Are there any folks in your guild that are married and/or have children? My wife would never go for the kind of time commitment you have made, and even though you are on the extreme end of playing, I imagine that there are people that play like you do and DO have families.
So if you do have a family, how do you balance it with work and the game?
That is certainly above average. It is even above-average if you want to see end-game raiding content. But, if you want to kill heroic-mode (basically souped up versions of the content), then it is pretty typical (although I would argue that 3-days of 3-hours per day is more typical, based on what I’ve seen).
As another data point, my main character has killed every boss in the game (except the latest mini-raid, due to time conflicts - the guild has killed him) on “normal mode” (not the hard-mode stuff that SFG is talking about), as well as a few hard-mode bosses. We raid two days a week, for 3 hours per day, and that’s all I do on that character. So that’s a total of 6 hours a week.
My “alt” tanking character has killed almost every boss on normal mode in 10-man raids (smaller groups, only the last boss still alive), also raiding two nights a week for 3 hours per night.
So what I’m saying is, even if you want to do raiding, you can do almost everything in the game without the types of time commitments SFG is talking about. You just won’t kill the bosses the first few weeks, or in their “heroic” modes.
You can play by yourself, or in a social guild (like the Straight Dope board guild), on your own schedule. Many people do this. There are “pick up groups” formed from exactly this type of player that do small-scale “one night only” raiding. You can do 5-man dungeon groups randomly at any time of the day. You can do player-vs-player battlegrounds randomly at any time of the day.
The only thing that requires structured time-commitment is raiding, IME. And even then, small 10-man guilds can do pretty well in the current normal modes, and well-structured large guilds (like the one my main is in, with over 200 level-80 toons) can do even more on a limited schedule.
As SfG mentions, she has a much higher than average time commitment to the game.
I’m probably about the commitment level you’re looking at - I’ll play a couple of nights a week for periods of 1-2 hours. And I’m having a blast. The game has a variety of activities that are easy to dive into and require ~1 hour of time. You can login, join a queue that will put you in to the next available dungeon group of your level (wait time 1-15 minutes), and then go about solo play activities until you are ready. Similarly, you can queue for player-versus-player events while doing solo activities.
As far as the guilds go, there are game play oriented guilds and then there are more social guilds. The SDMB guild, Burning Dog Legion, is pretty much social - they do organize some guild activities, but there’s no pressure to partake in them. It provides me with a pleasant social backdrop (text chatting for the most part) as I level. Maybe in six months when I have a max level character I’ll join in some of the guild runs, but in the meantime the guild is a resource for pleasant conversation, to ask advice, etc.
The guilds I raid with tend to attract other adults, which means married people and people with kids. Personally I’m unmarried without kids, so I can’t comment on specifics. But some people play together with their spouses (or even with their older children), and some just use it as part of their personal time. When I first started playing WoW, I was introduced to it by my boyfriend at the time, whom I was more-or-less living with; in the evenings, we’d sometimes play together, or one of us would play while the other played another game or read a book, etc. etc. IME, committed relationships work best when people aren’t welded to each other 24/7.
It’s not like we can’t ever get nights off, either–I’m currently seeing someone who lives 800 miles away, which means I’m missing at least two or three raid nights a month, on the weekends where I’m visiting him or he’s visiting me. The important thing is just to alert your guildmates ahead of time so they can plan accordingly.
But again, the amount of time I spend raiding is at the very, very high end.
I have an alt (alternate character, contrast with main, i.e., one you spend less time on) in the BDL, and I probably play it an average of an hour or two a month, in spurts here or there. People can just log on whenever they feel like it, as long as they stick to any commitments they’ve made.
If you want to try WoW out, I’d actually suggest seeing if anyone in the BDL would like to throw an Invite a Friend request your way. That will get you the standard free 10-day trial with some extra perks linking your accounts (like experience bonuses when any two of your characters play together). I’d do it myself, but right now I just don’t have the time to make an honest offer to help someone else level a new toon.
OH AND, off your earlier comment about not understanding a lot of the jargon: by all means, please ask for clarification on anything you’re curious about! I’m, as you’ve probably guessed, always happy to babble on about it extensively (and probably excessively). 
True, very true - that is how most people learn all the new jargon, by playing.
When you start a character (or “toon”) you start in a safe, low-level zone with quests that introduce to the game and your class (whether you’re a wepons-fighter, magic-flinger, whatever) gradually. You’ll pick up on other stuff my seeing chats flow across your screen. And there are great on-line resources to pick up the vocabulary.
