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NEW VIDEO: The EASIEST Way to Stop Gaming

I'm Marcus


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Hi there,

I made my first experience in online gaming with Diablo 2, BroodWar and later WarCraft 3. Before I got Internet I played games on consoles liked SNES or the good old Sega Mega Drive :)

These games were fun, but I never felt actually addicted. In school I was really smart, had good grades, some friends - no problem at all. I treated gaming as a pure hobby and in summer I played football rather than video games.

I loved the WarCraft theme and it was a no brainer to go for World of Warcraft when it came out. In 3 years I got a playtime of around 400 days - that's over 8 hours a day for 3 whole years! I once even spent Christmas and New Year in this game ... I played at a really high and competitive level and I saw (and battled) all the available content and bosses (even with some top 100 world kills). I was proud of my guild and myself, so I spent every available minute online.

My personal downfall started - I didn't care much about school anymore, didn't showed up and nearly dropped out of school. With some really badass luck I was able to finish school with a halfway good report. Some months later I could finish a traineeship and was eligible for studies. Note: At this time I still played WoW but at a much lower skill level, cause my first guild retired.

At this time there was a website called wowdetox.com where people wrote their reasons why they quit. I've read them for many weeks and months and agreed on them. I wanted to quit but I could not.

I realized more and more that raiding every night till midnight is much more like a job than a hobby. The people in this guild weren't as cool or fun as the ones from my first guild either. So I quit cold turkey, wrote my guild leader a PM and deleted my toon. Tired at 10 pm? No problem, go to bed :)

Another note: I met my wife in my first guild and she was really jealous that I could go to sleep while she "has" to play until the raidleader called it a night :D

She quit gaming WoW not long after me.

That was about 2010 and in my second semester at university (5 years ago? what the fuck ...). Once I quit spending all or at least a lot of my time in online games my grades were really skyrocketing! I was able to finish my studies with a good B and got a job even before I was handed over my bachelor's degree. Around this time I played some hardcore Diablo 3 and made my first post at Cams blogpost, that was in 2012. In favor of my bachelor's degree I quit this game, too.

Today? Well, in the past years I played some games when I wanted (StarCraft 2, Dota, some Singleplay like Orcs must die or Serious Sam but not excessively).

But today when I remember myself of the time wasted and the really bad feelings I had every day I woke up and just played ... I will never experience this again - it nearly destroyed me. As a said before, in my first school years I was smart, had good grades, was interested in many things, read a lot. It feels like all these experiences vanished while I played so much. Today I feel really stupid in comparison.

That's why I will never allow games to control my life again - and I recommend "The slight edge", it really helped me to find my focus again.

Honestly, I had a little relapse last weekend where I played some Blizzard Dota, but I quit and deleted the game. You really need to find another hobby to replace gaming. If not, you will be bored and play again (happens to me).

My hobbies: My wife (<3), meeting friends, gardening (summertime!), reading (I love fantasy novels), work out, Lego (you are never too old!) and ... my job. I really love my job and I am willing to spent my freetime if I have to. Also working on a IT certification to improve my skills and value for my company.

I keep track of my days since last played with smartphone app and now it's time for the 90s :)

Regards

Marcus

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Hey welcome to the community bro! I know it's really hard to quit games, but this is a really positive step. What helped me permanently quit all gaming was deleting & trading in all of the games that I could, & throwing out the rest (I actually did this, haha). If you still have games in the house, I suggest you do this you'll feel much better

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What helped me permanently quit all gaming was deleting & trading in all of the games that I could, & throwing out the rest (I actually did this, haha). If you still have games in the house, I suggest you do this you'll feel much better

?100%. It's like eating healthy. If you have a bunch of junk food in the house you'll want to eat it. If you don't and only have healthy food, you'll eat that instead.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey guys,

small update: 65 days without touching a game since counting. Feels good ;)

Had a little motivation problem in the last days to get things done, but I am back on track.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

Earned my ITIL (2011) Foundation certificate today - yay

(That is not the one I talked about in the original post, but it's great anyway^^)

 

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