Content on Farm - How to not Get Bored

The time between content patches can be really difficult to some players. Their guilds might suffer from players quitting, taking breaks, having motivational problems, and decreased performance. On the other hand some guilds that progress slower take longer to clear all the content and they can keep on raiding with their normal schedule for months.

In that situation some players might experience a burn out and quit just to get more free time, leaving their guild in a situation where they need to recruit someone new. Taking in a new player when you could have kept the old one is always more trouble, and from a guild's perspective it's important that players can manage through the times when playing wow doesn't feel that great.

 

The problem in both situations is the same; how to keep yourself motivated with playing. This article will focus on how Paragon members survive the gaps between patches, and how they keep themselves fresh to be able to play "balls to the walls" when needed. Some of the stuff our members do and think applies also to "how to not get a burnout from raiding too much".

 

Keeping yourself motivated comes down to one question: "what do you enjoy in-game and IRL and how to find a balance between them?"

 

I asked our members how they spend their time (in wow and outside of wow) when we are raiding only 2 hours per week, farming Icecrown Citadel and Ruby Sanctum. The questions I asked everyone are:

 

1. How much do you play World of Warcraft outside raid hours?

 

2. What do you do in-game outside raid hours?

 

3. How do you spend your free time?

 

4. How do you not get bored with playing World of Warcraft?

 

Maeil:

1. Not much, some weeks I just log to play at the weekly raids. Probably a bit over an hour per week on average.  On the other hand I do play a lot of beta when there is something new to test.

2. Check mail, put some stuff on the auction house, complete JC-daily sometimes and play some PvP randomly.

3. When I am not studying I relax watching a movie or some series, I also use a lot of my time just surfing the net and listening music. Chatting with friends and guildies is also a great way to pass time.

4. When I play WoW alone I do get bored quite easily, but when doing something with a friend or a group of friends there is no such thing as boredom.

 

Zyn:

1. Very little, unless there's new stuff to see. I'm going to be playing a lot once Cataclysm goes live. After I've seen the dungeons and done the quests etc, I'll probably just not play almost at all. Going to be helping out people occasionally if they need to get something done, but that's about it.

2. Pretty much I just do what I said earlier. Mostly I do stuff with friends, I'm not really interested in grinding some obscure faction reputation or getting 12k achievement points - I don't find it the least bit entertaining. I rather spend that time doing other stuff.

3. Free time off of WoW? It's a job now? 8[

 

I do whatever I feel like doing, pretty much. This past weekend I went on a boat trip to Tallinn and ate in some kind of medieval restaurant. It takes less than a couple of hours to drive across the bay, although it's highly dependent on weather. The trips are usually pretty booze-filled.

 

Other than that, I play and watch SC2 games. I've been working out a lot in the gym ever since I saw the Assembly pictures (lol). Plan is to resume practicing submission wrestling and maybe pick some other contact sport while at it.

 

4. By not playing it too much. It's easy to have everything revolve around a game and for me it becomes too much of an emotional experience at that point. I also play other games; occasionally try out some other MMOs. They usually work as a good reminder of why exactly I've kept on playing WoW.

 

I’m definitely going to try the new KOTOR MMO out too. I think it'll be fun, unless it lacks a significant amount of polish. Also looking forward to playing Cataclysm a ton. It's more of the "same old" but more polished and tweaked and with some new ideas. I'm absolutely certain I'll have a blast playing it with some friends.

 

 

Kruf:

1. A few hours per week, not counting the time spent playing Cataclysm beta which is quite random depending on server stability and such.

2. Chat with people, do some random instances or raids on my alts.

3. Lately I've mostly been playing SC2 and reading, and there's of course always ITG. (ITG = In the Groove, machine dance game).

4. Well I am quite bored with WoW at the moment. Luckily the farm raids don't really take that long... I still log on for every raid because I want to keep my 100% attendance and because we need 25 people online to get a raid going for those who still need loot.

 

 

Xodan:

1. Currently not too much, maybe an hour or two per week.

2.  I recently (couple months ago) leveled a dk alt to 80, which took some time, but now I mostly hang at the north bank or play with the AH a little.

3. At home I like to watch some series, SC2 matches (not that I know how to play it), or surf the net. With friends I like to play board games and now that the semester has started I like to spend some time at student parties. I've been also known to jog every now and then.

4. For me those boring farm runs turn fun when I try to beat others / myself on damage meters. Usually I just want to do the instance as fast as possible.

