Warband & Game Addiction

Note: This is long, if you don't want to read it, I'd recommend you hit the back button now to refrain from making posts about the conspicuous length of the thread.

Secondly, As a disclaimer, please note that everything I am going to say and, for that matter, everything on this thread is my personal opinion and experience, But that does NOT mean that you have to agree with me. I will also preface this by stating that I have been both a ranker and a leader of numerous clans within the warband community and have held very strong ties with the regiment that I am now currently running. So, I have experience with both sides of this argument. I have also spoken with many other leaders from warband whom personally have given me their common agreement on many of the points I've made with them. So without further adieu, let me begin.

For me, I first came across Warband while watching a YouTube video for a mod called "Mount & Gladius" a mod that probably most of you have heard if you've been in the community long enough. As I watched the video, I quickly became emerged in all of the unique team cooperation and diverse game mechanics that I had never seen before. Immediately after watching the video, I was so compelled to get the mod that I went ahead and bought the game just a day later. Unfortunately for me, the mod ended up closing down a few months after I had joined the community and thus, I was then left clanless. It was only days later that I would come across a DLC called "Napoleonic Wars" that would change my whole aspect on gaming completely.

As soon as I had purchased the DLC, I was very impressed with the gameplay and felt that joining a regiment would be the best way for me to enjoy the game to it's full potential. Around a day later, I had made a decision to join a regiment and was soon enlisted as a cadet in a French regiment. At first, after I had joined, I was so exhilarated for fighting my first line battle that it nearly took me an hour to fall asleep from my adrenaline to see what a real line battle was like. The next morning, I got on my pc, hopped onto teamspeak, and joined the server for my first linebattle. Let me tell you, it definitely felt awesome at first. The immerse feeling of actually being in a Napoleonic soldier's shoes felt incredibly unique and felt like there was nothing more enjoyable than playing that game. As time went on, I was active in my regiment, got promoted, and achieved all sorts of commendations for my service. Finally, as I achieved the rank of NCO, my entire experience completely began to change.

I was then handed online paperwork like roster editing, recruitment goals to meet, and hourly activity spikes to issue out on steam to keep people active on teamspeak. All of these tasks were aimed towards keeping the community organized and active. Despite the tasks being very redundant and dragging, I went ahead and proceeded to do them anyway without protest. Months later, I became Sergeant-Major and was 4th in command in the entire regiment. Every other day I would find myself needing to attend each and every other single linebattle that was scheduled. At that point, it was beginning to feel more like a job and less like a hobby. I was tasked with jobs like leading events, getting people on teamspeak, meeting a certain attendance amount, having an adequate skill in melee, etc. Pretty much all of the typical skills an NCO/CO should have when holding such a high rank. Another couple of months later I found myself in a position where I had honestly been in such a boring spot and wanted to have a change in my NW gaming experience and so I made the decision to leave and form my own regiment; A choice that many make but few succeed. 

For my regiment, we tried out EU/NA at first but were unfortunately forced to revert to just NA due to lack of funding, administration, and the time that would of been needed in order to devote such work to such a big obligation (Also including the fact that I was 14 years of age and couldn't attend EU events on weekdays). And so with that being the case, we ended up reverting to just an NA regiment from that point forward. Later on, about a month or so into the regiment, we numbered about 15-20 members, a typical sized regiment I'd say for any small communities just starting out, and for our events, had a spaced out schedule for events every other day during the week to make attendance less demanding. On event days, we would get on 30 minutes early, spam people on steam to get on, send out steam announcements, and scrape through our contact lists to make sure that people were attending. Afterwards, I would capture people's attendance and after the battle put it into our spreadsheet system where we would record inactives and actives within the regiment. To make matters more complex, we even had a whole roster that was constantly being updated to keep the regiment organized.

Soon enough, people started becoming bored and wanted more and more events to keep them more active and engaged with NW and I went ahead and added more events figuring that we might as well go professional anyway since I had no real extracurricular activities in real life at the time. Well, sure enough I found myself leading nearly every event, doing nearly every roster edit, and doing every activity spike and community errand to keep our community from going through a dark age with an empty teamspeak. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't everyone's case scenario if you have good and mature NCOs, but for me; I simply lacked competent individuals for NCOship at the time and knew deep down that I really was one of the only individuals who tend to the regiment best  than none other than myself. And again I emphasize, this may have not been your scenario in a regiment, but for me, I lacked a competent NCO base, and that is honestly not something you can really find right around the corner either. If there was anything that I ever learned, it was that I wanted to avoid giving someone a rank that they didn't deserve during my time of need because I knew that later on if I had to revoke it, they would feel like ****e and most likely protest for me stripping them of their rank. So I reconciled with myself that the best opportunity for me to go about leading the regiment was just for me, and souly me to lead and mentor my regiment since we lacked competent candidates for NCO positions.

