Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Signs you are approaching burnout

I am currently suffering from WoW burnout, severe WoW burnout. It came as the result of chain-running heroics with the Dungeon Finder and thinking more about the loot than the heroics themselves. It was easily avoidable, but I missed the warning signs that let me know I was going down this path. While there are many posts out there on WoW sites that let you know what to do when you have burnout, I have seen fewer posts about how to avoid burnout, so I thought I'd discuss the warning signs here. If any of these are happening to you, be proactive and do something to prevent your burnout. Try another part of the game, level an alt, or just cut down on your WoW time.

You start thinking more about the results than the experience
There are many rewards in WoW. They come in the form of loot, achievements, mounts, pets, and other such items, but they all have one thing in common: if you make acquiring them your reason for playing, you will suffer burnout. Focusing on loot, titles, etc. distracts you from the main reason you should be playing WoW: to enjoy yourself. This allows you to easily fall into playing habits that lead you to burnout, like playing more often than you would otherwise or getting overly worked up about a wipe. As I said in my post on my issue with speed runners in random heroics, if you focus more on the results then the process, you need to re-examine your priorities.

You do things out of habit rather than out of choice
Like prioritizing results before the process, doing things out of habit rather than because you consider them fun (like running a heroic each day just for the badges or doing dailies just for the money) is a recipe for disaster. If you aren't thinking about why you are doing what you are doing in game, you probably won't cut back or stop when it starts to annoy you. By the time you ask yourself why you are doing that random heroic each day when you don't even like any of the heroics any more or why you are doing the Argent Tournament dailies each day when they really aren't that fun, the damage is already done.

You start resenting the parts of the game you "need" to play in order to play the parts you enjoy
If you are a raider and you hate doing a random heroic each day, but you do it anyway for the emblems of frost, you need to really think about why you are running heroics. If you do any sort of group content (raids or heroics) and you hate doing dailies to pay for the repair bills, why are you doing them? You may think of me as idealistic for saying that you shouldn't do anything in this game that you can't make yourself enjoy, but as someone who has suffered the latter problem, I can tell you that those kinds of thoughts are not unconquerable. If you still "need" to run that content, try changing your mindset to one that allows you to enjoy it.

You start doing things you once resented other people for doing
This was the final sign for me that I was playing too much. I can't stand when anyone other than the tank pull enemies. However, during an Ahn'kahet run that I was healing, the tank only pulled one enemy out of a pack of four. He had Death and Decay down, so I body-pulled the other three to bring them into his D&D, just to speed things up. When I realized what I had done, I knew it was time for a break. Becoming what you once despised is a sure sign of burnout, and also a sign that your pre-burnout self what not have approved of what you are doing.

If you recognize any of those signs in yourself, you are likely on the path to burnout, if you aren't already there. If there are any signs that I missed, let me know in the comments section.

4 comments:

  1. Mostly agree with your post, except for "Becoming what you once despised is a sure sign of burnout,"

    I think becoming what you once despised could also be a result of obtaining a better understanding of the reasons behind the behaviour that you once despised, and realising that it was not necessarily worthy of your despisement, er, despisation, er, annoyance :)

    Of course it could also mean burnout, but it's not always the case in my opinion.

    Nice blog btw

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  2. burnout is something I'm actually constantly fighting against. I solve that by spending more time writing about the game on forums, blogs, & twitter than I actually spend playing the game.

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  3. @Rob: While what you say is true, my last point was mostly in reference to extreme actions, like body-pulling as a healer.

    @Lissanna: The same could probably be said for me. During my last bout of burnout, I spent more time on WoW.com alone than I spent playing WoW.

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  4. Im a former WoW player that stumbled upon this blog by coincidence.

    It seems that scaling back both your playtime and game ambitions is an important part of coping with burn out. When you start finding WoW to be less rewarding, its a good time to cultivate the parts of your life that are independent of WoW. During this time you can just login to do dailies, run a heroic, use your crafting cooldowns etc.

    Take your burn out as a sign that you and WoW need some time apart. You will enjoy the game more if you pace yourself.

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