Is Grinding Pointless? 

Yea I feel very much the same. I also feel when I get off work, I should learn a new skill that would make me better at my job or more likely to get a job I would enjoy more. I also wish i had pursued more creative hobbies overall like picking up writing or playing an instrument, maybe read more. I think what I'm trying to say is, no matter what I can spend my time more efficient, but I also think my brain needs time of reflect on the things ive experienced during the day. By relaxing with a video game, hanging out with friends and so on, I give my head time to rest and actually pause the intake of too many new impressions and gets me rdy for new impressions. Love content like this Mike. I think its very healthy to reflect on these things from time to time.

Someday WOW will be gone. Until that day, I will enjoy the time that I've wasted....spent playing.

My brother passed away during WotLK I stopped playing because life become difficult. My mom would scream at me and tell me that I was wasting my life playing video games. Came back to WoW in 2023 for Hardcore WoW because nostalgia, I was older and had my own place. I truly believe that if I would kept playing WoW, I would of ended up homeless. Now I'm playing SoD and Mop Remix, having a great time. Do I regret not playing WoW for 14 years ? No. I'm I glad to be back? Yes. Video games used as fun and entertainment are great, its when they are use for escaping reality, then you are wasting your time.

Hey nice video. As a fellow mount chaser, this really made me think about the addiction/validation schema you find yourself chasing. I work a full time job and when I try to do something in WoW that also feels like another full time job, my anxiety worsens. Exactly as you said, when I want to play WoW I play. And when I dont, I dont and try and think nothing of it. I dont try and motivate myself to get a grind done.

I have thought about the same thing many times, especially wondering about other hobbies I could've pursued and what I could've done with the time. My philosophy on it is that the hours I have spent playing are enjoyable, in the same way that any other hobby is. Sure, it's great to wish you learned all these skills in the time you were playing, but the reality is you weren't going to do that anyways.

I'm still playing WoW because I strangely still consider it to not just be a game, but a social hub where I can interact with other people that isn't just a wall of text and links like FB and Twitter. It's a hobby, and I always want to meet like-minded people that aren't from the small town I live in.

i feel like it comes down to how you consume games, i'm a 90s kid too so i was 12-20 during wow's peak so i used to play in a very carefree manner where the time aspect you talk about just didn't matter. it's not like i didn't do things outside of wow but that feeling of requiring meaningful time spent playing and like life fomo didn't exist for me back then. as i've gotten older i'm increasingly driven by meaningful gameplay, feeling like my time is respected and i've gravitated away from casual-centric gameplay like questing, wqs, BGs or collectibles. and i kinda feel like that's the thing with wow, it's no wonder that the casual gameplay feels less and less meaningful when we have 20 years worth of collectibles that don't matter and the game is more and more focused on the endgame content. although i also think that even if the mmo grind is endless, you can still opt into being able to "finish" the game by having/setting goals like pvp/m+ rating or mythic raiding that will always feel meaningful. in that sense wow is different from rocket league because in rocket league the time spent playing can be meaningful in itself because it's a causal chill game that only has rank/collectibles as goals to pursue while wow is build on a large number of reward systems (loot, rating, dungeons, raids, collectibles, achievements, alts) that are repeated every expansion. even though you talk about "just having fun" in wow before, how many times can you "just have fun" in the same game over a timespan of 5, 10, 15 years before you experience diminishing returns? i'll also say, the "i could have spent 10k hours in something else"-thought is kind of a trap, because an hour in a game is not equivalent to an hour of doing *something* else. i have something like 1800 days played in wow and tens of thousands of hours in other games but also in the last 4 years have become a marathon/ultra runner, and i can say 100% that just because i had one hour more to spare, that doesn't mean that it's realistic to assume that i would have spent it doing an activity that i know feels meaningful. not for a lack of wanting, but because with most activities there are huge diminishing returns in how much time and energy you have available to spend on them. this thought is a trap because it assumes that you have a limited amount of activities to choose from and that you will always choose them over playing the game for an hour which is just not the case. in my opinion, it's more to do with the time aspect you talk about and life fomo because just like you say, playing or not playing doesn't matter because you already feel that the activity of playing wow has become a waste of time due to not feeling meaningful while at the same time being a comfort pick for you

As a foreign speaker of English, when I started playing WoW 16 years ago, my English was far worse than it is now, and WoW was a huge help, my English got better through WoW, even though that was not the intended purpose of the game. I often feel bad in WoW nowadays, but that's especially since, on top of everything else you said, I must aknowledge that I dislike and even hate with passion most of the things I have to do in pursuit of the rewards. I despise the process, it's frustration and misery half the time, that's the fact. And I do it anyway. Now, THAT is when you should be asking yourself why! As long as you can honestly say you're having fun, fun is a sufficient reason why.