Definitely above average, that.
Oh, yeah - play as much or as little as you like.
I started WoW five years ago, near the beginning, while convalescing from a severe illness that left me physically weak. I think there were times I played 10-12 hours in a day because there was so little else I could do at the time.
Last two months I’ve been working 2 jobs. I think there were entire weeks that went by I never even logged on, and when I did it was for very brief periods.
You see, you can adjust your playstyle to fit your schedule. There are things that require an immense time commitment - and others that are still fun and require little time at all to play. One reason WoW is so successful is that there is something there for both those with a lot of time to devote and those with little time to give to the game.
Sure, play entirely by yourself if that’s what you want. Guild membership is in no way required. In fact, I have a character I deliberately keep out of guilds for those times I really do not want any company at all. I don’t always feel social, after all.
PvP - Player vs. player, where your combat opponents are controlled by other human beings.
PvE - Player vs. environment, where you’re up against computer controlled monsters/characters (“mobs”) and/or exploring the world setting.
Just as a note - hardcore raiding is considered PvE, even with 24 (or even *39]!) * of your best buddies along because your opponents are computer controlled. Arenas and battlegrounds are PvP, where everyone you fight is another player.
A favorite way seems to be that several family members play. Also, remember that Shots is spending a LOT of time in the game (so am I, but no family). Many players play only specific days, specific times. I’ve had guildies (married couple with two small kids) who would take turns except on one night, most of the time if one was in the other one wasn’t.
I’m male, 39. I’m a pretty casual player…my only max-level characters are both of the class that starts out at level 55, because I just can’t stick out an entire 80 levels (though I do want to someday). I do belong to a guild (the Wreck List on the Garrosh realm (it’s the unofficial Daily Kos WoW guild)), but I don’t raid (I’ve only ever been, in four years, in one raid…my guildies corralled me into trying out Tournament of Champions (ToC) 25-man).
My max-levels are currently doing mostly achievement-whoring (as I call it). Achievements are a special class of (I guess) kind of “mini-games”…they all relate to things you do in-game, but they’re not quests or anything. Some of them actually make up achievement chains (like the vanity pet chain, or the mount chain, or the holiday chain) at the end of which you get a special in-game reward (the pet chain gets you an additional pet that you can ONLY get through that chain, the mount chain gets you a special additional mount that you can ONLY get through that chain, etc). Some chains reward you with a special title you can make visible to other players (if you open up the maps for every zone in the game, you get an “Explorer” title, for example).
I’m currently working on Loremaster, which involves finishing an ungodly amount of quests. I’m hoping to get it before the next expansion comes out, since there are going to be some incredibly radical changes to the game world when it’s released.
If anyone has played both WoW and LOTRO or City of Heroes, how do they compare?
I loved CoH back in the day, and enjoyed LOTRO, but not as much.
I’ve played WoW, LOTRO and CoX. I liked them all, but City always seemed to get boring before I got too high in level. What I REALLY liked about City was the character customization. I’d kill to get that sort of customization in WoW.
LOTRO is good. I’d rank it between City and WoW. I stopped mostly due to not being able to afford two subs per month (LOTRO and WoW), but I hear it’s gone to the two-tier type of system, where the basic game is free but you have to pay for perks. DDO is similar (which doesn’t surprise, since they’re both Turbine games). If I weren’t concentrating on certain things in WoW before the new expak comes out, I’d probably be playing some free LOTRO, too.
I also played DDO for a very short while. It’s okay, but I’d probably put it at about the level of City.
WoW is home, though.
I don’t really have time to provide a detailed comparison of City and WoW, but I can say that they’re different. Really different. It’s possible to like both, as I do, but liking one is no guarantee of liking the one.
I will say that WoW’s chat system is primitive compared to City’s. If you like global chat, WoW will disappoint you.
I should probably also mention that I much preferred CoV over CoH. I don’t know if the missions were just better designed or what, but I played CoV much more than CoH (I had both in the combined pack about 4 years ago).
City of Villains was far better designed, yes. I expect Going Rogue to be even better.
Also, the games are essentially one right now; there’s no more option to purchase one or the other separately. Going Rogue will bring them even closer together.
