Balancing Life and WoW

[Kevin]

Summary: What are some strategies that Lurkers use to balance WoW and Life? In particular, how do Lurkers balance the demands of raiding with their regular lives?

More Information: The recent extended (and excellent) Lounge conversation about raiding vs. non-raiding content in WoW has got me thinking about WoW-Life balance.  My own strategy has been to 'Just Say No' to raiding. While I enjoy raiding, I just didn't want to go back to a 6-day-a-week WoW habit and give up the real life I rediscovered. But the excitement about Naxx has re-piqued my interest and I have begun to wonder if there is another option.

This topic often ripples through the official WoW forums with (at best) limited substance. Usually the two viewpoints are 'raiding takes too long' or 'Molten Core only takes 3-4 hours per week'. The issue proves to be more complex--Your guild and character both need a variety of things from outside of the raid to support the raiding endeavor. The raiding you might want to do isn't limited to MC or Onyxia. And you want to help your friends out--you don't just want to quit raiding as soon as you get your own gear. So do you raid, and if so, how do you handle it?
[right][snapback]109335[/snapback][/right]

Here is how I'm handling it.

I allow myself at most 3 raids, 20 or 40 mans, a week to go on. Between the two servers and my 4 level 60's I think I could likely be in on around 15 raids if I wanted to spend 30-40 hours a week raiding. I haven't looked closely at how the schedules overlap, but I know that some of them would allow me to raid on one server and then do a different raid on another server or potentially even two raids in one day on just the one.

Because of this and the structures of the groups I raid with, I do not put myself as a regular for any raid. This isn't a major issue, but it means that there are some raids I want to go on that I won't get in. Not a huge deal, that 2 to 4 hours then becomes the farming time for money for repairs or potions or anything else I will need for raiding.

I also won't let myself play for more than 15 hours a week. With 3 raids of 3 to 4 hours that leaves 2 to 6 hours for my alts, doing 5 mans and farming if I get into the 3 raids I sign up for. I've set up a seperate budget of 4 hours out of game time for forums and such, though with dual monitors and the video card I have, I can often do a lot of the web browsing in game (while on flights, while waiting for the group to get together, etc).

Because trying to enforce these rules in my head can get a little tricky I've actually started to track the time I play WoW. I'll let myself have "special exceptions" now and then but I talk to my wife (who plays WoW as mentioned) and friends first to verify that I should be able to.

Simply tracking how much time you have played can be a huge step for many people into controlling how much they play. It's a simple trick used to help people control many things. You put down on paper how much money you spend on "junk food" or cigarettes or lottery tickets and many people just from having a concrete thing to look at will be able to better control what they invest in something because they've created personal accountability for it.

You could very well be able to set regular raiding nights with your group and just count that vs whatever budget you want to set for yourself. Let your friends know what your limits are and they can assist you with staying in them and using exceptions wisely (not a horrible thing to be in on that first Nef kill even if that will push you to 20 hours and 4 raids for that week say, just don't do it every week)

So I personally forced limitations on it. For me it's much easier to choose which raids I'm going on. In most cases I choose to go on raids my wife can make as well. In the past 40 mans got preference over 20 mans, and learning runs got preference over farming runs because I enjoyed them more. I don't pay a heck of a lot of attention to gear, where it comes from and all that jazz. If I get stuff, wooohoooo, if I don't, oh well. If I know where gear comes from I expect at least 20 kills of that boss before I will even see it drop, which could mean 40-50 before I will actually win it. Helps to not set myself up for disappointment on the few things that do draw my interest. But then again I'm pretty easy to keep happy. Just hanging with friends online and killing stuff is usually enough, even if it is the 30th time we've done the same thing. The solo repetition kills me, I'm not a good one for solo grinding for something, and the motivation of loot at the end of the grinds doesn't usually help me either.

So, talk with your guild/raiding group and see what they think about you only being able to commit to X number of raids. If they are cool with that, be prepared to just be a "bit player" as you won't gear as fast and gear = power. This doesn't mean you aren't important and if you are skilled with the class you will still feel you contributed. Or maybe that's just me, if I played to best of my abilities and knowing that in this game, the best that I can do my not be as good as what an uber geared person can do even if they are having an off night, I'm fine with it. You don't have to be completely epic'd out to be a contributor in BWL. If you play to your abilities you will be more than just another warm body. If you are the type of person that feels the need to be on the top of the DPS or healing charts then this might not work for you.

But really I think the simplest tip is that if you want to control WoW time and real life time is just to give your WoW time accountability and the simplest way to do that is to track it.

If you have 10 hours a week to play and you want to raid you can raid 2 nights, pretty much anywhere, and still have time to farm items/cash you might need in the other 1 to 2 hours you have. This would mean you aren't going to be playing your alts at all anymore and that might not be a bad thing for you. If you enjoy alting too much then you might be limited to one raid a week and that may or may not work for your raiding group.

If just giving your WoW play time accountability by tracking doesn't work to help keep it under control you can try adding another layer and fully scheduling the time you can play. Strict limits of 6 to 10 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday say. If the servers are down, oh well you don't move that chunk of time. If you can't block time as it is for WoW then raiding is out anyway in most cases because the organization that is needed to run raids is just not friendly to people just showing up and joining in. Well if a group is just starting to raid this will work but as the group gets more successful, spots won't be open, people won't want to leave for reason X anymore, etc.

I don't really have any other tips other than just giving it accountability via tracking time, and forcing a schedule on it. Raiding will like force a schedule on it for some of the time anyway. You just look at playing WoW vs going to the movies with friends. If you have a group of friends that you can do both with it becomes easier, if those groups are different people, you just have to make the choices.