When The Game Becomes the Habit

 I've been getting up early to play video games.

Not because there's some raid that needs running or some event I can't miss. Not because I'm deeply invested in the story or desperately want to see what happens next. I get up early to play because that's what I do. It's the routine. It's been the routine for years.

But lately I've been asking myself a question I'm not sure I want to answer: Does this still make sense?

How It Changed

I've been gaming for over forty years. It started as something I genuinely loved, a hobby that was mine before I had kids, before the career consumed everything, before life got complicated. I wasn't chasing connection or trying to fill a gap. I just enjoyed it.

But then my son got into gaming, and suddenly it became something more. When he and his mother moved five hundred miles away, gaming became our bridge. We couldn't be in the same room, couldn't throw a ball in the backyard or go to a movie together. But we could log into the same world, run the same dungeons, talk about the same games.

It gave us shared language when distance made everything else harder. It kept us connected when I couldn't just drive across town to see him.

That mattered. For years, it really mattered.

Now my son is almost thirty himself. He has a family, a career, responsibilities that don't leave much room for twelve-hour gaming sessions. He moved on. The thing that helped keep us connected isn't what keeps us connected anymore. We talk about other things now. Real things. Life things.

But I'm still logging in.

The Sunk Cost of Virtual Worlds

World of Warcraft has been part of my life for two decades. Twenty years of characters, achievements, gear, progress. Guilds I've been part of. Content I've cleared. Expansions I've played through from launch day. The muscle memory of keybinds I've used for so long I don't even think about them anymore.

Walking away from that feels impossible. Not because the game is that good, necessarily. But because of everything I've put into it. The time, the effort, the identity I built around being someone who plays this game.

That's a sunk cost, and I know it. I know the rational move is to evaluate whether the game still adds value to my life now, not whether it justified the investment I made years ago. But knowing something intellectually and feeling it emotionally are different things.

What I'm Trading

A couple hours every morning while the rest of the house is still asleep. Time I could spend reading books I actually want to read. Writing more consistently. Planning what comes next now that the career structure is gone. Or just sleeping, which at my age would probably be the smarter move.

Instead I'm doing world quests and delves, leveling alts, and running the same content I've run dozens of times, chasing gear upgrades that will be obsolete in the next patch. I'm maintaining progress in a game that resets its goalposts every few months.

It's not that the games are bad. Some of them are genuinely good. Well-designed, engaging, worth the time if you have the time to spare. But do I have the time to spare?

I used to. When I was working sixty-hour weeks and needed the escape, gaming was how I decompressed. When my son was younger and lived far away and we needed something to do together, gaming was how we stayed connected. When the world shut down during the pandemic, gaming was how I stayed sane.

But the context has shifted. The career is gone. My son doesn't need me to run dungeons with him anymore. The distance that made gaming essential has been replaced by other ways of staying close. And I'm sitting here wondering why I'm still doing this.

The Comfort of the Known

Here's what I think is actually happening: Gaming is comfortable. I'm good at it. I know what to do, how to do it, and what the outcomes will be. There's no ambiguity, no uncertainty, no risk of failure that actually matters.

Real life right now is the opposite of that. I don't know what comes next. I don't have a clear progression path or a set of objectives to complete. There's no quest log telling me what to do or achievement system confirming I did it right.

Gaming gives me that. It gives me structure, progress, accomplishment. Even if none of it means anything outside the game.

That's not a great reason to keep doing something.

The Question I Keep Avoiding

Would I miss it if I stopped?

I think the honest answer is: not as much as I'm afraid I would.

I'd miss the routine, probably. The familiar comfort of logging in, the muscle memory of rotations and keybinds, the low-stakes problem-solving that doesn't require much thought. But would I miss the actual games? The content? The progression?

I'm not sure I would.

And that might be the most important thing I've realized. I'm not playing because I love it anymore. I'm playing because I've always played. Because walking away feels like admitting I wasted all that time. Because I don't quite know what to do with those morning hours if I'm not gaming.

Those aren't good reasons.

I'd miss the people that I've connected with over the years.  Guild members and social media friends.

What Comes Next

I don't know yet. I'm not ready to uninstall everything and walk away cold. The investment is real, even if it's sunk. The habit is strong, even if it's not serving me anymore.

But I think I need to start being honest about what gaming is and isn't doing for me now. It's not keeping me connected to my son anymore. It's not helping me decompress from work stress I don't have. It's not filling a gap that needs filling.

It's just... what I do. And maybe that's not enough anymore.

Maybe those morning hours could be better spent building something that actually matters. Writing more. Thinking more. Reading books instead of quest text. Planning a future instead of optimizing a character.

Or maybe I just need to let myself sleep.

I don't have the answer yet. But I think I'm finally asking the right question.

January Month In Review

January was a much more balanced month in gaming for me than what has been typical lately.  My total play time of about 33 1/2 hours comes in above my average from last year.  

As usual, World of Warcraft takes the top spot as I finished leveling all of those alts, and also jumped into the pre-patch content with my core group of characters.  I've also been dabbling a little more in housing, adding some furniture to my now slightly larger house and turning the exterior into a bit of a garden.  

I also resubscribed to FFXIV in January and have started catching up on the content there.  I'm about two patches behind on the MSQ, but I have finished the Cruiserweight raid tier, so I think I'm ready to plow through to 7.3 and 7.4.  

I also played the new content in Elder Scrolls Online, worked on a few Golden Pursuits, and started working on map completion again.  Finally, in Guild Wars 2, I started running a 2nd character through the new content and am pretty close to finishing it.  After that, I plan to run my Ranger through.