As I grew more and more weary of the repetitive tasks, I myself found the game to be a job that I was completely milked out of and felt sick having to play on. Yet, at the same time I kept telling myself, "I have to be there at the event" or "I want to stop but I can't" things that someone who has an addiction to something would typically say and yet. I can conclude that I was addicted to the game and had a choice I had to make. I could A) Keep playing for the community and to keep the little family we had formed there going B) Disband the community and tell everyone to their separate ways or C) Tell everyone we're done with NW and go hunt down another game for us to play.

In the end, we went ahead with option C and had our community for months turtle around playing small games here and there. We tried DayZ but found that to be too time constraining and stressful. We also tried MMOs like WoW and RuneScape but found that the community had little interest in playing those games and had little money to spend on the massive games like Guild Wars 2 and the other bigger MMO titles. As time went on we had less and less people come on teamspeak everyday and the server then looked like a ghost town. Unfortunately, I had hit the inevitable dark age of the community where literally everyday it was an effort to event keep the activity to at least 10 clients a day. At the last community meeting I posted, we only managed to get a total of 14-15 people in the channel at once and really had to make a decision whether to disband or go back to NW. Unfortunately, that choice was NW and here I am repeating the same redundant history I did as the last time and can't seem to get myself out of this pattern.

In the end, I'd like to ask that if anyone else can relate to this story and their experience with NW; have you ever hit my point with warband before? I myself feel like I was addicted before and am starting to forcefully get addicted again. Is clanning in your opinion really worth it for the community? For me, it just seems like an endless cycle of non-beneficial addiction and quite a waste of time. I mean, when you hit 870 hours on a steam game, was all of that really spent enjoying it as a hobby?
So all-in-all, is all of that time spent playing warband really worth it?

Anyhow, this has been a pretty long post and I could go on for days about it. If anyone has further questions, similar experiences, or general input then feel free to post it below.

You may be interested in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHtbX1-jd48&list=UUtIBkKQD1u7asfuRsqSLvYQ

870 Hours are small compared to what I've played at this point. I'm definitely in the thousands of hours, likely near to the tens. I've spent some of them being a leader now.
I see where you're coming from.

The simple fact is that Warband is only a game. People's interest is the sole driver of activity. And if there is a lull or a negative trend of community growth, groups tend to dissemble. Unless the scale gets bigger, and the group more interesting, people will eventually stop caring.

I feel your pain brother. This could easily explain why I stopped playing EVE Online: it had become, and promised to continue to be, more and more like work and less and less like play. I have subsequently reverted back to a mostly single player gamer. I have done a bit of Arma and Scourge of War coop (against AI) and that is a lot less tedious. Without the competitiveness of PVP, just getting together with some guys to pawn the AI is something that can be scheduled a couple times a week, for a few hours, bang your done: good times, no paperwork, planning, organization, motivational speaking, thief/spy/infiltrator detection, espionage paranoia (terrible in EVE), etc. At an even less 'commital' level is a game like Dead Island: Epidemic. Log in to a lobby, click ready, you get matched up to 3 other humans, pawn zombies for 15 minutes, bang your done. No need to get involved in all the human drama if you don't want to.

ADDIT: Something I think all gamers should regard as axiomatic: gaming should be for fun. If it is so fun that you do it too much, that may be a problem; but if it really is energizing, then maybe you can burn the candle at both ends and manage to keep RL obligations met too. Some folks manage to game a lot, and still kick ass at school, work, relationships, child care, whatever.

However, some folks don't. My "clan" leader ("Alliance" and "corporation" in EVE but same thing as clan in M&B) was a great guy. You could tell he was the sort of guy who would give you the food off his plate if he knew you were hungry. Smart, capable, friendly, charismatic (in a thuggish Portsmouth dockworker sort of way), in sum, a good dude. But it was quite simply appalling how he let his gaming interfere in his marriage and relationship with his children. I never felt like judging him, but it was actually heart breaking to hear he and his wife arguing over Teamspeak as he once again put an Alliance raid or other event higher in priority than fulfilling some promise he had made her to take her out on their anniversary or something like that. The really sad part about these gamer sub-cultures (at least the PVP focused ones) is that, because of the competitiveness, folks who are vulnerable to making that kind of sacrifice of RL in favor of gaming are the ones who naturally rise to the top of the pile: they are always online, they play constantly so they are masterful, and they wind up being powerful, influential and well-connected within the games sub-culture. Being "accomplished" in the game community, all too often, seems to come at the price of failing to excel at at least some aspects of RL, with relationships with wives/girlfriends and children being a common theme.

And then you have the harm that you describe, sacrificing your own fun for the sake of a commitment to a group. While there is certainly something noble in that, being able to step back and say "I need to take a break," else "I cannot carry all of this responsibility/time commitment" is something we all as gamers must always be prepared to do.