 

 

Baltha:

1. At the moment I don't play WoW outside raids, excluding some random altraids (and jump around Dalaran bank, but I wouldn't call that playing).

2. I pretty much already answered to this, but I'd like to add that with Cata being so close there just isn't anything to do. Well if you're an achievement or pvp enthusiast there is, but I’m clearly not either of these.

3. Most of the time I just sit on my computer (movies, tv-shows, games), but sometimes I even play golf or chill with mates or some other boring RL stuff I don't want to get into.

4. I do get bored with WoW, but the epic feeling you get from new content rush keeps me going.

 

 

Diamondtear:

1. Not at all.

2. I spend time in-game only when I can do something that'll benefit me in raids. Getting emblems from heroics for example.

3. Watching movies, tv-series, and anime. Watching and playing Starcraft II (mostly watching). I also play other games sometimes, but I usually just finish the single player and don't really get into them (Blur, Singularity, etc.). During holidays I might also play visual novels, because they take so much time (100 hours and counting on Fate/Stay Night). I don't have any hobbies outside my apartment.

4. I spend most of my day doing something else than playing WoW, so it's more like a diversion to me when I get bored with other things.

 

Rihmz:

1. Depends entirely whether I've just created a new alt or not.

2. When I get excited about leveling a new class I might play pretty much 24/7 until I've gotten the best gear available outside raid instances. If there are no alts it might be that I only log in once per week for farm raids.

3. On week days after school I don't really do that much special stuff, but during weekends I just have to get out or my head explodes. Usually there is beer involved.

4. From time to time I tend to get a "wow-depression". The best medicine to this is to entirely ignore wow for 2-4 weeks and do something completely different. I always end up wanting to play again when I've taken my time. Also, if I feel like my class is getting boring, it's worth trying a class that has a totally different role that you are used to playing.

 

 

Jubeto:

1. I haven't played outside of raid time for the last 6 weeks, but when I was on summer vacation, I was raiding with an alt every now and then to prepare for cataclysm, but as the quest rewards are so awesome, I decided to stop. (it was getting boring as well)

2. Other than occasional alt playing, mainly buy flasks or gems and sell primordial saronites.

3. I hang out with friends, play other games besides wow or do homework.

4. New content in wow is always fun, but I have to agree that content farming usually gets really boring after a while. We have so many members that if I want to skip, I usually can. (I'm not skipping often though) Trying top the damage meters on boss fights is the funniest part during farm raid and I enjoy minmaxing my damage output.

 

 

Tuuttiz:

1. Varies a lot, but average 1-4 hours per week

2. Doing random arenas or leveling alts.

3. On my free time I watch series and movies. I'm also doing freelancer webpage projects.

4. That's a hard question! There are periods when I only play during the farm raids and try to avoid forcing myself to participate in alt raids or stuff that doesn't interest me at all. I think I've got around 1000 days played on different characters and I've never felt like quitting wow.

 

Lazei:

1. 0-10 hours per week

2. 99% of it is arenas if Verdisha isn't slacking AGAIN.

3. I do a lot of different things like going to school, doing some IRL stuff once in a while, hanging out on IRC, idling, surfing the net and playing random games.

4. The secret of not getting bored at WoW is not play WoW when it’s boring. Every time there isn't anything to do I pick up some other game and play that until new WoW content is released.

 

 

zin:

1. It varies A LOT. Sometimes I play like 30 hours a week and sometimes 0 hours.

2. Level up some alts, get gear for them, do dailies (jc, bg, hc) and weekly raids.

3. I go to college, which is almost finished so not much of that during the week. Then I do network-related work when needed (routing, switching etc.). Currently I have plenty of free time. I use that to play badminton, go to the gym and train muay thai.

I also watch a lot of movies and series like Survivor, TUF, House, True Blood, SGU, SOA, Hell’s Kitchen, Top Chef, Apprentice, Breaking Bad, Bleach, Fringe and Dexter just to mention a few ;). Then I also randomly play Battlefield Bad Company 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Flatout: Ultimate Carnage. I also like to watch some top games in Starcraft 2.

4. I play different classes often (as some may have seen from the 0% LK video ;)), which gives me a lot of variety in gameplay.

 

 

As you probably noticed, a lot of our members take it easy during farm content and just wait for the next boss to kill. A lot of them have also gotten bored about the game by this point, but they knew that would happen whatever they do. The key is to prepare for it and plan other stuff and still not completely stop playing. Most of the people who take really long breaks don't come back when the interesting content becomes available.