With Midnight early access starting at the end of February, I'll probably be spending more time balanced across games like this until that begins, after which there will be a lot of focus on leveling and getting up to speed on the new expansion.  After all, I only have 52 max-level alts to level!

That's it for now!

Cheers!

Joar

Initial Thoughts on the Pre-Patch

I've been playing a decent amount of World of Warcraft for the past week or so and wanted to provide some of my thoughts on the pre-patch so far.  I'm looking forward to the event starting later today and whatever gear catch-up mechanic is coming down the way.

I've been playing all of the characters I consider my core, running them through delves and other content to get a feel for how the classes play.  This core group for me includes demonology warlock, BM hunter, ret paladin, blood death knight, frost mage, elemental shaman and balance druid.  At this point, they all feel pretty decent to me, with DK, paladin and frost mage probably being my favorite at the moment.  Balance druid feels the most off.  I haven't tried my demon hunter yet, but he's probably up next.

More of my addons are working than I was expecting.  The ones that still aren't include my favorite nameplate addon, an addon I use to quickly gather mail from my mailbox, and my casting bar addon.  The default UI seems fine for the casting bar now, so I'm not sure I'll miss it much.

I've been messing around with delves on various characters so much that I'm going to have vault rewards on 5 different characters to grab this week, so that should be fun.

In FFXIV, I finally finished the Cruiserweight raid, so I am ready to move on to the 7.3 MSQ content.  I still have three more weeks of the last boss to go to complete the weapon, which I'm not really looking forward to, but I'll struggle through that.

Beyond that, I've played a little bit of ESO and Guild Wars 2, but not a ton at this point.  The rest of this week will probably be heavily focused on World of Warcraft with the new event, but then we'll see how long that holds my attention.

That is the update for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Back to World of Warcraft for Now

My playtime has been pretty limited over the past week or so because of out-of-town swim meets and various appointments associated with getting the house ready to put on the market in March.  After the update from last week, I found myself mostly focused on going back and gearing up some of my other core Warcraft characters. 

None of them are probably geared enough to really make much progress on delves at max level right now.  We'll see what the catch-up event looks like in the next week or so, but in the meantime, I may focus on weeklies and world quests to try to get them caught up.

I have continued to play a little bit of Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars 2 as well, so it's been a pretty balanced past week.  I need to put together some kind of spreadsheet to help me track my progress on zone completion for ESO, because that's another thing I'd like to get done while there is some downtime.

I'm definitely interested in seeing what the next piece of the story line looks like as we get into the Warcraft pre-patch.  I tend to use a lot of addons, so I'm also anxious to see which ones are borked and which still work.  I probably could have researched this in advance, but I'd rather just be surprised. 

It is also still my plan to keep trying with FFXIV to get caught up on the content.  I know it's going to be a long time before a new expansion comes, so I feel like I have plenty of time to work on it.

Not much of an update this week.  Next week, I'll have my initial thoughts on the pre-patch, so I may do this post later in the week after the event goes live.

Cheers,

Joar

Drifting Between Games

I reinstalled and resubscribed to FFXIV and started trying to catch my character up, but then fairly quickly remembered why I had stopped playing in the first place after spending several hours in queue for various dungeons, trials, and raids to try to advance the story or just gear up to be ready for the next patch.

This isn't as bad when you're doing things as current content, and the queues are not as long because everyone is doing those particular dungeons, but it's definitely a lot worse when you are trying to get caught up.  I do love the characters and the story, but I just don't think it fits my play style very well right now.

I also started leveling a Barbarian through the new season in Diablo 4, but I found there wasn't much to get me very excited, so I put that down as well.  One can only do so many Helltides before it starts to get a bit dull, especially now that the rifts from last season are gone.

In Elder Scrolls Online, I started finishing up the remaining quests and other tasks for the Solstice zone and am almost done with it.  I never did finish the main story quest for the zone, as there is some kind of one-hit mechanic on the fight at the very end that kept getting the best of me.  I tried it about 7-8 times, following the advice I saw on various threads to always keep moving, but it didn't seem to make a difference for me.  If I see that they've adjusted the fight down the road, I might go back and give it another try; otherwise, that one is just going to sit there for a bit.  The other piece of the Solstice zone story has been good, though!

I've also noticed that my Magplar doesn't seem as strong as he used to be, so I'm not sure if something got nerfed there while I wasn't playing.

In Guild Wars 2, I've also started running my mechanist through the newest expansion, which has been going really well so far, so I'll keep at that until the latest World of Warcraft content hits shortly.

That's the update for now.

Cheers,

Joar

2025 Year In Review Part 2

Thanks to Kevin Brill and the TempusGameIt app, I'm now able to provide more detail about how my gameplay broke out over the course of the year.  In 2025, I played for a total of 18 days and 17 minutes, which works out to about 36 hours per month.  

World of Warcraft was my most-played game with 324 hours total, and the rest was split pretty evenly between Guild Wars 2 (43 hours), Diablo 4 (33 hours), and Elder Scrolls Online (30 hours).

Because my weekends tend to be dedicated to swim meets, my days with the most playtime were Monday and Friday, while my least were Saturday and Sunday.  

For the actual month of December, my game time totaled 28 hours, with 26 of that in World of Warcraft and the rest split among the other 3.  

Since my last update, I also managed to get that Gnome Hunter to max level, and so I've now switched over to playing the last of the Worm Cult storyline on Elder Scrolls Online.  The last boss of the new content seems a bit over-tuned for quest content, so I'm struggling to finish that one up. I'm going to take a few more shots at that today and then move back to working on Diablo 4.

That is the update for now!

Cheers!

Joar