I like gaming.
I like the easy optimizability of it. I like being in an arena where I am a dominant factor. I like knowing that I'm the best.

I also like mentoring people, and the bittersweet thrill of seeing someone do better than I do because of what they've learned from me.

I like gaming.

But I am really starting to dislike the costs.

I don't like having no time to cook dinner two nights a week. I don't like missing Fridays with my girlfriend. I don't like playing with people who refuse to take the game seriously (and if that preceding statement made no sense to you, then you don't quite understand what it is that I get out of gaming). And I don't like being dependent for my fun on people who aren't as competent as I am.

I don't, exactly, want to quit. But I also don't want to keep spending my time in-game doing the things I've been doing. It isn't fun.

The easy answer, of course, is "stop raiding". But at our level of gear and expertise, all of the content we can access without raiding is trivial to us. Roll a new character and start over? Well, I suppose I could, but I've kind of seen all that before. PvP? Let's see--instead of being frustrated because the people I'm relying on are incompetent, I can be frustrated because the people I'm relying on are incompetent and the people on the other team are competent. No, thanks.

I'm a little bitter right now. My guild, through basically not caring very much about my time, just succeeded in utterly wasting somewhere between 40 and 160 hours of my time. Completely avoidably.

That's something I'm not even remotely okay with.

But then again, suppose they'd actually bothered to give a damn, and I'd gotten the Elemental Focus Band of my dreams.

Oh, look! For only 160 hours out of my life, I'll do at least 19 more damage on every spell I cast. I just got two percent better.

For 160 hours?

That's a month of full-time work.

That's an approximate economic value of $16,000 dollars at contractor's wages.

That's 44 years of feeding a starving child somewhere in the world, every day of his life.

That's also 32 days of work on the Metaphorest (the house we're buying, and remodeling, in a couple of months). 16 weekends. 4 months.

Or I could be selfish. That could be 320 glorious, luscious, thrilling acts of intercourse. Or 4 years of my once-a-week high-intensity workouts. Or 80 delicious, satisfying, home-cooked meals, rich and savory and full of juice. Hell, it's 40 good fantasy or science fiction novels read, savored, enjoyed, and stored away for future use.

It's even 480 LJ posts talking about how much better my life would be if I were spending this time on something other than video games.

Y'know, I like pot (yes, I too was once young). I like the buzzy, floating feeling, and the relaxation, and the time dilation, and the heightened sense of fun (not that mine needs any heightening). But I don't smoke pot. Because I've got better things to do with my time.

I just checked something out. On my three highest-level characters, I have a total of 1262 hours played. That's not quite a full-time job for a year, but it's not an insignificant fraction of it, neither.

$126,200 at contractor's wages. 20 starving children fed from birth to age 18. Two and a half years of working every weekend on the Metaphorest. More sex, by my estimation, than I have had in my entire life to this point.

Okay, there's a scary thought--I've spent more time in the past year playing World of Warcraft than I've spent in my entire life in actual sexual intercourse.

That is a serious failure of resource allocation.

And what do I have to show for it?

I'm a respected, appreciated member of a reasonably successful end-game guild in World of Warcraft. I have a very well-equipped character and the skill to play her. And I get to spend 10 to 20 hours per week incrementally improving my gear, learning new encounters, seeing pretty pixel puzzles drawn by highly talented game designers, and beating my head against the wall when the inevitable personality conflicts get in the way of my fun.

10 to 20 hours per week. 500 to 1000 hours per year.

$50,000 to $100,000 every year, forever. Two to four nights a week that I'm not spending learning to play electric guitar, or arrange pop songs, or remodel houses. Two to four nights a week that I'm not taking pretty women out on dates, or volunteering at a soup kitchen or a suicide crisis hotline, or taking night classes toward a counseling degree. 500 to 1000 hours not spent with my daughter, in the last precious seven years before she leaves home forever. 500 to 1000 hours not spent making Christmas a family delight, keeping in touch with distant friends, getting enough sleep, working out, cleaning my house, petting the cat, meditating, shooting bugs, acting in plays, teaching classes, throwing parties, protesting injustice, teaching literacy, dreaming big dreams.

I've got better things to do with my time.