Not a single one of us will make it out of this life alive... enjoy it if you want to. It doesn't matter why. There are so many horrible things that if you have found something that makes you happy, don't pass it up! The reason you have that nagging feeling is because of society. You've (all of us really) been conditioned to be the most productive you as possible or you are less than the others pressing themselves to the max. They'll end up the exact same place we all end up.. not here. In one generation past your kids you may not even be remembered. I have no clue what my ancestors did with their days. I do however hope they didn't listen to the nagging brains.

Interesting this pops up after I started thinking about it more regulary. Im farming Mounts and Transmog on Retail ( Im at 80%+ on Allthethings for Plate gear ) and the closer I get to the 30yo mark, the more I struggle with the Time I sink into farming virtual armory i will never transmog just to get the total number up. Obviously I enjoy playing and I love collecting, but yea. quarter life crisis or something haha

I use wow to keep up with my Spanish and Portuguese. I keep a word bank of fun new words I learn from reading quests and in-game lore. So I learn while I have fun, and the content and lore is endless 📚

I was in a ded in service job i was depressed and i found my self worth in mmos progression being the top in games like tera online and bdo. with the shut down of all tera servers i gound myslef seekign more. i dedicated half the time i spent in 3v3 arenas and dedicated to learning code for fun. and at the end of 8 months i landed my first softwre engineering job. and since then recieved a promtion 1 year later. my life is changed jsut dedicateding half my time in arenas to like uhh me. i met my dream partner wwhile learning code and life has never been better. it feels liek a fairyland princess movie plot and i feel undeserving. but all i did is dedicate my intensity at winnning arenas to become rank 1 in games to learning. it is wild to me that i took the first step and it is supprising how easy it came to me. and now i am back to playing quite a bit but with a newfound skill and stability and the support of my partner. May not be that way for everyone but i really appreciate you makign this vid gave me a moment to reflect on the same stuff

In Wow we only spend hours and a bit of money. But in other MMOS besides of thousands of hours people also spend thousands of Euro and dollars to get digital staff.

You do what you want... if you feel its a waste of time then do not play.

Now be me an arena addict. There is nothing like wow arena gameplay out there, i tried to replace it but nothing comes close. But to enjoy arena you have to "grind" for gear- min max your character THAN you have to find a partner, or at the very least wait 15m que for solo shuffle to pop for 2 min pvp gameplay Just cause we are playin MMORPG For pvpers it feels like im playing a mini game inside the real game, it fucking sucks

Great question i do think of this sometimes. Ive been playing wow 20 years now. For me, i play because of the stories i tell the epic adventures i have and tell my loved ones about. Trying for realm first 85 dk, getting week 1 glory of the legion dungeon hero, i cant forget those stories and theyre so epic. I cant replicate it in any other game. Past that? Is it pointless? Besides pure fun yes, it is. But i think this ties to a deeper philosophical question, does anything matter? And essentially my answer is no. You make your meaning in life but when we're in the twilight of our lives all that matters is what you told yourself mattered. For me what matters? Being good to others and myself, caring and growing my family, loving and laughing. Anything else is free game. Society has this weird way of making us feel like things matter so much more than they do. Life is really pretty simple and theres only a few big categories of things to do the rest are just pushed onto us as a societal ideal of this multilingual politically involved persons person but that really doesnt matter that much at all.

u made me check my /played in wow 21969 hours :O

I use to worry about this exact thing. I did take a long break (aka shadowlands lol) but the first week of hearing how amazing dragonflight was really changed it for me. I spent my non-wow time with crafts, chores, other games. but that time is still time for 'me' and I've liked playing wow for almost 20 years. Yes the game will cease to exist, eventually. I'll hopefully hae a different game to play by then.

Part of it growing up, and gaining perspective. For me I had to start getting projects/hobbies out side of video games. Overall its less gaming, but enjoyment is greater.

pretty much yeah

Lastly you have an existential issue. You realize your time is limited and so you cannot be at peace and your eyes widen thinking about the clock ticking as you play instead of work... In my case i simply think its an accomplishment that i have time to play instead of work and every second i dont have to work and can spend it on leasure is a life well lived.