Rallix said:

You may be interested in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHtbX1-jd48&list=UUtIBkKQD1u7asfuRsqSLvYQ

870 Hours are small compared to what I've played at this point. I'm definitely in the thousands of hours, likely near to the tens. I've spent some of them being a leader now.
I see where you're coming from.

The simple fact is that Warband is only a game. People's interest is the sole driver of activity. And if there is a lull or a negative trend of community growth, groups tend to dissemble. Unless the scale gets bigger, and the group more interesting, people will eventually stop caring.

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I envy Dyslexci his never ending passion for Arma. I personally (and I think most gamers) get bored with the same thing over and over. And that is another reason I stopped playing EVE Online. If you are an active and committed participant in an online PVP gaming community, and especially a persistent world MMOG like EVE, there is a feeling of 'dereliction' any time you spend time having fun playing some other game (Angry Birds or whatever) instead of your 'job' game.

Interesting story, but what I don't quite understand is why you felt it was an addiction. Or to put it this way, what you described, doesn't necessarily fit under the definition of addiction.

Based on what you wrote, it seems more that you felt a duty to the community that you had created and that's what kept you playing or organizing events.

So, it seems more that the commitments you made, made you feel that you had to play. Which again, doesn't quite make it sound like it was Warband you were addicted to but rather perhaps that the community you were/are it seems to satisfy some of your social needs.



A real life example of what you describe in my mind would be say...someone who joined a club.

Let's say the chess club, worked to build it up and then found a year or two later that they were tired of chess. However, because the chess club was where they had formed social bonds and friends, they would be very reluctant to just leave.

In this case I wouldn't really say that they were addicted to chess but perhaps rather that they had a limited social network and thus felt dependent on that one group to maintain their life.

DelcoreXD said:

In a sense yes and in another sense no. Warband itself has been confessed by many that I've spoken with to be very addictive. For me, sometimes after not playing after a while does bring back nostalgia to me and I feel that I'm looking at the game trying to say no to it just as an ex-smoker looks at a pack of cigarettes. In a way, you want it to stop because you know it really isn't benefiting you in any way. I mean, out of the 870 hours I've devoted to warband, I haven't gotten a girlfriend, haven't gotten a scholarship to a college yet, and nor have I improved my skills in mathematics. One who is a member in a chess club doesn't face the challenges of keeping it alive and constantly making sure that people are attending events (unless they are officers of course) and even at that doesn't come with the amount of responsibility as something like warband clan management does.

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Ok, that makes a bit more sense.

However, like a lot of examples brought up when people discuss Gaming/Addiction, it seems like for you it represented an outlet for either lack of success in real life or social interactions. In turn, I find it a bit hard to figure out if it is an actual addiction or more of a symptom of other problems.

Granted, if you really felt that you had to play and experienced the classic signs of addiction, then I can defiantly see where it seems like a likely diagnosis.



I know that my example isn't exactly the same, but what I was trying to point out was that in such a case where one group/place is pretty much all of your life, of course it will be hard to make a clean break.

870 hours? Weak

Getting bored of a game is nothing surprising or revolutionary. I have to switch between 5 different games currently to keep myself entertained for the 30 or so hours of gaming I do a week.

Just play what you want, and you'll find people to play with. I also recommend diversifying into multiple types of games, strategy, RPG, shooter, etc.

Agreed, to have a long-burning passion to play a game and stick to that passion out of your own voluntary free will is a pretty rare case. For me at least, passion ran out after I had attended about my 15th linebattle and started administrating as an NCO.

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I mean, out of the 870 hours I've devoted to warband, I haven't gotten a girlfriend, haven't gotten a scholarship to a college yet, and nor have I improved my skills in mathematics.

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I burned out on linebattles in a matter two months. After two years of native scrims, I dropped from competitive play not from lack of interest but from lack of a team. I'd probably still play in scrims if I was invited. In that span of time I started and finished an associate's degree on scholarship at a community college, then started a bachelor's degree at a university which I'm currently finishing up (majoring in math, as it so happens).

Video games are entertainment, and in my opinion are more socially interactive and engaging than more mainstream forms of entertainment. Hell, a popular date idea is dinner and a movie. You're just sitting idly at a movie, not talking, not really getting to know who you're with, and you're probably spending ten bucks or more per person for less than two hours of entertainment. Nobody cares about the total lack of socializing during a movie, and if you spent a dozen hours a week watching movies (one movie per day) then you'd be a film enthusiast, not an addict. Think of all the different people you meet in that amount of time in a game, and how much you can learn from them.

DelcoreXD said:

I myself, don't find myself to be a warband enthusiast and from my perspective upon the community over the years, don't really see raging passion from the game at every steam user who has 1000s of hours of warband on their steam record either.

