bit. Invested some of my day/work time to WoW to justify the time I spent with it, and gave the rest of my time to my wife and now my new baby girl. There’s much better balance this way, for me, and I can sleep knowing my daughter gets as much time from me as possible. :)
Hope you find a balance, BBB. Good luck bro.
I’m fortunate in that my wife is a nurse and works overnights for three nights a week. This allows me time to schedule gametime, since I try not to play (or at least not instance) when she’s home. The kids go to bed at 9, and are old enough to tuck themselves in, so that’s not a concern. I still don’t play as much as I like. I’m still catching up to the rest of my friends gearwise, so raiding SSC isn’t really in the cards just yet. Still several of our little friends and family ‘guild-within-a-guild’ group get togetner once a week on non-25-man nights. Our target of choice has been Zul’Aman, since the rest of them are geared out of and bored to tears with Kara. ZA is great because it’s so short. We’ll try to run the first three bosses on one week night, and then pick up the rest of the instance on a weekend. Works ok as long as schedules mesh.
I’m lucky that I can stay at home with my boys, and both the hubby and I play wow, so we each understand why the other wants to play so much. Typically I won’t really log on to ‘do’ anything during the day, maybe check mail quickly and ah a couple of things while the kids sleep, other than that I don’t log on til after they’re in bed, so usually around 7.30-8pm. That’s assuming I’ve managed to catch up on reading blogs, written a post of my own, and done the chores around the house that need done.
The other half plays more often. He’s more likely to play with the baby on his lap and do dailies, get the toddler to ‘help him’ run around and such to help him kill things etc. He currently raids 3 nights a week and it likely to be on most nights. On those nights, I look after the baby when he wakes for a feed, and on his nights off he (usually!) does the same for me.
It makes a huge difference with both of us playing, although we very rarely get to play *together* anymore, which kinda sucks :(
I usually forgo instances and raiding cause I know I’m gonna have to go /afk at some point and I don’t want a group to have to wait around for lil old me, even though my friends are happy for me to be on follow at times!
Now do you see why I have so many lowbie alts? Low lvls = easy questing with kids! ;)
Wow, a lot of great reposnses, and what I seem to hear is that most of you have made the same decision I have, and intentionally cut back on playing to make sure your family comes first. Awesome!
A few people seem to think I might have been talking about trying to find a balance between life and WoW… I feel like we’ve got that without a problem, my thing is just realizing that I keep feeling like “Oh, a little isntance won’t be that big a deal”, and then when the time comes, going, “whoops, no time for one now! I must have figured wrong”
I do like the idea of setting aside one night a week for banging around with friends on a light eharted run, and then spending some time one the weekend doing something more intensive. It sounds doable.
For those of you that simply don’t play until the family is in bed, and then drop sleep time to play, I will say that while I do that on weekends to some extent, I just can’t do it during the week.
I live in teh same time zone as my server time… and I have to be at work at 5 AM… which means I get up at 4. So… just staying up until 10 means that I get 5 hours of sleep each night. No midnight runs for me! At least, not without knowing darn well I’m going to be paying the piper later. :)
Seriously, though, it’s real nice to see so many of you have found a good balance between playing and life… and that where the decision comes down, you choose life. Rock on.
I feel your pain. The wow time isn’t as easy to pull together as it was when i was 19 and could just skip class to hit those last couple lvls (on DAOC of course). With family responsibilities and friends in different cities that I rarely get to visit in person anymore, it’s easy to hop on and telecommute with my buddies, but if I’m not on lvling a toon every night for mutliple hours, I fall 10 lvls behind in no time. Not to mention trying to maintain a relationship with my extremely tolerant and loving wife… Now I finally have a 70, but I’m undergeared and not in a serious raiding guild like my friend with 3 lvl 70s. It’s wild. But for all the frustration that comes with making sacrifices, it’s still fun to hop on and pwn some alli just for fun in the bgs before bed. And there’s always a day off every so often to just play till my eyeballs explode :D
I’ve cut back alot too. (well, in process of). My wife also plays, has more alts than I do. Her main is 69 and climbing. My druid alt hit 70 a few weeks ago, my main is in a BT raiding guild. My alt #3 is 49 and in my friend from school’s guild. All of this means i have alot of stuff i feel responsible to do. Get the druid epiced out. Get the kara key. Get the tanking stuff. Get mount money. Finish professions. And that’s on the druid. Raider? Do Isle of QS for repairs, run around looking for herbs for pots. My 49 lock? Questing and ocassional instance.
Folks that’s alot of time commitement. (plus all the forums and blogs looking for upgrades and research). I decided it was crazy to keep up. I’m shelving my druid unless my wife wants me to play. I absolutely love her but dont have time. I’m shelving my 49 lock. I’m continuing raiding for 3 nights a week. I’m not doing Isle of QS. I’m buying all my pot needs. I’ll do this until i go dead broke then maybe just cut back on raiding to farm a bit. I plan to do max 15 hours a week. I instituted parental controls to only let me play at certain times.
Last week I probably played 50 hours. It’s addicting pure and simple, but not an addiction. I don’t have withdrawl symptoms. Anyway, wish me luck.
yep its a problem for me to.
we have a 6 month old baby so wow time is more limited as i need time for him and to help out the wife or let her get some free adult time.
pre-bc i raided mc/bwl/aq40/zg/aq20 etc etc
now i just try to do a couple of heroics during the week with weekends off limits to wow – apart from a few daily’s and some ah checking.
I set aside one or two nights a week as “raid night” – where I am for all intents and purposes unavailable except for genuine family dramas. I sneak an hour here or there outside that time (generally late night) to do dailies to make money for raiding.
The flip side of that is that I offer my wife one or two nights a week off to do her thing the same way (not WoW). I take care of any child-related drama and she can do whatever she likes without interruption. Of course, with a 6-month old breastfeeding baby, there is only so much I can do, but the intent is there.
The problems come in when you try to extend it. So we fail to clear Kara on Wed, and the call goes out “same time tomorrow”. Well, at that point I have to discipline myself to say no, because I want my second raid night to be SSC or Gruul, not a couple of bosses in Kara. It’s very easy to justify it to yourself – “it’s not even a full raid night, maybe an hour, etc” but what the wife sees is you pushing the limits and taking 3 raid nights a week when you agreed to 2, and the seeds of the famed “wife aggro” are sown.
Agree dedicated raid time with your partner, offer vice versa, and stick to it.