If you find yourself playing and suddenly start thinking that it's a waste of time and "Why are you doing this?", that means that something is not OK. You either have been tricked to play a game you dont want to play (which I dont think is the case) OR you have suddenly changed your goal in life while playing or made some random realization... If you are playing this game and even more, if you have left it at some point and came back to it again, its because you find something in it. Fun? Friends?, Chill out?, Compete?, call it whatever... We all have our own purposes. Of course you can spend 12k+ hours in something different. Lets say learning code and program stuff. Ok, that would be a lot of skill that might bring you a lot of money. But can you compare playing wow and having fun with writing code down and programming? You would have 2 different goals. If you switch Wow for coding, you will learn code but you will stop having that fun. Therefore you will find another way of having fun. And then you will be in the same situation. Asking yourself... "What am I doing? I am here at the bar having fun with friends when I can be at home coding and getting better and earning more money." By that time Money wont be an issue for you becuase 12k+ hours will bring you more than enough. Then, why the urge to go for more and more? Maybe you are obsessed with trying to be efficient and "not waste time", but here is a secret. Wasting time, having fun, chilling out, escape from reality is actually part of our lives. If you dont abuse it it's just as healthy as eating a good salad, fruit or go jogging for some time. My advise? Set your main goals in life and keep up to them (Personal and social life, job, family, etc.) Then You work on that and whenever you need to distract yourself go grab a beer, call a friend, read a book, play guitar or get on wow farming some mounts. Doesnt matter. As long as you dont ruin your own life for a game and you measure things up keeping them in place, its all perfectly fine.

Everything in life is pointless. At the end of your life you die and lose it all. Just try to enjoy yourself while it lasts.

Its about as pointless as playing videogames is. Games are a problem you have fun solving. so if you ask yourself is it pointless to buy problems to solve for fun and you answer yes, then grinding is pointless. if you say no - asuming you do because you play videogames then achieving something in a videogame for example grinding something out - is not pointless, its fun. People who complain about grind are people who want things easy, its not about getting rewarded for a job well done, its them wanting rewards other people earned but without having to earn them. Theyre just literal children getting their narcisistic ego injured by the fact other people achieved more than them and they want to drag these people down to their level...

perhaps you want to avoid responsibility for your own decisions. namely time management

Its not only pointless! It's also not allowed. You might get punished for grinding.

I think it all comes down knowing what life do you want to live. If you can imagine yourself playing in next 40 years, then play it. If you imagine different life. Maybe you should stop spending your life and give that time to something more meaningful to you. Hope this helps

Dude but hobbies you would get into would also be pointless no? You are only doing them for fun dont you? Essentially you are setting yourself up to become miserable as the only thing you are allowing yourself to do are things that are brutally miserable. Would you be a happy person only living to work? Thats where you lead yourself here. Other than that, if you are insecure about your own time 1 our time is limited, doing one thing instead of the other is unavoidable 2 Things dont have inherent value that makes one task more valuable than other. Playing thesame game over and over is not inherently less valuable than learning a new language. You can learn 10 new languages - hate it - and never use them because you dont actually need them. You just made your life worse for no reason. 3 Are you insecure because of your own underacomplishment? do you have money to live? do you think social pressure is telling you you should grind yourself as a sacrifice on the wheel of torture of doing things you hate out of some shaming that you are to contribute to others wellbeing? generate economic activity?

sounds like you are insecure about how you spend your time.

I think if you are going to evaluate and discover who you are, and what you love most, it's important to try a large variety of things. If you have concluded, after trying a wide variety of things, that you enjoy wow more, then the grind of wow is simply something you enjoy most in life. If you find other things more enjoyable, then the grind of wow is not pointless, but not an optimal use of your time, based on your preferences. This is a big problem with video games, or really any addictive THING...in that it takes time away from your personal exploration of life, and so you may not find the thing you love most, because you simply didn't try enough things. We all have things we gravitate towards...things that we're genetically predisposed to enjoy the most...and since we can't really alter our genetics, then our utility happiness in life will essentially boil down to how often we do the things we truly love, based on those predispositions. If that's video games, ok, if it's not, the video games are a net loss. So find what you love, by exploring this reality as much as you can...and then once you've found it, 'grind' those things, because those things will no longer be a grind, but will be done out of love and joy.