44 here. I started playing video games with the original Asteroids way back when, and played all sorts of other games in the intervening years, but never got “hardcore” into any of them (Super NES is the only console I’ve ever owned). WoW is the game I’ve been waiting for all these years. The thing that always made me get bored with video games was their linear nature; after a while I’d just get tired of doing the same story over and over and over. Diablo II kept me interested for a very long time, despite its linear format, because with all the different character classes and possible “specs”, I was doing the same linear story over and over, but I was able to do it a different way every time. But eventually, I did get bored with it. But WoW’s “open-ended”, “sandbox” nature really appeals to me. I can do (or not do) anything I want!
I’ve been utterly astonished at how much money I’ve saved since I started playing WoW, simply because I’m not out spending it on other kinds of entertainment.
Almost all of my characters are female. This is largely because I spend 99% of my time looking at my character from behind (due to where the “camera” is positioned when you’re playing), and if I’m going to have to stare at an ass for hours at a time, I’d prefer it to be a female ass
/wave
I call myself a “hardcore non-raider” 
Thanks. I meant to add but my internet died before I could edit, that if it matters I’m into paired or small group play and I like to tank. Is that a good fit for WoW?
All regular dungeons are five-man, and tank is one of the essential class roles. Once you get higher in level, you start to get into raids, which are 10-man, 25-man or (in a couple of cases, though nothing that’s current (all old content that almost nobody does)) 40-man.
Thanks, jayjay and Bosstone.
That’s a *great *fit for WoW. One of the recent additions to the game is the Random Dungeon Finder (RDF) tool. Starting at level 15 (which you reach pretty quickly), you can use the RDF to queue either for specific five-man dungeons based on your level, or for a completely random dungeon (which will also be level-appropriate). Based on what role(s) you’ve selected (tanking, healing, or damage), you’ll be randomly assigned to a group of four other people from your Battlegroup (a collection of realms)–or, if you queue with a group, the RDF will fill any missing slots.
Tanks are currently the bottleneck in five-man content, so you’ll always get the fastest possible queues. My main is a tank, and when I queue for my daily Heroic dungeon, five seconds is a *long *wait. You’ll probably be waiting a bit longer at lower levels, but I can’t imagine it would take more than a few minutes unless you’re on at a really odd hour (and even then…).
If you want to tank, your class options are Warrior (Protection spec), Paladin (Protection spec), Druid (Feral spec), or Death Knight (currently all three specs have viable tanking talents, but come Cataclysm (the new expansion), Blood will be the dedicated tanking tree).
**DKs **aren’t available until you have at least one level 55+ character, as well as the *Wrath of the Lich King *expansion. **Warriors **are a great class and the classic tanks of the game–we have a huge toolbox, which IMO makes us some of the best tanks but also means it’s one of the hardest classes to tank *well *with, currently (e.g., you have to work harder to hold AOE aggro than a Paladin). I’ve never gotten a **Pally **past the low teens, but a lot of people enjoy them. They seem to be especially useful for soloing–Plate armor, healing spells, etc. make for great survivability. They’re also arguably the strongest tanking class in the game right now, because of the ease of their AOE threat generation and talents like Ardent Defender. **Druids **are great if you want to try a bit of everything–they’re the only four-way hybrids in the game, because depending on spec and gear, you can play them as tanks (Feral), healers (Restoration), ranged DPS (Balance), or melee DPS (also Feral, but with different talent choices). Feral DPS and Feral tanking also have more gear overlap than any other tanking class.
The one big problem with tanks in WoW is our group role scaling. A five-man requires one tank. A ten-man raid uses two for most encounters, and sometimes just one. But a 25-man raid almost exclusively requires between one and three tanks, depending on the encounter. (In fact, I can’t think of a single regular-mode fight in WotLK that requires more than three.) However, it’s worth noting that going forward into Cataclysm, 10-man raids will provide exactly the same rewards as 25s, so we may see an even greater proliferation of strict 10-man raiding guilds. (There’s also no way to tell how role scaling will work with the new raids until the fights have been seen.)
ETA: Currently, every WotLK raid is available in both 10- and 25-man versions. The 25-man versions are tuned higher and drop better gear.
Wow, thanks Shot. Based on that, I think I’ll start with a Paladin and go from there.
Great info.
Pallies are a great starter class. They’re a little slow at first, but they’re solid and uncomplicated. You’d think Warriors would be the straightforward, uncomplicated class, like they are in almost every class-based game, but they’re actually fairly tricky technical fighters, whereas the Pallies are the “hit things with a big stick” class.
I’d be too scared to start with a Pally. People automatically assume you’ll either be able to tank or heal on a dime if one of those roles drops out.
Hunters, rogues and mages yo, no one ever expects you to do anything other than DPS.