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Is the only justified enjoyment one that is described to be a "raging passion"? You seem to understand that people can have persistent long term enjoyment of things or like-things, but the categorization of the only healthy enjoyment of such things in this long term state as a "raging passion" seems to be quite odd.

I can relate and agree with you 110%. Not about M&B cause never let it get so far , but was about 6 Years a Guildleader/Staff of WoW.
Also i was Maintank (so had to be in all major raids), Raidleader, recruiter and so on.
I had spend about 6-8 hours a day managing all this and then i was about 4-10 hours a day farming for stuff you need (herbs for flasks, better armor/weapons etc).
Since you couldn´t do all with 1 char i had 8 max lvl chars with all professions. Last thing in the eve was checking that i don´t miss anything ingame, first thing in the morning was to make sure i didn´t miss anything. Got barely out of house cause my life was build around the game. I made a cut with WoW just to fall in the next trap World of Tanks, started as fun but got into a clan, promoted quick to Companie leader and where back in Clan wars, spended my time farming money and xp to get more Tanks to play and went in about the same circle like wow.
Like a lot of others i know and had been hardcore gamer, didn´t had a girl nor a job, but didn´t care cause the game made my life.
But i reached the point where i asked myself if this should be it till the end of days for me.
Clearly not i quit and never went back, restricted my gaming times to max 2-3 hours and no mmo.
It helped got a job and i´m married now and now gaming is really just a fun thing inbetween, but still tempting to play mmo´s
but you have to make a choice and RL with my fam is more important then gaming

At the end of the day, addiction is defined more by the negative consequences derived from our activity or substance than by the hours spent/amount consumed. If a game is causing you to neglect your health, family, friends, and work, and you keep wanting to do it anyway, then it's an addiction. However, simply not enjoying the time you spend with a game, but feeling committed regardless, is similar but not the same. In this case it seems the extreme organisational elements have overridden what you enjoyed - this is a shame and certainly a problem, but the solution is not the same as with addiction. Addiction must be managed, either with minimisation or complete withdrawal. For you, I'd say look for ways to relieve the stress and pressure of people management (and this is a real problem in the workplace as well).

Perhaps it can help to look at the difference between native Warband and NW. I've not played in the latter but my impression, from your post and a few other accounts, is that it is hyper-organised, played very serious by nevertheless quite young people, and requires a lot of commitment in terms of hours, training, all to line up and take potshots at each other (ok  I'm trolling a bit now xD). A lot of this comes from the nature of way line battles play out, it's impossible to get the kind of co-ordination needed without that effort. For native, battles are much smaller and dependent on individual skill than the coordination of tens of people, but activity of clan members and training is still required. In our clan, we basically don't bother to keep on top of everyone 24/7 to make sure they're attending events and filling hours of 'online paperwork'. It has to be up them to want to play, to keep informed of events, and other than a little spamming on steam before a match, it's relatively stress free. I say relatively because we still have the dramas, fights, sudden moments of not enough people, etc that every clan has, but for the most part it's casual.

The exception is during tournaments. In the last WNL, which lasted 7 weeks, I committed a lot of time to improving both my own skills and to training members, keeping activity up, practice matches every day, etc. It was exhausting yet fun, and showed results. After those 7 weeks, I actively avoided all matches for about 3 weeks xD

So in conclusion I would recommend that you find ways that take pressure off of you, as it seems a problem of management rather than the time spent on the game itself. If you find clan members becoming inactive without your constant sacrifice, then that's just how it goes - your enjoyment and health must take some priority at least. You may end up with a smaller group in the end, but it will be a group of people you don't need battle with every hour to keep organised and interested.

If after all that, you find yourself still unhappy, spending hours on the game but not enjoying it, and your real life is suffering, then I think we can revisit addiction and quitting the game may be necessary.

Or you know, you could join native and find a real challenge

Edit: Oh and I should say, good luck and I hope you find some enjoyment again, in whatever you do! xoxo

These were all choices you made, none of which are imposed upon you in order to play Warband. You could easily have played Warband without getting involved in any of that, but you chose not to.

What you need is to see how a game community dies and then you lose all contact with the guys that were in the events and such.

Real contact > Virtual contact

DelcoreXD said:

Mage246 said:

These were all choices you made, none of which are imposed upon you in order to play Warband. You could easily have played Warband without getting involved in any of that, but you chose not to.

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Pretty ignorant statement to make when each case is different. Each individual, group, and or organization functions in a different manner. Each mentality is different. Again, like I said before, it's easy to say you couldn't have when it encroaches on you. For myself, I have a scenario with a community that has built upon me with my time playing warband over the years. I don't see how you could make such an assessment like the one you are describing.

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Pretty ignorant statement to make. I've been gaming longer than you've been alive. I learned how to set limits. Simply because you won't or can't set limits to your gaming use does not mean that this has anything to do with Warband. It has everything to do with your lack of self-control.