I think this ties into the idea of MMORPGs. I used to play them a lot until I realized they were not fun, just addictive; they make you feel like you're accomplishing something by leveling and gaining skills, when really it's only your character that's improving - you're not getting better at anything.
I take issue with this. I think MMORPGs can be a LOT of fun. The problem is, like with anything, eventually it stops being fun and feels more like work. As soon as that happens, most people have the good sense to quit. However, MMORPGs have just enough "community" to keep some people playing long after the stopped enjoying it. I myself quit playing MMORPGs years ago and will readily admit I do not enjoy them anymore. But I can't deny the thrill I had when I first started playing through World of Warcraft when it first came out.
Did I get better at anything useful? Not really. But that's okay. There's more to life than an endless treadmill of getting better at things.
I had some roommates in college that played Diable II like beasts. Once, when they thought they were online but weren't, we heard a scream through the wall, "Fuck! I'm not getting any experience from this!"
We laughed for a while at that one while we browsed videos of people getting hurt on ebaum's world.
Diablo II is actually the one game I return to, time and time again - but not really so much for the game as the socialisation.
I've never had a battle.net account - instead I've always played co-operative LAN with friends. The madness and the glory, the "oh shit" moments where you start cursing under your breath and everybody else piles over to where you are to help, and the tactical analysis over pizza - that's what Diablo II's about for me.
I think the advent of MMORPGs with voice communication has made them much more social - a friend of mine who's a serious WoW player spends as much time talking about his guildmates as he does about the gameplay.
You basically described my life during junior high. That same type of phenomenon happened often before I finally convinced my Mom to upgrade to DSL, with the excuse that I could find homework help on AOL even quicker, which is true, but I had ulterior motives. I really just wanted to play Starcraft online with real people without a crappy connection.
I was a single child and had zero friends within a 3-mile radius. Video games were a close friend back then.
I felt this way a decade ago when my wife and I rented Season 1 of the show 24. I never enjoyed it, but felt strangely compelled to find out what happened in the next episode, and would stay up too late watching. After one season I decided that was enough of that addiction.
I really hated the politics and rhetoric of 24, but was somehow compelled beyond my will to watch every single episode. I knew it was unhealthy as I'd stay up way too late and ended up getting weird & anxious (head full of of right-wing fantasy combined with prolonged sleep depravation).
Unlike you I didn't kick the addiction & i've now seen every season.
Damn you and your insidious cliff-hangers Jack Bauer! :P
I didn't watch it because it got cliché pretty fast like LOST. The worst offender I reckon was Dragonball Z [0]. I realised this pattern and that greatly put me off many games and movies, eg WoW, FarmVille, etc. It was a grind. I want something novel.
[0] Do: Scream, build up tension, to be continued, until Infinity. Replace scream with drama (twists).
Ouch. I watched that back on TV a decade ago when I had no idea what I was getting into. Longest "15 minutes" ever. They're supposed to be fighting on a planet that's about to explode... but the planet patiently waits to blow up until their fight is over... which takes almost forever. Ugh.
Paul contrasts two situations, the first exemplified by the "watching TV all day" example, the second by "staying all day at the office doing busywork while not accomplishing much".
Playing MMORPGs all day seems rather like the first, not the second.
I do have to disagree with you. "busywork" makes it look like you're doing work. Often you can get away with it. You might very well be doing work but you're not really doing anything of value.
World of Warcraft can feel like work but you're not really trying to pass it off as work. If you managed to do that, who ever you work for certainly has some issues!
Same story for me as far as MMORPG's, Farmville and similar go. I get super addicted for a week and play probably 8 hours a day, then I just get bored. The whole thing is vaguely addicting, but ultimately completely uninteresting.
If I'm going to watch a character level up I'd much rather hit the gym. The increasing weights you can lift offer a nice chance for some nerdy analysis while you're also actually doing something useful.
I rarely engage in shameless self promotion, but this seems like an appropriate moment. My startup, Fitocracy, is built around the notion of loosely mapping the MMORPG experience to exercise and fitness. We've been getting fairly popular with the early adopter crowd and we've even been featured in XKCD and Penny-Arcade.
I'll chime in on this about how the gym worked for me. Do both strength training and aerobic exercise; both are good for you, and both will work to keep you healthy. I joined a gym that did CrossFit workouts which combines both styles of exercise, and have been doing so for the last 9 months.
I could never stay motivated at the gym on my own, whereas CrossFit is nice because it's run as a group class, and you typically have a coach that runs you through the exercises. It's a bit more expensive, but it's the only gym that I've ever actually stayed committed to.
As for results, I haven't lost any weight; but I've lost fat and gained a ton of muscle (it was extremely noticeable in my face.) I've also taken 2.5 inches off of my waist.
I've tried various methods, but a little notebook seemed to always work the best. Of course you can always transfer some data to a spreadsheet if you want a chart or something, but the only thing I really ever check is "the last time I did this exercise for this target reps what weight did I use and how many did I get?" Use that number to determine what to do today. Checking takes about 20 seconds. I now have years of weight training workouts in my little notebooks :)
I didn't really run any super advanced analytics. But when you're there 2 hours a day 6 days a week, it tends to stick in your mind when you're progressing and when you aren't.
But to give you a sense, it took me 3 years to go from 50kg to 64kg body weight (first ~8kg was in 6 months or so). 64 is my IBM limit so it's incredibly difficult to go up from that.
I could squat-lift 130kg, benchpress about 80kg, biceps curl around 25kg and so on ... it was epic.
I've since taken up boxing and in a way it's even awesomer.
I use a program called Beyond the White Board (http://beyondthewhiteboard.com/) it's $3/month. It's mainly built around CrossFit, but you could easily tailor it for your own workouts. Like a good geek, I tried to "roll my own" and use spreadsheets, but after 2-3 months I realized that the $3/month was a better usage of my resources.
I haven't gotten into them myself in that way, but many people who are into MMORPGs have a significant social aspect to it, not just level-grinding. I'm ambivalent about the question overall, but it doesn't seem inherently worse than the many other ways that people socialize and entertain themselves.
