Comments on: What lessons can we learn in life from playing WoW?

By: SuxToBU

SuxToBU — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 12:43:44 +0000

@ Hugmenot
Sorry dude, you can’t send out a Christmas present like that and expect your name to save you /hug
I hope she doesn’t freak out too much :)

By: Shiro

Shiro — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:19:32 +0000

MMORPGs in general can teach a lot about life. The mere fact that effort equals advancement holds true for both leveling up and progressing in real life. I previously talked about living life like an MMORPG and it mirrors some of the ideas presented here.

By: Elton

Elton — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:28:45 +0000

People sue far too much and for silly things, because they’re too lazy to actually work for money. Thankfully, this is NOT something WoW teaches, so maybe some people could learn a thing or two.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:35:10 +0000

I’d suggest that the WoW work ethic makes the game successful precisely because the real world doesn’t work that way. It’s refreshing to be rewarded for effort rather than politics, perception or coincidence. It’s not a lesson that translates to the real world if we’re looking at teaching teens, but for those adult players out there, it’s a refuge from an insane world. It’s nice to have a meritocracy, even if it’s in a game.

On the flipside, the subscription model teaches that those who spend the most time in-game per month are those who are rewarded most, since they get the biggest return on their “real money” investment. Again, this doesn’t translate well to the real world, as OCD overworking and imbalanced priorities are often a detriment to real life.

By: Lan'dorien

Lan'dorien — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:14:29 +0000

The question that this brings to my mind is: how closely does a virtual world need to mirror the real world in order to be successful?

By: Azshrin

Azshrin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:25:51 +0000

I’ve learned you have good days and bad days. And no matter how bad the bad days are, tomorrow is always a fresh start.

By: Hugmenot

Hugmenot — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:54:50 +0000

I bought the game for Christmas ’04 because my 1 year old had serious sleep problems. I figured I could solo quests and take frequent breaks.

I discovered the AH about a month later… I found it interesting and challenged myself to uncover its patterns. I wrote my first AddOn to help find arbitrage situations, then another to help me figure out a rough timeframe when large sellers were scanning/posting. I wanted to test my findings and decided to check whether it was easy to trick them by manipulating the market…

By Christmas ’05, I had 27k gold, most of it “earned” by tricking the bulk sellers into believing items were worth more (or less) than their fair market price value.

I did not spend much gold along the way because there was no point. I could only solo because of my real life situation and the mix of blue/green gear my level 60 rogue was wearing made it fun and challenging.

My rogue walked everywhere. No horse or tiger for her because beauty of the scenery one of my top three motivations to play WoW.

I come back to work in early January ’06 to find out four co-workers bought the game and rolled Alliance on a different server. I created a toon on their server and lo and behold, 3 months later, my son’s sleeping problems are resolved and I am able to group!

I never played horde again until last weekend

I logged onto my old rogue to check if anyone I used to chat with are still playing. One is, a single mother of 3, whispers me as soon as I log on because she was really worried something terrible had happened to me. I was totally shocked someone kept me on their friend’s list for the 3 years I was inactive, especially considering the list was reset at least once. Anyway, we chat about wow and real-life for a couple of hours and I know I will log onto that server at least bi-weekly to maintain contact.

One of the things we discussed was what we like best about the expansion. For me, it’s the majesty of Grizzly Hills and the new boss gimmicks. For her, it’s the non-combat pets and the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth.

She will find out Chrismas morning she can now afford one.

***

WoW has taught me that virtual friends deserve a goodbye.

By: gevlon

gevlon — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:08:15 +0000

I dedicated my whole website to the business side of the “what you can learn in WoW”, and I found plenty.

However one thing catched my mind here, that you are payed for work, not hourly, and how punishing it is to be equally payed as slackers. How about raiding? In a raid, people are usually hourly payed (DKP comes for hours, being on time, killing bosses), and not work-payed (if you are DPS first, you get the same DKP as the guy who died in the fire in the first minute).

What do you think about that?

By: Goldengreen

Goldengreen — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:29:33 +0000

I am a high school math teacher in real life, so the majority of the lessons that I see in WoW relate to understanding the young minds and the adult minds and how they differ. I learn by watching the choices of other people in game and can tell their maturity level How they act always teaches me something about maturity myself. This is what many of my students do in their free time instead of homework or studying so it’s good for me to see how it affects them. For many “griefers” it translates easily into real life that there are few consequences for making someone else’s life a little harder and a little less fun. Students seem to pick up that lesson very quickly, so their needs to always be a firm consequence for griefing in real life.

By: Wildcricket

Wildcricket — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:50:02 +0000

The things I have learned have all come from guild management. Since I am a manager IRL I find that the WoW side of management lets me take more risks, since no one’s jobs are at stake. For instance, I have been trained in things like how to handle confrontations for my job, but the opportunities to exercise those skills are few and far between. They come up all the time in WoW so I was able to try those skills out. Practice makes perfect!